Reading/Watching Log #79

Well, it’s been a shit month for women. Need I elaborate? Probably not.

At least June taught me something about the joy of low-stakes drama. These days most blockbuster movies and big-budget television shows predicate on catastrophic world-ending apocalypses, where nothing less than life as we know it hangs in the balance. It can get pretty exhausting after a while, especially since you know nothing too drastic is going to happen.

But June gave me at least three stories in which nail-biting suspense was formed by: a sentient bulb of garlic summoning the courage to make a new friend, a middle-aged woman and her friends scrambling to pull off a pilot episode for a cooking show they have to fund themselves, and an animated puppy figuring out how to put on a backpack.

It’s an important reminder that audience investment comes from characters, not circumstances. All the CGI explosions in the world won’t help if there isn’t someone on screen or page that the viewer/reader cares about. Bigger isn’t always better, and these days especially it was a welcome reminder that small victories are important too.

Garlic and the Vampire by Bree Paulson

This graphic novel is SO CUTE. The basic premise is that a bunch of vegetables have been brought to life by a witch so that they can help out in her garden, only for them to notice that a nearby castle has been inhabited. On using her magic to discover who has taken up residence, the witch discovers that a vampire has moved in – and little Garlic is chosen from among the vegetables to travel to the castle and vanquish the possible threat to their lives.

Yeah, it sounds completely random and bizarre, but the earthy tones and surprisingly realistic depiction of the sentient vegetables carries you along with the story. Garlic may have been chosen because of the vampiric aversion to her very nature, but she’s a nervy and anxious creature who worries about everything. Not wanting anyone to get hurt because she was too afraid to do anything, she summons her courage and heads for the vampire’s castle – only to find that he’s a perfectly friendly vampire who doesn’t drink blood.

That’s it. There’s no twist, no conflict, no drama. Garlic just finds out that the vampire isn’t so bad and makes a new friend, then returns home to introduce him to everyone. It’s just so nice.  

Obviously the real conflict is born out of the fact that she has to overcome her anxiety and work on behalf of her community (even if the community is a bit stink in sending her off to complete this potentially dangerous task by herself) but it’s such a soothing and charming little story. Sometimes everything is going to be alright. Sometimes the scary-looking person isn’t a threat. Sometimes there’s nothing to worry about. I think we need more stories like this one.

Dawn and the Impossible Three by Anne M. Martin

The first Dawn-centric book in the series involves a fairly weighty topic: that of a babysitter brought into the middle of a dysfunctional family and misguidedly taking on more than she’s equipped to handle. This early on, Dawn comes across as the most sensible, down-to-earth, emotionally mature of all the main characters, and – just as she walked Mary Anne through Jenny’s medical emergency in the last book, which could have just as fairly been called Dawn Helps Mary Anne Save The Day – she here deals with the disappearance of one of her babysitting charges with minimal panic.

Dawn is the latest member of the Babysitters Club, and is eager to prove herself when she’s first to mind the Barrett children: Buddy, Suzi and Marnie. On arriving at their house she’s dismayed to find that the house is a mess and the children barely dressed, with Mrs Barrett flying out the door to a job interview without leaving any instructions or emergency contact numbers.

Being a tidy sort of person (which will get Flanderized into absolute neat-freakery in later books) Dawn convinces the children to help her clean the house up a little, gets them properly dressed, and starts to learn more about them.

The Barrett kids aren’t really “impossible” – they’re actually pretty good all things considered. It’s the Barrett adults that cause all the trouble. As noted, Mrs Barrett is a scatterbrain going through an acrimonious divorce and a series of job interviews. Soon Dawn is doing household chores and the kids are calling her up with questions on school projects and other family problems. It’s obvious that this is well outside healthy child/babysitter parameters, though things don’t come to a head until Buddy goes missing from the backyard while Dawn is taking care of him.

Spoiler alert: he’s been snatched by his own father who is frustrated that his ex-wife keeps forgetting the schedule of their custody agreement. Ultimately it’s all’s well that ends well, but Dawn tells Mrs Barrett that she can’t babysit for her until she gets her shit together (not in those exact words) with the two of them eventually coming up with a compromise. It’s probably the most nuanced depiction of a “babysitting crisis” that the series has come up with so far.

The book’s subplot involves Dawn noting Kristy’s considerable coolness towards her, realizing that it’s jealousy/insecurity over the fact that Mary Anne now has another best friend, and making a concentrated effort to win her over, again proving that this fictional thirteen-year-old is a far better and more mature person than I am.

So Dawn passes her first test of babysitting character with flying colours. The only other things worth noting are that we get a proper look inside her colonial house (including a very important barn which comes back into play in the next Dawn-centric book) and that Kristy appoints her the Club’s Alternate Officer. This is kind of adorable as it doesn’t really mean anything – the idea is that she takes over the duties of whatever babysitter can’t make it to a meeting, but aside from Stacey’s absence between books #13 to #28, I don’t recall her ever having to step into anyone else’s shoes. (And surely if Kristy couldn’t make it to a meeting, then the role of President would fall to Claudia, who has the equally pointless role of Vice President).

Kristy’s Big Day by Anne M. Martin

This title marks the first second book in the series, which is to say that having given each of the original five babysitters their own point-of-view book, the circuit loops back around to Kristy, kickstarting the second narrative arc.

As has been established in the previous books, Kristy’s mother is engaged to Watson Brewer, an extremely wealthy man with two children of his own: Karen and Andrew. After one last summer in their own neighbourhood, Kristy and her family will move into his residence in the considerably more upscale community across town – or at least that’s the plan. What prevents this bittersweet-but-closure-allowing-final-summer from happening is that Kristy’s mother Elizabeth has been offered a cushy business trip to Europe AND a desperate buyer for the house puts in an offer that can’t be refused.

As such, the wedding and the move will have to be brought forward. As in, they have only two and a half weeks before walking down the aisle and moving to Watson’s place. It seems an impossible task, especially when Elizabeth realizes that – in all – there will be fourteen children attending the celebrations, who will naturally be underfoot while the adults are trying to prepare what now amounts to a shotgun wedding (without the pregnancy).

And so the Babysitters Club steps in, offering to care for all the assorted children while the adults run their errands. This was one of the first Babysitters Club books I ever read, and there was something so appealing to my young brain about how the girls manage to create order out of chaos: planning age-appropriate activities in advance, dividing the children by ages, and giving them colour-coded symbols (bluebirds, green dinosaurs, pink hearts) to keep track of everyone. We get the ups and downs of the week, from an ill-fated trip to the hairdresser to Karen scaring the other children with stories about Martians, but also the girls delivering excellent childcare service in the face of their first large-scale booking.

This is the first of what will eventually be dozens of books in which the babysitters have to look after a large group of kids while their parents are elsewhere, but I remember it being one of the best, with the climatic wedding chapter pulling everything together. But I was surprised to discover that the book actually discloses how much money the babysitters make, and you’ll never believe what it is: three dollars an hour. Man, those girls got robbed!

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

As mentioned last month, Amazon’s upcoming The Rings of Power series is fast approaching, and it inspired me to reopen The Silmarillion, which I suppose is best described as Tolkien’s mythological/historical precursor to The Lord of the Rings. It’s one hell of a read, and if you think the scope of his famous trilogy was large, know that its entirety is summarized within two pages at the end of this book.

What he was attempting to do (and what is essentially his life’s uncompleted work) is best outlined in his own words, in a letter to his publisher in 1951: “Do not laugh! But once upon a time I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to England; to my country... I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.”

It’s rather heartrending in its self-deprecation, as he clearly had no idea just how portentous his words truly were, or how much readers of his work would take them to heart. I even believe they’ve been quoted by one of the writers/showrunners of the upcoming show to justify the liberties that’ve been taken. Unfortunately, it’s also the most oft-quoted passage when it comes to that side of fandom bemoaning the fact that people of colour now exist in Middle Earth. Because apparently, they not only don’t exist in a mystical, non-existent world, but also not in the England to which Tolkien dedicated his efforts.

The most fascinating thing about The Silmarillion is that despite its colossal length, there still isn’t nearly enough of it. As Tolkien says above, some parts of it are ripe for expansion, while others are left tantalizingly nebulous. Stuff like the hazy origins of Men and their first encounter with Melkor (obviously some shit went down, but we never discover what it was) or the cataclysmic battles between Melkor and the Valar that literally reshaped the geography of the world, or even the unknown identities of two of the five Istari... Tolkien scatters concepts and images and possibilities through the text like diamond dust.

And at times, it really does feel like you’re reading something profound and holy; like an actual religious text written as the ancient ways of paganism gave way to the first strains of Christianity. I’ve always been charmed by how Tolkien found a way to reconcile his Catholic faith with his love of Norse mythology, with the Valar essentially playing the roles of the gods, the Maiar as angels, and Melkor as the fallen Lucifer. You can feel Tolkien’s own fascination with the world he was building – even if he did have the attention span of a goldfish when it came to committing to finish his magnum opus.

That the volume is as complete and coherent as it is, is down to Christopher Tolkien’s diligence in editing the material. And though people say it’s difficult to read, that it’s dry and so on... it really isn’t? I was pretty much captivated from start to finish, only stumbling over the archaic way in which some of the sentences are structured (how many double-negatives can you fit in one paragraph? Quite a few) and the vast multitude of Elves who have names starting with the letter F. Oy.

There are actually four distinct parts to The Silmarillion: the Ainulindalë is essentially the Book of Genesis, that lays out the creation of the world at the hands/thoughts of its monotheistic god Eru Ilúvatar and the calling forth of the Ainur (or Valar) who are god-like beings that sing holy music together and in doing so bring Arda (later known as Middle-Earth) into existence.

Next is the Valaquenta (the shortest of the four books) which is essentially just a run-down of the fourteen most important Valar and their attributes: Ulmo is the Vala of the ocean, Yavanna of all growing things, Aulë of smithery and so on. Most important is Melkor, later renamed Morgoth, who rebelled against Ilúvatar, disrupted the harmony of the Ainur, and abandoned his place among the Valar in order to corrupt the world to his own ends.

It is no exaggeration to say that he’s the Lucifer/Satan of this world, though without the folklorish Flanderization that Old Nick has been subjected to over the centuries. Morgoth is the embodiment of demonic grandeur: cruel, monstrous, terrible and terrifying; the source of all the evil that will plague Middle Earth for centuries to come (Sauron started out as a Maiar, a slightly lesser spirit than the Valar, and ended up Morgoth’s chief lieutenant and successor).

Both the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta are pretty short and straightforward, though there’s at least one passage involving the gender of the Valar that’s rather fascinating: “Their shape comes of their knowledge of the visible World, rather than of the World itself; and they need it not, save only as we use raiment, and yet we may be naked and suffer no loss of our being. The Valar may walk, if they will, unclad... but when they desire to clothe themselves the Valar take upon them forms some as of male and some as of female; for that difference of temper they each had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied forth in the choice of each, not made by the choice, even as with us male and female may be shown by the raiment but is not made thereby.”

It’s a complex passage to parse through, and the implication that male and female forms are predicated on an individual’s “difference of temper” is rather dubious, but I’m intrigued by the notion that Tolkien is essentially describing gender as “raiment” or garments that can be applied or shed at will. Am I saying Tolkien was consciously dabbling in transgender politics? Haha, no. Am I saying it’s an interesting passage with thought-provoking implications for a queer audience? Yes.

The longest portion of the book is called the Quenta Silmarillion or The History of the Silmarils, and contains the full width and breadth of Tolkien’s imagination. It involves the awakening of the Elves, their long and perilous passage across Arda to reach Valinor (the home of the Valar), the sundering of this race into various factions, the creation of things such as the sun, moon and stars, the emergence of Men, and a multitude of romances, heroic deeds, and battles against the forces of Morgoth.

It is named after the Silmarils, three priceless jewels filled with the light of Laurelin and Telperion, two miraculous trees that provided illumination throughout the world, which were eventually made all the more precious by Morgoth’s deliberate destruction of the trees and the permanent dowsing of their light. He made off with the Silmarils at the same time he and Ungoliant (a giant spider) destroyed the trees, and their creator, an Elf-Lord called Fëanor, swore a terrible oath to retrieve them by any means necessary.

This oath was shared by many of his family members, leading to a great Elf exodus from Valinor into the lands of Middle Earth to wage war upon Morgoth, leading to a centuries-long conflict that involved kinslaying, genocide, betrayal, murder, and despair. Called the War of the Jewels, it forms the crux of The Silmarillion, touching the lives of every single character that features in the history, and did not end well for anyone involved. To put it lightly.

It only ends with the defeat of Morgoth and the permanent loss of the Silmarils; a deeply bittersweet conclusion with enough dangling threads to lead us into...

The Akallabêth, another fairly short section of the book, which concerns the race of Men and the downfall of Númenor. For helping the Elves in their war against Morgoth, mankind is rewarded with an island home rich in natural resources, though over the course of several thousand years the people grow corrupt, jealous and fearful of death. Their eventual hubris in bringing Sauron to their shores and getting talked into assailing Valinor in pursuit of immortality leads to the Atlantis-like sinking of the island and its cities (and by an astounding coincidence, “Númenor” translated into “Atalantë” in Tolkien’s invented Quenya language).

Finally, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” is a chapter which essentially summarizes the events of The Lord of the Rings, though it delves a bit deeper into that trilogy’s immediate history: the threat of Sauron, the forging of the Rings of Power, the arrival of the Istari, the corruption of the Nazgûl and the loss of the One Ring.

This was of most interest to me given that this is the period in which Amazon’s The Rings of Power purports to be set: at the very tail-end of The Silmarillion in its entirety, and butting right up against The Hobbit in terms of the events it covers. Which is a shame in a way, as they’ve chosen quite a limited period of time in which to tell their story, at least in relation to the frankly massive chronology that encompasses the Quenta Silmarillion. How odd that they would bypass the chance to dramatize the story of Beren and Lúthien, the fall of Gondolin, the forging of the Silmarils, the darkening of Valinor, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears...

I suppose we’ll see how it all pans out, and there might well be flashbacks to some of these events, but between the glossy, artificial-looking promotional shots and the inherent cowardice in not letting Dwarven women have beards, I’ve significantly lowered my expectations.

After that comes the genealogies, indexes, appendixes, maps and notes on pronunciation (I have to admit, I skip these parts). In all, it’s a staggering piece of work, filled with beauty and poetry and tragedy and meaning. From the mystery of the Music of the Ainur in the Ainulindalë to the discussion of the Doom of Men in the Akallabêth, Tolkien delves into universal themes of life, death, morality, corruption, free will, hubris, loss, memory and good and evil. Much like the Bible itself, it’s a history, mythology, philosophy, theology and poetry book all in one. You could dip into it at any point and find something worth pondering at length, and knowing that it’s technically an unfinished manuscript is mind-blowing. This is a man’s life’s work.

And of course, because you’re reading my blog, you’re obviously going to hear something about the female characters. In the entirety of The Lord of the Rings there are only seven female characters of note: Galadriel, Éowyn, Arwen, Shelob, Goldberry, Rosie Cotton and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins (and maybe Ioreth at a stretch). Of these seven only five made it into the Peter Jackson films, two don’t get any lines of dialogue, one is a giant spider, three are defined only as wives/love interests to male characters that have no other significance to the plot, and only one of them gets an actual arc (Éowyn obviously).

It’s still a better showing than The Hobbit, which is famous for not having one single female character (which lead to the rather dubious inclusion of Tauriel in the Peter Jackson adaptation). Thankfully, there are considerably more women to be found in The Silmarillion, though the quota is still at least 30:1 in favour of the men.

But I will give Tolkien credit for entirely avoiding the Madonna/Whore archetypes, something that would have been all-too-easy to fall into given the type of story he was writing (even C.S. Lewis veered a little into this territory). But there are no sexy witches or evil temptresses in Tolkien; if there’s any sort of dichotomy between female characters in The Silmarillion it’s best described as Maidens/Monsters.

Elven and human women are invariably depicted as worthy of respect and/or reverence, which is nice, but not much else is afforded to them. To quote The Fall of Gondolin: “the maids and women of the Gondothlim were as fair as the sun and lovely as the moon and brighter than the stars.” Flattering, but do they have personalities? Their ethereal beauty exist in stark contrast to the two female villains of the epic: Ungoliant, the monstrous giant spider who is responsible for destroying the Two Trees (and notable for existing outside the control of even Morgoth himself – he didn’t create her, and her origins remain a mystery) and Thuringwethil, a creature that we learn next-to-nothing about save that she was a vampire (yes, really!) a herald of Morgoth, and the creature that Lúthien disguised herself as when she infiltrated Angband.

Yet the dearth of women in Tolkien’s body of work doesn’t bother me too much all things considered. I don’t think Tolkien was omitting them out of an overt dislike of women, but just a simple lack of interest – found in both the source material he was drawing upon for inspiration and (I suspect) his own life. I don’t want to waste too much time complaining about it, and what glimpses we do get of women in The Silmarillion are fairly compelling.

We’ve got Varda, the Queen of Heaven, the most powerful feminine Vala (or to use the feminine term, Valier) of whom it is said that “of all the Great Ones who dwell in this World, the Elves hold [her] most in reverence and love” and that Melkor, the source of all evil: “hated her, and feared her more than all others whom Eru made.” (That’s such a tantalizing titbit, and is never elaborated on at all).

Then there’s Yavanna, the Valier responsible for the growth and wellbeing of all trees, plants and fruits, as well as the deity who crafted the Two Great Trees from which so much of The Silmarillion stems from (no pun intended – they not only provided the light captured within the Silmarils, but seedlings of Telperion survive in one form or another all the way to the Tree of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings).

Other female Vala include Nienna the Weeper, Estë the Gentle, Vairë the Weaver, Vána the Ever-young and Nessa the Dancer, who are all powerful beings in their own right, but play less significant roles in the story itself.

Melian is perhaps the most famous female Maiar, who married the Elven King Thingol and established the realm of Doriath, which stood for many centuries due to what was called the Girdle of Melian, a powerful protective spell. Not only a great queen in her own right, she was a mentor to Galadriel and one of the grand-sires of Arwen Undomiel.

Speaking of, Galadriel plays a relatively big part in The Silmarillion. Among other things, she is one of the leaders of the Noldorim uprising in Valinor, who then followed Fëanor back across the seas to Arda (though Tolkien is careful to note that she did not participate in the kinslaying at Alqualondë and did not swear the Oath of Fëanor). She’s something of an Amazon-figure early on, and is said to have “thrown down the walls and laid bare the pits” at the Elven conquest of Dol Guldur, not to mention seeing through Sauron’s deceptions surrounding the making of the Rings of Power, becoming the Keeper of Nenya, the Ring of Water, and the nominal Queen of Lothlórien as a result. Along with Elrond, she’s probably the most important “bridging” character between The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, though she predates him by several centuries.

Other female Elves of note include Idril the Far-Sighted, the daughter of King Turgon of Gondolin, described as: “wise-hearted even beyond the measure of the daughters of Elfinesse” who had the foresight to suspect Maeglin’s treachery and have a secret tunnel carved through the mountains encircling the city, providing an escape that saved many lives. Aredhel was a headstrong Elf-maiden of whom it was said: “to none was her heart’s love given,” only to be seduced and/or raped (the text seems deliberately ambiguous) by a hermit-Elf and who eventually dies for the sake of the child of that union.

Sadly, many others are little more than a name and a glimpse of personality, largely defined through who they married and gave birth to. Nerdanel was Fëanor’s wife, said to be “firm of will, but more patient than Fëanor... and at first she retrained him when the fire of his heart grew too hot.” That’s pretty much all we learn of her. Meanwhile, Elwing was the wife of Eärendil, the mother of Elrond and Elros, and the grandmother of Arwen, who escaped the Third Kinslaying by being transformed into a bird. Sure, why not?

Among the race of Men there are a few notable women: Emeldir was called “the Man-Hearted” and led the women and children of Dorthonion to the safety of Brethil after their home gets overrun by Morgoth, and Haleth was a warrior-woman and chieftain who fought to protect her people, defended them against attacks from Orcs, and on being questioned by King Thingol as to whether she had any allegiance to evil powers, replied: “If the King of Doriath fears a friendship between Haleth and those who have devoured her kin, then the thoughts of the Eldar are strange to Men.” She never marries and dies peacefully of old age.

On the other end of the scale, The Children of Húrin had the tragic figures of Morwen Edhelwen and Niënor Níniel, Finduilas and Lalaith, who (in order) are the imposing mother of Túrin, whose demeanour was enough to dissuade enemies from assaulting her, his ill-fated sister whose only moment of agency leads straight to her doom (unknowing incest with her brother and suicide), Túrin’s unrequited Elven love who is pinned to a tree by a spear in a classic fridging, and Túrin’s little sister, who dies while still a child.

Still, the story does have the largely off-page character of Aerin, a kinswoman to Morwen who was forced into marriage and dismissed with scorn by Túrin, but who provides succour to Morwen over the years and gains the following commendation when she sets fire to her own home to slow down enemy forces: “Many a man of arms misreads patience and quiet. She did much good among us at much cost. Her heart was not faint, and patience will break at last.”

And of course, Lúthien Tinúviel, perhaps the most significant female character in the entirety of Tolkien’s work, embodying so many of his themes, concepts, story-arcs, philosophies and worldview. But I think I’ll save her for July’s Woman of the Month...

There are plenty more minor female characters, but they’re largely defined as wives and mothers, and often as nothing more than a placeholder name. Yet every now and then, there is a tiny glimmer of intrigue. From the most illustrious to the least noticed, Tolkien’s female characters may not always get a lot to do, but they capture the imagination perhaps because of rather than in spite of their scarcity.

It would be easy to say that the female characters of The Silmarillion (and by extension, The Lord of the Rings) are a case of quality over quantity, as what little we see of them is deeply interesting. It would also be disingenuous to say that none of them get much dimension or characterization, as with only a few exceptions, neither do any of the male characters.

Such is the nature of the text: a vast epic that concentrates on plot and world-changing events rather than deep insight into its cast of characters. It is a mountainous achievement, and as soon as I had finished my first impulse was to flick back to the beginning and re-read my favourite parts.

The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

This is the third of Tolkien’s three “Great Tales”, named so due to Tolkien’s desire to write longer, more expansive versions of each story than the ones found in The Silmarillion, and the final one to be published in 2018.

Sadly, only The Children of Húrin was completed to any degree of satisfaction, with a clear beginning, middle and end. This volume contains a number of renderings on its specific narrative, some only a page or two long, concerning Tuor’s discovery of a hidden Elven city and its eventual destruction by the forces of Morgoth.

It is by far more piecemeal than either of the other Lost Tales, and so it stings a little to know that Tolkien (despite his massive body of work) left so much undone. In fact, the last version of the story comes to an abrupt halt right at its most exciting moment: when Tuor is done passing through the secret gates of the secret city and about to look upon it for the first time.

Thankfully earlier versions detail what exactly what happened once he reached Gondolin: his love story with the king’s daughter Idril, his rivalry with Maeglin (a rare evil Elf), his attempt to warn the city of Morgoth’s coming, the inevitable attack, defense and evacuation (all very reminiscent of the Sack of Troy), the slaying of a Balrog by the warrior Glorfindel, and even the adventures of Tuor’s son Eärendil, easily one of the most significant characters in the Middle Earth mythos.

And occasionally it can get a little weird. This passage for example: “then arose Thorondor, King of Eagles, and he loved not Melko; for Melko had caught many of his kindred and chained them against sharp rocks to squeeze from them the magic words whereby he might learn to fly... and when they would not tell he cut off their wings and sought to fashion therefrom a mighty pair for his use, but it availed not.” Just try not to laugh while imagining the demonic Morgoth's attempts to graft a pair of eagle wings to his shoulder blades.

It was a bit of a mission to read the whole thing, as large segments of the text are inevitably repetitive given how many retellings of the story are featured, which is then followed by Christopher Tolkien’s in-depth look at how the story evolved over the years (yes, we’ve just read a half-dozen versions of how that happened!) but deeply immersive and mythopoeic once you get into the swing of it.

Taking place after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, in which Morgoth’s power and influence is at its zenith, young Tuor escapes to the Western Sea, where he is given a mission by Ulmo, the Valar of the Oceans. He’s tasked to find the hidden Elven city of Gondolin and warn them of Morgoth’s imminent invasion, and to lead its people to the western shores of Middle Earth where they might find sanctuary.

More than anything Morgoth covets the location of Gondolin, fearing that from its halls a major threat to his own power should arise – a prophecy that proves true once Tuor reaches the city and is introduced to Idril, the daughter of King Turgon. More than either of the other two Tales, The Fall of Gondolin is less standalone and more deeply linked to The Silmarillion as a whole, with its beginning and end existing far beyond the scope of the city’s destruction – specifically in the aforementioned character of Eärendil, whose life pretty much marks the end of the First Age.

Interestingly, The Fall of Gondolin chronologically occurs last in Tolkien’s compendium of First Age stories, even though it (or at least parts of it) were penned at the earliest point of his writing career. You can tell in the prose itself, which in its earliest treatment is distinctively written in present tense, a trait not seen anywhere else in Tolkien’s body of work (at least, not so far as I can tell). That said, some events do happen concurrently with The Children of Húrin, which is not surprising since the protagonists of each story are first cousins.

In fact, there is a poignant moment in which the two of them very nearly cross paths, for the first and only time in their lives:

And as [Tuor and his companion] waited one came through the trees, and they saw that he was a tall man, armed, clad in black, with a long sword drawn; and they wondered, for the blade of the sword also was black, but the edges shown bright and cold...

Then he went swiftly away towards the North, as one in pursuit, or on an errand of great haste, and they heard him cry: “Faelivrin, Finduilas!” until his voice died away in the woods. But they knew not that Nargothrond had fallen, and this was Túrin son of Húrin, the Blacksword. Thus only for a moment, and never again, did the paths of those kinsman, Túrin and Tuor, draw together.

Sometimes you’re the cousin that's chosen by the sea-god, discovers a secret city, marries the Elf Princess, fathers a Messiah-like figure and leads his people to safety, and sometimes you’re the cousin who loses his father, accidentally kills his best friend, joins a band of outlaws, unknowingly marries his own sister, and eventually throws himself on his sword.

With the conclusion of this volume, I turned back to The Silmarillion and finished up with the story of Númenor and the recap of the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, neither of which are technically considered part of The Silmarillion (which ends with the permanent loss of those three jewels). For all intents and purposes, The Fall of Gondolin marks the end of the First Age and Tolkien’s grand undertaking in creating an invented mythology, and so it ends as all such stories must: tragically – though shot through with a thread of hope.

This was of course also Christopher Tolkien’s last book, and we owe him so much for having devoted his life to his father’s scribblings. Without his commitment and diligence, we wouldn’t have anything Silmarillion-related, or at least not in the coherent form in which he presented it, and its existence lends so much to the scope and context of The Lord of the Rings, not to mention changing the game in regards to how fictional world-building is devised.

Railhead by Philip Reeve

The best way I can describe reading a book by Philip Reeve is to imagine yourself ice-skating through an imaginary theme park full of things you’ve never seen before. The prose is so effortlessly beautiful to read, despite the complexity of the concepts he comes up with, and the intensity of his imagination is bar to none.

It’s a shame that Mortal Engines failed so miserably at the box office, since successful adaptations usually draw more people to the source material, and even though the Railhead trilogy is a completely different story (and genre) there aren’t nearly enough people familiar with its genius. Set thousands of years in the future, mankind has left Earth and live on what’s called the Network Empire: a series of planets that are connected by interstellar railway, where high-tech trains speed through K-gates that allow them to pass instantaneously from one world to another.

Because this is Philip Reeve, the trains have names like the Damask Rose and the Thought Fox and the Ghost Wolf, and they sing to each other as they traverse any number of alien worlds, teeming with all kinds of strange lifeforms. Already my greatest wish is to escape into this imagined landscape. I don’t even need a story to go with it, just let me sit on a sentient train and look at the windows at whatever Reeve deigns to invent.

But there is a story, and it has as its protagonist a young street urchin called Zen Starling, who is roped into a train heist by a mysterious man known only as Raven. He wants Zen to personate a member of the Noon family so that he might get on board their personal train and steal something from the museum: a strange device whose purpose remains a mystery.

How will Zen manage this given all the security? It turns out his paranoid mother actually has good reason for living in hiding: years ago she was a surrogate for a distant member of the Noon family, only to run away before the child was born. So Zen has the required DNA needed to impersonate one of his cousins and get on board.  

But naturally, not all is as it seems. Zen isn’t one to ask questions when there’s a decent reward on the table, so he duly learns as much as he can about Tallis Noon and inserts himself among his long-lost, offensively wealthy, and completely ignorant relatives. But like all fictional heists, not everything goes according to plan.

The world-building in any Philip Reeve book incredible. We’ve got the aforementioned trains and their K-bahn system, as well as Motoriks (high-tech droids), the Guardians (artificial intelligences that can download themselves into cloned interfaces to interact with mortals), Hive Monks (mutated bugs that form sentient colonies with a single, united intelligence) and Corporate Families (rather than governments, everyone works for a massive corporation which exist more like royal families than businesses, complete with arranged marriages and generational responsibilities).

And the way Reeves writes is just *chef’s kiss*. Here’s someone appreciating how the trains think: “He liked the careful, logical paths trains’ brains took, the mental rails their thoughts ran down” (because, they like, travel down rails in real life, geddit?) Here’s someone else getting nervous about exposing their inner mind to the Datasea, a massive repository of virtual information: “There were things that lived in the deep data: unregistered phishing nets, spam-sharks that would hack your mind and fill your dreams with adverts, half-mad military programmes left over from long-ago wars.” I don’t know what any of those things are (and they’re not explained) but it sounds fascinating.

Reeve turns the word “gecko” into a verb to describe how someone “geckoed” over a flat, vertical surface, which makes me so happy for some reason, and he also has some fascinating ideas about the nature of identity. At one stage one of the Hive Monks loses its form, only to restore itself later on. Zen ends up wondering: “he wasn’t sure if this new Monk was Uncle Bugs. It was made up of insects from all three Hive Monks. Perhaps it counted as a completely new person.”

In the sequel Black Light Express, the interface (or avatar) of one of the Guardians is destroyed: “it didn’t really matter, because all his memories had been uploaded to the version of him in the Datasea, and that version would already have sent most of them on to other versions in the Datasea on other worlds, so there would be Mordaunt 90s all over the network who remembered [the adventures] he had shared [with them]. But this was the version she had known, these were the hands she had held when he was frightened, and this the face from which she had wiped the rust of the ancient train. This was her Mordaunt 90, and it mattered a lot to her.”

The third book Station Zero goes on to ponder the nature of death and immortality if all of one’s memories are uploaded into a virtual reality. If you exist in cyberspace, do you ever truly die? There are few children’s authors who would delve into this sort of existential material, but Reeve is most definitely one of them.

Black Light Express by Philip Reeve

The direct sequel to Railhead picks up right where its predecessor left off (so if you want to read it, then know there are spoilers ahead). Zen and Nova (the Motorik who wants to be a human) have escaped from Raven, the Corporate Marines, and everyone else chasing them in order to board a sentient train and leave the known universe to travel through a brand-new K-gate to a world no human has ever visited before.

It does what all good sequels should do: expand and deepen. Zen and Nova are living a dream-like existence in which they explore alien worlds without supervision or restraint, discovering new lifeforms and bizarre locales. Not to mention, they’re in love, which somewhat mitigates the bittersweetness of never being able to return home.

Meanwhile, back in the Network Empire, Reeve gives us a chance to get into the minds of other characters. In the last book, Chandni Hansa was simply the off-screen diversion to keep Tallis Noon out of the way while Zen impersonated him on the Noon train. Now she’s a point-of-view character, having been defrosted from cryo-prison by the new Empress of the Great Network: Threnody Noon.

Her throne is under threat from another Corporate Family, the Prells, who are ambitious and power hungry and have the support they need from a rogue pair of Guardians to pull off an attempted coup. In trying to learn more about Zen Starling, Threnody almost accidentally ends up with a valuable ally in the streetwise, ball-busting Chandni (though Chandni’s internal dialogue is pretty amusing: she has no idea why she’s choosing to help Threnody and keeps scolding herself for getting invested).

The two plotlines end up converging, though for the first half of the book they have virtually nothing to do with each other. Nova (and technically Zen, though he’s not as curious) investigates the source of the K-bahn technology and the strange phenomena known as the Blackout (wherein all the trains stopped running from their place of origin), while Threnody and Chandni desperately try to keep one step ahead of the Prell assassins.

Just as the first book was a heist, this is an espionage and adventure/mystery story – never say that Philip Reeve repeats himself or can’t mix things up a little. As ever his prose is on-point and his characters are capable of surprising the reader with the choices they make. He avoids a simplistic portrayal of “good guys” and “bad guys”, preferring to write them as three-dimensional human beings who are capable of a wide spectrum of behaviour.

Zen for example, is hilariously uninterested in “doing the right thing” – he just wants to make himself and the people he cares about safe. Chandni meanwhile, doesn’t hesitate to sell out the people she’s allied herself with in order to avoid going back to cryo-prison – and why the hell wouldn’t she given the psychological horror of being frozen for years at a time?  

And as a final note, pretty much the entire cast is explicitly non-white, which is fitting for a story set in the far-flung future, and Reeve casually throws in mentions of asexuality and same-sex partnerships as well. Truly, he’s out there writing what fandom is constantly demanding without any fanfare, and no one seems to notice.

Outlander: Season 3 (2017)

I can’t say I’m hugely fond of Outlander, but I also can’t deny that I’m completely engrossed by it whenever I decide to catch up on episodes. The run-time can sometimes exceed fifty minutes, and yet the scenes fly by, with sky-high production values and attention to detail. I feel completely immersed in the world that’s presented, whether it’s America in the 1960s or 18th century Scotland.

It had been a while since I watched season two, so some of the finer details were a bit fuzzy. I recalled only that before the battle of Culloden, Jamie returned his wife Claire to the standing stones that transported her back through time in the first place, imploring her to return to the 1960s so that she could give birth and raise their daughter in safety.

At the end of last season, Claire learns that Jamie not only didn’t die at Culloden, but that there’s a chance for her to return to him in the past. The third season kicks off with a few episodes that paint a portrait of her life in the years after World War II (a failing marriage with her first husband, the childhood of Brianna, her studies towards becoming a surgeon, the research she undergoes in tracking down Jamie’s whereabouts) before returning back to the past.

Likewise, a fair bit of screentime is devoted to Jamie’s stint in an English prison, his meeting with Sir John Grey (who I gather is an important character in the books) and what he gets up to while working as a groom in a manor house.

Okay, I’ll admit it: unlike everyone else who watches this show I’m here less for the central love story than for the time-travelling/historical adventures. It’s funny that a period drama so devoted to accuracy and realism could hinge so completely on such a broad sci-fi premise, but more supernatural elements are delicately woven into this season, including premonitions, prophecies, and another time-travelling gate.  

I was getting pretty caught up in all this, and the setup is done incredibly well, from the shifting locations of three distinct sapphires, to Claire doctoring a woman who can tell accurate fortunes, to the analysis of an ancient skeleton in the 1960s (no surprises that this eventually forms a Stable Time Loop). At times it really does feel like the hand of fate is at work among the characters, especially at a soiree in Jamaica, when all the pieces start to come together.

It’s a shame then that it’s wrapped up so quickly and rather anticlimactically. I’m alluding mainly to Geillis Duncan, a character that (if memory permits) hasn’t been seen since season one and who is a fellow time-traveller like Claire. Unlike Claire, she’s actually a more interesting character since her travels back in time were both deliberate and with a clear purpose: to see a Scottish king on the throne once more. I couldn’t help but wish she was the main character, as (to be frank) I find Claire a bit insufferable at times.

Perhaps I’m still bristling over that Persuasion trailer, but too often writers get it into their heads that in order to be “strong”, female characters must be outspoken and non-conformist. The truth is that in dangerous situations women are more likely to be smart than performatively feisty, which usually means keeping one’s head down, using the social mores to their advantage, and trying to blend in.

It’s far more rewarding to see a woman negotiate a hostile environment by being sensible and cunning, instead of, oh say, insisting that she be allowed to travel unaccompanied in a foreign city because she’s a strong, independent women™. Obviously this all depends on the type of story that’s being told. I wouldn’t expect (or care) in something like Xena Warrior Princess. But if you purport to be a realistic historical epic that takes its Values Dissonance seriously, then the story should follow the rules of fair play when it comes to context and realism.

Getting back to Geillis, she’s someone who largely does fit into the environment in which she’s found herself, using the tools at her disposal in order to achieve her aims. And though I always like watching Claire working as a physician, it’s rather glaring to note that she’s come back in time to pursue love, while Geillis has a clear and thoughtful political agenda. Like I said, that makes her automatically more interesting.

So they do the usual thing when female characters get too ambitious: pass her off as a crazy bitch and duly kill her. Bah. Even guessing how it was all going to pan out, I found myself wishing they had milked the story a little more, especially when it came to hinting that perhaps Claire’s sojourn into the past was not a mere happenstance. As a non-book reader, perhaps they’ll pick up this thread later, especially as it pertains to Brianna, the baby who is “two hundred years old at the time of her birth”.  

I can’t complain too much, as like I said, I’m always fully immersed whenever I watch an episode – but now I’m three seasons behind, and not in a desperate hurry to catch up.

Bluey: Season 1 (2018)

This show. I had heard people raving about it and seen a few clips on YouTube, and since I’m always down for watching a decent cartoon, I found unabridged episodes online (a few have been edited for overseas audiences, and cut out some of the funniest jokes). Kids get all the good stuff.

But the key to Bluey’s success is that it’s clearly not just for children, but almost comes across as a primer for adults on how to be a good parent. They may be cartoon dogs, but Bandit and Chili are the best television parents I’ve ever seen, and their daughters Bluey and Bingo are enjoying the type of childhood that every kid deserves. I mean, it’s almost too good to be true (and there have been reports from parents that Bandit makes them feel inadequate, to which I say – step up, dads).

Every episode revolves around a game of imagination that Bluey and Bingo have either concocted in the past, or make up on the fly. Some occur at preschool or while the family is out and about, but most of the time stories take place at their house, garden or neighbourhood. And yet, there is no understating the magic of what they get up to.

More than anything, the show captures what it felt like to be a child, and how anything and everything could be absolutely fascinating if you were engaged with it the right way. Remember when windshield wipers were a big event? Or when you saw a particular insect for the very first time? Or when you were so immersed in a role-playing game that it felt 100% real? This show gets that.

What makes Bandit and Chili so amazing as parents is not only their boundless patience, but their willingness to indulge the girls in their imaginative fantasies. God knows how they get any work done, because the two of them are active participants in everything the girls come up with: backpacking around the garden, telling stories with hand puppets, pretending a spear of asparagus can change them into animals...

And of course, lessons are learned at the end of every episode: often the usual “you should work together” or “be nice to each other” moral, but just as often something more innovative. At one point Bluey insists that her playmates follow the rules of the game, even though one of them insists on trying to make things easier by cheating. Bluey sticks to her guns, and by the end of the episode she can articulate why it’s important to follow the rules: because it makes things more of a challenge, and therefore more fun.

And sometimes the stories are just little vignettes of life. I laughed my head off at the one in which the kids decide to play shops, spent almost the entire runtime arguing with each other over who’s going to play what role, negotiate their way through squabbles and disagreements, finally get down to acting out the skit... and then immediately run off to play something else.

The voices of Bluey and Bingo go uncredited because the two of them are clearly voiced by children (it’s probable that they’re the daughters/relatives of creator/writer Joe Brumm) but it makes all the difference when it comes to relating to them as actual children. Their little giggles are just adorable, and the fact that they’re technically dogs means that we get the added joy of watching their tails wag when they get excited.

It’s also an intrinsically Australian show, filled with its flora and fauna, lingo and accents, culture and occasional landmark. Plus Bluey’s family are Blue Heelers, a beloved Australian cattle dog. So much children’s television is set in either America or Britain that it’s a breath of fresh air to watch something closer to home.

I know it’s weird for a grown woman to be watching and recommending cartoons, but if they’re done right, they can transport you back to what it was like to be a kid. Bluey manages that, while at the same time lightly nudging young parents toward some sound advice: don’t be shy about joining in with your child’s playtime, sometimes it’s best to let kids handle things by themselves, and if you go to the pool, don’t forget to take all the boring stuff that makes having fun possible.

Catherine the Great (2019)

Helen Mirren as Catherine the Great. How did it go wrong? This has been burning a hole in my hard-drive since the first season of The Great aired, and is obviously the reason that I got hold of it in the first place: to see the second half of the ruler’s life (albeit in a far more serious context).

I think the major problem is that no context or sense of grounding is given to Catherine or any of the other characters in her court. Stuff just starts happening, and we have no idea why it’s important or why we should care about it. There’s no sense of Russian culture or history, or even what Catherine is trying to achieve. What exactly is her vision for her adoptive country? Everything happens in an odd vacuum.

Naturally Helen Mirren is a powerhouse, and we get the usual line-up of familiar faces: Jason Clarke as her lover Potemkin, Gina McKee as Praskovya Bruce, Rory Kinnear as Nikita Ivanovitch Panin, Richard Roxborough as Grigory Orlov (such a profoundly different depiction than the one in The Great!) and... hey, that’s Joseph Quinn as a grownup Paul! I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything before this, but he’s just made quite a big impression as Eddie Munson in this latest season of Stranger Things.

Incredibly, I think I’m learning more about the period and the titular character from The Great, which is a broad satire. Here, though there are a couple of interesting insights on how love and power are both compromised by the other, the central dynamic between Catherine and Potemkin isn’t hugely compelling and I don’t have any sort of understanding as to what Catherine’s reign was actually like, or why she’s remembered as “the Great”. The whole thing feels like a missed opportunity.

Julia: Season 1 (2022)

Every time I think of Julia Child, I think of the baffling 2009 film that interwove the beginning of her culinary career with the story of a bored New Yorker who decided to blog about cooking all the recipes in Child’s book. Even after casting Amy Adams and giving her a well-meaning Character Establishing Scene in which she’s moved to tears by the plight of a call-centre customer tied up in 9/11 red tape, it’s difficult to fathom why on earth anyone would give a shit about a self-absorbed nobody who went on to write a tell-all book about how she cheated on her husband when Meryl Streep was Julia Child in the parallel storyline playing out right beside her.

Truly one of the most bewilderingly pointless creative decisions I’ve ever sat through in my life.

So it was a relief to watch the first season of Julia knowing that it was going to be about Julia and only Julia, as played by Sarah Lancashire, complete with high, fluty little voice. Choosing to set it after the events of the movie, by which point she had already published Mastering the Art of French Cooking and was basking in the afterglow of its success, the six episodes cover her next self-imposed challenge: to headline a cooking show.

Joining her is David Hyde Pierce as her supportive husband Paul, Bebe Nuwirth as her long-time friend Avis DeVoto (though for the longest time I thought they were sisters), the fabulous Fiona Glascott as her editor Judith Jones, and Fran Kranz as the show’s skeptical producer Russell Morash. They each have their own little subplots, though nothing to overshadow Julia’s. Perhaps the best involves Brittany Bradford as Alice Naman, a Black producer on the show who struggles with her own array of setbacks. Even James Cromwell and Isabella Rossellini turn up in small roles.

Did anyone truly enjoy living as much as Julia Child did? More than her success as a writer and a television show personality, it was her exuberance and zest for life that was truly inspiring. The show is a love-letter to that attitude, demonstrating over and over again that there was no obstacle too high or tough that Julia wasn’t prepared to overcome, or to at least see the silver lining in whatever mishaps she faced.

There’s one particularly lovely moment in which she’s trying to raise money for the show by hosting a cooking class in her own home. Before the end, it becomes apparent that her efforts aren’t going to be enough to cover the costs, but before leaving one of her clients tells her that her mother died recently, and that this class was the first time she’s felt cheerful since it happened. On pondering the afternoon, Julia decides: “at least we made Marion smile.”

That said, the show tiptoes a little around the subject of her homophobia. On the one hand she did make many bigoted remarks in her lifetime, on the other she did have close friends whose orientation was an open-secret and came out in support of the gay community during the AIDs crisis. It’s not impossible for people to change their minds over time, and we naturally want to think the best of Child, so the show includes a scene in which she’s taken to a gay nightclub. She’s a little perturbed by what she sees, but gradually loosens up in the face of her own popularity among the patrons.

It is rather slow-paced, and some of the forays into the supporting cast aren’t hugely interesting, but it’s a love letter to a woman passionate about cooking, demonstrating an interest in the real nuts-and-bolts of making a television show in the 1960s, from shopping for ingredients, to sticking soft toys on the cameras so Julia knows which one to address, to the famous mirror trick that allowed for a bird’s eye view of the cooking.

Stranger Things: Season 4: Part 1 (2022)

Because fandom’s default position these days is moaning and cynicism, the lead-up to the fourth season of Netflix’s flagship show felt like one long whinge. The kids were too old, the episodes were too long, the hiatus too unnecessary, the episodes too expensive (okay, thirty-million per episode is a bit ridiculous).

But Stranger Things is also the show that has reliably delivered since its inception, and I was happy to simply wait and see for myself how it would unfold (though I’ve noticed that because so many pop-culture sites make their money from negative clickbait, it also feels like most of the reviews have been deliberately lukewarm in order to justify all the pre-emptive complaining about it). I appreciate critical thought as much as the next person, but sometimes I think that people have just lost the ability to enjoy things.

Due to Covid, it’s been over three years since the last season of this show, which just about blows my mind. Most of the main cast, who were literally just children when we first saw them, are now approaching their twenties, whilst the older teenagers have hit their thirties. That gives the Duffer Brothers reasons to up the ante a little, trusting in scarier plots and more mature arcs, and referencing horror movies like Poltergeist, The Exorcist and (most obviously) Nightmare on Elm Street.

For the first time, the show’s period setting isn’t just window-dressing sprinkled with homages to the Duffers’ favourite eighties films. By drawing on the terrifyingly real spread of Satanic Panic across the USA’s Mid-West in this era, the story can plug into that age-old (and still relevant) question: “who exactly are the real monsters?”

Heck, even the anti-Russia/Red Scare sentiments of season three have suddenly aged incredibly well.

As ever, the story handles its ever-increasing cast by splitting them up and setting them off on separate adventures, only to eventually reveal they’ve all been investigating the same strange phenomena the whole time. But hey, it’s a formula that’s worked for them so far, though it takes a bit longer for the pieces to start coming together this time around (which feels inevitable considering the characters are spread geographically as well as narratively).

At the end of the last season, Joyce packed up Jonathan, Will and El and relocated to sunny California, desperate to finally get out of the horror-filled Hawkins. Given that school is out, they’re soon joined by Mike on his summer break. Unfortunately, not all is well in El’s life – she’s being bullied in school. The insanely over-the-top type of bullying committed by sadistic future-serial-killers that only exist in Stephen King novels.

After an incident at the skating rink turns very nasty, El is taken into police custody, leaving the Byers and Mike scrambling for answers as to her whereabouts. Where is Joyce during all this? Well, she’s received a message from Russia informing her that Hopper is still alive and that if she wants to see him again, she’ll have to pay $40,000 to a go-between called Yuri in Alaska. Seeking help from the reliable-but-somehow-still-rather-dodgy Murray, the two of them quickly schedule a “business trip” and head off into their own subplot.

This is a bit disappointing, as the Byers family (plus El) have never gotten the chance to really interact with each other since season one. I was looking forward to Jonathan and Will being brothers to El, and Joyce stepping in as her mother figure. But the four of them are almost immediately separated, and even the two that stick together (the brothers) barely acknowledge each other’s existence. In fact, given that the Duffers were heavily ship-teasing Nancy and Steve back in Hawkins, it’s gotten painfully obvious that they’ve long-since run out of ideas regarding what to do with Jonathan.

Let’s get the Hopper/Joyce stuff out of the way: as teased in the stinger at the end of season three, Hopper is still very much alive, having been thrown out onto Russia’s side of the Upside Down’s gateway, and put to work in a gulag. This is easily the most superfluous of the three seasonal plots, and I found myself wondering if the Duffers regretted last season’s stinger. Having already established that Hopper was imprisoned in Russia, they might have inevitably felt obligated to follow through with this, even though it would have made far more sense storywise if Hopper had simply gotten stuck in the Upside Down for a while (yes, they did this with Will in season one but we never actually saw any of it, and surely Hopper in the Upside Down could have been integrated more fully into the Vecna storyline, what with him dodging his attacks and figuring out his identity).

In any case, the storyline stretches out interminably, outlandishly and with way too many gratuitous torture scenes. It had its moments: Hopper disclosing that his biological daughter’s death may have had something to do with the chemicals he mixed in the Vietnam War was a striking revelation, as was Murray putting his blackbelt karate skills to good use. Tom Wlaschiha (best known as Jaqen H'ghar in Game of Thrones) puts in a good show as a corrupt but helpful and eventually sympathetic prison guard, and it was fun to see a demogorgon again (it feels like the show’s signature monster).

But the real meaty storyline, and the ones the Duffers are clearly the most interested in, deals with Steve, Nancy, Max, Dustin and Lucas (and newcomer Eddie) in Hawkins, where the town is still grappling with the deaths of so many people in what’s been blamed on a “mall fire”. Sadly for them, more tragedy is yet to come, with the horrifically gruesome and violent deaths of a cheerleader and a school reporter. Blame is placed on Eddie Munson, the leader of the local Dungeons and Dragons club, and the last one to be seen with the first murder victim.

Believing in his innocence, our team of heroes finds his hiding place and gives him the lowdown on the Upside Down and its weird influence over the town, finding a lead to pursue in the mention of one Victor Creel: a man found guilty of killing his wife and children before blinding himself. What does this tragedy from the 1960s have to do with the present-day killings? How does the unknown killer choose its victims? Is it connected in any way to the unfolding revelations taking place in Eleven’s storyline?

In what is the most satisfying narrative arc of the season, all the pieces click into place with the resolution of this mystery. Maybe you guessed some of the twists, but I’d be surprised if anyone managed to guess all of them, and it pulls everything together in such a way that we’re left salivating for the final two movie-length episodes in July.

I have never felt any great desire to re-watch any of Stranger Things, though at the same time I am completely immersed whenever a new season drops. The Duffers know how to handle characterization, plotting, suspense, humour and twists, and at this point I’m just happy to sit back and let them entertain me. The expanded run-time didn’t bother me in the least; the episodes flew by and I barely even noticed their length. In fact, I’m hard pressed to say what I would have cut if given the chance (well, I suppose the whole Hopper-in-Russia plot could have been truncated, along with a few less torture scenes).

It was Queen’s Birthday this month, so I timed the viewing of this to be spread out over the three-day weekend, which was the best way to enjoy it: binged, but not all in a single sitting. I miraculously managed to avoid all spoilers in my week’s delay, and it was worth it for the uninterrupted experience.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Like the Russo Brothers, the Duffers are undeniably good at juggling a large cast, even beyond what you’d expect (how many more characters can they add at this point?) and making all of them instantly interesting and/or likeable. You’ll surely recall the Sturm und Drang of the #JusticeForBarb movement in the wake of the first season, and the writing manages to pull off a similar feat here: Chrissy and Fred are established quickly and efficiently as real people with fleshed-out lives – and whose deaths subsequently really hurt.

The likes of Eddie and Argyle are folded in nicely as important supporting characters, and appearances from Erica, Suzie, Billy and the infamous Tammy (Robin’s tragic crush who sings like a Muppet) add without detracting. That said, Amybeth McNulty only gets a single scene, which is a shame. I was looking forward to her, but since the Duffers were apparently big fans of Anne With An E, it just feels like she was there to provide deeply personal fan-service. But hey, when you’re getting paid thirty-million an episode you can do whatever the fuck you want.

Also hats off to Robert Englund’s surprisingly moving cameo. That’s how you do stunt casting.

MVP of the season goes to Sadie Sink as Max. There were some complaints that her grief over Billy was unfounded considering the two of them hated each other, but I can buy it. It played out more like she was mourning the possibility of a decent relationship with him, not to mention dealing with the trauma of watching him die and her swift change in socio-economic status (if memory serves, she was living in a fairly nice neighbourhood in season two, now with her stepfather gone, she and her mother are stuck in a trailer park).

Bless her, Sadie knew that episode four was her episode, and she sunk her teeth into it. After a great turn in the Fear Street trilogy, she’s a talent to keep your eye on.

So who guessed the big reveal regarding Jamie Campbell Bower’s character? Anyone? I deliberately put my mind into neutral and just let the Duffers tell their story without delving too deep into analysis or guesswork, but I a. definitely had it figured out that the orderly was going to be Number One (though for a while I really bought into the idea he was just a helpful dude, as the series has so far erred on the good side of human nature) and b. had my spider-sense pinged by the Creel son: notable enough to be important, but ignored enough for it not to be obvious.

However, I definitely didn’t realize that it was going to be a quadruple whammy: the orderly is Number One is Henry Creel is Vecna. Well played show, well played.

(Though I didn’t believe for a second that Eleven was the culprit of the massacre – sure she had killed before, but her violent reaction at the skating rink was just too much of a red herring. My money was on her killing the real killer and being blamed for the deaths, which is pretty much what happened).

I’m a little fuzzy on the details of when/where we last saw Matthew Modine. The internet tells me he was taken by a demogorgon at the end of season one, but apparently he pulled a Hopper and has been alive this whole time? Are we supposed to know how he managed that?

Somewhat disappointed in Paul Reiser’s character, who took Eleven to the facility under false pretences and put her back into the control of her abuser without her knowledge or permission. That the writing kept trying to sell him as a good guy after that (such as showing him call out Brenner on his tactics) without acknowledging that he’d just committed a horrific betrayal of trust is pretty sketchy.

Where was Eight? The Duffers have always been a bit too aware of the audience reaction to their show, though so far they’ve been able to thread the needle – even when it’s obvious they’re taking notes. You can see it in the way they focused on making El and Max friends after people complained about their frosty introduction, pulling back on Lucas and Max as a couple after backlash for springing a surprise kiss on Sadie Sink, romantically pairing Joyce and Hopper, the whole #JusticeForBarb thing... and relegating Eight/Kali and her minions to the memory hole.

Which is a damn shame. There is a very brief mention of her, one that’s practically unavoidable since at one point they need to plug into Eleven’s memories of her mother and Eight was present when she tried to reclaim “Jane”, but it feels like they’re just hoping everyone has forgotten about her (the mention is a throwaway line claiming she escaped before all the shit went down). I know Eight/Kali wasn’t warmly received, but I’d have more respect for the Duffers if they went back to that well and righted the ship. I mean, Eight and Eleven didn’t part on bad terms, it’s a massive dangling thread, and the character was an interesting one (as I recall it was mostly the rest of her crew that audiences didn’t take to). Surely at some point El will have to call in the cavalry and contact her lost sister, right?

On the shipping front, it’s sweet that Joyce and Hopper have been reunited, but I can’t say I’m particularly thrilled about the rekindling of Steve and Nancy. It’s just an inversion of what we’ve already seen between the two of them and Jonathan in season one, and it wasn’t very interesting there either.

As for El and Mike... look, I loved their dynamic back in season one and two, because it so beautifully captured the intensity of first love, but it looks as though the Duffers have decided the show’s flagship ship needs a break. I was actually surprised by how distant the characters felt given their obsession with each other throughout season three, but I suppose time and distance did its work. As for Will, it’s been obvious for a long time now that he’s both gay and nursing a crush on Mike, but I’ve no idea how the show plans to resolve this. Mike is obviously straight, so unless the Duffers pull a massive one-eighty, that way only leads to heartache.

Nothing about any of this thrills me, and as usual, arguing about ships is the most tedious part of the fandom. Half are insisting that the Duffers are queer-baiting with Will (it’s clear they’re going somewhere with all this, so it not queer-baiting until the story is FINISHED) and the other half is complaining that there’s already an out gay character, so why do we need another one? *long beleaguered sigh*

In the hiatus between parts one and two there are some unanswered questions to ponder: why is the Upside Down frozen on the day Will went missing? Is it to do specifically with Will or (more likely) the fact that Eleven escaped from Hawkins laboratory that very same day? Why has Vecna waited until now before attacking? Does it have to do with Eleven leaving Hawkins or losing her powers? Thankfully we don’t have too long (like say, three years) to wait.