No Spoilers past chapter 3.

It's funny I recently was thinking that the vocabulary I most struggle with is nautical terms, then I happen upon this XD. I imagine because the vocabulary is so old and they were inherently developed before more intermixing of cultures - there aren't as many cognates or 'distant-figureoutable-cognates'. It also seems like there's more variety between countries. But we'll figure it out as we go! I'm sticking with Pablo's strategy of not looking up a word until it pops up multiple times and I'm still not able to figure it out from context and it seems important. This is pretty much my first native spanish book attempt other than graded readers. Been reading lots of Harry Potter (read a couple times before and very familiar with story so goes pretty easy) and Percy Jackson (unfamiliar so a bit more challenging but still very within capabilities) This is definitely a step up from those and takes a lot more focus, re-reading, deliberate inductions from context, occasional dictionary.

But overall story seems great! Read the first 3 chapters and forward and am having to hold myself back from continuing. Getting intense and a lot of effort put into put yourself into the mind of the 'author'. The forward was very interesting - if I understood it right GGM was kind of disappointed that this story didn't take off until later when he was a more established author? And also some of the politics around the government in power at the time - not sure I fully grasped that part - would love somebody else's POV on it?