My quest to "finish what you started" continues, with new seasons of Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl under my belt, as well as American Gods, Killing Eve and the final season of Into the Badlands.
Bookwise, I've finally completed Sarah J Maas's Throne of Glass saga, the fourth and final book in the DC Icons series, and the second instalment in Michael Di Martino's Rebel Genius trilogy. And I haven't even begun to put a dent in the rest of my TBR pile.
This blog has been a bit slow lately, not because I'm not writing but because I'm writing so many things at once that my time has been spread thin between them. And with Stranger Things just around the corner, things will probably get worse before they get better...
Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas
It seems strange that I would finish this book (and the entire series) so soon after the conclusion of Game of Thrones, as there are a few superficial similarities between the two: specifically a white-haired lost princess affiliated with fire whose goal is to reclaim her kingdom. Perhaps that's a coincidence, yet with Martin on my mind I was surprised to see phrases like "the Queen Who Was Promised" and "within a few days, they'd all be a grand feast for the crows."
I'm in a weird place when it comes to this series, because on the one hand I want to celebrate the fact Aelin is an unashamed wish-fulfilment character, one who is insanely beautiful and skilled, adored by everyone she meets, and successful in everything she does. I get the importance of these types of characters for younger readers, and admire the audacity with which Maas makes Aelin as arrogant, talented and revered as your standard male character, one who would get far less critique for embodying such traits...
Yet I still found Aelin a bit insufferable at times: her victories too easy, her endless banter too contrived, her stratagems bordering on the preternatural. Is it internalized misogyny at work? Am I holding YA escapist fantasy to a higher standard? Would I be this annoyed if Aelin was a dude? Am I overthinking all this?
Moving away from all that, I found the biggest problem was that all the characters in this series are essentially the same person: the women are stubborn and spirited, and the men are broody and noble. You could take the dialogue of any character and give it to another, and no one would notice the difference.
There are several (heterosexual) romances that play out over the course of the seven books, and they're all totally identical too: the couple bicker and argue, sometimes in very nasty ways, before their overwhelming sexual attraction leads to hawt sex (it's almost funny how many couples can find time for this in the middle of an apocalyptic war).
And honestly, Maas's prose gets on my nerves. Everything is. Just. So. Overwrought. You know that annoyingly pretentious technique some writers use to make everything sound important by chopping up a sentence into dozens of smaller ones? To make things sound more portentous. More urgent. A way to make everything seem more dramatic?
Yeah, like that. It's all through this book and it drove me up the wall.
And she churns these books out so quickly that it's obvious no one is doing that good a job with the editing. Here's a sentence from page 860:
"The warrior ran toward them, a sword in one hand, the other drawing a dagger. Ran toward Aedion, his tawny eyes scanning him from head to toe. His father."
From page 862:
"The word was more of a question, subtle and sorrowful. Together. As father and son. As the two warriors they were. Gavriel - his father."
And page 864:
"He stopped hearing the battle. Stopped seeing the fighting around him, above him. Stopped seeing everything but the fallen warrior, who gazed toward the darkening sky with sightless eyes. His tattooed throat ripped out. His sword still gripped in his hand. Gavriel. His father."
So, did you get that Gavriel is Aedion's father? I'll understand if you didn't, she only mentions it three times in under five pages.
But it's done now, and hey - the silver-haired princess trying to save her kingdom from tyranny certainly gets a hell of a better deal than Daenerys. That's the one positive thing about YA fantasy - you're almost always going to end with a victory.
And like I've said from the very start, I think this would translate well to the rumoured television show, if not just in getting rid of Maas's irritating prose. It's apparently being adapted by Hulu, but the last update on its progress was back in 2016, so who knows what's going on.
Superman: Dawnbreaker by Matt de la Peña
The fourth and final book in the DC Icons Collection, which involves taking familiar superheroes and telling stories about their adolescence - before they don the cape and cowl. It's not exactly groundbreaking territory, especially in this Golden Age of Superheroes, but they're quick and fun reads.
However, this is probably the least of the series (the others focusing on Wonder Woman, Batman and Catwoman), which retreads a lot of ground when it comes to Clark's backstory. Shoehorned in is a mystery involving disappearing migrant workers and shady dealings with big corporations, which Clark tries to uncover alongside Lana Lang (taking the role of budding investigative journalist).
The problem is that the story doesn't really know what to focus on. The mystery itself is fine: it touches on real-world issues and has Clark exercising his powers in pursuit of justice for the first time, but it's also packed full of irrelevant original characters (including a love interest who we've never heard of before, and - because this is a one-shot - never will again) and Clark discovering his true alien origins. Every reader on the planet already knows all that by know, which makes reading about it for the umpteenth time rather tedious.
Warrior Genius by Michael DiMartino
The second in DiMartino's trilogy set in an alternate Renaissance Italy, where artists have bird-like Geniuses that channel their creative energy (think the daemons from His Dark Materials, but with the ability to harness sacred geometry as portals, weapons and inspiration) this sequel expands on the world a little, while still keeping the story rather formulaic.
Under threat from a cruel dictator (who couldn't help but remind me of The Legend of Korra's Kuvira) a young artist called Giacomo and his friends attempt to track down the three Sacred Tools that might break her power. With the Compass already in their possession, they now turn their attention to an enemy empire where the Straightedge is rumoured to be hidden.
There are some great ideas here, but the plot and characterization remains rather lacklustre. I like Giacomo and his companions, but none of them are bursting with life, and the story itself a fairly standard treasure hunt. The most interesting aspect remains Zanobius, a Tulpa (or golem) brought to life by an evil artisian and struggling with his past as a powerless slave to violence. Unsure of his purpose or identity without his master to guide him, he flounders for a purpose.
I'd say the sum of its parts are greater than the whole: a lot of neat ideas and fun little flourishes, but nothing to really tie it all together and make it an instant classic. And yeah, I realize a high standard is at work when you're subconsciously comparing everything to Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Cinderella (1950)
My friend and I are continuing his introduction to the Disney Princess films, and this was number two on the list. It's aged much better than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, though there are still some issues throughout: the prolonged animal sidekick hijinks, the filler songs, an emphasis on wishing, the cypher of a prince and his disturbing father (imagine having HIM for a father-in-law) and Cinderella's passivity - yet I could argue in defense of all these things.
Sure, scenes of the mice outwitting Lucifer the cat get a little tedious after a while, but they're fairly crucial in the final act, and their utter devotion to Cinderella is a testimony to her own goodness. The songs are quintessential Disney (would we really want to give up "Bibbity Bobbity Boo"?) and Cinderella is actually more assertive than most people give her credit for. She stands up for herself on numerous occasions, comes up with a few clever ideas, and (most importantly for a lot of people) withstands emotional and verbal abuse without sacrificing her own goodness.
The opening song "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" is probably the main culprit (along with Pinocchio's "When You Wish Upon a Star") in establishing Disney's reputation for encouraging people to wish for stuff instead of working for them; a theme that was pointedly deconstructed in The Princess and the Frog. And yet it's a little unfair to say Cinderella just wishes her problems away, as she's constantly hard at work, and her desire to go to the ball framed as a chance to simply take the night off.
It would have been nice to learn more about Prince Charming, but the film is juggling a lot of characters by this stage, and it's refreshing to keep the focus on the women: Cinderella, her step-family and the Fairy Godmother. Lady Tremaine is truly one of Disney's best villains: no demonic powers; just total control over a single human being that she's determined to wring dry of love, hope and kindness.
The artistry also caught my eye this time around; from the faded grandeur of the old manor house, to the vast interiors of the palace. Cinderella's arrival at the palace and her understated bravery simply in stepping through the front door is an animation triumph - as is that glorious climax when Lady Tremaine destroys the glass slipper, only for Cinderella to reach into her pocket and reveal: "I have the other slipper." That's a slam-dunk.
The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Meet Pixar's red-headed stepchild, the film that no one talks about and the studio's only financial flop to date.
The thing is, it's really not that bad - it's just that apart from its breathtaking visuals (which are reason enough to watch at least once) it's rather uninspired; like James Cameron's Avatar in that it's beautiful to look at, but with a story that feels like a pastiche of a dozen other films. In this case it's The Land Before Time, The Incredible Journey and Ice Age. There's a father straight out of The Lion King, a typical "boy and his dog" friendship, and a protagonist that must overcome his cowardice. Throw in a little Jurassic Park for good measure, and you've got this movie.
Even stranger, it's central premise (that the meteor didn't hit Earth, thereby allowing dinosaurs to exist and evolve alongside humans) is largely pointless. Given that we're dealing with talking dinosaurs that can build farms and tame other animals, why bother creating an AU scenario that justifies them still being around? Just go with it, like Ice Age did in throwing mammoths, dodos, sloths and sabre-tooth tigers into the mix together. No one's gonna care.
The bond between Arlo and Spot is sweet (though never manages the depth or poignancy of other great Pixar duos) and some of the villains are genuinely scary. But it just doesn't have that Pixar touch - this could just as easily have been a Dreamworks feature.
Also, why is it called The Good Dinosaur? I can only come up with the idea that it's a play on the term "good dog"... and yet it's the human who is the "dog" in this scenario, so why attribute it to the dinosaur? Weird.
Justice League vs The Fatal Five (2019)
This is one of those odd little films that doesn't seem to belong to any established continuity (at least, not one you can fathom without looking it up), existing in a strange hinterland between various animated series and big-screen franchises.
It's pretty much exactly what it says on the cover: thanks to some time-travelling shenanigans, the Justice League goes up against the Furious Five in both the present and future, though the story is told through an interesting perspective: a Green Lantern called Jessica Cruz who suffers from panic attacks and depression after a traumatic experience.
On the one hand, a female protagonist who struggles with anxiety? Great! On the other, what on earth is a person who struggles with anxiety doing taking on the mantle of a superhero who deals with high-stress situations on a daily basis? It's like hiring someone with a fatal cow allergy as a dairy farmer.
It's perhaps most notable for bringing back Kevin Conroy, Susan Eisenberg, and George Newbern as Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman respectively - though again, it opens up questions as to where exactly this fits into existing continuity. As with all the standalone animated DC films, I'm left entertained, but a little bemused.
Arrow: Season 6 (2017 - 2018)
I valiantly made it through season six of Arrow, realizing as I did why the show is wrapping up after its forthcoming eighth outing. As much as I actually liked the show going back to a street-level crime lord and his cronies, it's obvious that the showrunners are running out of ideas, characters and plotlines. And some of what they do is just plain silly.
Like, if you manage to book Michael Emerson as your season's big bad, then why on earth would you kill him off halfway through and replace him with someone that has infinitely less charisma and menace? (Flashbacks of Cottonmouth and Diamondback on Luke Cage). It was a casting coup to land Emerson, his character is mercifully not motivated by a dead woman, and even the silliest of lines can become threatening in his hands. Yet they get rid of him for a guy whose name I honestly can't remember?
(You know what would have been cool? If Felicity's hackstivist friend Alena had been the mastermind behind it all).
And then there's the ludicrous notion that Oliver decides he has to give up being the Green Arrow because he has a son, thereby passing the baton onto Diggle... who also has a son. Once they realize this plotline is dead in the water, he just goes back into the field despite William being totally correct in pointing out that Oliver simply can't promise him he'll come home at the end of the day (not realizing that he's the main character of a television franchise and has indestructible plot armour).
That he's juggling his responsibilities as mayor while heading out nightly as a vigilante is crazy enough, but then he's put under FBI investigation and we're meant to expect that the paparazzi aren't staking out his apartment and offices every second of the day?
Quentin goes full Annie Wilkes and ends up kidapping Earth-2's Laurel in the attempt to turn her into his own daughter, complete with handcuffing her and taking her to a secluded cabin in the woods. Perhaps he's finally snapped after dealing with his daughters dying and coming back to life so many times, but this got genuinely uncomfortable, and as usual Katie Cassidy is given the short-end of the stick when it comes to characterization. I think she's having more fun as Black Siren, but the writers still haven't figured out what to do with her.
There's a subplot clearly inspired by Captain America: Civil War, in which Curtis, Rene and Dinah break free of the group to form their own vigilante squad, and honestly I didn't really care enough about them to feel any sense of poignancy. I get that a show has to stay fresh by replacing characters and their arcs, but it's a total mystery why they phased out Laurel, Roy and Thea for these three, whose presence would have given this particular storyline a lot more weight.
(As it is, the most entertaining thing about it was reading the reactions on Previously TV. Yeah, I didn't learn my lesson from Game of Thrones, as I still love watching people have meltdowns over fictional characters).
Speaking of Thea, she's wasted here as well - kept in a coma for the first part of the season, then made the voice of reason that nobody listens to (except when she's counselling Quentin on Laurel) and then shuffled off-stage at the earliest possible convenience. At least we got to see Roy and Nyssa again.
And yet... I didn't hate it. That's simply because I've never been particularly invested, so the sloppy writing and disjointed arcs didn't bother me that much. And when all's said and done, it was actually pretty satisfying to see the utter nonsense of Oliver's life as a vigilante finally hit the brick wall of reality when all the overwhelming evidence of his secret identity comes out in a courtroom trial.
The Flash: Season 4 (2017 -2018)
Running concurrently with season six of Arrow, this was a fairly pedestrian season of The Flash, with a few high points along the way. There's a pretty good villain whose abilities lie in his intelligence, with a master plan that's rather silly but still has an internal comic-book logic that makes him a force to be reckoned with.
Even better, the writers finally find a niche for Iris as the head of Team Flash. Granted, they all got along pretty well without her before this season, but having a singular voice issuing instructions and monitoring everyone's progress is a nice way of organizing the team situation, and she also gets to return to her blog and have a brief sojourn as a speedster (which really should have been a multi-episode arc - that purple suit and lightening was awesome).
Julian is disposed of in a brief aside, informing us that he's gone back to England (bye Tom Felton, you deserved a better send-off than this) and promptly replaced with Ralph Dibney, a.k.a. Elongated Man. He's best endured in small doses, so the writers inflict him on us for nearly an entire season after Barry decides to train him in the art of super-heroing. Let's just say it's not for everyone.
Wally leaves to join the Legends, and Cecile steps in to fill a surprisingly big role, especially in the finale. Caitlin also gets some vaguely interesting material regarding Killer Frost, which eventually reveals she's been around since long before the particle accelerator explosion (which will perhaps finally explain why her split-personality disorder is unique to her and not any other meta on the show).
After my post on female friendships, I was actually rather impressed that the "girl power episode" (which actually involves the girls saying: "hashtag feminism" out loud - yeesh) had Iris and Caitlin acknowledge that they were never really friends; only work friends. As I pointed out in my post, most writers depict girls as besties, enemies or totally indifferent to each other, and so it was nice for the show to grasp that there are different types of friendship, and theirs never really progressed past work acquaintances. That having been done, their subsequent scenes have a genuine weight to them.
Um, what else? Katee Sackhoff is here as a meta crime lord, having what looks like a lot of fun. There's a cameo appearance by Jay and Silent Bob, and a great running gag in which nearly all the members of the team visit an increasingly confused therapist.
But best of all is the sporadic appearances from a mysterious girl who interacts with all the cast members across the season, dropping clues as to her identity as she goes. Given the show deals with time travel, it doesn't take a genius to realize who she is, but it was certainly eye-opening to see Jessica Parker Kennedy in this role after Black Sails: a bubbly personality, no French accent, and skewing at least ten years younger. This is about as far away from Max as you can get!
All in all, it didn't blow me away, but I was entertained throughout.
Legends of Tomorrow: Season 3 (2017 - 2018)
By now the show is firing on all cylinders, and it's strange to look back and consider that this started out as such a po-faced drama. That Rip went from announcing he had assembled a team of experts, to said team redefining themselves as people who screw things up for the better, is a shift in tone that works wonders.
Also working to the show's advantage is the revolving cast door - regulars are constantly coming and going, and rather than replacing solid mainstays (like Laurel, Thea and Roy) with barely sketched successors (Curtis, Rene, Dinah), Legends makes sure that those departing get a decent send-off, and those arriving are compelling characters in their own right.
So we lose Martin, Jax, Rip and Amaya, but gain Zari, an acerbic Muslim from the future, Wally, who gets infinitely more to do here than he ever did on The Flash, and Ava, a member of the Time Bureau who takes a shine to Sara. The likes of Snart and Constantine also pop in for brief spells, and it's particularly nice to see Matt Ryan getting the chance to revisit a character he clearly loves playing. What's more, these writers almost immediately establish his bisexuality, which is more than the original writers of Constantine were ever prepared to do.
(I kept wondering if they were going to pick up plot-points from his cancelled show, but there's no sign of Zed or Manny, who provided the big cliff-hanger of his first and only season. That said, they do establish continuity with the mention and appearance of Astra, so perhaps this will change later down the track).
So it's weird to think that Sara, Mick and Ray are the only three original members left! (Nate still gets on my nerves, and it would seem we're stuck with him for a bit longer).
This season leans heavily into the crazy, with Damien Darkh returning as a much more comedic villain than he was on Arrow, and a plot to conjoin several mystical totems (think the elemental rings in Captain Planet) to bring forth a demon from hell. Or something, honestly the plot doesn't matter that much. The real joy is in the craziness, the character dynamics, and the show's newfound sense of fun.
These concurrent seasons also contained the big crossover event! I had skipped the relevant episode of Supergirl back when it aired, which made it very strange to watch these in order and see that Mon-El and Win were still around. There's good and bad here: as ever the writers struggle with the overload of characters (Wally disappears quickly, even though his powers should have made him vitally important) but Oliver and Kara are interesting choices for the two villains, Iris and Felicity get a nice little non-superpowered subplot together, and there's some hilarious interaction between Sara and Alex once they realize they're both gay.
That said, it was a little disconcerting to see our heroes put in a full-blown concentration camp, and Martin ends up getting killed just three days out from his retirement. C'mon, if the actor was ready to leave, just let the character go back to his family in peace!
And honestly, what was up with Felicity deciding she had to interrupt Barry and Iris's wedding vows so she could marry Oliver at the same time? Especially after the inital ceremony had been crashed by Nazis? Honestly, this shit ain't cute.
Into the Badlands: Season 3 (2018 - 2019)
I foolishly thought that catching up on the end of Into the Badlands would be the perfect antidote to Game of Thrones. I needed a dose of women kicking ass, which this show always had in abundance... so imagine my joy when it proceeds to kill off three female characters in a row, and leave another one's life teetering in the balance in the finale's weird cliff-hanger.
And yes, men are sad about it. (To add insult to injury, a man is killed in the midst of all this carnage, and then promptly brought back to life).
This entire season was on rather unstable ground to begin with. With the removal of Quinn as the show's big bad, they introduce a fanatical preacher called Pilgrim who soon brings a number of Dark Eyes (including M.K.) under his wing in order to... you know, I never quite grasped his goals or motivation. It's the standard bad guy "destroy everything and rebuild from the ashes" ploy, I think.
People fight, people die. Long-lost relatives turn up, alliances shift and change with the wind, and the writers pull off so many back-stabs and double-crosses that it's impossible to settle on one character to root for. Bajie's introduction for example involved him punching a woman in the face in order to take her place in an escape attempt, something that the writers promptly forget about in their bid to then make him the comic relief. Sometimes it's not even clear what anyone is fighting for, or against, or with.
It's bizarre that there was never a final confrontation between Sonny and M.K. given their history, or that Tilda's life was left hanging in the balance, or that Lydia was killed off when the seeds were sown that she would be the best leader of the Badlands once the smoke had cleared.
It's not even clarified whether peace is established or not, as aside from killing off the main villain (though letting another get off scott-free) the finale offers absolutely no closure on any of its main characters or plot-points - in fact, it adds a few more right at the finish line. The fate of M.K. in particular is rather devastating in hindsight. That poor kid.
So I'm not really sure what to make of it all. It was impossible to get invested in any of the characters, as they were very much pawns of the plot as opposed to three-dimensional people in their own right. That said, it still felt like a meal that was taken away before I was finished eating.
All things considered I enjoyed Emily Beecham as The Widow, who combines the name/red hair/fighting prowess of Natasha Romanoff with the visionary/ruthlessness/moral ambiguity that Daenerys was meant to have. That, and Lewis Tan as Gaius is perhaps the most handsome man that ever lived.
Great martial arts, beautiful costumes, stylistic world-building, and yet this went out with more of a whimper than a bang. Or more accurately, a: "huh?"
Supergirl: Season 4 (2018 – 2019)
It feels like this season has been running forever, probably due to the midseason hiatus and the fact I forgot about it for about it for about five months. But I got there eventually, to discover a decidedly mixed bag. There were moments of brilliance this season, and just as many clumsy subplots and character beats.
Supergirl was always a show that had a lot to say about current events, but this season... well, let's just say someone decided they needed more cowbell, ALL THE COWBELL, as this has a full-on anti-immigration analogy between aliens and humanity, complete with Alt-Right assholes getting validated by the government, Antifa protest groups going vigilante, attacks against the free press, and thugs brandishing tiki torches.
Yup, tiki torches.
It goes a little overboard, especially since it's not really smart enough to handle the material it's chosen for itself. I mean, at some point we're meant to think that Manchester Black has gone too far in his crusade for justice and has become just as bad as the fascists that he's trying to defeat... unfortunately, having drawn several obvious parallels between Ben Lockwood and the Alt-Right (who murder Manchester's girlfriend, among other heinous crimes) I felt nothing but gratitude for the guy who was actually trying to stop the Agents of Liberty before they murdered more innocent people.
But nope, the writers make sure that there's a right way and wrong way of dealing with the violent, war-mongering bigots living among us, and apparently punching them in the face is a big no-no. (Look, I get that they successfully came up with a problem that Supergirl couldn't just punch her way out of, but I'm sick to death of being told to "see both sides" of a situation when one side is hell-bent on destroying the rest of us).
Also annoying is that we're sporadically treated to glimpses of another Supergirl being trained in Kaznia, with no understanding of who or what she is. With this tantalizing mystery being teased every so often, the all-too-familiar-and-therefore-depressing main storyline tends to drag. Other things trail off into irrelevance: J'onn's struggle with pacifism, Manchester's anti-climactic end, Alex having her memory wiped of Kara's secret identity (though that last one does result in a hilariously narm-tastic scene in which Alex tries to save her sister's life by screaming "TAKE THE GRASS!" and no, I'm not going to provide context).
Some of the new characters work: Nia Nal and Brainy are given decent arcs and a sweet little love story (don't shoot me, but I prefer Brainy to Win), though others grate: Colonel Haley and Manchester Black are more plot-points than characters (and is it just me, or are most antagonistic-towards-our-heroes-but-not-full-out-evil characters played by black people in the Arrowverse shows?)
It FINALLY all comes together with the long-awaited appearance of Lex Luthor, who storms in and pretty much steals the show right out from under everyone. Turns out that everyone was his patsy this season, from Lena to Otis, Red Daughter to Lillian, Eve Teschmacher to Ben Lockwood. Suddenly the disparate subplots coalesce into a master-plan that's pretty breathtaking in its scope, performed by an actor that manages the perfect balance of ruthlessness and dark comedy that's found in all the best Lex Luthors.
James gets a little more to do, Lena finally learns Kara's true identity, and there's some amazing familial chemistry between the Luthors (they're constantly poisoning each other, and it's hilarious).
American Gods: Season 2 (2019)
Yikes, this was a slog. What happened? Okay, Bryan Fuller and several key actors leaving was what happened, and you can practically see the new team scrabbling to pick up the pieces and stick them back into a coherent whole.
It... did not work. I was actually going to do episode-by-episode reviews for this like I did last season, but then March 15th happened and drained much of my enthusiasm, which in turn made it incredibly difficult to work through this meandering season.
There was so much naval-gazing and pontificating, and none of it felt particularly insightful or philosophical. It also lost much of its surrealist imagery that was so memorable in the first season: Fuller had an eye for this sort of thing that just can't be replaced. I also noticed that there was much more flesh on display this time around, and naturally it's all from the women - as opposed to the fifty/fifty divide in season one.
As ever, the Mad Sweeney episode is the best one, with a gloriously deep and complex examination of the mutability of myths, memory and madness; the way they merge and interchange with one another, and how the character struggles with what's going on in his head as he devolves from god to king to fairy over time.
Honestly, the best the show has to offer are the two Sweeney-centric episodes. You could watch those two and feel like you'd gotten a fascinating two-part story with only a few contextual details missing.
Still, Shadow is finally off to Lakeside which will bring Samantha back into play - but the structure of Gaiman's book is not working in the show's favour. By the time the denouement comes, is anyone even going to remember Low-Key?
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