I had two weeks off from work this month, so naturally they were spent stuffing myself with all the shows and books I needed to catch up on. I’m now well into my Slavic Fantasy reading list, having read novels by both Sophie Anderson and Leigh Bardugo. I caught up on two blockbusters from the nineties that I’d never seen before, and got more graphic novels under my belt (damn, there’s some good stuff out there).
Having time to catch up on my shows are always welcome, in this case it was the various conclusions of Sanditon, Happy Valley and Westworld, the sophomore season of Vikings: Valhalla, and the Bridgerton Queen Charlotte spin-off. Another Babysitters Club Super Special, more Spooks, and a little treat from Philip Pullman...
And I went to the ballet, which is always a soul-cleanser.
Romeo and Juliet (Isaac Theatre Royal)
Thank goodness for the ballet. After a terrible cringefail week at work, I got to sit down in a beautiful theatre and watch moving, breathing art – even if it was behind a man with the WORLD’S BIGGEST HEAD. Ballet has such a calming effect on me; I’d watch it every night if I could.
Everyone knows the story, it’s all a matter of what each new performance brings to the tale of the star-crossed lovers. In this case, it was making Juliet the centrepiece, to the point where this could have more aptly been called Juliet and Romeo. The performer was perfect: young, petite and emotive, and the audience spends more time with her emotions than any other character: her nervousness at meeting Paris, the dizziness of first love, her anguish at Romeo’s exile, the courage she musters to drink the poison.
She even establishes genuine affection between herself, her father, Tybalt, and even Paris – you get the impression that perhaps they could have been happy together if Romeo hadn’t crashed that masked ball.
In comparison, Romeo feels rather secondary, though his first meeting with Juliet is beautifully staged: he’s at the masque to pursue Rosaline, who doesn’t recognize him behind his mask. As he follows her down stage-left, continually making overtures and being rejected, he notices Juliet on the dance floor and turns away. Then he looks back, his gaze lingering a little longer. Then steps away again, searching for Rosaline, only to be distracted once more by Juliet. Then he steps out onto centre-stage, besotted, and their eyes and hands meet in the dance...
It's wonderfully done, because it feels less like love at first sight than a gradual awakening to each other (even if it still takes place over the course of a few minutes).
They had an amazing set to work with: a courtyard that could shift to include steps, arches, balconies, doorways and an altar, and the costumes were stunning, with colour-coding for all the characters. The Capulets wore red and the Montagues were in blue, while more in-between characters had their own colour schemes: Juliet’s nurse wore green, her four handmaids were in peach, and Mercutio was in purple. Meanwhile, the titular lovers often wore white, though Juliet switches to light blue after meeting Romeo, which was a nice touch. And it was all so rich and vibrant: crushed velvets and jewelled headpieces and long sleeves.
They managed to sneak in a little bit of subtext between Lady Capulet and Tybalt (I feel like a lot of adaptations do this) and a very protracted death scene for Mercutio, who initially tries to brush off his fatal wound, leading everyone to believe he’s just messing around when he collapses. The swordfights were well-staged and the deaths were suitably melodramatic without going over the top – that sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s a fine line.
There were a couple of questionable choices: Juliet’s nurse is full-on sexually harassed by Romeo’s friends when one of them sticks his head up inside her skirt, and there was something a little tasteless about Romeo dancing with Juliet’s lifeless corpse in the crypt (though more kudos to the dancer – she would have had to perform that entire segment with her eyes closed). But it was all beautiful, and I’d have watched it again in a heartbeat.
The Babysitters’ Summer Vacation by Anne M. Martin
The Babysitter Super Specials always come in one of three flavours: vacations, disasters, and mass babysitting events – with double the page-count, a white cover and point-of-view chapters from every main character. This one takes a little from the first and the last categories, turning the babysitters (including Logan) into camp counsellors for a couple of weeks.
That it takes place at summer camp is a no-brainer, and I’m actually surprised it wasn’t the setting for the first special given the easy link between vacations and childcare. It’s the locale where many a YA novel has been set, and there’s a surplus of children in need of babysitting. Even Stacey gets to come along!
But the strangest thing about this book is that as soon as the girls hit camp, they’re immediately separated, and remain so for the duration of the multiple storylines. I supposed this was also the case in Babysitters on Board!, as each one has to be the protagonist of their own subplot, but it’s kind of a shame everyone except Mal and Jessi are so isolated from each other. I mean, isn’t hanging out with her friends the entire purpose of Stacey’s presence?
In any case, the camp is called Camp Mohawk (the reprints change this to Camp Moosehead, even though the original print had Stacey call out the camp emblem of a tepee as being incongruous with the Iroquois tribe, who lived in longhouses). The framing device is that Stacey has asked the other sitters – including a reluctant Logan – to contribute to her journal/scrapbook of the experience. As such, the whole thing begins with her chapter in which she boards a bus from New York before reuniting with the other girls at camp.
As it turns out, she probably has the least fun time at Camp Mohawk, as she almost immediately comes down with pinkeye, poison ivy, impetigo, and a bad cold. She spends most of her time in the infirmary, trying to fend off her parents’ panic attacks, even though her diabetes is the one thing she doesn’t struggle with (not counting a misunderstanding with the camp cook, who thinks she’s complaining about the food when she’s actually trying to explain she requires a specialized diet).
Kristy’s cabin bunkmates end up giving her a makeover that she has mixed feelings about, and she’s constantly distracted by Charlotte Johansson’s terrible homesickness. Dawn looks after a cabin fill of girls who pick on one of the quiet ones, only for said quiet one to save the day with her survival skills when all the girls get lost in the woods during an overnight excursion. Claudia falls for a boy counsellor at the boy’s camp situated on the other side of the lake, who is also Japanese.
Mary Anne probably gets the most hilarious subplot, which amounts to her being put through an endless game of chicken by her judgmental bunkmates... and winning every single one of them. Who’d have thought she had it in her? Initially feeling insecure next to their sophistication, Mary Anne deliberately lets slip that she has a boyfriend on the boy’s side of the camp, and writes him a mushy love letter she never actually intends for him to see. One of the other girls dares her to visit him by trekking around the lake at night, and she nearly makes it – only for her bunkmates to dob her in.
Later, they decide to pierce her ears with an ice cube and a needle, only for the girl offering to do the procedure to crack first. But remember that soppy love letter Mary Anne wrote? One of the counsellors that caught her trying to cross the lake ends up delivering it to Logan who is... kind of into it? Even when his bunkmates start to tease him about it, he goes ahead and wears a yellow flower to the dance, as per Mary Anne’s bonkers request. Honestly, it’s the most I’ve ever liked these two characters.
Finally, Mallory and Jessi are teased by their bunkmates (quite a lot of this going around) when they act too overexcited to be there, not to mention wearing rather cringy homemade armbands that identify them not as counsellors-in-training, but junior counsellors-in-training. Some of the comments directed at them are quite racist, so when they’re tasked with getting the younger campers organized for an end-of-camp performance, they dramatize what happened to them as a dance number, resulting in their fellow campers shame-facedly apologizing to them (except for one, a detail I kind of liked. Some people are always going to be assholes).
It's a reasonably fun read, and settles into the formula of what the Super Specials will continue to be: books with longer page-counts, a change in location, white covers, and mass babysitting. The girls attending summer camp as counsellors was a no-brainer for this series, so much so that I’m surprised they never went back.
Cat’s Cradle: The Golden Twine by Jo Rioux
This graphic novel is the closest thing I’ve experienced to watching a Cartoon Saloon film without actually watching a film, and given my feelings on Cartoon Saloon’s output, you’ll already know that I loved this book. There’s something about the artwork that just calls to mind the distinctive style of that animation studio, and the plot as well, which is all about social misfits and living on the edges of a world that contains an even more ostracized supernatural realm.
Suri is a young girl living amidst a travelling merchant camp, though she must remain hidden from its leader, a foppish Frenchman (I’m not entirely clear why he doesn’t want her around, but the eye-rolls from the rest of the folk behind his back are pretty funny). Suri loves everything to do with monsters, particularly those known as the caitsith: half-human, half-cat creatures. She wants more than anything to train to be a monster-tamer, and perhaps one day travel across the Giant’s Belt, a range of mountains that protects people from the land of monsters beyond.
Then a strange series of events sees her in possession of a tooth and a ball of golden twine. She’s not sure what they are or what they can do, but the fact that three possible caitsiths are determined to get them back suggests they’re incredibly valuable – so she’s just as determined to hold onto them. She also has to contend with three down-on-their-luck monster hunters and what is potentially a real monster caged in a wagon owned by a strange little man who always keeps his face covered.
Suri is incredible cute, and her expressions and body language are beautifully rendered. Rioux really captures a sense of vitality to her characters – you can easily imagine them moving across the page, and their micro-expressions are a gift: grimaces, eye-rolls, double takes, dramatic sighs – it’s all gorgeously done. Likewise, there are some very scary and suspenseful scenes of Suri being chased by the caitsith, and a great reveal of the camp’s “monster” and its keeper.
My only complaint is that it’s not a complete story, but instead ends on something of a cliff-hanger before anything other than setup has taken place. I was always going to track down the sequel, Cat’s Cradle: The Mole King’s Lair, but this story needed a bit more meat in it first.
Lightfall: Shadow of the Bird by Tim Probert
After reading the first book in this graphic novel series, I bumped its sequel up the TBR list, since I was so captivated by its story and artistry. An immediate sequel to Lightfall: The Girl and the Galdurian, it picks up with our heroes having found sanctuary and respite in the hidden village of the inherently funny but also dignified Arsai. They kind of look like winged rabbit-insects with perpetual deadpan expressions? Think Nibbler from Futurama in regards to the dignity and solemnity they convey despite appearances. That’s quite an illustrative feat.
On meeting with the wise sage of the Arsai, our heroine Beatrice is given a missive from the Pig Wizard (also known as Gramps). It tells her to seek out Lorgon, the Lord of Water, who lives deep underground along the Lost River, to ask for his help in preventing the ongoing destruction of the giant lamps that provide light all across this world. In the same letter, he tells her that he’s going to travel to Lealand to try and stop Kest, the terrible bird-creature that is behind the destruction of said lamps.
At the conclusion of the last book, Kest stole the Jar of Endless Flame from Beatrice – which we discover was once part of the sun – and has been rallying his forces ever since. For this reason, Cadwaller the Galdurian wants to travel to Lealand in order to confront and kill Kest (in his words: “let’s find a pig and stop a bird”) though Beatrice is still wrestling with her anxiety and in two minds about which way they should go.
Ultimately, they pick Lealand. Whether or not that’s the correct course of action remains to be seen, but like the last book, the whole thing is a feast for the eyes. The use of light and colour is incredible – more blues and greens than last time, and with wide vistas of open countryside, a river that floats through the air, strange architecture (like an impossible tall door that’s narrow enough for only one person to pass through at a time) and a two-page spread in which a giant lamp plummets to earth, crushing the village beneath it. This is followed by a depiction of darkness steadily crawling across the sky, which is genuinely unnerving.
Beatrice still makes for a great protagonist, especially when she talks her way through her crippling anxiety (depicted as strands of darkness that swirl around her whenever she’s stressed) and Cad takes on some interesting dimensions. He’s still as optimistic and carefree as in the last book, but he’s also surprising gung-ho when it comes to killing Kest, despite Beatrice’s reservations.
This may not be a good thing, as Probert already seems to be sowing the seeds of a more complex villain when it comes to Kest. He still looks like a terrifying Skeksis who is also on fire, but this time around he manages to convey some visions and feelings to Beatrice that suggest there’s more going on here than wanton, meaningless violence. Undoubtedly the next book in the series will untangle this mystery (I’m not sure if Probert plans for this to be a trilogy or something longer) which means the only problem now is the wait.
Swan Lake: Quest for the Kingdoms by Ray Terciero and Megan Kearney
Coming on the heels of Cat’s Cradle and Lightfall, this inevitably wasn’t as good as the other graphic novels I read this month, but still a fun read. Obviously inspired by the Swan Lake ballet, this is the story of a princess called Odette who turns into a swan by day after a mysterious assailant curses her as an infant. This condition naturally makes her parents very overprotective, which in turn leads to Odette one day making a break for it and flying away as far as her wings can carry her.
When she transforms back into a human by night, it’s only to bump into tomboyish Dillie (a play on Odile) the princess from the kingdom of Rotbart (not sure why they dropped the “t” in Rothbart). The two quickly establish a rapport, and try to get to the bottom of why their kingdoms are constantly feuding. Turns out, each blames the other for Odette’s condition, which means that if the girls are able to lift the curse, they can establish peace.
So the quest begins, picking up a prince and a bear on the way (unsurprisingly named Siegfried and Benno). There are plenty of visual wonders to be had, from a sunset-coloured canyon to a cavern system filled with terrifying deer-like creatures with pincers for faces, and some deliberate subversions of the usual fairy tale characters: Siegfried isn’t considered prince material due to his reluctance to hunt wild animals, while Dillie has an undercut and a prosthetic leg. Only Odette remains the same feminine, demure princess – though in these days of tomboy princesses, that archetype played straight has itself has become something of a subversion.
Siegfred explicitly complaining about “toxic masculinity” was perhaps a little too on the nose, but Terciero’s afterword sheds light on this characterization: as a child he had seen Swan Lake on television, was enraptured by the movement of the dancers, and then hassled by his stepfather when he tried to emulate it. He wonders over the fact that no one much cared when he played Spiderman, even though that superhero’s movements were very much like a ballet dancers; an observation that struck a chord with me.
I can’t say I was hugely fond of the book’s bulgy, cartoonish artwork, though that’s almost certainly because Lightfall and Cat’s Cradle were incredibly detailed in comparison. I can’t fault the colour scheme though. We hear so often these days that movies and shows are so murky and grey, so it’s a relief to realize that graphic novels haven’t fallen to that curse yet.
The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo
The conceit behind this book (though I’m sure it’s been done before at some point) is ingenious. These are the stories that exist within the world of the Grishaverse; ones that the characters know, that are told to children, that are occasionally referenced in the books themselves. I love that idea: in-universe fairy tales from various countries, with their own cultural flavour and detail.
There are six altogether: Zemeni, Ravkan, Kerch and Fjerdan, some of which were originally published on the Tor website (which is how I became aware of the Grisha books in the first place). A lot of them are also based on pre-existing fairy tales of our world: “Amaya and the Thorn Wood” is clearly a take on Beauty and the Beast, “The Soldier Prince” is The Nutcracker, “The Witch of Duva” is Hansel and Gretel, and “When Water Sang Fire” is based on The Little Mermaid. But Bardugo’s prose is perfectly calibrated to tell these sorts of dark, otherworldly fairy tales, and she goes big on imagery. Think fallen leaves, bare branches against autumnal skies, the taste of marzipan, polished wood, white foam on dark waves, an underwater nautilus hall. Every story is a feast for the (mind’s) eye.
There are also plenty of postmodern twists involved, from Beauty taming the Beast by throwing proverbial spanners into the stories she’s telling him, to the story of the Little Mermaid becoming a Start of Darkness tale for the Sea Witch. The Too-Clever Fox is outwitted, the Nutcracker becomes human in a surprising way, and neither the witch nor the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel are the story’s true antagonists.
There are even surprises seeded in the stories themselves. The first two tales have within them a twist that reveals a sympathetic female character is actually the horrifying villain of the piece – which is a bit unusual given the feminist-leaning nature of the book... but that only preps the reader into being suspicious of the aforementioned witch and stepmother in “The Witch of Duva,” who turn out to be heroic characters. Well played, Bardugo.
Also worth mentioning are Sara Kipin’s illustrations. They border the text, but at the start of each story they’re just a few little details around the edges. As the pages turn, more elements are added to them, matching the development of the story, until each tale ends with a two-page spread of the illustration in its entirety, often containing visual representation of whatever twist or resolution the story delivered. It’s also rather ingenious, and fascinating to watch each picture grow across the course of the story.
Anyway, I just love the concept of fairy tales within a secondary universe, and it was fun to imagine some of our Shadow and Bone characters reading these stories as children. Admittedly, they’re told with a level of detail that belies the oral tradition of storytelling (which is how I assume these tales were originally shared in the Grishaverse) and I have trouble imagining the staid Fjerdans coming up with a story as emotionally fraught as “When Water Sang Fire”, but all that aside, it’s a great anthology.
You don’t have to be familiar with any of the Grishaverse (man, I hate that term) to understand these fairy tales, and they’re specially calibrated to be My Jam. I’ve particularly enjoyed reading them for a second time with a greater understanding of the Grisha books in my mind.
The Castle of Tangled Magic by Sophie Anderson
Sophie Anderson’s third book was a little odd in a very specific way. When I read and reviewed The Girl Who Speaks Bear, I mentioned that it was a joy to watch an author grow and improve. So, why did this feel like a bit of a step backwards? It wasn’t that the plot was bad, but rather the prose felt suddenly awkward and repetitive.
All Anderson’s stories have been in first-person narration, which is always a bit of a risk, but she was very good in capturing the voices of Marinka and Yanka without delving into every single thought or emotion they experience. However, this time around, Olia (short for Magnolia, but also a form of Olga) is constantly informing the reader of every thought, feeling and fancy that runs through her head.
It never becomes a stream-of-consciousness rambling, though at the very least it breaks the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule. When a character is stepping through a portal to another world, or traversing a booby-trapped maze, or facing a terrifying storm, we don’t need an extensive rundown on how they’re feeling at the time. It’s pretty obvious that they’re going to be apprehensive.
Likewise, Olia’s mantra “I will protect my family and save my home” is repeated ad nauseum. Seriously, we’re not going to forget what the whole point of the book is, and in the final chapter, after the destruction of her castle-home, she thinks to herself: “I now understand it wasn’t really my home. My family are my home... and they’re still here, right in front of me.”
Except that Olia was well-aware of this from the word go. Throughout her adventure, she’s constantly telling herself that people are more important than property and that losing the castle is the cost of saving lives. It's just such an odd backstep for the author to take.
In any case, the story itself is fun. Once again based on Slavic mythology, Olia lives with her family in a massive castle, the remnants of what was once the royal family’s abode. It provides a wonderful setting to explore, with many rooms that haven’t been visited in years. That would be enough for any book setting, but this one goes further and provides a magical portal to another world.
It’s through this she must travel if she wants to find out the reasons behind the massive storm that’s brewing on the horizon – and as you may have guessed, it has to do with tangled-up magic. Having entered the magical world that houses all manner of creatures from Slavic mythology – a fox-like domovoi, leshiye, the firebird, vily, giants – Olia has to find a way to unravel the warring magical forces at work in order to save her home.
It might just be because I’ve recently watched Labyrinth, but this book reminded me of that, what with Olia gathering together a gang of various creatures and trying to get through a maze (this isn’t a huge part of the book, but there is a maze, complete with riddles on how to get through safely). Naturally, not all is as it seems, though the twist that a so-called evil wizard isn’t actually that bad was telegraphed too soon and not resolved particularly well.
Maybe I sound too negative. It’s still a fun read, and the idea of the castle being a nexus for portals into other worlds is a great conceit. There’s even an unexpected link to the previous books, when the conclusion reveals that Olia’s mother is Marinka, the protagonist of The House with Chicken Feet.
The Thief Who Sang Storms by Sophie Anderson
After three Sophie Anderson books that dealt with Slavic folklore as a baseline for her stories, I was surprised to start this one and discover it was taking place on a tropical island. Was she changing course for a while? But no, according to the afterword this is still very much based on Slavic folklore, specifically the Russian folk poem “Nightingale the Robber”, and a few nights later I came across the term “Alkonost” in Catherynne Valente’s Deathless, another book based on Slav mythology. Furthermore, it’s tied into the other books (and revealed to be a prequel) by a reappearance from two characters from The House with Chicken Legs, well before the events of that story take place.
Here, the main character of the original poem is imagined not as the villain, but the father of the protagonist: a young girl called Linnet who lives on the island of Morovia. Shaped like a broken heart, it’s one of three floating islands that occasionally draw closer or pull away from each other. On one side live the humans and on the other the Alkonosts – the bird people. They’ve always lived in harmony together, with the Alkonosts using their singing magic to achieve all sorts of things... but after the sinking of a ship filled with people in a freak storm, relationships have soured.
Under the authority of Captain Ilya, singing magic has been banned and all Alkonosts forced from their homes. Linnet’s mother was one of those killed in the shipwreck, along with the parents of her bets friend Hero, a human. Now she lives in hiding with her father in the swamplands, estranged from Hero and former neighbours.
After her father is arrested for stealing something Linnet took, she’s forced to join forces with several of her old friends, including Hero, in the attempt to free him from the quarry where all Alkonosts are forced into slave labour.
As ever, the story is told in first-person, but as with The House of Tangled Magic, it’s not quite as good as Anderson’s first two novels. Quite a lot of chapters end with a “sum-up” of how Linnet is feeling at that precise moment, and her two cute animal sidekicks are completely superfluous (we’re going on a dangerous mission into enemy territory – let’s take a toad and a capybara!)
The way in which the major conflict of the story is resolved is fairly simplistic – yes, it’s a children’s book, but oh were it that easy to solve the internalized fear and prejudice of humankind by singing a few songs. In many ways the book works better as a meditation on grief, as Linnet learns to connect with her father after the loss of her mother, than a story on overcoming racial tension. As in The Girl Who Spoke Bear, there are several “non-chapters” strewn throughout the story, but unlike its predecessor, these flashbacks don’t further the plot, but are instead memories of the life that Linnet lost.
It's not a bad book, far from it, but perhaps reading them all one after the other affected my enjoyment. For my money, Anderson’s best novel is still The Girl Who Spoke Bear.
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Naturally I had to come back to this after watching the second season of Shadow and Bone. And it was bizarre in a way, considering that the show has essentially filmed the two books of this duology out of order. Reading Six of Crows is essentially reading the sequel to season two after they’ve already adapted Crooked Kingdom, which covers Kaz’s vendetta against Pekka Rollins and more or less gathered up the titular Six of Crows (not withstanding Matthias, who is still in prison). We’ve seen the payoff before the setup.
Still, the content of this novel, which contains the entirety of the Ice Court heist, is essentially self-contained. Though there are a few lingering threads in this novel that would have to be wrapped up in a hypothetical season three (Wylan’s relationship with his father, Nina’s recovery, Matthias’s fate) the basic plot-points of the heist aren’t hugely dependant on what happens in Crooked Kingdom. It is essentially, a heist.
And what does a heist involve? Any heist worth its salt will contain a careful introduction to every character that will take part and the skills they’ll contribute to the mission, followed by extensive planning that takes into account any weakness, blind spots, variables, character flaws, objectives, and – most importantly – the stakes, without giving too much away. There’s a reason Unspoken Plan Guarantee is such an important trope.
Then there’s the heist itself, which has built-in tension given we (should) already know the dire consequences if the characters should fail, not just on a personal level, but preferably on a larger societal one too. And naturally things will go wrong, forcing the characters to improvise, scramble, or just plain shoot their way out.
Most importantly, nothing can be pulled out of thin air. You cannot have your characters rely on luck. Deus ex Machinas are disapproved of at the best of times, but they’re completely forbidden in heists, since the entire point of a heist is that our heroes use their own faculties to outwit the impossible.
Leigh Bardugo knows this – for the most part. There are a couple of fuzzy areas, particularly when the kids simply assume that the prison transports will make a (conveniently) daily run to the Ice Court gates, and later when they go in search of their target within the prison facility by having two of their number race up and down the corridors, looking in cell-door windows and simply hoping they’ll find the man they’ve been hired to break out. Which draws attention to the fact that this entire prison break is built on the assumption that the man in question is being kept in this complex, when in truth the Fjerdans could have stashed him anywhere.
Also, I call foul when it comes to the fact that this singular Fjerdan compound contains the most sacred place known to their culture AND its most high-security prison complex. I can understand why this setup is important to the story, but does it ring true to anyone? It would be like building a sewage pond right next to the palace, when the truth is any society would keep these two facilities as far away from each other as humanly possible.
But in the grand scheme of things, these are just quibbles. The first thing Bardugo does right is establish the stakes, and I dearly hope that if we get a season three of Shadow and Bone, the show dramatizes how she introduces the concept of jurda parem, and how Kaz is commissioned to take the job. The show simply has him approach Jesper, Nina and Wylan with news of their mission, intercut with a Fjerdan assassin at Nikolai’s coronation, but the books demonstrate the threat in a much more terrifying way.
In its opening chapter, we learn that Grisha indentures are being forced to take the jurda parem drug in order to gauge the effect it has on their abilities. It ends up intensifying what they can do to the level of god-like power, with many of the Kerch merchants finding out the hard way that it’s not to be messed with.
Kaz is shown the aftermath of one of these experiments, when he’s hired by a merchant called Jan Van Eck to track down the man responsible for creating the drug, a Shu scientist called Bo Yul-Bayer, currently in the custody of the Fjerdans. Van Eck brings an interesting context to what the release of jurda parem on the market would mean for the world at large: “Men who can walk through walls – no vault or fortress would ever be safe again. People who can make gold from lead, or anything else for that matter, who can alter the very material of the world – financial markets would be thrown into chaos. The world economy would collapse.”
These stakes are fascinating, as the drug’s release wouldn’t destroy the world, just throw it into chaos. Of course, Van Eck is a merchant, so it’s only natural that this is where his concern would lie, but it doesn’t take into account the effect this drug has on individual Grisha. The hold the drug has over them is fatal: more than one dose makes them addicted, and they’re slaves to whoever will provide them with more.
It’s far more terrifying than the Shadow Fold or the Darkling, because it feels that much more real. The previous trilogy having already established the abilities of the Grisha and the prejudice that surrounds them, the idea that they could be turned into drug addicts, serving whoever holds the leash, is downright horrifying.
As such, the desperate hope is that Yul-Bayer hasn’t made any more jurda parem, and that the Crows can prevent it from ever reaching public knowledge. That’s a little like trying to force the genie back into its bottle, but what choice do they have against the staggering consequences such a drug would have on the world?
Granted, Kaz doesn’t care about any of this, but he’s very much invested in the money he could make from pulling off this heist (here’s one place where the show will struggle – his main motivation is getting the money to pull off his revenge scheme against Pekka Rollins, which he’s already completed in season two).
He gathers his crew: Jesper and Inej obviously, but also Wylan (already on his payroll) and Nina, who is working as a Heartrender in Ketterdam on the heels of her kidnapping at the hands of the Fjerdans, her ordeal in surviving the permafrost after the shipwreck, and her betrayal of Matthias in order to save his life – something else that was restructured in the show due to the fact they dramatized it chronologically. In the book, we gradually learn about their history together through flashbacks.
Kaz needs Nina to get to Matthias, who has the necessary inside knowledge of the Ice Court, though he’s very much a wildcard in regards to his trustworthiness. Kaz’s offer is a pardon that will allow him to return to his work as a drüskelle (witch-hunter) and yikes – I had forgotten the fraught nature of his relationship with Nina in this book.
When he first discovers her trying to break him out of prison, his first impulse is attempted strangulation. As they’re escaping, his point-of-view chapters tell us he’s seriously tempted to murder her at the first available opportunity. They’re well into their mission before the truth finally comes out: Nina’s decision to turn him in as a slave trader was to save his life from her own people, and she’s been spending all her time since then trying to free him (foregoing her deep desire to return to Ravka in order to do so).
Since the show version of Matthias already knows all this, I’ve really no idea how they’re going to adapt their material. I suppose they can still add the wrinkle of he and Nina conspiring to assassinate Yul-Bayer without the others knowing about it, which could make for an interesting plot-within-a-plot.
In any case, once our team is assembled and the heist kicks off, it’s all on. Even having read this book before, I was on the edge of my seat, telling myself “just one more chapter, just one more chapter.” If anything, it was even more exciting the second time around, as I had a clearer picture of all the characters, and the luxury of being able to read the text closely, knowing where it was all headed.
The suspense and ingenuity are impeccable, particularly when various gambits and character-based hedging comes into play. And the set-pieces! Inej climbing the incinerator, Wylan taking down the gate, Matthias’s decision regarding where his loyalties lie, Jesper commandeering the tank, Nina’s sacrifice with the jurda parem, Kaz pulling all those tricks out of his hat... it will be an absolute CRIME if Eric Heisserer doesn’t get the chance to adapt this material, especially having gotten as far as he has.
Netflix, I promise not to care about anything ever again, if only you give me the Ice Court heist.
The Collectors by Philip Pullman
After the completion of the His Dark Materials trilogy, and before the start of The Book of Dust, Pullman often amused himself by penning short stories set in his created world: Lyra’s Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine, and this, The Collectors, which was apparently first released in 2014 as an audiobook. As far as I know, it’s only recently been released in print.
It’s something of an outlier in the collection of short stories, as it’s set in our world in 1970 and is more of a horror or ghost story than an adventure, reminding me of M.R. James or Algernon Blackwood’s similar works. Like Northern Lights, it starts in a university, where several men are having a late-night conversation. Two in particular are Horley and Grinstead, discussing two works of art – a painting and a sculpture – with a rather strange history behind them. The painting is of a young woman, and the sculpture is of a monkey, and according to their new owner, they cannot be separated for very long.
Because the book is so short (you’ll read it in under twenty minutes, even if you pace yourself) I don’t want to say much more. But Pullman’s prose is as sharp and precise as ever – I don’t know how he does it, but a simple sentence conjures up a whole range of visuals and impressions.
You could potentially read this without knowing a thing about His Dark Materials, though there are several slight hints toward what’s actually going on, which ends up being oddly poetic when you consider the bond between a person and their daimon.
Taking over from Chris Wormell and his distinctive woodcut illustrations is Tom Duxbury (who also illustrated Serpentine). Their styles are very similar, though honestly, there’s plenty of them here for such a short book – one on each page almost, which is a surprise considering there’s not a whole lot of action!
The Witch’s Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff
Along with The Collectors, this book is the odd one out in this month’s reading list, not being from my pile of Slavic fantasies. Still, during my break I had the strongest urge to revisit Rosemary Sutcliff. Mostly famous for her Roman history novels, not to mention various retellings of Arthurian and Greek myths, The Witch’s Brat is one of her less-known stories, though no less solid because of it.
I can easily imagine her rattling this off in-between her more prestigious titles, as she utilizes a lot of her favourite themes and motifs: a disabled protagonist, a grounded historical context, a deliberate threefold structure, and the search for a place of belonging.
Sutcliff is best known for her impeccable historical research, though for my money no one can structure a novel quite like her. At the start of the story, protagonist Lovel recalls a moment from his youth in which a butterfly died in his hands, and his grandmother tells him: “you will be one of the menders of this world.” Approximately halfway through the story, he spies another yellow butterfly, though is unable to recall anything but the echo of her sentiment. Finally, the story closes with a hover of butterflies once again pricking Lovel’s memory of his grandmother’s words, and his realization that he’s exactly where he should be.
This threefold law of storytelling pops up all the time throughout her work, and though it’s rather more simplified here, The Witch’s Brat remains a totally inoffensive little story about a single person struggling to find a place in the world after a traumatic experience. Lovel is recently alone after the death of his grandmother, the local wise woman. On trying to figure out what’s wrong with a sick cow, he’s accused of giving it the Evil Eye and is run out of town on account of his crooked back.
He nearly dies on the road, but it brought to the safety of the Abbey of New Minster, where he finds sanctuary among the monks. It’s there he meets Rahere, the King’s Jester (a real-life figure, who founded the Priory of the Hospital of St Bartholomew) who offers him a chance to join the hospital he has planned, and to hone his skills at healing. As is Sutcliff’s way, she manages to make this seemingly-simple choice feel exactly as scary and as weighty as it should, for Lovel must overcome his terror of the outside world in order to serve the greater good. “He knew that if he [turned back] he would have failed Rahere, and failed something deep within himself that men generally call their souls.”
It’s short and sweet, and perhaps even a little forgettable within the realms of Sutcliff’s other novels, much less children’s fiction in its entirety, but it has an unstated haunting quality to it. And bonus – my copy had cover art from P.J. Lynch!
A Few Good Men (1992)
It was reading Cary Elwes’s memoirs on The Princess Bride last month that drew my attention to this movie, as he mentioned it being among director Rob Reiner’s extensive body of work. And because I’d already seen The Fugitive (below) I was in the mood to watch some nineties classics for the first time.
This is essentially a courtroom drama, or a morality play, if you will. After the death of a marine at Guantanamo Bay after a hazing exercise gone horribly wrong, Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) is assigned to the defence of the two men responsible, who are accused of murder. Kaffee is renowned for delivering advantageous plea bargains, but in this case, the defendants aren’t interested. Their honour is at stake, and they want the case to go to court.
In this they’re supported by Lieutenant Commander Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore) who senses something fishy, especially after learning that the dead man broke the chain of command to request being transferred away from the base. In this, there are conflicting reports between the superior officers stationed at the base, Colonel Matthew Markinson and Base Commander Colonel Nathan Jessep (the latter played by Jack Nicholson).
It becomes something of an investigation as Kaffee and Galloway try to get to the bottom of William Santiago’s death, seemingly stonewalled in every direction from everyone who was involved – including their own clients. It all culminates in classic Hollywood courtroom case, where pretty much every rule of law is thrown out the window and the Perry Mason Method saves the day: that is, the bad guy confesses on the stand. Sarcasm aside, it’s a compelling film.
It has dated in some respects though, particularly in the fact that Tom Cruise’s character is peak nineties douchebag. If he appeared in a movie today, you’d assume it was a parody. Where to even start? He’s brilliant but lazy. He sexually harasses a superior officer and suffers no consequences. He’s desperately trying to live up to the expectations of his late father, which means he never commits himself to anything (until of course, he does). He’s smarter than everyone else in the room, including the people who are clearly more qualified than he is to do his job.
The one small mercy is that his and Demi Moore’s character never hook-up on screen, though she’s apparently interested enough to ask him out on a date halfway through the case despite his shitty treatment of her.
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping moment is when Galloway criticizes his attitude, and he responds by telling her: “I think I’m sexually aroused right now.” Later, this comment is overtaken by Jack Nicolson’s misogynistic spiel about women officers and blowjobs – though in that case, it’s clearly meant to indicate what a vile person he is. But here’s where my bewilderment comes in: you’d think that after hearing something this disgusting from the man he’s investigating would lead to some sort of soul-searching in Kaffee; something akin to horror on realizing he’s Not So Different from a gross misogynist in how each man has spoken to Galloway.
But... that doesn’t happen. He doesn’t apologize for his inappropriate comment, and it’s never even mentioned again. So it would seem that sexist comments are fine coming from someone like Cruise, but when Nicolson takes it up to eleven, it’s a sign of pure villainy. That’s not how it works, guys. (And like I said, that Galloway would ask Kaffee out for dinner after he makes a comment like that is just absurd).
I found out afterwards that the film was based on a stage play written by Aaron Sorkin, which made me laugh since in hindsight the story contains so many of his tells. But if you can get past the bizarre incongruity of who can and can’t make misogynistic comments, it’s a compelling drama delivered by A-list performers. And a pre-fame appearance by Cuba Gooding Junior!
The Fugitive (1993)
Believe it or not, I had never seen this movie before, though it feels like it was one of those seminal films of the nineties that everyone has seen. I don’t even recall what made me want to watch it so out of the blue. This is one of Harrison Ford’s most iconic roles (and he’s got plenty of them) and possibly for Tommy Lee Jones as well. It’s simply a suspenseful crowd-pleaser that knows what it wants to do, and executes its assignment almost perfectly.
Vascular surgeon Richard Kimble is a well-respected doctor who returns home from an emergency call-in at the hospital to find an intruder in his house and his wife’s dead body on the floor. Yes, Mrs Kimble is one of those quintessential Plot-Triggering Fridged Wives who only exists for plot and character motivation. There’s not much you can do about it (but hey, imagine this movie with the roles flipped, and it’s Mrs Kimble on the run while trying to solve the mystery of her husband’s death).
Somewhat incredibly, this wealthy white doctor who has no criminal record and could easily afford the best lawyer money could buy is found guilty of murdering his wife and sentenced to death on purely circumstantial evidence. On his way to death row, the other inmates attempt to escape. One out-of-control prison van and a train collusion later, Kimble is free. Or as you might say, a fugitive. This is the perfect opportunity for him to find his wife’s killer, IF he can stay one step ahead of the manhunt led by Tommy Lee Jones’s Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard.
(His role has not aged well. He’s gung-ho and trigger-happy, and one scene involves his squad bursting into the house of another convict who escaped at the same time as Kimble. He’s a Black guy living with his girlfriend who screams in terror as men with guns storm through her house and shoot her boyfriend at point-blank range. De-escalation? Negotiation? What that? It’s difficult to watch, especially when Gerard tells her to shut up. Dude, you just shot her boyfriend in her own home).
This sequence aside, the action moves between Kimble and Gerard, each one trying to hunt down/evade the other. A conspiracy emerges, Gerard eventually gets on the right side of the mission, and the real bad guy is caught. It’s a surprisingly long movie, but a solid one. I can see why it was so popular in the nineties while remaining unknown to me this whole time: a blockbuster of its day that holds up well but wasn’t necessarily a game-changer.
Its best feature is the fact that both Ford and Jones play characters who are genuinely intelligent men, and their cat-and-mouse game never relies on either one acting stupid for the sake of the plot. Instead, tension is derived from Kimble risking his freedom and/or life by helping others, choices that lead to some of the film’s most suspenseful scenes while providing insight into his character (as his story of a one-armed man IS rather suspect for a while, to the audience as well as the cops).
A few familiar faces pop up. Jane Lynch! Julianne Moore! And I recognized L. Scott Caldwell by her distinctive voice – years later she played Rose on LOST. All things considered, I enjoyed it. More so-called “mindless” blockbusters should put in the effort to be this intelligent.
Spooks: Season 5 (2006)
With each new season, it gets more difficult to talk about this show, simply because it’s found its formula and is utilizing is well. There are spies, and they do espionage.
Season five kicks off with a fairly gripping two-part premiere, in which a cabal of right-wing politicians, military men and media moguls decide to launch a coup is response to what they perceive as a failing government, considering themselves the only ones qualified enough to stave off threats to the country. It’s terrifying stuff, as they believe they’re utterly justified in doing what they’re doing, up to and including staging their own terrorist attacks to put pressure on the Prime Minster to resign and allowing themselves to form an unelected shadow government.
This means MI-5 is essentially fighting for the abstract principle of democracy, as well as against a bunch of loonies thinking they knew better than the public in choosing their own leaders. They’re also the episodes that introduce Hermione Norris as Rosalind Myers, the daughter of one of the attempted plotters, and she’s great. In hindsight, I probably would have chosen her over Zoe Reynolds as March’s Woman of the Month, as she’s ice-cold but highly principled, someone that no one likes, but who you know you can trust absolutely. That’s the kind of character I really enjoy.
Also, she ends up making the most hilarious joke this show has ever done. On being tasked with looking after an eyewitness, she takes him to her home. He mistakenly believes they’re at a safehouse, and he comments on how cold and empty they always are. She turns to him and says with just the barest trace of incredulity: “this is my home.” That’s Roz in a nutshell.
This is also the season in which Ruth leaves, as I understand it because the actress was pregnant (though I know she returns eventually) and poor Colin winds up dead. Colin! Noooo! I honestly thought that if anyone was going to get out of this show alive, it would be him and Malcolm (they being the Those Two Guys of the show).
There’s another two-part episode halfway through which I imagine was quite controversial, as it involves the Saudi Trade Centre getting taken over by terrorists posing as Al-Qaeda trying to stop a nuclear power deal from going through. Eventually they’re revealed to be Mossad, and almost as a pre-emptive response to any backlash, the next few episodes involve fundamentalist Christians and eco-terrorists as the bad guys. Honestly, it’s pointless to criticize a show such as this on who it choses as its antagonists – sooner or later, every group will have their turn.
However, there are some inconsistencies this time around. Up till this point, the team has always been here to follow and uphold the law to the best of their abilities, yet one episode has them deliberately let loose an assassin to complete her hit on a would-be dictator planning to massacre an ethnic minority. I’m not saying that doesn’t make for a compelling ethical conundrum, but there’s been nothing in the show till this episode that suggests MI-5 under Harry’s leadership would meddle to such an extent in another country’s politics.
Elsewhere, I appreciated that Fiona’s murder isn’t something that’s brushed under the rug like so many of the deaths in this show (even Colin barely gets a mention after he’s left hanging from a tree). Adam is clearly left with PTSD and struggling with single parenthood – which naturally calls into question his ability to operate in the field. Hopefully this will be carried over into season six, as in many ways a total mental breakdown feels like the inevitable endpoint to all these characters. To paraphrase Harvey Dent, either you die young as a hero or live long enough to go mad under the pressure.
And as ever, there’s the “hey, it’s that guy from twenty years ago” game: Robert Glenister, Saskia Reeves, Phyllis Logan, Anthony Flanagan, Alec Newman (Muad'Dib!), Nikki Amuka-Bird (in a case of Narrowed It Down To the Guy I Recognized, as you know they’re not going to cast her as a mere hotel waitress) and little baby Gugu Mbatha-Raw (who is not a case of the aforementioned trope. As soon as she appeared as Adam’s new nanny I assumed she’d be a plant or a mole of some kind, but nope – I suppose this was early enough in her career that she really was who she seemed the whole time).
I’ve reached the halfway mark, now it’s on to season six!
Westworld: Season 4 (2022)
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Remember when this was HBO’s flagship show after the conclusion of Game of Thrones? Now it’s been cancelled, just one season short from its planned five-season run. If there’s one thing I hate more than a show getting canned after just one or two seasons, it’s when a show is so close to the finish line and not given the opportunity to wrap up its story. It makes everything that came before it feel so pointless.
As such, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to bother with this season, as there’s nothing that kills a person’s interest in a story so much as knowing there’s no proper ending, but I’m a completist if nothing else. Plus, Thandiwe Newton is always a reason to tune in. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have bothered, as this felt like an eight-episode prologue to a season finale that will never materialize.
It always struck me as strange that the show itself very quickly left the confines of the titular Westworld and the myriad of philosophical questions that that particular setting provided, instead becoming a very straightforward “humans vs A.I” conflict. I can respect the showrunners’ decision to branch out from the original concept, but – much like The Hunger Games – it strikes me that leaving its central conceit was a bit of a risk.
This season falls back on a couple of old tricks, namely the parallel timelines. This was used to good effect back in season one, in which it was ultimately revealed that the good-hearted William and the sadistic Man in Black were the same person at different decades of his life, the stationary, circuitous nature of the park making this twist possible.
This time around, we’ve got three story strands: Caleb and Maeve searching a park set in America’s 1920s (the highlight of the season, especially when Maeve wearily responds to the recycled scripts), Bernard waking up after a prolonged period to set off on his own odyssey, and a young woman called Christine going about her life feeling as though something is profoundly wrong – and considering she’s played by Evan Rachel Wood, she’s right.
One of these plots takes place at a considerably earlier time than the others, and once that’s revealed, we’re left with the season’s main plot: Charlotte Hale (who I think was harbouring a clone of Dolores?) has reshaped the world to her liking and now decided she’s bored with it. This is... bad? And all the other characters are... trying to stop her?
The problems here are twofold. The first is that it’s been so long since the last season of the show that I’ve kinda forgotten what happened the last time I watched it. (I know I’m not the only viewer that’s been having this problem, and Covid issues aside – why is it taking so long for shows to get made these days? I mean, we used to get twenty-plus episodes of something every year. Now we’re lucky if we get six episodes of a show every three years. What has suddenly made shows take so long to produce?)
The second problem is that I’m no longer engaged with most of the cast. I’m not entirely sure why Caleb is now a protagonist on par with Dolores and Maeve, and I’ve nothing against the actor (or even the character in principle) beyond the fact that I just don’t care that much. He was introduced last season, and now the emotional crux of this season is the relationship he has with his daughter, whose character is divided into younger and older versions of herself thanks to the dual timelines.
I just didn’t care, especially when considering the expansive supporting cast of the first two seasons. Remember Hector? Logan? Elsie? Armistice? Akecheta? (Who at least gets a cameo). They were great! Tell us more about them!
Granted, Caleb’s scene in which he tries to escape captivity, assisted along the way by clones of himself that have gotten reasonably far but not all the way out, is perhaps the most riveting sequence and biggest mindfuck of the season, but to use his relationship with his daughter as the emotional centrepiece of the season just doesn’t work.
It’s also crazy how many established character-actors are enlisted in order to do absolutely nothing. Saffron Burrows is in this! So is Daniel Wu! And Ariana DeBose! They’re brought in and written out almost immediately! Ed Harris’s William spends the entire season in a cryogenic chamber before he’s killed off by his confused clone. Maeve’s last scene is getting a bullet to the head. Stubbs goes down without much of a fight. It’s all so anticlimactic, and clearly meant to be resolved in a final season.
Which is why it’s so much more frustrating for a show to get cancelled right at the finish line than it is after a single season. I know it’s a business, and that Westworld’s massive budget probably didn’t justify its falling viewership numbers, which in turn were exacerbated by the prolonged wait between seasons, but come on HBO! You made it that far, just let them finish their story!
Happy Valley: Season 3 (2023)
We missed out on a third season of Gentleman Jack, but thankfully get a proper send-off for Sally Wainwright’s other passion-project, Happy Valley. As with the first two seasons, I planned to stagger the episodes over the course of several days, then ended up binging the whole thing across the course of a single morning/afternoon.
It frankly feels like a miracle that we’re getting a third season at all, and that so many supporting characters/actors, including Charlie Murphy, Daniel Cawood and Con O’Neil (not to mention Derek Riddell, who sat out season two) return for this season is just astounding. Even characters like Nevison and Joyce are still around!
That said, I was disappointed at how underutilized some of them were, especially Ann, who was set up to be Catherine’s protégée, and here doesn’t do much except hook up with her son and get retraumatized over Tommy Lee Royce’s escape from prison. They probably could have pulled off this season with just Catherine, her sister Clare, her grandson Ryan, and of course James Norton as the psychopathic Tommy Lee.
As in previous seasons, the show alternates between Catherine’s family drama and scenes of a crime being committed and covered up by people in the community that Catherine will eventually start to investigate (here it’s a woman addicted to pills with a control-freak of a husband, and her supplier, a mild-mannered GP who ends up being blackmailed by organized crime). And as ever, Catherine has to contend with the spectre of Tommy Lee Royce, the man who drive her daughter to suicide shortly after the birth of his son, Catherine’s grandson, Ryan.
By this point he’s been incarcerated for several years, though it turns out Catherine’s sister Clare and her boyfriend have been secretly driving Ryan to the prison for visits with his father, something that understandably comes as a massive betrayal once she finds out what they’ve been doing.
And who can blame her? The man drove her daughter to her death, murdered a colleague by running over her in a van, raped and tortured a local girl for several days, and beat up Catherine so badly that she ended up having half of her spleen removed. Possibly the season’s best scene is when she confronts her sister, and her almost-transcendent bafflement when once again someone tries to justify their actions in assisting a manipulative, monstrous, unrepentant killer.
Catherine’s deep-seated fear has always been that Ryan will end up like his father, and knowing that her entire family has been going behind her back to provide Tommy with visitation rights to his son throws her completely off her axis. With retirement looming, who could blame her for wanting to wash her hands of the entire ungrateful lot of them?
It taps into my ongoing exhaustion with stories of “redemption” for fictional characters that have committed no end of depraved crimes, and the endless screeds of apologia for their actions either by fandom or other people in the story. Where does this compulsion come from? I felt something close to despair when the show attempts to give Tommy a moment of grace in its final episode, in which he breaks into Catherine’s house, thumbs through photo albums of his ex-girlfriend and son, then decides to refrain from setting the place ablaze on realizing she gave his son a good childhood.
I’m stunned to think that the show might have expected me to feel something approaching sympathy for Tommy Lee, though at least Catherine doesn’t buy any of it and he sets himself on fire immediately afterwards. Still, it was a jarring moment in what has otherwise been a show about how everyone but the protagonist refuses to take responsibility for their own behaviour and choices. As such, I refuse to include Tommy Lee in that very exclusive demographic.
To tell the truth, the final confrontation between them felt a little anticlimactic. And whatever happened to the fact that Tommy was 100% convinced that Catherine killed his mother? Did he just… stop caring about that?
Furthermore, the show also forgets to wrap up some pretty important subplots in a satisfying manner (though given the odd disappearance of certain characters in the final episode, I wonder if Covid resulted in some hasty rewrites. If you told me several actors came down sick, I wouldn’t be surprised).
But a massive amount of screentime is devoted to an abusive teacher at school who is also assaulting his wife at home, and the aforementioned GP who gets caught up in organized crime. When the latter kills the former’s wife after she threatens to expose him, the husband is naturally the prime suspect – but this entire plot dies on the vine, as does the GP’s entanglement with a pair of thugs who were tied into the larger drug culture in the area (which gives the show its very name: Happy Valley).
What resolution we get takes place entirely off-screen, and is only briefly discussed at Catherine’s retirement party. The more I think about how abruptly it all ends, the more I’m certain that Covid played a part in how it all wrapped up. There’s no way a writer of Wainwright’s calibre would have purposefully left it all dangling like this, right? Surely the original plan was for Catherine to triumphantly bring down the drug-lords and the thugs and the domestic abuser – though I suppose that’s a profoundly up-lifting conclusion for a show that defined itself with its gritty realism.
But I can’t help but feel disappointed. Too much is set up without nearly enough payoff. What was the deal with the abusive teacher trying to make amends with Ryan? Why have Tommy Lee threaten the prison priest if it wasn’t going anywhere? And I would have actually liked an update on some of the criminals in the first two seasons. Is Kevin Weatherill still cooling his heels in jail? What happened to his sick wife and two daughters? What about the family of the man who committed suicide in season two? And like I said, Ann is horribly wasted here. I really wanted to see her step up into Catherine’s shoes.
I did, however, really like the return of Alison Garrs (the mother of the second season’s serial killer) and her unexpected friendship with Catherine, which led to the show’s funniest exchange between Catherine and her ex-husband: “How do you know that woman?” “I arrested her.” “For what?” “Manslaughter.”
Ah well. Like I said, we were lucky to get this season at all, and I was stunned to realize after the fact that the actor playing Ryan was the same one who played him as a child in seasons one and two. Having watched those recently, seeing him here was dizzying, as though he’d literally grown from a child to a teenager over the course of two years.
All faults aside, this was a solid farewell to Catherine Cawood, and I hope she enjoys her retirement. God knows, she deserves it.
Vikings: Valhalla: Season 2 (2023)
This was at the top of my list for “shows to catch up on” during my break. It dropped on Netflix way back in January and I really enjoyed its first season. This one is divided into three distinct plots, which have very little to do with one another, but are all engaging enough that you don’t feel disappointed when the action moves from one to the other. In one, Harald and Lief join up with a travelling caravan to reach Constantinople, ostensibly for the former to raise enough funds through fur-trading that he can take on his brother for ownership of the throne of Norway.
However, the two end up getting embroiled in much more than that. They’re joined by a rag-tag group of travellers who make the journey together (including a nobleman and his servant who is clearly a girl in disguise, an educated Middle-Eastern woman who forms an attachment with Lief, a slave-trader and his three Irish slaves, and a blind man whose brother now rules the land they’re hoping to traverse) on board a ship pulled like a sleigh across the frozen river.
It’s only a matter of time before tensions (of the romantic and vengeful types) spill over, but eventually the mishmash of characters form a strong found family, and I was genuinely tearing up at the bonds they’d created and the goodbyes they must share by the end of the journey.
Elsewhere, Freydís has reached the “promised land” of Jómsborg, the last refuge of the Vikings ruled over by none other than Bradley James (a.k.a. Prince Arthur) and his wife. It’s a seeming paradise, in which Vikings can live and worship in peace off the edges of the map, but naturally when something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
For those tuning in to see how Bradley James is doing, I’m afraid this is another period drama in which he ends up dead – and in this case, he’s also revealed to be a fairly one-dimensional villain who wants to put any Viking refugees to work in the forest... doing stuff. It’s not entirely clear what his plans are, only that when Freydís starts preaching egalitarianism and inviting newcomers to visit the temple, he resorts to a massacre. Well, that escalated quickly.
But he’s up against Freydís, a one-woman army who can hold off any number of warriors while cradling her newborn in her other arm, and ultimately the entire storyline is a tribute to her strength, cunning and reservoirs of true compassion. No complaints here.
Finally, in what unfortunately turns out to be the weakest and most disconnected plotline, Vikings such as Canute, his father Forkbeard, his son Svein, and his rival Olaf (Harald’s brother) vie for control of their newly established lands, while Queen Emma and Earl Godwin play at cat-and-mouse games that are very Game of Thrones, right down to the fact that neither are particularly likeable characters to root for.
This is deeply disappointing since Emma was one of the most interesting characters of season one: an intelligent, cool-headed woman who was always three steps ahead of her rivals, but here has been reduced to a cold and paranoid woman whose distrust for Godwin isn’t clearly mapped out. The season seems to end on the assumption that she was right about him all along: that he’s neck-deep in political conniving for his own gain. But if that’s the case, then he’s possessed of near-psychic abilities of cause-and-effect foresight.
Let’s say the end goal of his machinations is precisely what he attains by the end of the season: marriage to a noble woman (the king’s niece) who can provide him with an heir of noble blood. To do this he first woos one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, a woman of no importance whatsoever. He also bribes this woman’s brother to try and kill the queen through a poisoning attempt, one that he thwarts. The man is captured and executed, and his body displayed. The plot at this point hinges on a. his secret fiancé recognizing her brother and reacting in horror, and b. the queen being witness to this reaction and drawing the conclusion that her handmaid knew something about the attempt on her life.
Those are two MASSIVE leaps of logic on Godwin’s part, and there’s no discernible way of seeing how he might have set either step up, but it’s precisely what happens.
At that point, Emma grows so suspicious of Godwin that she has her own handmaid tortured in the attempt to discover what he’s been up to (presumably thinking that he staged the assassination attempt in order to gain her trust? I guess??) The woman ends up dying, something else Godwin couldn’t have possibly foreseen, at which point a. Canute’s niece Gyda starts to fall for him, and b. Canute organizes a marriage between them, two more incredibly big leaps for Godwin to have made.
(There’s also a lot of talk about someone called “the Bear” but I have to admit I lost the thread of who exactly this person was and how he figured into everything).
The entire plotline honestly ruins Emma’s character, who was certainly not this paranoid or cruel in the previous season, and – if all this was the intended result of Godwin’s machinations – gives him near God-like powers of precognition, a Gambit Roulette on a massive, unforeseeable scale. It’s a confusing, convoluted story, and is furthermore entirely unconnected to everything else that’s going on in the show.
Thankfully, a third season is already in the bag, and I’m interested in seeing how things pan out for our three protagonists (Lief, Freydis, Harald) at least. And maybe there’s a chance they can redeem Emma in some way, though I’d love to see her go head-to-head with a character like Freydís or round two with Ælfgifu, who is present here but not given a huge amount to do. That actress has so much presence that I’d love to see more of her.
As ever, there’s great scenery, great fight scenes, great costumes, solid plots, compelling action sequences – the whole shebang. The original Vikings was certainly running on fumes toward the end of its run, so let’s hope this one either wraps it up soonish, or manages to keep the torches burning for longer.
Sanditon: Season 3 (2023)
And so ends what was a rather strange show, all things considered. Taking the fragments of Jane Austen’s last, unfinished novel and using them as a basis for a television adaptation was a clever idea (and I’m surprised no one has done it before) as it gives viewers a story with the status of being drawn from Austen while also being something no one has ever seen before.
Unfortunately, the screenwriter was Andrew Davies, who may have given us 1996’s definitive Pride and Prejudice, but went well off-script with this one. Surely if you’re going to complete an Austen manuscript, you should on some level be beholden to what Austen would have written. Or at the very least, avoided anything she definitely wouldn’t have written. Like, for example, depicting the two villains of the story screw on the conservatory floor.
Also troubling the production was the fact the show was cancelled after its first season, only to be resurrected two years later – at which point a vast number of the original cast had been released from their contracts and already committed to other projects. Out of interest, I went back and watched the first episode of the first season and was stunned by how many faces disappeared in the interim: a Parker sister, Charlotte’s second love interest Stringer, one-half of the show’s Beta Couple Babbington, and of course, the romantic lead himself, Theo James. His absence in season two renders most of the romance between him and Charlotte as rather pointless in hindsight, when Davies is forced to kill him off during the time-gap between seasons.
Even less people turned up for this third season: Charlotte Spencer as Esther has moved on, as has Rosie Graham as Charlotte’s sister Alison. She doesn’t even turn up for her older sister’s wedding, which is decidedly odd! We do, however, see a return from Lady Susan and Otis, neither one having been seen since season one.
In hindsight, it all plays out rather like a long-running soap opera, in which various actors come and go according to their availability, taking their storylines and development with them when they depart. Sanditon never pretended to be anything but light fluff, but this season is definitely read to end itself. The courtroom drama involving Georgiana’s fortune was excruciating, as was the trite drama over whether the Parkers would gentrify the slims in order to build a new hotel.
There’s a December Romance between Mrs Denham and her old beau, and a not-quite-yet December Romance between Lady Susan and Mr Colbourne’s brother (I totally missed the fact she was the king’s mistress in the first season, but it was nice to see Liam Garrigan playing a good guy for a change).
Georgiana wants to stop the fortune-hunters by getting married to a gay man (who is part of a new trio of characters: two siblings and their gold-digging mother) though I’ve been low-key shipping her with Arthur this whole time. They make each other smile, he’s trustworthy, they get along like a house on fire... but this season reveals he’s not only gay but in love with the guy who just played Prince Vasily in Shadow and Bone! I thought he was familiar.
Still, I didn’t mind the return of Otis, who was the best match out of all her suitors – though I have to confess not having the slightest recollection of what happened between them in season one or why he left. I recall a very pretty scene in a meadow of bluebells, and that’s it.
Once again, a show dangles the possibility of a redemption arc for a morally bankrupt dude and expects me to care about it. Although they back off at the last minute, it’s still pretty uncomfortable watching what is apparently meant to be a genuine attraction between Edward and the much-younger Louise Colbourne. Does Davies want us to forget this guy psychologically tortured his stepsister for months on end? Ultimately no – but it’s Edward himself who brings it up AFTER all the drama of having eloped with Louise, “heroically” not sleeping with her, and pulling a Break Her Heart To Save Her.
I really don’t know what to make of all this. I suppose I should be grateful Davies didn’t turn this into a genuine “you’ve redeemed me!” love match, and Edward gets very little credit for passing the lowest bar of decent behaviour possible, but to go as far as he did with Louise was still rather awful and on the heels of a similar attempt at providing a modicum of humanity for a villain in Happy Valley, I was really not in the mood for any of it.
(Also, did anyone else find it amusing that Louise’s reputation is put at risk when they discover she’s run away with a man, only for Colbourne to co-opt Charlotte and drive away with her through the night in a private carriage to hunt down his wayward niece?)
As for Charlotte herself, she finally bags her man. After FOUR romantic false leads, which surely has to be an all-time record for an Austen heroine, she finally gets rid of her farm-boy fiancé with no hard feelings (even though he had every right to be severely ticked off) and marry into the landed gentry with her wannabe Rochester. After three seasons of turgid romantic turmoil, I’m mostly just relieved.
In the end, it ended. What an odd experience.
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