Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

 My first book of 2024 turned out to be a success, which I take as a sign that it is going to be a good year. The title of this book is, of course, taken from a famous Shakespeare soliloquy spoken by Macbeth:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
to the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
and then is heard no more.  It is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing. 

One of the problems I have with watching productions of Macbeth is that I get distracted by the multitude of book titles strewn throughout the dialogue. This is not Shakespeare's fault; he could not have known that his words would grace the covers of scads of books. And now we have one more. 

This is not a novel about Shakespeare and only a small and peripheral part of the story is about a production of Macbeth. It is a story about gamers and the people who create games.  What does this soliloquy have to do with games, you may ask?  Well, as one character asks, "What is a game?"

It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent because nothing is permanent, ever. 

Sam and Sadie meet as children and become friends through their love of games. Later they become game creators and start a successful game company. I am not a gamer. The only games I can remember playing were Pong and Tetris. But despite that, I loved this novel.  

This is not a plot driven novel - stories about lives seldom are because lives aren't particularly plot driven - but I did find it to be a bit of a page turner. This is the story of two complicated characters who have the kind of love/hate relationship that many famous collaborators have. Mike Love and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys feuded for years. Darryl Hall recently got a restraining order against John Oates. Richard Rogers was famously frustrated by his first lyricist, Lorenz Hart. 

Through much of this novel, as the characters came together and then drifted apart only to come together again over a 30 year period, I was afraid that Zevin would give in to the temptation to make them lovers. After all, Harry told Sally that men and women could never really be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. But as Sadie tells Sam, lovers are common; true collaborators are rare. And don't most of us go through life working with people that we never even consider having romantic relationships with? 

These are not easy characters to love; each is stubborn and at different points in the novel convinced that they are right even though they are so clearly wrong.  Each has issues that arise in their lives that make it difficult for them to move forward when the other needs them to move forward. There are misunderstandings. There are very sad moments. They each have different visions for what they want to accomplish:  Sadie wants to create art; Sam wants to create entertainment .  Their arguments through the years are intense. Zevin captured the reality of life and collaborative relationships with these two.  This would be a great book club book for those book clubs that treat characters as real people and argue about whether they "like" or "agree" with them. 

Zevin also manages to work in many interesting life issues for the characters:  Sam is an Asian American who sometimes feels he doesn't belong; Sam is also physically disabled although he doesn't like to think of himself that way; Sadie deals with sexism in a male dominated industry; both of them deal with death and loss; there are discussions about cultural appropriation; same sex marriage and people's opposition to it come up; and it even deals with how good intentions can inadvertently lead to tragedy.  Zevin takes her time with these issues and gives us moral complexities as complicated as they are in real life. 

One thing I found interesting was that I very much related to Sadie and the issues she faced as a woman in a male dominated university and career while at the same time thinking she was wrong much of the time and disagreeing with her choices.  I like when authors create complicated characters like that.  Of the two, I found her less likeable than Sam but Sam had his issues too. 

As a former corporate lawyer I also thought she captured the challenges of partners starting a company very well.  

The only time my attention flagged was in the penultimate section of the novel, where she creates someone playing one of the immersive games.  Apparently these games work like stories where the player becomes a character in the story and can make certain choices, while other people that they don't know are other characters interacting with them.  Maybe because I don't game, I got a little bored with this section even though I figured out fairly early what Zevin was trying to accomplish by including this.  But this isn't a long portion of the novel and it is a minor quibble. 

There was so much hype about this novel that I wondered if I would like it as much as others seemed to.  I did.  I happy to be able to recommend this first novel of the year.  If you like character driven novels you should like it.  Even if you like plot driven novels, you should find it readable.  It does give a real sense of the time periods in which it is set and the locales.  And while I didn't find any sentences or paragraphs that made me stop and say "what great writing!" I did think it was well written.  

 

2023 Reading Wrap Up

2023 is now in the books (so to speak) and it's time for my yearly wrap up. This year I am doing things a little differently. One of my goals this year was to blog about books on a monthly basis and I pretty much managed to do that. Since most of the books I read already have a brief write-up on my blog I don't intend to list them all in one place. Feel free to scroll through back posts on my blog to read about all the books I read (or at least most of them). In this post I will do a roundup of my favorites along with some general thoughts. But I will try to link to the blog posts where I talk about the individual books so that you can click through if you need more information. 

STATISTICS GENERALLY

In 2023 I read a total of 73 books which is much fewer than I read in the last two years but is a  much more manageable number for me. I think part of the reason there were fewer books was because I read fewer series this year and also I tried to read longer books. 

I read 44 books from the library (almost all on the Libby app), 24 on my Nook app (although some were books I bought in previous years but didn't read until 2023) and 5 in physical book form. 

In terms of diversity, I read 51 books by female authors and 22 books by male authors (I counted Charles Todd as male even though it was a mother-son writing team). I didn't research the background of all the authors but, unfortunately, it looks like only 7 were written by people of color. I don't think I read any books in translation this year - I generally don't read much translated work. 

In terms of genre, I only read two non-fiction books and both were memoirs. Of the fictional works, it seems that 44 were mysteries (although some were hard to categorize). I also read about 35 works of historical fiction. I do count historical mysteries and any book set more than 20 years in the past in this category.  

HOW I JUDGE BOOKS

Before I get into the books, I thought it would be good to talk about how I judge books. Earlier this year I wrote about Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways" into a book. She wrote:

It seems to me that all works of fiction and narrative nonfiction are broadly made up of four experiential elements: story, character, setting, and language. I call these “doorways,” because when we open a book, read the first few pages, and choose to go on, we enter the world of that book. And I’ve come to believe we can help readers better choose their next book by looking at the proportion of these four elements.

A book with story as its biggest doorway is one that readers describe as a page-turner, a book that they can’t put down because they desperately want to discover what happens next.

A book with character as its biggest doorway is a book in which readers feel so connected with the characters that when the book is over they feel they’ve lost someone dear to them.

Readers of novels in which setting is most prominent say things like “I felt like I was there,” or, as one man told me, “When I finished Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, I immediately made plans to go to New Mexico—I had to see for myself where it took place.”

A book in which language is the major doorway leads readers to utter sentences like “I read more slowly because I wanted to savor the language” or “I’m not even sure what the book is about, but I loved the way the author wrote.”

I fall into that last category. A book doesn't rise to "great" in my mind unless I fall in love with the way the author wrote it - her language, the way she structured the story. This means that a lot of really good books, that other people rate as "great", are just on my "it's ok" lists and not on my "great" lists. Keep this in mind if you are looking for books to read. You may not read the same way I do and you may need a different doorway to be the major doorway. As a general rule, if you are looking for page turners, I am not the person you should be looking to for recommendations. I do really like books with a strong sense of place and good characters, but writing is the top criteria for me. 

MY "BEST" BOOKS

These are books I enjoyed the most (in no particular order) and/or stayed with me the longest. It goes without saying that to make it onto this list, I had to really like the way the book was written. 

    The Fraud by Zadie Smith.  Although this is historical fiction, set in the 1800's, Smith makes it very relevant for our populist times. It involves a trial to determine if a man is the real heir to a fortune or is just a fraud. Many, many people believe him even though his story is farfetched. For the people who want the writing to be their doorway into the novel, this is a great one. There is an interesting but somewhat convoluted plot, and the two main characters are very well drawn, but mainly it is the writing that stands out for me. 

    The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout.  This novel takes place in the same fictional universe as Strout's Lucy Barton books but can be read alone, as Lucy is not a character in this novel. Strout places character building above plot in her novels, although this one does have a messy, chaotic plot.  This is not a novel for those looking for a page turner, but for those who like slow character builds, this is a good one.  And the writing is outstanding. 

    Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead.  Again, if you are looking for a page turner, this is not for you.  This is a novel about a place (Sag Harbor) at a specific time (the early 1980's) and the black community that summered there. The story meanders along just like summer vacation meanders along. But if you remember the 80's you will enjoy this novel even if you are not black and never set foot in Sag Harbor. 

    Rose Nicolson by Andrew Grieg.  The main character, William Fowler, is a young man from Edinburgh in the late 1500's who leaves home to attend St. Andrews University where he makes friends and has adventures. This one does have a good plot in addition to well drawn characters and good sense of place. If you like historical fiction set in this time period, you should like this novel. 

    The Bookseller of Inverness by S. G. MacLean. Iain MacGillivray survived the Battle of Culloden and is now keeping his head down as a bookseller in Inverness, but the locals keep pulling him into rebellion. The plot is sometimes a little farfetched (but it does move along). I liked it mostly for the characters and sense of place. Again, if you like historical fiction set during this period you should enjoy this. 

    Tom Lake by Ann Patchett.  This seems to be the novel of the year and I was afraid it was over-hyped but I did very much enjoy it. The main character, Lara, is telling her grown daughters the story of how she had a relationship long ago with someone who became a famous movie actor. She tells it at her own pace and there are a couple of (to me) unexpected twists in the story. There is a plot but this is not really a  plot-driven novel; I would say it is mostly character driven. I like it for the way she structured her story, with natural pauses and breaking points in the story that fill in what the characters are doing in the present time. Set on a cherry farm in Michigan, it also has a good sense of place. 

    The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken.  This is a very short little book about a woman on a trip to London where she remembers her recently deceased, larger than life, mother. She evokes a London I know and I really enjoyed her writing. 

I also have a couple of Honorable Mentions.  I enjoyed these books but in each case felt that they were too long and maybe could have used an editor who said so. 

    Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris.  This is the story of two men who signed the death warrant for King Charles I and were later hunted down by Charles II and his men. They escaped to North America. This is primarily a plot-driven novel but also has, in some places, a great sense of place. Harris really creates the world of New England in the 1600's - the sense of expansiveness but also the stifling nature of the communities. The story is, at times gripping, but sometimes the action slows down. This may be because it is a true story and that is the nature of life. 

    The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish.  A story told in two time periods.  In the modern period two academics work on translating household records and documents from a Jewish household in the London of the 1600's.  The other part is the story of the woman who lived in the 1600's. I really liked this novel but it is VERY long and parts of it are excerpts from correspondence regarding philosophy that I found tiresome. Trust me, if you skim over those parts you aren't losing any of the plot and I didn't think they added much to the characterizations. 

NEW (TO ME) MYSTERIES

As usual, I read a large number of mysteries this year, most of which were continuations of series I've been reading over the years. You can check out my 2022 end of the year summary for descriptions of those series. This year I did read a few new (to me) mysteries that I enjoyed:

    The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett.   This novel is structured as a series of transcripts of audio files found on an old iphone done by specialist transcription software (including the mistakes that the transcription software makes). Some people may not like that but I really did. Interestingly, I also read her other novel, The Appeal, this year which also is structured with documents and I didn't really like that one. 

    The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death, both by Anthony Horowitz.  Horowitz makes himself a character in these mysteries which is very meta but I found it enjoyable. 

    The Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman.  A Jane Austen-like setting but the main characters are middle aged spinsters who solve crimes. My only complaint is that it reads like inter-connected short stories instead of one novel. 

    The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair.   Set immediately after WWII in London, two women set up an agency to introduce eligible women and men, but when one of their clients is murdered they must solve the crime in order to protect their business. This will be a series and I will read more. 

    Jane Harper's Aaron Faulk Series set in Australia.  This includes The Dry, Force of Nature and  Exiles,  Very plot driven with a great sense of place.

NONFICTION

As I said above, I only read two non-fiction books this year.  One of them was Chita, by Chita Rivera.  If you are a theater nerd, I recommend this. 

December Reading

 December was a fairly light month for reading because I was busy with holiday activities.

• Viviana Valentine Goes up the River by Emily J. Edwards.   This is the second in the Viviana Valentine series and I thought I should catch up since the third book was recently released.  These novels are set in the early 1950s and are light hearted mysteries with main characters that sound as if they should be in hard boiled mysteries.  This time the scene is reminiscent of an English country house mystery (although it is outside NYC) with Viviana spending time at a rich guy's mansion to figure out where the "noise" he is hearing is coming from.   These are not deep mysteries and I guessed the culprit pretty early.   But they are lighthearted fun that work as good pallet cleansers between deeper books.

• Home at Night by Paula Munier.  This is the next in the Mercy Carr mystery series.  Mercy solves crimes with her dog Elvis.  She is helped by her partner Troy and his dog, Susie Bear. This one involved an eerie old house that Mercy wants to buy and fix up.  But strange things are going on there.  I love this series because I love the two dogs and usually the mystery is pretty good too.  I was told that the author said this one was inspired by the novel Possession by AS Byatt and I can see that.

• Woof by Spencer Quinn.   I was in the mood for another dog-led mystery and someone on the internet was talking about this series so I thought I would give it a try.  Birdie Gaux is a little girl who lives in a town near the Louisiana swamps.  At the beginning, for her birthday, she is allowed to adopt a dog and she picks Bowser (her name for him).   The mystery is told completely from Bowser's point of view and is delightful.  It's not a complex mystery.  This series is published by Scholastic so I suppose this is a YA novel but that didn't really matter.  It was the point of view of Bowser that made it enjoyable.  I think kids would like this. 

• The Hero of this Book by Elizabeth McCracken.  This is not a memoir, the author makes very clear.   It is a "novel".  She says "If you want to write a memoir without writing a memoir, go ahead and call it something else.  Let other people argue about it.  Arguing with yourself or the dead will get you nowhere."  So this is a "novel" in which the unnamed narrator takes a short trip to London in August 2019.  You know, before the world changed.  "Things", she writes, "felt dire, which now seems laughable."  It is 10 months after the death of the unnamed narrator's mother.  The last time she visited London was in 2016 with her mother.  I read this the day before the 3 year anniversary of the death of my own mother.  I wasn't sure that was wise but it turned out to be perfect.  The mother of the unnamed narrator was nothing like my mother but I still related to the feelings in the book.  And London is one of my favorite cities. In addition to a book about a larger than life mother, this is also a book about writing.  "Perhaps you fear writing a memoir, reasonably.  Invent a single man and call your book a novel  The freedom one fictional man grants you is immeasurable."   I enjoyed this very short book very much. 

• Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead.  Whitehead is one of my favorite authors but this novel is not one of my favorites.  It is more like a series of three linked short novellas and that's not a form I particularly enjoy.  The writing is, as usual, brilliant but I did not find the story as interesting as I found the story of Harlem Shuffle (this is a sequel).  The initial premise is that, in order to score tickets to a Jackson 5 concert for his daughter (it's the 1970's) Ray Carney is drawn back into the life of petty crime he previously abandoned.  But it is much more violent and dangerous than previously, just as New York became much more violent and dangerous in the 1970's.  While I didn't enjoy this novel as much as his others that I've read, I did regularly think that it would make a good TV series.     

November Reading

 The following are the books I finished in November. 

• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett.   It seems that everyone is reading this novel and I worried that it might not live up to the hype.   The New Yorker called this Ann Patchett's "Pandemic Novel"  but there really isn't much about the pandemic in it.  The pandemic is the reason the whole family is together for the summer on the family cherry farm but they don't talk about it much and nobody dies of COVID.  The novel is a memory novel in which Lara tells her three grown daughters the story of how she once dated a man who later became a famous movie star.  Lara has long been content with her life on the cherry farm with her husband (who is secure enough to not care about the daughters' interest in the famous movie star) and doesn't regret anything in her life.  Her daughters, like most children, find it hard to imagine their parents as young.  This is a NICE novel.  A PLEASANT novel.  I never really cared much about the plot line (such as it is) although there were a few pleasing twists that caused me to smile.  I never felt deeply invested in the characters, although I liked most of them.  I enjoyed this book mostly for Patchett's use of words and the structure that kept things moving along. 

•  A Mercy by Toni Morrison.  Not my favorite Toni Morrison book but still a wonderfully well written novel.  Set in the 1600's, the main character is Florens who is sold as a slave to a man from New England (?) and separated from her mother who is a slave in Maryland.  The sale is actually the mercy because this saves the daughter from the worst of plantation life.   But the separation scars Florens.  The novel contains multitudes - native american slavery, fear of witches, greed, mail-order brides.   It is a little difficult to follow sometimes because Morrison switches points of view often.  It is a good picture of 17th century America told from the points of view of persons from whom we don't normally get points of view. 

• Chenneville by Paulette Giles.  The latest book by Paulette Giles is about a Journey for Revenge.  I don't much like revenge tales and this one ended up being something of a disappointment at the end.  But Giles is VERY good at writing about the journey (as she was in Enemy Women).  Her creation of a sense of place is excellent as the main character moves from the eastern battlefield hospitals of the civil war, back to St. Louis, down to Ste. Genevieve county Missouri and then a long trek through Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.   Giles also is good at creating characters with interesting back-stories - in this case the main character begins the story waking up from a coma with only partial memories.  But after creating interesting characters, it's as if she doesn't really know what to do with them. It's not that they don't grow, they do.  But they grow in predictable ways without, in my opinion, having to actually do the work for the growth.  I'm always left wanting more. In  this case I was disappointed that at the end she took away from the main character the decision to act or not act that was, in my opinion, essential to having him actually grow.  On the whole, not a bad read but frustrating in places. 

• Fatal Legacy by Lindsey Davis.  The latest Flavia Albia mystery.  I always enjoy Davis' mysteries which are set in ancient Rome but have a modern feel to them.   This one involved an investigation Flavia Albia does for a very complicated family.  It involves slavery and emancipation in ancient Rome.  This can be read alone but it is part of a series and the earlier books give more background on the main, continuing characters. 

RIP A.S. Byatt

Today we learned of the death of A.S. Byatt, one of my favorite authors.   Thinking about her I remembered that long ago (15 years!) I did a re-read of her Frederica quartet and blogged about it.  

The Virgin in the Garden

Still Life

Babel Tower

A Whistling Woman

I didn't like everything she wrote but I loved many of her novels, including Possession.  RIP

September/October Reading

I combined September and October because ... well, I only finished one book in September.  There were a few reasons for that but the main reason was that I was working on a book I started in August and I found it very hard going.  But, instead of just DNF'ing it, I wanted to finish it because I like the time period it was set in.  The problem was that when I would put it down I never wanted to pick it up again. And I guess I felt guilty starting something else.  And there was a lot of good television I wanted to watch. And ... well, enough excuses.  By October I stopped feeling guilty leaving it and started reading other things.   

• Jamie MacGillivray:  The Renegade's Journey by John Sayles.  I think the word "Journey" is an appropriate word for the title.  This is the book I had a hard time finishing.  This is the last of my "Scotland" books that I started in August.  You may remember that the main character of the first Scotland book I read, The Bookseller of Inverness, was also named MacGillivray and he had survived the Battle of Culloden and transportation to the colonies, only to return to his home town of Inverness.   The MacGillivray in this novel has a similar journey without returning to Scotland. But this novel goes into much greater detail about the horror of the Battle of Culloden and its aftermath, the horror of being imprisoned in London for treason, the horror of being transported across the ocean, the horror of being attacked by privateers, the horror of being enslaved on a plantation in Georgia, the horror of being captured by native Americans - and that's only the first half of the novel.  With so much horror I kept putting it down and reading other things.  In the end it took me almost 2 months to finish it.  It was good enough that I wanted to finish it but at the same time I kept wanting to leave it.   When Jamie is finally captured by Indians and becomes involved in the beginning of the French and Indian War (and another main character ends up in Quebec)  it began to move faster for me because French North America is a particular interest of mine (and there was less horror).  But in the end, I can't really recommend this book.   I truthfully think it would make a good mini-series.  Detail can be captured on film with a shot that lasts a few seconds.  In a novel, the detail takes pages (and pages and pages and pages).  

• The Fraud:  A Novel by Zadie Smith.  This is the only book I finished in September.  I love Zadie Smith's writing and although this is the first historical novel she has written I ended up loving it as much as the other works of hers that I have read.  The novel opens with a home catastrophe brought on by the weight of too many books in the library/study which causes many books to crash through the floor to the room below.  I was a little nervous when it turned out that it was a history of the Battle of Culloden that turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back (Culloden again!).  And the main character, the widow Eliza Touchet, is also Scottish.  But this is not a Scottish novel.  Eliza is the housekeeper for her deceased husband's cousin, a one-time best selling author who is in his declining years. Both of them are people who really lived but are not much remembered  today (in fact, not much at all is known about Eliza).  Set in the 19th century in the times of Dickens, the main "fraud" in this novel involves a real life incident where a man claimed to be the long lost heir to a great fortune.  The main witness for the fraudster was an elderly, formerly enslaved Jamaican man who is also a character in this novel.  The legal proceedings around this are always in the background as the main characters, and all of London, follow the trial avidly.  Those of the lower classes see this as a populist cause and echoes of our own times are all over this part of the plot.  But there are other "frauds" that are ongoing in the novel.  I enjoyed the many layers of this novel and recommend it as well as Zadie Smith's other novels (all of which are set in modern times).

• The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman (A Thursday Murder Club Novel).   The next installment of the Thursday Murder Club, this episode features our elderly main characters investigating the death of a local antiques dealer whom they knew.  As usual it is delightful and I think he captures these elderly detectives beautifully.  But a warning - if you had or have a loved one with Alzheimers you may find parts of this book very difficult.  VERY difficult. I did not expect to find myself crying my eyes out in the middle of a cozy murder mystery.

• The Accidental Detectorist: Uncovering an Underground Obsession by Nigel Richardson.  When the pandemic stopped all travel, a travel writer decided to learn about metal detecting.  He could travel through British history.  Richardson takes you through his journey, buying equipment, learning the how's and where's of the hobby and the joys of finding things.  As someone who was always interested in archaeology, this seems like the perfect hobby and while reading I briefly considered taking it up.  But, then I realized that while America has been inhabited many thousands of years, the only metal objects I would find would be a few hundred years old at most. 

• The Umbrella by A. M. Stuart.  This novella is a prequel to the Harriet Gordon mystery series which is set in southeast Asia in the early 1900's.  In the series we know that Harriet, a widow, had been arrested in London as part of the demonstrations for Women's Suffrage and that she had been force fed.   This novella is that story. I liked it because it filled in some of Harriet's background, although as with many novellas there wasn't much to it. 

• Terror in Topaz by A. M. Stuart.  This is the fourth book in the Harriet Gordon mystery series.  In this novel, Harriet and her brother travel to Kuala Lumpur (in present day Malaysia) because her brother has a job offer.  While there, a murder (of course) takes place and Harriet is in the midst of it.  I mainly read these mysteries because they have a good sense of place - I find myself googling pictures of places a lot when reading.  As mysteries they are fine but are not my favorites. 

Ahsoka Series Finale Season 1

 The series finale of Ahsoka is tonight and I thought I'd go on record with my predictions (not that anyone cares or will even read this). 

Here they are:

• Baylon Skoll will discover the thing/person who has been calling to him and he will die or be irrevocably changed/defeated in the process.  Throughout the series he has been set up as a very powerful force wielder.  Ahsoka has come up against him twice.  Once she lost and the other time he didn't win.   If the final "big bad" is going to convine those of us who don't participate in the Expanded Universe that it really is big, really is bad and is horribly frightening the writers have to show us - they can't just tell us.  The best way to show us is to kill the most powerful person in the series and that's Baylon.  They can't kill Ahsoka, it's her show.  That's why she hasn't defeated Baylon - they need him to be defeated by the Big Bad to show us how frightening the Big Bad is. 

• Thrawn will make it back to the original galaxy.  He will take the witches (sigh) with him. I'm pretty sure the others except Baylon will make it back too but I suppose it is possible Ahsoka, Ezra and Sabine could be stranded until next year.   Maybe fighting the Big Bad.  (I'm hoping whatever the Big Bad is, they will just leave it in the other Galaxy.)  None of them will die - the death of Baylon will be enough.

• At some point Ezra will use a light saber and make some quip about how it's all coming back to him.  (But I think he will eventually construct a new light saber of his own when he gets back to the main galaxy - although I like the idea of him finding Kanin's light saber which many people have thrown out as an idea.)

• Although Shin wants to throw in her lot with Thrawn, the witches PLUS zombies will be too much for her.  (I don't really care for Shin but in some ways she is a stand in for the audience every time she says "witches?"  Zombies haven't shown up yet but I predict that if they do, that will be too much even for her).  Thrawn will have to show some of his hand or we fans are going to wonder why we should really be worried about him getting back to the main galaxy. 

• Shin will not be "redeemed" - if she ends up with Ahsoka and company it will be because she is stranded like them and has no other choice.  But wherever she is I predict she will magically continue to have time to apply all that eye makeup even though she hasn't had time even for a bath. Same for Sabine.

• I predict they will NOT return via the World Between Worlds.  Ahsoka already made it clear in Rebels that everyone has to go out the way they come in or chaos will ensue.  And Dave Filoni has said it is a place meant for knowledge not travelling between times.  This is not to say that the WBW will not come into it in the final episode, I just predict they won't use it to return. 

• They will NOT fully resolve the looming issue between Ezra and Sabine over her not telling him how she got there.  I think they will let that character issue arise in the episode and then be resolved next season.  

• There will be a post-credits scene.

• Not a prediction, but speculation.   Whatever the Big Bad is, it will not be resolved without Anakin who may be set up to be the most powerful being in the Galaxy (the Father?) and finally bring meaning to the phrase "bring balance to the Force" (which I've never thought had much meaning at the end of the original trilogy).   Part of me thinks that would be cool but part of me thinks that would be a problem in a series entitled Ahsoka.   Seems like Ahsoka should be the hero in her own series.