I love how the book triggers her vocabulary and linguistic skills. I've always been fascinated by scenes where art/fiction/learning help reconfigure prisoners with the outside world, prolly because there's a lot of truth to them. And there are potentially meaty plot and character developments which could derive from this chapter: How will her retriggered learning affect her behavior as a captive? Will it make her more rebellious? How will the Medic and Co. react to an object that connects her to her life outside captivity? Who gave her the book? Did one of the classes draw the pictures for her, or did she draw them herself before the Medic turned her into an Angel? I hope you pick up at least one of these threads, though no doubt you've planned to already. ;) One critique I have for the style is that I'm unsure of whether the Medic's operations have caused Angel to genuinely forget her (considerable) vocabulary until the book helps bring back her cognitive skills...or if Angel simply hasn't had a chance to use her vocab for some time, and the sudden opportunity to do so both excites and frightens her. I think it's prolly the former, since words are described as leaping to her mind "ex nihlo" and "with no impulse I can name," but if that's the case, then her normal narration outside of parenthesis should be plainer. The descriptive words she uses in parenthesis are sophisticated and beautiful, ("Ecru," "carmine," "dun"? Wow.) but they'd stand out and have even more impact if she didn't already use fairly big words like "atonal" in her regular narration. Best wishes with sorting out the plot bunnies. If you like, maybe you can share conflicting plot ideas on this thread for us to discuss?