Okay so the kids from chapter one are brought back into the story, and Peter, the focus character among them, knows more than he’s letting on.
We’re presented with an interesting scene in which two of the clay dolls that Peter is playing with come to life. Later he makes reference to creating golems, so I’m going to assume this is related.
Also, Ted’s returned to Millgate (after putting his wife up in a nearby town, it sounds like… probably won’t hear from her again…) and is now living in the boarding house which Peter’s mother runs.
Then Ted has a bizarre conversation with Peter, in which this kid shows he definitely knows more than he’s letting on. He confronts Ted with all sorts of strange statements and questions, like “how did you get past the barrier?” and Ted, quite craftily I’ll say, plays along, trying to give non-answers to the questions in hopes of drawing out more information from Peter. Eventually, Peter seems to realize that Ted doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and discontinues the conversation. As he runs out, he shouts back to Ted “I know who you are. I know who you really are!”
The mystery being built up seems interesting enough, although the characters are a bit flat. This is often the case, I’ve seen, with this 1950’s pulp sci-fi. Which has unfortunately had far-reaching impacts on the genre even to this day. Even genre novels with really rich characters (ASoIaF, Watchmen/Sandman) are sort of relegated to the side based on their association with older conceptions of these genres.
By this I don’t mean to suggest that I dislike these novels, certainly they’re interesting, but they are in many ways decidedly pulp, and it seems as though the standards for them are pretty low in terms of writing quality and character depth.
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