This page provides information and commentary specifically about the novel Hopscotch and CONTAINS SPOILERS. Read with caution.
For broader, spoiler-free information about Cislunar and its major institutions, see the World Guide for Across the Line. Each Across the Line novel scholia page provides a more detailed description of the other three protagonists: Arcady Lorencz (Hopscotch), Tegeus Droit (Red Rover), Axton (Twenty Questions), and Michael Aronson (Catch).
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Dramatis Personae: Michael Aronson • Tegeus Droit • Axton • Arcady Lorencz • Elliot Chime • Lt. Tasya Shrike • The Children • Far • Arlin • Other Sentinels • The Reporters • Michael’s Staff
Miscellanea: This Book • Bombs • Journalism •
Michael Aronson: M / late 30s / Long black hair and brown eyes. Tegeus Droit’s cousin, foster-father to Angie and Kay, legal guardian of “the children.” He dresses well, lives a comfortable upper-class life, and serves on the Cislunar Vigilance’s board of directors. Wears the Vigilance’s pin; silver as a regular sentinel, gold as the arch-sentinel.
Michael has been the most kind-hearted and humane of the four main protagonists in the series so far, even if his mindset tends to reflect his privilege — which is highlighted more here than in previous novels, as he’s back in his home element and realizing his ambitions. Still, he’s the product of an only slightly less dysfunctional home environment than that which bred Tegeus, and we saw in Twenty Questions that he can be ruthless when it comes to protecting children. In Catch we learn that wasn’t his first time eliminating a threat to children, either.
I’m afraid the poor guy takes quite a beating. But facing death helps adjust his values; for one thing, he realizes that he already has a family, and he doesn’t need to get married to start one. This isn’t a “happily ever after” for him, but in many ways it’s a new start.
Tegeus Droit: M / 43 / Long blond hair often pulled back in a ponytail, green eyes. Michael Aronson’s cousin. Working for the Dockside Watch. Reformed monster.
Tegeus has always taken shots at Michael, and he continues to do so here, although the two of them are learning to respect each other as competent in their own fields. Tegeus has demonstrated an irritable, half-threatening protectiveness toward his cousin throughout the books, and the threats to Michael’s life in Catch end up making him get more serious and strategic about things than we’ve seen before.
Axton: M / 36 / Very short, “prison-cut” dark hair and pale gray eyes. Short, slight of build, and thin to the point of malnourishment. A former prisoner of Hellsgate, where he was dubbed “Ratsie” for being “crazy as a shithouse rat,” Axton serves as a medical examiner and alienist and is in a relationship with Tegeus Droit.
In this novel, we see Axton’s relationships grow in several ways. He confuses Michael by admitting that he loves him, although the kind of love he’s talking about isn’t clear to Michael. I think it’s a sort of pure semi-romantic love, a chivalrous love, almost; one that’s devoted and loyal to the death. His relationship with Tegeus is much more realistic and less selfless. Axton also has to come to terms with Arlin’s shortcomings.
At the end of the book, Axton doesn’t celebrate his recognition, all too aware of the violence and death that led to it.
Arcady Lorencz: F / mid-30s / Short hair, often self-cut and therefore ragged, usually dyed in garish red, orange, and yellow. Wears the uniform of the Cislunar Watch with a Dockside Division badge while on-duty and, always, a Vigilance silver sentinel’s pin. Engaged to Elliot Chime.
Arcady ends up sitting a lot of this novel out due to injury, and events of the novel messed up her wedding plans pretty badly. I feel a little sorry for her.
Elliot Chime: M / 30s / Wears glasses, dresses neatly middle-class. Elliot is the intelligent, studious, occasionally absent-minded head archivist in the city’s Hall of Records. We see and learn a little more about him in Catch, at last, including his writing hobby, which intimidates Arcady.
Elliot’s a little overwhelmed by the violence and dysfunction around him, and he’s still figuring out his role in this odd little family he’s planning to marry into.
Lt. Tasya Shrike: She showed up in Twenty Questions and her use of “Michael” toward the end, addressing Michael, suggested a friendly relationship. She went to school with Michael and they became buddies there. I imagine Michael was bright but timid, used to being bullied by parents and cousin, so Tasya stepped in and started protecting him … in exchange for his doing her homework for her. She gets scarred up and loses some fingers in the novel, but she’s only down, not out.
The Children: Michael’s gathering a family around him: the two orphans Angie (9) and Kay (7); the young sentinels, Jack Alloway (12), Holly Francis (13), Finn Kenzie (14), Caro Liseaux (14), and Kate Mockery (13); and Far’s favorite, Milka Nevenek (12). Angie and Kay are still young enough to treat him very much like a father as they get used to him. The others are a little too old for that, although they have come to see how dedicated he is to their well-being and happiness, and they have decided to protect him, in turn.
Far: Far learns an important lesson in Catch — humans lie. It’s quite a concept to grasp, but Far’s already been proven to be a quick study, learning from Yzyrche and Kyrchye as well as from the humans with which he (his chosen gender) interacts.
Arlin “The Knave” Mallery: A courtier in Audrey Lament’s court who became Axton’s guardian when Axton was orphaned. I said in the Scholia for Twenty Questions that he’s a tragic figure, and here that’s realized; a good man driven to irrational, desperate acts by ostracism and despair. And, to some extent, love; he’s served Arlin in loco parentis for years. He’s not a very good parent-substitute, of course. I would have liked, perhaps, to spend more time on him, to allow readers to see things with his eyes, but unfortunately the novels’ structures didn’t lend themselves to that.
Other Sentinels: I throw out a lot of sentinel names in this novel, primarily because they’re Michael’s peers, and this novel revolves around the Vigilance. The Vigilance’s board of directors consists of Nicolai Grimme (hi, Jo). Laurent Palster (hi, Catherine). Sindin Dacey (hi, Jaime). Charles Christopher Cadmium. Ysolde Waring. Hester Bellamy. Aimee Devereaux. Mazarin Saint-Cloud. For the most part, none play huge roles in the novel, though. Cadmium has a son in the Inquisitors Militant, and is second in power to Michael. Saint-Cloud is greater in power than Michael but suffers a loss in the bombings and goes on to become the protagonist in Bone Horse. Ysolde Waring is an old lover of Michael’s, but despite thinking about it a bit, neither of them are really ready to pick it up again after so long. Who knows, though; maybe some of them have side-stories to tell.
The Reporters: The newspapers in Cislunar tend to have identifiable focuses and biases. In Catch, Saint-Cloud briefs Michael on the papers and their representatives: Vincent Pool – Candor Sun-Herald (Conservative — Michael’s paper of choice) Daniel Griffin – Cislunar Clarion (Slightly left of Conservative); Celia Brooke – University Review (Analytical); Adeline Walthingham – Morning Chronicle (Labor/Progressive); Horace Lowell – People’s Shout (Labor/Radical — Arcady’s paper of choice); Unnamed – Shipping Report (Financial); Unnamed – Gentleman’s Weekly Gazette.
Walthingham is the only reporter to get much time in the story, as she insists on seeing Michael’s activities through a Progressive lens. She’s looking to make a name for herself, and although she’s not quite as hardened as she thinks she is, she’s stubborn. Axton thinks she’d make a good match for Michael, but Axton’s judgment may be a little impaired when it comes to matters of the heart; he does love romance novels.
Michael’s Staff: Merrit, the butler. Thomas, the footman. Niles, the “boy.” Mrs. Lovett, aka Cook. Aldo, the coachman. Michael likes his staff and takes care of them, and they like him. Some have been with him a long time, like Merrit.
This Book: I think the books have been getting progressively longer…. I struggled with Catch more than with the others, because this one had to be much more political than the rest. I’m also afraid it got pretty violent. I re-read it as I posted it here, and I’m tempted to cut some scenes out, although for the most part I like the way the key attacks push Michael forward from something of a pampered noble to a seasoned leader. Eh, feel free to tell me where you’d cut, if you want. “Catch,” of course, is named after the game … “let’s play Catch.” It was originally going to be called “Tag.”
I wanted to stop the series here, but I think there’s a least one more book’s worth here. I’m just not sure whose perspective to use. I really, really thought about narrating it from Far’s perspective, but I think that would drive readers crazy. Like reading James Joyce’s Ulysses with far more fragmented English. I get to explore transient speech much more in Bone Horse — which, by the way, IS a spin-off after the events in Catch — and I think that will be enough for readers. Sorry, Far. I know you want to talk about how frustrating humans are. Arcady thinks she should be revisited, since she started it all off and sat most of this novel out, plus had her wedding ruined. She thinks I owe her. Elliot suggests an outsider’s perspective might be interesting to readers. Axton doesn’t want the job but he’s also a good candidate, whether he likes it or not. Well … we’ll see.
Bombs: I felt very nervous Googling around about explosions and bomb-making and the like. …Bombs are awful weapons. If you’re going to try to kill someone, at least have the decency to look them in the eyes as you do it. Killing shouldn’t be easy. Bombs and so many of the weapons that followed their invention make taking human life too easy and impersonal. It’s horrible. I tried to reflect that horror here. I probably didn’t do a good enough job.
Journalists: I wanted to be a reporter when I was young, but the college I ended up attending didn’t have a journalism program. I took a journalism-adjacent major and worked on the student paper throughout college. Later, I worked professionally at a magazine for a year. When I first began teaching, I had to teach one to two newswriting classes every semester, and oversee the student paper. It was grueling, not least because I felt like the journalistic values I’d been raised to respect were quickly eroding — and in my opinion, it’s only gotten worse. But really, in a way, it’s like the field has simply reverted to the past, when “objectivity” wasn’t a journalistic value at all.
I’ve noticed that when I mention journalists or reporters in my fiction, I often do so critically, which isn’t entirely fair. A lot of journalism is awful here in the U.S., but there are still papers and reporters striving to meet the ideals of the field despite a 24-hour news cycle driven by a greedy desire for ever-increasing ad profit that requires a constant churn of sensationalist content to catch consumers’ attention. There is still, maybe more than ever, a role for a “watchdog press” in society. It’s just that too often the watchdog is really a lapdog. …Walthingham, in this book, thinks of herself as a watchdog.