The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear

I am currently reading The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear.  I began reading this mainly because it had an interesting cover, but I have been really enjoying this book. Not enjoying the book like a 'whoa I really like this book I'm gonna stay up 'till 3:00 reading it,' but like 'O Lordy, this is a marvelous book I will treasure forever and maybe even, god forbid, reread.'  The kind of book you're not so excited about that you want to finish quickly, but the kind of book you want to read slowly so as to prolong the sacred act of soaking in its pages. Anyways, being only a hundred pages in or so, I don't necessarily have such a great grasp of the plot, but so far the author has just portrayed the protagonist drifting around and living with different strange creatures and learning strange things from them. In each of Bluebear's so- called "lives," he lives with a different group of people, but eventually has to leave. I think the author here is hinting at the theme of ending, and all things ending, and how all the experiences in your life are pretty connected in the fact that they all end, and usually in not so great ways. The subsequent endings of Bluebear's lives thus far include:

Life 1: Being ditched on an island for growing too large.

Life 2: Fleeing who he's living with (hobgoblins) in fear of becoming despicable like them.

Life 3: Nearly being eaten by the candy- filled island he's living on that actually turns out to be a creepy large creature and saved by a strange dinosaur- like bird thing in the nick of time.

Life 4: Being given up in favor of retirement.

I wouldn't say that any of these unfortunate occurances are Bluebear's fault at all (except for maybe the second, but who wants to be like a hobgoblin?) -- so maybe the author is pointing out  how every little thing in your life will end, and there's not a thing you can do about it, because it's not your fault and it's not under your control. Maybe he thinks that as a person you are not in control of anything-- after all, all Bluebear's been doing for the duration of the book is drifting, getting to other places accidentally, but not staying long, and just going where the tides take him-- sometimes literally.

Critically reading over what I have just written, I've realized that it sounds a lot like what Ms. Rear talked about with Romeo and Juliet-- fate. I think that the author of this book must be a big fan of fate, even if not in the way Shakespeare is. Bluebear may not be fated to end an ancient feud with death, but I feel like, no matter how insignifigant his life has been so far, all of this stuff has been decided for him. He has no control and everything is following a pattern- faaaate.

All of this talk makes me wonder what will happen at the end of the book. I seldom blog on a book without finishing it, for fear of making uneducated (in that book) and incorrect assumptions. But if each of his lives are fated to end in this manner, and we're on 5 out of 13 1/2, I wonder how and if he'l die. It's hard to predict what will happen later in this book, because the narrator speaks as one telling back their story, so he must be alive at the end, but if he is, that doesn't follow the pattern. Maybe he has 13 1/2 lives because the last 1/2 life is used writing this book peacefully till death? Anyway it may be will be interesting, and I look forward to seeing all my theories proven useless later in the book. Conclusively, I would say that this book is excellent, and possibly thematic, depending on if I'm right. Either way, the book is worth reading if only to be able to say you're reading a book about Captain Bluebear.