Talk:Joyride (novel)

October 2016

Since Nightvisiting is still set in October, I strongly believe now that this story is set in between The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo and Nightvisiting, making it also an October-set story. Here is the evidence.

• The situation with Dawson is mentioned many times by many people. Clearly, The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo is in the past.
• Quill says to April: "[Ram] probably does [more than that] but you don't actually know him that well do you?" And then everyone agrees: "They know it's true. Ram wasn't friends with them before the prom, in fact nobody's really sure he's friends with them now". After their first kiss in Nightvisiting, April wouldn't think this way.

The reasoning behind putting the story in November is based on Matteusz saying: "A few weeks ago we would hear about something awful, something strange, and we would think about it as [...] something far away." Two weeks seems like too few to be described as "a few". However, Matteusz need not refer to exactly the day before the prom. He could mean any time before the prom. So I believe, this story is set in October, making the alien origin happen in April. Amorkuz ☎ 08:45, November 3, 2016 (UTC)

And later April explicitly says: "What Quill said, about us not really being his friends, that's kind of true isn't it?" She couldn't have said it after starting a relationship with him. Amorkuz ☎ 13:16, November 3, 2016 (UTC)

There is also an argument against it being set before Nightvisiting: There Ram says that this is the third weird thing happening this month. Thus, he doesn't count the events of this story. Most probably it is because the writers of the episode forgot about the book. Or, as an in-universe explanation, he only counted things related to the Rift in the TV episode. Amorkuz ☎ 08:36, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

No, that's definitely just Patrick Ness not counting prose stories. To be fair, you wouldn't expect him necessarily to revise his scripts once the novels were completed, and it might confuse viewers if he said fourth.

To address your other points, I absolutely agree. This novel mentions the events of Coach many times, but not Nightvisiting, and it's made clear that at this point, April and Ram aren't very close yet. This is definitely in the lead-up to Nightvisiting. Good catch.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 09:12, November 4, 2016 (UTC)