Reading/Watching Log #118

This month can best be described as one-thing-leading-to-another month. I wanted to finish the second season of Atlantis, and that reminded me of 2012’s Sinbad. Having watched that, I naturally had to watch the animated movie of the same name from DreamWorks, which reminded me of their other early animated projects. This meant rewatching The Prince of Egypt, which then put me in mind of other Biblical retellings, like Samson and Delilah. And so on and so forth.

It reminded me of just how connected our multitude of stories are; how one can inform all the others; how it all trickles down. Superman’s origins are just a variation of Moses in the Bulrushes, while his superstrength is matched in that of Samson. Then there’s the progression of his story, in which he learns a devastating truth, runs away and returns a changed person, and is then charged with righting a great wrong. It forms the backbone of so many modern stories.

Meanwhile, so many of our Femme Fatales are the progeny of Delilah, while the star-crossed element of her love affair with Samson (she’s Philistine, he’s of the tribe of Dan) reminded me a little of what they’re going for in the upcoming Robin Hood, in which Robin and Marian are Saxon and Norman respectively. Atlantis is filled with ancient tropes that are all muddled up in order to create a new story, while Sinbad’s best episode involves a run-in with the personification of death, who has been promised a young woman as a bride, but can ultimately be outwitted out of his prize. How many times have we seen that one before?

Anyways, I just find it fascinating to connect everything, like there’s a giant fishing net inside my mind, and this was a good month for it. 

Little Myths: Rama and Sita by Swapna Haddow and Darshika Varma

Let’s be honest: most Westerners of my age (especially women) are mostly familiar with the story of Rama and Sita through the retelling that was sporadically dramatized throughout A Little Princess. Other than knowing the couple came from the stories of The Ramayana, that was the extent of my knowledge.

This little picture book looked too cute to ignore, and hits what I can only assume are the major beats of the story (and it turns out the Little Princess depiction was reasonably faithful, just extremely truncated). Rama is the incarnation of the god Vishnu, while Sita is a foundling child with the power to move things belonging to the gods (mere mortals find them too heavy). The two are betrothed, only to be exiled to the forest by Rama’s evil stepmother (because no matter where you go in the world, there’s always an evil stepmother).

This is soon followed by Sita’s kidnapping at the hands of the many-headed demon Ravna. Hanuman the monkey turns up to help Rama find her, and eventually a huge battle is fought to win her freedom.

This retelling is written to be accessible to a young audience, with a personable narrative voice (“Rama grew up to be a champion archer. I mean, he was the god Vishu after all,” and “Rama and Ravana met on the battlefield, and it was ON!”) as well as speech bubbles throughout containing very colloquial dialogue (“oh hey, Rama, I really fancy you.”) It also lampshades the fact that Sita remains quite a passive figure despite being established as having godlike abilities: “If you are wondering why the mighty Sita, the woman who moved Shiva’s bow with one hand, didn’t just fight Ravana herself, you wouldn’t be the only one. Sadly, Sita had to sit this one out and await her rescue because it was fated that only the god Vishnu could defeat Ravana.”

Darshika Varma’s illustrations are very cute – even the demons are diminutive and brightly coloured. In fact, everyone reminded me of those Squishmallow soft toys, or the animation in My Father’s Dragon. It’s obviously a shortened version of a much longer and more complicated story, but a great primer on the myth for little readers (and people whose knowledge on the subject is limited).

Mary Anne’s Makeover by Anne M. Martin

What did I just read? I think we have a new winner for the worst BSC book, and I can’t believe it gets me to feel sorry for Mary Anne. Maybe the ghost writer felt we were overdue for everyone else to be a passive-aggressive nightmare to deal with. It’s also one the books that demonstrate the Club can get weirdly cultish, and that Mallory and Jessi are by far the most mature people in this whole series (they are eleven).

I mean, the cover art says it all: Dawn, Claudia and Kristy are glaring at Mary Anne from across the hall like she’s just killed a toddler and gotten away with it. Her actual crime? Getting a new haircut. A HAIRCUT.

The story goes that Mary Anne is flipping through some fashion magazines during a meeting and sees a short bob cut that she really likes. She talks her dad into taking her to a decent hairdresser to get it done, and Mr Spier suggests a full-blown father/daughter day out while they’re at it. There’s only one condition: Mary Anne wants to keep it a secret, just to give everyone a surprise when she returns home.

The pair have a very sweet outing together at the mall, in which Mary Anne gets some makeup and a few new outfits to go with her haircut. She feels great. On returning home, Sharon gushes over her, but in the weirdest case of Conflict Ball I’ve ever seen (in which characters get furious over things for absolutely no reason, just to create the aforementioned conflict) Dawn acts weird and then aggressive about the makeover.

By the very next day, the other girls in the club (sans Mallory and Jessi, whose reactions aren’t even touched on, and who at the very end are described as “innocent bystanders during this ordeal”) are giving Mary Anne the cold shoulder. It’s frankly bizarre. I mean, we eventually get a line of reasoning as to why Dawn is acting this way (see below) but there’s no explanation whatsoever as to why the other three are so worked up over what Mary Anne has done.

Because of her new look, Mary Anne is suddenly getting positive attention from the more popular girls in school (Cokie drops her books and says she “looks great!” and Sabrina Bouvier – who oddly enough seems to share a name with the winner of the Little Miss Stoneybrook pageant back in #15) is under the impression that a high school guy called Carlos has a crush on her. But the BSC is acting so unpleasant towards her that Mary Anne eventually skips a few meetings to spend time with Logan who is – to his credit – being really supportive.

Things finally come to a head when Dawn makes one too many snitty comments and it turns into a yelling match. Then Mary Anne goes to apologize to Dawn (why? She’s done nothing wrong this time!) and we get this from Dawn: “if I was thinking about a steak dinner, wouldn’t you feel left out if I didn’t ask your advice or tell you about it or include you in any way?”

Um, no Dawn, because that’s insane. Why would anyone give a shit if you were thinking about eating a steak? Even later on, she states that she got jealous because Mary Anne spent time with her father, which is astounding given that Dawn has TWO living parents, and gets to live with her mother whilst Mary Anne’s died when she was a baby. And we never get any explanation as to why the other girls were being so hostile.

At least we get a rather charming babysitting B-plot, in which Carolyn Arnold is building a time machine in her basement and getting all the neighbourhood kids excited about the possibility of using it. The babysitters get a little perturbed when they realize Carolyn is charging money to use the machine once it’s finished, almost as though she actually believes her endeavour is going to work. It’s resolved when she discreetly returns the money on the big day, and the participating kids only pretend to go back in time. It’s pretty sweet, though perhaps that’s only in comparison to the rest of the book.

Minor notes: this book establishes itself as taking place in January (Mary Anne cuts her hair due to her New Year’s Resolution and everyone attends the January Jamboree in the final chapter). Look, I’m using Halloween as the marker through which to track the extremely bizarre time-flux that these books take place in, but I’m pretty sure we just had a New Year. I also noticed a Little Sister shout-out when Mr Spier offers to take Mary Anne to Gloriana’s House or Hair, and she cries that the place ruined Karen Brewer’s Hair. Sure enough, this is the plot of Karen’s Haircut.

Jessi and the Awful Secret by Anne M. Martin

Jessi Ramsay is easily the most sensible, level-headed girl in the entire BSC, though unfortunately that seldom translates to her getting particularly interesting titles (notwithstanding Pet Sitter and The Dance School Phantom). This one is more in line with Jessi’s Secret Language and Jessi’s Wish in that it’s a Very Special Episode, this time tackling anorexia in the most surface-level way possible. (Along with half a dozen other subplots that don’t get enough attention to feel relevant).

Jessi is at ballet class when Madame Noelle tells the students she and another teacher, Madame Dupre, will be hosting free ballet classes for underprivileged kids. Jessi puts up her hand to volunteer, and is surprised that so few of her peers aren’t as enthusiastic about it (even though these free classes are at the same time they have one of their usual – presumably very expensive and career-building – ballet lessons). One of the few girls who puts her hand up is Mary, a fellow student that’s never been mentioned before, but who Jessi overhears complaining about her weight, even though she’s just as trim as the other girls.

The classes are held for mainly Black and Latino kids, and though a few are clearly bored and putting in little effort, Jessi notices that a little girl called Martha seems to have some experience with the positions, while an older boy called Devon is disruptive and rambunctious, only to start taking it more seriously when the teachers bench him and threaten to bar him from the class altogether. It all culminates in a recital put on for the parents, though Jessi realizes that most of the kids won’t be able to afford ongoing lessons once the class has finished and so tries to organize a scholarship programme. After telling Kristy, who tells her stepfather, Watson steps up and provides financial support for Martha and Devon to continue taking dance classes.

Meanwhile, Mary has been showing all the red flags of an eating disorder: getting twitchy around food, fainting in class, and becoming unhealthily thin. Despite some concern over being perceived as a tattle-tale, Jessi confronts Mary about her health issues. When she’s rebuffed, she goes to Madame Noelle instead, who stages an intervention of her own (and I really think the teachers, who would surely be familiar with the signs of an eating disorder, should have been onto this sooner). Then Mary just sort of falls out of the story, and we don’t see or hear about her afterwards, other than Jessi being reassured that she’s getting help. Realistic I suppose, but hardly narratively satisfying.

In the third and final completely asinine plot, Kristy says she’s tired of hanging out with Shannon and asks Dawn, Claudia and Stacey to make an effort with her instead. Then she gets pissy because Dawn, Claudia and Stacey make friends with Shannon, and eventually admits she was afraid they’d prefer Shannon to Kristy herself. Does this honestly sound anything like super-confident Kristy would do or feel? It also has nothing to do with anything else going on, and I’ve no idea why it was even included in the first place. Surely there were other ways of drumming up the word count, so I can only assume Shannon is going to become more prominent in later books, and this is their way of laying the groundwork.

A pretty messy book all things considered, which doesn’t really do much with its subject matter. It touches a little on the troubles of non-white children in the performing arts, though when Jessi is flat-out asked if she faces discrimination in ballet, she demurs. I mean, she deals with racial prejudice all the time – it’s mentioned in every single chapter two – but admittedly this has never stretched into her ballet classes, as she’s been the star of at least three performances so far. It wasn’t terrible, just overstuffed. If nothing else, I found out who Alvin Ailey and Judith Jamison were.

The Old Willis Place by Scott Peterson, Meredith Laxton and Sienna Haralson

This is the second work of Mary Downing Hahn in which I’ve read the graphic novel before the original text, which makes me feel vaguely guilty for some reason. Like watching a movie adaptation instead of the book and acting like you’re still an expert on it.

Diana and George are brother and sister living feral in the grounds of the Old Willis Place. The reader isn’t given any context to their lives, only that they have watched various caretakers of the old house come and go while never revealing themselves to any of them. They run wild in the overgrown grounds with no sign of a mother or father, but are afraid of getting too close to the house for fear for “Miss Lilian.”

But on the day the story begins, Diana is intrigued to discover the latest caretaker has a daughter about her age called Lissa, with whom she dearly wants to be friends with. But to approach her would mean breaking the all-important “rules” that she and her brother live by.

SPOILERS. Okay, so it’s pretty easy to grasp that Diana and George are ghosts, the children of former employees of old Lilian Willis, also deceased. They died a number of years ago, but remain mystically tied to the house until someone discovers their bodies. Their demise is rather gruesome – they hid from Lilian in a basement storage room, only for her to lock them in and promptly have a stroke, leaving the children trapped. Since then, they’ve been roaming the grounds, avoiding the ghost of Lilian, whose guilt and rage keeps her trapped in the house.

We’ve seen this ghostly perspective flip a number of times. R.L. Stine’s The Ghost Next Door or Dian Curtis Regan’s Ghost Twins spring to mind, though this mystery unfolds partly through the eyes of newcomer Lissa, who knows there’s something weird about the children, but isn’t quite prepared to figure out what. There’s an interesting concept in the “rules” that govern the children’s limitations and what happens when they start to push back against them (in all honesty, it’s a narrative device designed to keep her characters where she wants them to be, but Hahn nevertheless makes it feel more numinous) and a suitably bittersweet ending when the old “unfinished business” is finally resolved.

The illustrations are nicely done, and are surprisingly realistic at a time when most artwork of this nature is very stylistic. A few pages are given over to Lissa’s diary entries, which are sometimes redundant given we’ve just seen what’s happened in the actual illustrations, and for a while I couldn’t understand why Lilias looked like a spooky old spectre while the children looked completely normal – till I realized the fact they were Dead All Along was meant to be a surprise twist. And they couldn’t have pulled that off if they’d been portrayed as ghostly white with plasma trails.

Mary Downing Hahn is well into her nineties at this point (this was originally published in 2004, which doesn’t feel that long ago!) and she must be chuffed that her books (most of which came out in the eighties and nineties) are being granted a new lease on life by getting caught up in this wave of popularity for readapted children’s graphic novels.

Murder on the Orient Express by Bob Al-Greene

Well, of course I had to read this one. Every variation on the novel, whether it’s a film, a stage play, or now – a graphic novel – is fascinating to me due to what they chose to keep, change, or omit when it comes to how this famous crime unfolds.

This one drops certain details such as the meaning behind Mary Debenham’s last name and the fiddly business of the lady’s hat frame being used to read the burnt note, but keeps other things that none of the films have ever dramatized, such as Poirot noting Mary’s agitation when the Taurus Express is delayed, only for her to be completely composed when the Orient Express is caught in a snow drift. Other differences are incidental – Hardman blames his tears on dust rather than the glare of the snow and so on.

The artwork here is surprisingly similar to that in The Old Willis Place, in that it skews for realism while also retaining a somewhat cartoonish vibe (that is, bold lines around shapes, bright colours, and little detail). The deep blues also reminded me a lot of the colour palette in Kenneth Branaugh’s take on the material, all the more so since Mary Debenham is the splitting image of Daisy Ridley. On that note, Doctor Constantine is a perfect mashup of DC’s animated Raz al Ghul and Tin Tin’s Professor Calculus.

The format of a graphic novel also means that Greene can lay everything out for the reader’s benefit, to clarify and categorize: close-ups of the evidence, line-ups of the suspects, and Poirot’s notetaking throughout. Like the book, which stops rather abruptly after Bouc makes the call to blame an outside assassin, this also finishes suddenly, which is a shame. The good thing about the films is that we always get a bit of an epilogue regarding the twelve “jury members”: in the seventies version they toast each other, in the noughties they’re sullen and self-righteous and almost moved to kill an appalled Poirot who wants to turn them all in, and in 2017 they simply appear shellshocked and traumatized. I would have liked to see another version here as well.

There’s not a lot more to say, except that it made me wish for a more innovative filmic adaptation. At this point, almost everyone on earth knows the solution to this particular mystery. It’s become so prolific in other detective novels, even those that don’t know would probably be able to guess very quickly. So why not a film that has all its cards on the table? The first half takes the time and energy to portray the Armstrong household in their day-to-day life and how it’s torn apart with the kidnapping of Daisy. Dramatize the true horror of a child’s death, her mother’s despair, and the ordeal of Paulette before she commits suicide. I’m not kidding when I say this could be a full one-third of the film.

The rest of it then involves the search for Samuel Ratchett and the planning of his murder, complete with the twelve killers realizing Poirot is aboard the train and scrambling madly to throw misdirection in his path: the handkerchief, the pipe-cleaner, the woman in the kimono, the tampered watch… Let us see the difference in the carefully laid plan the conspirators had already concocted over a series of months, and the changes they had to make by the skin of their teeth to throw him off the scent. Heck, you could even dramatize Poirot’s hypothetical “option B” which casts the blame on an assassin that simply disappears into the night.

It wouldn’t be a whodunnit but a “will they get away with it?” with the audience rooting for the culprits from start to finish. Call me crazy, but I’d love something like that: a perfectly planned murder that slowly devolves into chaos just because the train got snowed in.

Helen of Wyndhorn by Tom King, Bilquis Evely, Matheus Lopes and Clayton Cowles

I picked this up on the strength of the cover art, my first impression being: Nancy Drew at a Gothic boarding school. Hell yeah. Turns out, that wasn’t quite the tone of the story itself, though it was still very relevant to my interests.

Framed with a storytelling device in which an interview with an interested party is recorded and handed down from person to person along with a range of pulpy fantasy comics, we learn that a young governess called Lilith has been sent to fetch her new charge Helen after the death of her father, and bring her back safely to her grandfather’s estate of Wyndhorn. She’s rather dismayed by the state she finds Helen in: inebriated in a jail cell. Things don’t improve on the journey, or when they arrive at the impressive mansion packed with ancient relics, staffed by a single butler.

Inevitably, strange things start happening, namely Helen complaining of monsters outside her window at night. Lilith blames the drink. Eventually Helen’s grandfather Barnabus returns after a long absence, and that’s when things really kick off. Turns out Wyndhorn is on the borders of another world (never specified as Faerie, but that’s clearly what it is – think Lud-in-the-Mist or Stardust vibes, though with a stronger Lovecraftian edge). Fascinated by her grandfather’s double life, Helen undergoes training and accompanies him on his excursions, which are then relayed to Lilith, our narrator.

In hindsight, the plot is fairly straightforward, especially compared to the framing device, which tracks the journey of Lilith’s interview from one person to the next across several decades. The real meat of the story simply explores Helen and Barnabus’s relationship as they each grapple with the death of the father/son that lies between them, but because Lilith recounts it second-hand (much like Nellie in Wuthering Heights) it can feel a little detached at times. Furthermore, some questions deliberately remain unanswered, most notably why Helen’s father killed himself, which was the very reason why the interview with Lilith was being conducted in the first place.

But Bilquis Evely’s art is glorious. Detailed, consistent, a little stylized, but with realistic proportions and perspectives… it reminded me a little of the Harrow County and Monstress comics, not just in style (all of them have a little of the Art Deco about them) but quality.  The landscapes, the character designs, the scope – incredible. The book is worth it for the artwork alone, and that it catered to my love of exploring Otherworlds and delving into the nature of storytelling was just an added bonus.

Song of the Lioness: The First Adventure by Tamora Piece, Vita Ayala and Sam Beck

First, a short summary of my history with Tamora Pierce. My introduction to Tortall was actually the second quartet that Pierce wrote, with Daine as the protagonist and Alanna in a supporting role – so when I finally got around to reading Alanna’s story (my sister bought them, which annoyed me to no end because it was meant to be my book series) it always felt more like a prequel than a starting point. Now, like so many other books from the eighties/nineties, it’s getting the graphic novel treatment.

Alanna is a young woman who pulls a Sweet Polly Oliver in order to train as a knight rather than become a marriageable noblewoman, taking her twin brother’s place while he goes to study magic in another city. Though she initially struggles with the demands of the training and study schedule, she soon makes friends among her peers, specifically with the heir to the throne, Prince Jonathan, and the self-proclaimed Prince of Thieves, George Cooper. Both are drawn as suitably handsome, because yes, Alanna will eventually be hooking up with both of them (though not at the same time).

The story covers about two years of training, during which she becomes highly suspicious of Duke Roger, Jonathan’s uncle, a powerful sorcerer who is next in line to the throne, but very devious in his subterfuge against it. Despite being quite an episodic story, it culminates in a slightly Lovecraftian sojourn to a haunted Black City in the desert, to face down some eldritch immortal beings.

The arguments surrounding whether or not Alanna is a Mary Sue continue to amuse me, because now of course the argument has become: “is being a Mary Sue even a bad thing?” I mean, it all depends on the quality of the writing – there is a world of difference between Bella Swan and (for example) Katara, Djaq or Sara Crewe, all of whom have been accused of Mary Suedom in my time.

Alanna definitely checks a lot of boxes, from the purple eyes and red hair combo, to her special palomino horse and magical sword that only she can use, to her love triangle with the two hottest guys in Tortall. Did I mention she also has magical powers and gets a talking cat and is personally blessed by the goddess? Because she is.

But what makes Pierce’s writing transcend the clichés is (in my opinion) the physicality inherent in Alanna’s journey. She has to work, every day, arduously and rigorously, to grow better and stronger. This training is described to us in great detail, across a number of chapters, in which she gets injured, exhausted, frustrated and humiliated on a daily basis. She wants to give up when faced with the momentousness of the task ahead of her and later gets her first period without any idea of what to do about it (and trust me, this was an astounding thing to read happening to a fantasy female protagonist in the eighties).

So yes, there’s a lot of Mary Sueishness about Alanna, but Pierce still doesn’t make any of it easy for her. She has gifts but she still has to work hard to use them properly – and give the woman a break, this was her first novel!

(As an aside, I’ve spoken before about my theory as to why some female characters often “get it easy” when it comes to learning a new skill. It’s simply because long-term training to become experts has already been done with their male predecessors, and the writers simply don’t want to repeat themselves when it comes to the likes of Rey, Korra and She Hulk. It’s not great, and I’m not excusing it, but I can see how it’s part of a much wider problem in how female characters have to wait their turn for a story to be told about them – at which point, the story beats have already been done with a prior male character. In any case, this doesn’t apply to Alanna, which gives her a distinct advantage).

And sometimes you do just want a female character to be super-special, because that’s what makes for a fun wish-fulfilment story. Boys have plenty of those, and Alanna reminds me a lot of Lloyd Alexander’s Vesper Holly, another girl prodigy who is deliberately written as a fantasy version of the reader. (I don’t really want to mention Celaena Sardothien, but yeah – her too).

And many of the things readers whine about are perfectly justified within the story itself. To quote this (otherwise negative) Goodreads review:

She gets a deep discount on buying a horse from a rich friend? Everyone else gets horses from their rich dads. She's super-skilled by the end of the book? She's being given the best martial education in the entire kingdom and works non-stop. The prince refuses to be suspicious of Duke Roger? Not surprising, if Jonathan sees Roger the way Alanna sees Sir Myles. Time passes quickly? Good, because I want to get to actual adventuring quickly, not read about school the whole time.

Okay, I’m way off-track at this point. The graphic novel is adapted well, getting all the necessary story beats across, though the likes of Gary, Alex and Raoul are a little underserved. At one point another character describes Alex as “the secretive one,” and it’s like: ‘huh? He is?’ Sam Beck’s illustrations are clear and consistent, though not hugely detailed. I’ve clearly been spoiled by the artwork of Sana Takeda and Bilquis Evely.

If I ever get around to writing my “Unsung Feminist Icons” post, then Alanna will definitely be on it. There are many far more obscure than her, but neither is she mentioned in the same breath as Xena, Buffy, Scully, Leia, Ripley or Sarah Connor. And yet she’s a crucial stepping stone, who brought so much to the YA genre when it comes to how women are portrayed and what they’re allowed to do.

Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

The last book in the Morrigan Crow series was published five years ago, so my memory was certainly a bit fuzzy when it came to some of the finer details of the ongoing plot. In broad strokes, it’s a Harry Potter setup: the unwanted child of an unpleasant family is whisked into a magical world where they’re of significant importance to the people living there, predominately because of their connection to a legendary villain who has been missing (believed dead) for some time. Each protagonist is eleven when the books start, and is a year older in each story, but gradually finds acceptance and belonging among similarly magical peers that they grow and learn alongside.

All that said, Townsend writes with more care and insight than Rowling, in that most characters are complex and multi-dimensional; not the heavily archetypal characters that made up Harry Potter’s supporting cast. That said, I’m afraid Rowling still has the edge when it comes to her puzzle-box plots. Both sets of books are mysteries of a sort, in which clues and rules are baked into the magical fabric of the world they’ve each created, but Townsend’s are both convoluted and oversimplistic.

This book for example, is a straightforward whodunnit, in which I clocked the killer almost immediately (the guy who’s consistently present, but mildly out-of-focus, which means their presence isn’t justified unless they are, in fact, the culprit) and even some of the red herrings to boot (I’m not even sure how, but I could just tell the wedding was a sham between consenting adults to further their own separate ambitions).

I’m getting ahead of myself. Morrigan Crow is at a relatively good place in her life, under the guardianship of benevolent Jupiter North, surrounded by friends in the Wundrous Society, and living at the gorgeous Hotel Deucalion, which magically caters to her every need. But there’s something bothering her, something gnawing at the edges of her mind, something she can’t quite recall – it’s that she’s secretly under the tutelage of Ezra Squall, a powerful and dangerous Wundersmith like herself, whom she has asked to put her under a spell called “the Hush,” which dulls her memories of him whenever he’s not around, thus preventing her from grappling with guilt and fear while she’s going about her normal day-to-day life. It’s obviously not a sustainable solution, but she desperately wants to learn from him.

But the greater part of the book delves into Morrigan’s family history, namely that of her mother, revealed at last as Meredith Darling. What happens next is… divisive. I’ve always appreciated that Townsend casts a keen eye on the class divide and socio-economic differences throughout her books. One of the most memorable scenes she’s written is of a secret magical playground that can only be accessed by children living beneath the poverty line. No rich kids allowed.

But that’s not fair, I can hear people whining, we should all be equal. Yeah, we should be but we’re not, and giving this gift to underprivileged kids while saying “tough shit” to all the rest (even in the realm of fiction) felt like a radical bit of creative engineering.

This time around, Morrigan is thrown into the world of the one-percent, who live in a magically gated, invite-only community, discovering that she was technically one of them all along. She finds herself enjoying the endless leisure, lavish spreads, grand gestures and excessive wealth they have to offer. Despite their foibles, the Silverborn (a term which essentially translates into a derisive “moneybags” or “fat cats” idiom) are people too!

Okay, fine I guess? I mean, I’m not advocating the guillotine or anything, but it’s a little at odds with the general tone of the series thus far, and it leads to the main issue of the book: when one of these pampered elites gets murdered… I didn’t really care. The murder victim and the entire pool of suspects are people we meet for the first time in this book, and given that I guessed the means, motive and culprit almost straight away, I felt a little blasé about it all. Townsend is on firmer ground when she’s indulging her own interests, and it’s pretty cute to realize she has a number of things she really, really likes to write about: themed parties, ritualized celebrations, specific landmarks in her imaginary city, secret routes and passageways (magical in nature, obviously) – you can just tell the paragraphs in which she’s enjoying herself.

It's a big chunky book, yet long-established characters like Jack, Fenestra and the Hotel Deucalion are rather underserved; the focus simply elsewhere this time around. It feels very overstuffed, almost chaotic and with a somewhat disappointing climax in which time-travel is utilized to erase the consequences of Morrigan’s latest bad decision. For those that’ve waited so long, it’s hard to say what they’ll make of it, as plot-points established in the previous books regarding Squall and dark forces and so on, are here replaced with what feels like a standalone mystery. As stated, my memories are a little fuzzy, but it does feel like the momentum has slowed down, and if we’re in for another five year wait – whew.

It's not a bad book, not at all, but it’ll be interesting to see how it fits into the series in its entirety, whenever the opportunity to read them all becomes a reality. Because of how disconnected it feels to the momentum of the prior three books, it may end up being the odd one out in the series.

Samson and Delilah (1949)

Old films like this can often surprise you when it comes to their female characters. In a country like America in the 1950s, it’s easy to suppose that a woman like Delilah would be a one-dimensional evil temptress whose sole purpose in life is to lure in men with feminine wiles and then discard them. But that’s not the case for Hedy Lamarr, as her Delilah is a very complex, very sympathetic woman, despite some of the choices she makes. It’s essentially her movie, even if her name does come after Samson’s.

Of the two other female characters, Angela Lansbury’s Semadar is the more disappointing cliché (despite being introduced as something of an Amazon, she pulls the “you don’t really love me card!” in trying to find the answer to Samson’s riddle, and is then fridged pretty early on in the film’s runtime) while Olive Deering’s Miriam is the virtuous contrast to the voluptuous Delilah. She’s Samson’s other potential love interest, but he has no passion for her whatsoever.

Delilah herself is given a backstory as Semadar’s sister, who falls in love with Samson almost at first sight. Not good with rejection, she sabotages his marriage to Semadar, becoming embittered and vengeful once it culminates in the death of her entire family (in true Demona-from-Gargoyles fashion, she ignores her own contribution to their demise). From there she becomes the mistress to the powerful Saran, and after Samson becomes a wanted fugitive, she offers to find the secret of his superhuman strength.

You probably know how it all goes from there, but in this version Delilah is conflicted about betraying the man she still loves, horrified on realizing the Philistines have blinded him, and ultimately utilizing her cunning to ensure he’s able to tear down the temple. It’s actually quite a touching moment when she prays “to Samson’s God” for guidance on how to help him – though none of this negates her cold, manipulative side either.

It’s an amazing performance from Hedy Lamarr – at times cruel or naïve, heartbroken or coquettish, remorseful or vengeful. I’d never seen her in anything before this, and it’s no wonder she considered this her best role (but man, she reminded me so much of Vivian Leigh, right down to the facial tics and mannerisms).

And oh yeah, Victor Mature as Samson. He’s fine as a standard big lug of a character, though his foibles are fairly straightforward (a weakness for the ladies) which are eventually overcome when he decides to embrace death. Make no mistake, Delilah is the real star of this drama, and though villains can often be expected to steal the show, it makes for a pleasant change that this time around, it’s a woman doing the stealing.

One other thing: watching these old movies you always know that the stunts are real, and in this case that means somebody ended up wrestling a real lion!

Whisper of the Heart (1995)

I had been told about this movie years ago, specifically the conceit of a girl checking out library books and realizing (via the checkout cards at the back of each book) that someone called Seiji Amasawa has previously done the same thing to every book she’s chosen. As a result, she becomes intrigued by the mystery of someone with the exact same taste in books as herself. The trailers highlight scenes toward the end of the film which take place in Shizuku’s imagination, giving off the false impression it’s a fantasy story like many other Studio Ghibli offerings, when in fact it’s a slice-of-life, coming-of-age story for a young girl.

And much like Kiki’s Delivery Service, it’s blissfully low-stakes. Shizuku is a student whose biggest problem in life is rewriting the lyrics to “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” for a school project. *deep sigh of relief*

One day she notices a largely tubby cat boarding a train and decides to follow it, because – why not? Studio Ghibli animators have always made the everyday seem fascinating due to their care and interest in portraying spatial dimensions, which means the sequence of Shizuku simply following a cat down narrow alleys and up pavement steps and to the doors of a quaint antique shop is the most captivating thing I’ve ever seen all year (second place is Shizuku manoeuvring through the clutter of her room). There she meets an elderly craftsman called Shirō Nishi and his grandson, and well – you don’t need me to tell you she finds a connection to the recurring name in her library books.

There’s quite a sad story behind the making of this film: it was directed by Yoshifumi Kondō, who was apparently being groomed as Hayo Miyazaki’s successor, only for him to pass away of a brain aneurysm at just forty-seven. This ended up being his one and only film, which means that the whole thing (as much by accident as design) feels permeated with melancholy, from the beautiful clock that Shizuku sees once and then never again on the very day it was set to be shipped back to its owner, to Nishi’s story of the love he lost – not through death, but because they were separated by the war and never found each other again.

It's one of those films you just want to escape into, whether it’s the antique store, the library, or even Shizuku’s cluttered room (in fact, this film provides the source of the much-replicated meme of a girl in profile, working at her desk with headphones on). Plus, there’s so much of what TV Tropes calls Narrative Filigree and what I call “the nooks and crannies of life,” from Shizuku’s friend irately informing her: “I’m not talking to my dad!” when she goes to visit (we never learn why, and don’t need to either) to her older sister making plans to move into her own place over the course of the film. One day Shizuku wakes up and sees that all her sister’s belongings have gone from their shared room, never to return.

Gah, it’s such a gorgeous movie! Japan in the mid-nineties is not a place I can ever visit, but this film creates such a vivid impression of it. I’m already looking forward to seeing this again.

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

No one really talks about this movie anymore, even though it was a big hit at the time of its release and put DreamWorks on the map as an animation studio (their two follow-ups, The Road to El Dorado and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas were massive flops, which then led them to completely computer-animated fare).

But they pulled out all the stops for this one: epic, sweeping vistas, an all-star cast (whether or not they were suited for the role – what the heck is Jeff Goldblum doing there?), merging CGI and hand-drawn animation to create things like Moses’s dream sequence and the parting of the Red Sea, pop covers of Award Bait Songs sung by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey – yeah, they were definitely gunning for some Oscars, you can tell.

But that doesn’t mean they didn’t take this story seriously. In fact, I recall an animator in behind-the-scenes footage recalling how he had asked whether they would depict Moses killing the Egyptian guard, knowing that his interest in the project would rely on the answer. As it turns out, the film does include this event, even if it is staged mostly as an accident. That pretty much sets the tone for the whole thing: a dark and serious, but still essentially kid-friendly retelling of the Biblical Exodus.

The biggest change to the retelling is that Moses and Ramses are raised as brothers (in the Bible, they’re uncle/nephew) in order to wring as much emotional drama from the situation as possible. They grow up together and love each other, so when Moses returns from his self-imposed exile on God’s behest, it is to essentially pit himself against the person he loves most. In fact, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Ramses, as he’s granted a sympathetic backstory and understandable motivation.

Knowing he’s the heir to the Egyptian dynasty, and haunted by his father’s words that he might be “the weak link” in the chain, his depiction as a tragic figure works almost too well, as it’s clear where Ramses is coming from, and how hurt and bewildered he is that Moses is making what is (to him) an insane demand.

The soundtrack is another big point in the film’s favour – unlike The Road to El Dorado, which had lacklustre, non-diegetic songs performed by Elton John, and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, which had no songs at all, The Prince of Egypt contains one banger after another, sung within the world of the film by the characters themselves: “Deliver Us,” “Heaven’s Eyes,” “The Plagues of Egypt,” and “There Can Be Miracles.” It’s no surprise it was nominated for Best Score (thanks to Hans Zimmer) and won Best Song at that year’s Academy Awards. It’s an intrinsic part of the storytelling, and probably the reason the film was as successful as it was.

The Road to El Dorado (2000)

Like Puss in Boots in Shrek 2, Tulio and Miguel are two great characters looking for a better movie. But whereas Puss eventually got to star in The Last Wish, Tulio and Miguel are now most famous for that “both, both is good,” gif on Tumblr. This was DreamWorks’s follow-up to The Prince of Egypt and was unfortunately (but unsurprisingly) a giant flop – though not as much as their next offering, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, would be.

Yet in all three films you can see similarities: the distinctive design of the characters (which I’ve never liked, as they remind me of humanoid insects), slightly more risqué humour than Disney would ever dip into, and a deliberate aversion to fairy tale formulas (though two out of the three couldn’t resist including the cute animal sidekick).

The Road to El Dorado is about two swindlers who get their hands on a treasure map to the famed golden city, and by an astoundingly contrived series of events, find themselves not only ushered into the secret civilization, but considered gods by its people. A lot of their adventure relies way too heavily on truly insane coincidences, from a lucky roll of the dice, to a volcano erupting – then not erupting – at precisely the right second.

Obstacles arise in the form of the zealous priest Tzekel-Kan, who expects his gods to be much more bloodthirsty, the arrival of Cortez and the Conquistadors, and the contrived third-act rift between our two buddies which is completely unnecessary to the story and gets resolved just as effortlessly (and of course, is partially brought on by a woman, the hypersexualized Chel, who is a fun character but gets virtually no interiority. We never even find out why she was so keen to abandon her home and people in the first place).

It's also bewilderingly structured, with at least three big climatic events (the giant stone jaguar, the attempt to destroy the gates to the city, the arrival of Cortez), plenty of racist elements that wouldn’t get touched with a twenty-foot pole these days (not least the whole “white people are our gods” thing) and songs that are not remotely memorable or even catchy. They deliberately nabbed The Lion King trio of Elton John, Tim Rice and Hans Zimmer, so what the heck happened??

Yet it’s not without its charms. Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline are a wonderful double-act, up there with John Goodman and Billy Crystal in Monsters INC (only, you know, without any good material). The animation is bright and colourful and unique, and heck – I can always appreciate a film that takes a big swing and tries to do something different, even if the results are less than ideal.

However you feel about it, I highly recommend watching this YouTube video Decolonizing Adventure: A Cinematic Road to El Dorado by José María Luna.

The Cat Returns (2002)

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this film, though based on the artwork on the back of the DVD case, I had an inkling it was connected in some way to Whisper of the Heart. And it is – kind of. I think this film is meant to be the story (or one of the stories) that Shizuku writes in that prior movie, indicated by the fact that the character of the Duke (a talking, dapperly dressed cat ornament) is one of the main characters in this movie. In a nice touch that I did anticipate, Cary Elwes returns to reprise that voice role in the English dub.

It's a quirky little film that starts when awkward schoolgirl Haru uses her lacrosse stick to save the life of a cat crossing a busy road. To her astonishment, she gets a verbal thank you. It transpires that this cat is a prince, and so several unwanted gifts start turning up at her house and school from his grateful entourage – along with a marriage proposal from the King of Cats.

Trying to get herself out of the engagement, Haru is told to seek out the Cat Bureau, where Baron Humbert von Gikkingen may be able to assist. All sorts of shenanigans follow, which reminded me a lot of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: the diminutive size of the Bureau (which makes Haru look large in comparison), the multitude of talking animals, the bodily transformations, the psychedelic journey into a world that has its own hidden dangers... It also contains a fair amount of randomness and a dreamlike quality that’s so inherent in the Alice stories, though I always found that a bit unnerving as a child.

The animation is a little different from what one expects from Studio Ghibli: still visibly anime, but more realistic in its facial features and body proportions, with a gentler pastel colour palette. I went in with almost no preconceptions and so enjoyed it as something that unfolded on its own terms – though if this was meant to be a story by Shizuku of Whisper of the Heart, I’m a little disappointed that she didn’t see fit to unite the Duke with his lost love, given that that story was such a thematic turning point in the prior film. Knowing what we do about Nishi’s life story, it would have been very touching if Shizuku made sure the lovers were reunited in her story, even if they never were in real life (yes, just like Atonement).

The idea of this film as a defictionalization of a story that originally existed inside another story (rather like the Lightyear film) is an interesting concept, though ultimately you don’t have to have any familiarity with Whisper of the Heart to understand what goes on here. And maybe that’s a tad disappointing? I would have liked to have seen more of Shizuku’s fingerprints on this story.

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)

Well, this is it, the biggest flop of DreamWorks studios – and for a while, one of the biggest flops ever. It’s a bit sad, as there’s nothing really wrong with this movie, it just didn’t really coalesce for some reason. Is it that the world is beautiful but ungrounded? The MacGuffin only vaguely explained? That Sinbad is kind of an obnoxious jerk? That the villainess’s evil plan doesn’t really make much sense?

(I mean, Eris steals the Book of Peace which immediately throws Syracuse into darkness. But her real goal is to set off a chain of events that sees Proteus – the heir to the throne – executed, thereby creating chaos throughout Syracuse. But… that was already achieved with the stealing of the book. It’s like dropping a bomb and announcing it’s the first step in a plan that will culminate in mass destruction. Hon, you already dropped a bomb. The damage is done).

Sinbad is an amoral sailor seeking out his next mark when he realizes the ship he’s chasing belongs to his childhood friend Proteus, Prince of Syracuse. He’s carrying the legendary Book of Peace to its new home, only to be attacked along the way by a giant sea monster sent by Eris, the Goddess of Discord. Sinbad ends up helping his old friend escape, but makes a hasty exit from the celebration party in Syracuse when he comes face-to-face with Proteus’s fiancée Marina (minor note: I like that she’s got short hair instead of the usual flowing tresses of the Disney Princesses).

That night, Eris uses her magic to steal the book and frame Sinbad for its disappearance, though Proteus puts a stop to the execution by taking Sinbad’s place, giving his friend enough time to find the book and return it safely. That at least is the plan. To preserve her fiancé’s life and make sure Sinbad keeps up his end of the deal, Marina sneaks on board his ship – and sure enough, Sinbad was going to do a runner. But with a big enough monetary bribe, Sinbad agrees to the quest to Tartarus…

There are some truly great set-pieces throughout the film: Eris stealing the book, the attack of the watery sirens, the rising and falling sands of Tartarus, and even a sequence in which a crewman swings through the rigging of the ship at dusk, lighting the lamps as he goes. I like that the story

Even though the romance between Sinbad and Marina isn’t remotely convincing (there’s a bit too much belligerence in their Belligerence Sexual Tension), their love triangle with Proteus is surprisingly sophisticated. It’s rather reminiscent of Casablanca, in that all three parties are sympathetic and respectful towards one another, though in this case Ilsa runs off with Rick instead of staying with Lazlo (though since the writers clearly realized Marina would be a complete fool to pick Sinbad over Proteus, she’s also given a love of adventure and the ocean just to give her a more personal reason to ditch her fiancé).

But because Proteus quite literally puts his life in Sinbad’s hands, Sinbad has to spend the rest of the film trying to deserve that trust, and ultimately proving himself worthy. It’s as much a story about their friendship and Proteus’s leap of faith as it is Sinbad’s love story with Marina (which was done much better in last month’s Cutthroat Island, of all things).  

The film also utilizes some clever tropes from mythology, such as the fact that the word of a goddess is binding (which becomes a major plot point in the final act) and the idea of an individual willing to get beheaded as a point of honour (which is very Gwaine and the Green Knight). In this respect the conclusion actually works better than the conclusion of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. That film’s plot was heavily dependent on deals and contracts and loopholes, but ultimately Prince Eric just has to drive the prow of a ship through Ursula’s guts to resolve everything.

Here, the established story beats aren’t just ignored to provide an easy out, and the climax of the film comes down to a moral choice instead of a huge action sequence. The surprising thing is that it works!

A part of me wishes they hadn’t allowed Sinbad to have his cake and eat it too. He could have saved Proteus’s life, but consequently had to say goodbye to Marina as a result (who would have wanted to stay with Proteus, as well as feeling duty-bound). Better to have him genuinely do the unselfish thing and make a lasting sacrifice. But hey – it’s a kid’s movie.

Some of the CGI effects have dated extremely badly (it’s no surprise that the studio moved permanently to fully computer-rendered graphics after this), and there’s no getting around the fact that Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta Jones are terribly miscast as Sinbad and Marina (it’s not just the white-washing thing – Michelle Pfieffer and Joseph Fiennes play Eris and Proteus, but their voices at least match the characters they’re playing, which just isn’t the case with Pitt and Jones).

Also, Dennis Haysbert (a.k.a. David Palmer from 24) is present as an almost too-perfect example of the thankless Black Best Friend emotional support side-character role, and there is absolutely no reason to include Spike the dog beyond the fact that cute animal friends were just considered a necessity of any animated movie back then.

Despite certain highpoints, there’s something missing – some X-factor that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s entertaining enough while it lasts, but simply forgettable once it’s over.

That said, I was browsing through the DVD extras and was astonished to find a whole short film in which Sinbad’s crew (plus Marina) land ashore an island inhabited by Cyclopes. More than that, the disc allows you to select what character to follow when it comes to their run-ins with the creatures, making for an interactive story that changes every time you watch it (and is voiced by the original cast!) Over twenty years and I had no idea this even existed!

The craziest thing about watching all three of these DreamWorks films this month is that I saw each of them in theatres back when I was a teenager… and this is probably the first time I’ve watched them since.

Winx: Season 4 (2009)

I decided to return to Winx, the story of six badly-animated insectoid-looking fairies who fight evil-doers in what looks suspiciously like lingerie. Having graduated from Alfea College of Fairies, our heroes Bloom, Stella, Flora, Techna, Musa and Layla (called Aisha in some regions) are sent to Earth – specifically Bloom’s hometown of Gardenia – to find and protect an unidentified fairy from four evil Wizards of the Black Circle.

As ever, their powers get an upgrade (from “Entrantix” to “Believix”) which requires a lot of sermonizing about believing in yourself and encouraging others to be their best selves. In a way it’s a natural continuation of the story, a bit like what Tamora Pierce did in The Circle of Magic books: now that the girls have mastered their own powers, they become mentors and guardians to a younger girl. Said girl is called Roxy, the last fairy to exist on Earth, whose trust must be won and powers unlocked in order to combat the Black Wizards.

Subplots involve the girls opening a pet store called Love & Pets (because sure, managing a business is no big deal), Musa getting scouted by a record agent who wants her to sign up with him, some jealousy between the assorted boyfriends and the guys that the Winx socialize with on Earth, and Roxy learning about her true parentage. Oh, and in the final few episodes the girls form a band, because apparently they could play instruments this whole time. Mkay.

(Hey, at least they prioritize their careers; rejecting their boyfriends’ invitation to return with them to Alfea).

There are some fun exertions to places like Tir Na Nog and the Omega Dimension, and some run-ins with other types of fairies that aren’t as light and fluffy as the Winx are, but I’m still a bit bewildered at the success of this show. The animation is hideous and the stories incredibly trite. The care with which it’s brought to the screen can be summed up with this title card:

Incorrect grammar AND a typo. Amazing!

Maybe something was lost in the translation given it was originally Italian? Who knows, but at least it’s kicked off my adventures in the Magical Girl genre, which will hopefully culminate in watching K-Pop Demon Hunters. Already it’s fascinating to watch stories where girls are active and assertive and powerful, but still seeped in overt femininity (glitter and fashion and cute fluffy animals), in which their goals aren’t necessarily to defeat their enemies, but to win them over. It makes for an interesting comparison to more boy-centric stuff of the time, and I wish I had the energy to delve deeper into a close examination.

Sinbad: Season 1 (2012)

About ten years ago I attempted to explain the cancellation of Atlantis by comparing it with this, another fantasy show that tried and failed to capture an audience – so when I rewatched Atlantis for the first time in years, I had to follow it up with a rewatch of Sinbad. One simply followed the other.

I wasn’t sure how it would play out the second time around (though at least I got to watch it in much better quality) but yeah – it wasn’t great. The seasonal structure feels broken in half, there’s no compelling storylines, and not a single character really pops. I’ve already gone over everything in that aforementioned post, but just to reiterate the basics: Sinbad is cursed by his grandmother after his scheming gets his brother killed, and he’s chased out to see by Lord Akbari, whose son he also accidentally killed that morning. It was a big day.

The nature of the curse means that he cannot remain on land for more than twenty-four hours, or else the torque around his neck will tighten and strangle him. With Akbari and his sorceress Tamlyn trying to track him down, Sinbad takes to the seas with a motley crew: Rena the thief, Gunnar the Norseman, Anwar the physician, Nala the noblewoman, and Cook – the cook. Not a bad setup, but the odd thing is that it’s done away with after episode six.

Without ever really utilizing the curse as a plot device, or making Akbari any sort of real threat, Sinbad returns home, faces down Akbari (who is then killed by Tamlyn) and is promptly released from his grandmother’s curse. It feels like the end of a story that never really got started. Did the writers get tired of it? Did some of the actors involved want out? It’s difficult to say, but there’s a strange narrative break halfway through the season which sort of makes it feel like this was being made up as they went along, with each writer contributing an episode and then handing it off to the next one.

(Not helping is that the female lead up till this point is a Black woman who is written out in episode seven and promptly replaced with a white one. The optics aren’t great, are all I’m saying).

The production values are reasonably high, but everything is shot through a murky, orangey filter with choppy editing that doesn’t give viewers much of a chance to enjoy the Malta scenery or architecture. Was this a mid-noughties thing? Because 2012’s Treasure Island was shot in the exact same way and it’s rather distracting. 

Though the main cast is solid (props for not casting a white guy as famous Middle-Eastern hero Sinbad), there’s no great chemistry or interesting dynamics between any of them; nothing that really captures your attention, or explains why they chose to stay together in the first place. Still, the casting director managed to book some impressive talent in guest-starring roles: Naveen Andrews, Orla Brady, Evanna Lynch, Timothy Spall, Sophie Okonedo, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Georgia King, Dougray Scott, and tons more familiar faces.

It was a valiant attempt, but the writing just didn’t support it – no surprises or originality anywhere, and no build-up to a satisfying finale.

Atlantis: Season 2 (2014 – 2015)

I finished up this second and final season with mixed feelings. It concluded on a cliffhanger, which always sucks no matter how bad a show is, and in all honesty, I would have watched more if given the chance. That said, this show was simply not good, all the more for coming straight on the heels of my Black Sails rewatch, which made for truly excellent television.

The flaws were pretty glaring this time around, all the more for dropping the episodic adventure format for a serialized story which is just a revolving door of the same events happening over and over again. Jason is framed for a crime and put in jail. Ariadne busts him out, and is then imprisoned in his place. Then Jason busts her out. They all escape into the forest, only for Jason to get captured (or give himself up, it’s unclear). Then his estranged father busts him out again.

Pasiphae attacks Atlantis in the first episode. Then at the midway point of the season she takes over the city. Then in the penultimate episode she’s executed, only to be resurrected and take over the city again, again. Ariadne keeps getting new loyal generals that keep dying. Endless arena games are played for the entertainment of the Atlanteans, who don’t seem to have much idea about what’s going on with our main characters.

It’s just the same events, over and over again. And the characters are so one-dimensional, it’s simply impossible to care about them. They’re complete blank slates that move from plot-point to plot-point without any interiority whatsoever. Who are these people? Ariadne is the most interesting, as we can at least infer an accurate estimation of her: a girl raised as a princess, sheltered but not without intelligence and a sense of responsibility to her people, which leads to understandable decision-making. But everyone else just… exists.

Jason is of course the prime example of this, a guy who comes either from the modern day or another dimensional, with no curiosity whatsoever as to what’s happened to him, where he is, or if he’ll ever get home. He discovers the identity of his parents, and it’s still a complete enigma as to how he was raised or why he was in the present day – but then, he doesn’t care, so why should we? At one point Ariadne declares: “I know everything about him,” and it’s funny because nobody knows anything about him.

And of course, the plot holes. In the first season, it was established that Ariadne had an older brother called Therus. He’s not seen nor mention in this season, even though he was the first in line to the throne. Jason uses Medusa’s severed head to turn Pasiphae’s soldiers to stone, and then it just disappears between scenes. What happened to such a powerful weapon? I mean, I could understand if they decided it was too powerful, or wanted to bury it out of respect, but it’s never even mentioned again!

Guest stars pop in and out, and are then discarded without ever having done much to justify being there in the first place (Telemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Diagoras – who in hindsight is just there as a “test subject” to be bitten by Pasiphae’s zombies and demonstrate what this will do to the others if they’re not careful. That’s a lot of set up on a character that’s ultimately just a Red Shirt).

One semi-interesting addition is Medea, a niece of Pasiphae, who always looks on the verge of tears and who Jason apparently has a “connection” with. There’s not much chemistry there, so despite their mythological relationship, their kiss feels more random than inevitable. And of course, if Medea is Pasiphae’s niece and Jason is her son, then the romantic connection they try to build between the two of them… is between cousins. I can guarantee you this never even occurred to the writers. Also, who is Medea’s mother meant to be? Circe, who was killed off in the first season? Or someone else? Everyone just exists in a vacuum.

That’s the major problem really, not just a repetitive storyline (goodness knows Merlin had those in abundance) but no characters to care about; just cardboard cutouts. You can’t deny they made the right call to pull the plug on this – there was just no reason to care, save for all the “spot the famous character actors,” most notably Lashana Lynch and Anya Taylor-Joy, who are big stars now, but also Amy Manson, Vincent Regan, Clive Standen, John Hannah, Robert Pugh, John Light and more.

The cliffhanging finish is the Oracle having a vision that Jason will embark on his famous quest for the Golden Fleece (the destruction of which is the only thing that can destroy Pasiphae’s power) and a vision of Ariadne seemingly being abandoned on the shoreline, as per her mythological counterpart (only it was Theseus who left her there, not Jason). What would have been in store? We’ll never know. Ah well.

The Dragon Prince: Season 7 (2024)

Well, that’s that. This came and went with a bit of a whimper, and my friend and I have been watching it sporadically throughout the year, more out of a sense of duty than enthusiasm. (I was actually shocked to realize it was released in 2024. I can recall no promotional for it whatsoever).

But I remembered the basics of the plot: Claudia has released the super-powerful Aavaros, who wants to… take over the world? For some reason? Something to do with his deceased daughter? Naturally it’s up to our band of heroes to stop him, and this involves the resolution of several long-gestating plot-points, such as releasing Rayla’s guardian from his imprisonment within a coin, dealing with Queen Janai’s treacherous brother, and Callum coming to terms with the possibility that he may have to turn to the dark side in order to save his people. Hey, remember when The Dragon Prince was about the dragon prince?

Some things work and others don’t, though I gotta admit I’m struggling to remember some of the stuff from early on in the season. If I had the time or inclination, I’d watch it all the way through from the very start, since I definitely missed a few details.

The biggest disappointment is the complete lack of closure between siblings Soren and Claudia, who have always been my favourite character duo. Showrunner Aaron Eratz has often talked about a redemption arc for Azula in Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I was expecting one for Claudia to emerge at some point. Instead, Soren just admits he was thinking about killing her sister (to her face!) and she wanders off by herself. That’s it??

To add insult to injury, the whole thing ends with a crowd-funder to raise money for a sequel series in which our young cast are now adults (some teasers have already revealed Callum and Rayla with a baby daughter, and Ezran has been longbottomed) which means they deliberately leave several storylines up in the air. This includes the fate of King Harrow, and whether Soren and Corvus are ever going to be a thing.

One significant theme is that there are no bad guys, just damaged people – which I have mixed feelings on. I much preferred Aavaros as a beautiful seductive Lucifer-type character, but it turns out he’s just really sad about his daughter. The REAL bad guys are the stuffy regime enforcers… but what if they had really sad childhoods and unexamined traumas too? I get that evil is born, not made… but sometimes you just want to watch a bad guy get what’s coming to them, you know?

Ultimately, I was left with the lingering feeling of: was that it? Surely a show that’s been airing for seven years should have gone out with more of a bang. There were no announcements, so I honestly didn’t even know this season would be its last, and it feels like it was released right on the heels of season six. Did it drop early or did I just get to it really late? Or was this another hurried wrap-up courtesy of Netflix?

Ah well. I never got used to the animation (it had no texture, no detail – it just felt very plasticated to me) but all things considered it was a fun ride – and probably one that would benefit from a complete start-to-finish rewatch.