Reading/Watching Log #99

I had three weeks off and tried to stuff them with as many books, shows and activities as possible, though I’m not entirely sure I succeeded. That is, I didn’t get as much reading done as I wanted to. Look, I even brought out all the books I own written by my favourite authors and took a not-very-good picture of them:

Yeah, it was wishful thinking that I was going to get through all THIS in three weeks, especially on top of all the activities I had planned (I may have to do a separate post on what passes for a wild time in my life – it involved train rides, wandering around the city, various forms of street food, catching up with friends and buying expensive boots, then feeling guilty about it).

The break also gave me the chance to catch up on some shows that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while now – even though all of them have since been cancelled, or are approaching cancellation. Nancy Drew has already aired its fourth and final season (I’ve just finished the third), The Great ended after its third season (there was room for more, but thankfully it went out on a fairly conclusive note), Perry Mason was unfairly cancelled after only two seasons, and Evil is finishing after its not-yet-aired fourth and final season. All goods things come to an end, I suppose, and aside from Perry Mason, they got a better run than most these days.

This month I also read a book called The Lost Kingdom of Lantia by Maggie Hamilton, which I haven’t included here since I want to do a blogpost for it on its own. It was one of my absolute favourites as a preteen, so I’m taking the opportunity to do a deep-dive.

Island of Whispers by Frances Hardinge

I love Frances Hardinge, though this is a slightly different change of pace for her – despite being categorized as YA in our library, it’s a much shorter novella with illustrations by Emily Gravett. But as usual, her incredible evocative prose carries the day, as well as concepts such as having to take the shoes of the dead to an island where spirits can ascend a broken spiral staircase to the afterlife.

Here, Hardinge envisions an island where the dead can linger, presumably due to the thick fog that confuses their otherworldly sense of direction. Milo’s father is known as the Ferryman, responsible for gathering the shoes of the recently departed and carrying them across the sea to a broken tower on an island, only accessible through a strange archway hovering over the ocean.

That is, until the day a highborn fourteen-year-old girl dies, and her father refuses to accept the suddenness of her death. He comes to forcibly take his daughter’s shoes back from the Ferryman, and put her fate in the hands of two magicians in his employ. But the Ferryman is determined to take her away, only for a confrontation to leave him dead at the hands of the lord’s minions.

Now it’s up to Milo to ferry the dead to their island – but he’s always been warned against doing so by his father. Milo is easily distracted and inclined to stare at them, something that can be fatal if it goes on too long. But there are no other options available, so he takes the boat and begins the journey, the lord and his magicians in pursuit.

This is a strange haunting little book, with a lot of half-formed ideas and featherlight characterization. I’ve no doubt that’s by design – this almost feels like a coffee table book in some respects; something you pick up and thumb through when you’ve got a few minutes to spare. I wish there was more of it, though that’s something that I think about every Hardinge story, and I’m assuming she just wanted a change of pace after the intricacy and complex plotting of her other books.

Monstress: Volume 8 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

I’ll admit it, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in these books at this point, though my understanding of their hugely convoluted plot was always a bit tenuous. How is it possible to enjoy a graphic novel this much while simultaneously being unable to make heads or tails of it? Unclear.

But I’m still very much enjoying Monstress, even though there’s still no end in sight. Maika Halfwolf has been separated from her inner child (who is now just a free-roaming spirit of some kind, trying to make contact with her friends, a talking cat and a little girl with fox ears) and is trapped in a prison-like dimension as a floating dismembered head. Sure, why not?

To elaborate, our collection of main characters are trapped on a prison planet, kind of like the Phantom Zone, where the Monstra species have been held for centuries (a Monstra is the funky looking guy on the cover with the one eye and the tentacles). Due to the prolonged trauma she’s sustained, Maika has been divided from the spirit of the little girl she used to be, who is currently searching for Ren (the aforementioned talking cat) and Kippa (little fox girl) in an attempt to bring them all back together and escape. I think. Like I said, I’m really not sure what’s going on here.

Ren has found some members of his own species that want to piggy-back on his prison break (and the character designs for these guys are awesome – a cat with a mohawk, pierced ears, intricate armour and a machine gun is a sight to behold) while Kippa is desperately trying to reach Maika, still on the path to self-destruction (more so, considering she’s just a floating head at this point).

As ever, Takeda’s artwork is incredible: the colours, the details, the expressions, the vibrancy. I probably would have quit long ago if it wasn’t for her astounding talent filling every page and panel of these books, and she can make anything – no matter how absurd it sounds, from the floating head to the talking cats – look real and grounded. You can even see the exhaustion in the characters’ faces: these women have been hanging on by a thread for a while now, and are in deep need of a long rest.

Which means we are hopefully heading towards a definitive conclusion to this series, mostly because I’m looking forward to starting a reread and perhaps gaining some sort of clarity about what it’s all been about from the start. Marjorie Liu has already begun two new projects, The Night Eaters with Takeda and Wingbearer with Teny Issakhanian – surely that’s a sign that she’s getting ready to wrap this up, right? However long it takes, I’m in too deep to back out now.

Cat’s Cradle: The Mole King’s Lair by Jo Rioux

I loved the first instalment of Cat’s Cradle, and was looking even more forward to its sequel after reading (then immediately buying) Rioux’s The Daughter of Ys, but as much as I love the characters and artwork of The Mole King’s Lair, there’s big “when do they get to the fireworks factory?” energy with this one.

As per the final pages of the previous book, Suri the self-appointed monster tamer is off to earn her keep by traveling to the Monster’s Cradle beyond the mountain range known as the Dragon’s Belt, the place where all monsters come from. She never reaches it in this book.

Instead, she’s waylaid by a giant mole-creature on the way, taking refuge in what turns out to be a cave network filled with similar creatures. With her is Caglio, a sneaky little imp, and Bryon, the giant dog, who all get separated once they’re inside the caves. Also introduced in this book is Koyla, who (unbeknownst to Suri) is one of the catsith, a feline-like creature that can appear as human. Hiding his true identity, he forms a quasi-friendship with Suri, but dances a little around Caglio, who suspects who he really is and leverages it for his own benefit.

In the book’s subplot, a trio of these catsith (the ones from the first book, who are desperately hunting for the ball of golden twine in Suri’s possession) have thrown in their lot with a prince and his retinue, hiding their true identities – though not very well – and using their influence to convince villagers that an expedition into the mountain in search of its treasure will be beneficial to all...

As ever, I adore Rioux’s artwork. Highly reminiscent of Cartoon Saloon’s distinctive style, her characters are bursting with life and energy and expression. Her colour palette isn’t quite as vivid this time around, as a lot of the action takes place in the puce and gloom of the underground caves – though I did like the blue/green crystals that grow organically like mushrooms down there. As for the story... let’s just say that the next book in the series is called Suri’s Dragon, and I really hope there’s an actual dragon in it.

Baba Yaga’s Assistant by Marika McCoola and Emily Carroll

I’ve read this one before, but naturally had to return to it thanks to my Slavic Fantasy reading project and general love of Emily Carroll. Masha has been raised on stories of Baba Yaga by her grandmother, and so is stunned to notice an advertisement in the local paper that’s seemingly from the old witch herself, searching for an assistant.

Her widowed father is remarrying, and Masha is somewhat reticent about it, though it’s her future little stepsister Danielle who puts up the real fuss. Fed up with the whole thing, Masha heads to the woods to answer the wanted ad, and ends up running into the famed house with chicken legs. Armed with meta-knowledge of how fairy tales work, specifically the ones involving Baba Yaga, she begins her apprenticeship in her strange new home, undergoing three tests to prove her worth.

Emily Carroll’s illustrations are the real drawcard here, and she’s perfectly matched to this type of story. A little tamer than her work in Through the Woods and A Guest in the House, she still captures the dark edges of the fairy tale and the very real danger that Masha is in. There are even some fun visuals, like the artwork changing to a more simplistic style when it’s depicting the original Baba Yaga stories in Masha’s storybook, or a bottle of spilled ink that splashes all over the panels on the opposite page, obscuring everything but Baba Yaga’s angry face as a speech bubble from the blackness tells her “nothing is too difficult or too dirty to clean.”

And Baba Yaga herself is exactly as she should be: mercurial, tricky, demanding, terrifying and wise. Definitely enjoyed this one.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Chris Riddell

Having watched the 2015 movie of The Little Prince (see below) I obviously had to come back to the original text to see how the two compared. I’ve read the story before, and recall being a little bemused by it all, but this edition was illustrated by Chris Riddell, who was apparently invited to do so after being involved with Martin Oelbermann’s stage production of the story.

An unnamed aviator (who purports to be the book’s author) crash lands in the Sahara Desert, and is astonished to discover he’s not alone. A young boy who introduces himself as the Little Prince approaches him and asks for a picture of a lamb, for he’d like one to eat the Baobab trees that grow in such profusion upon his asteroid. Unable to draw one to the boy’s liking, the aviator eventually draws a crate and tells his companion that the lamb is inside it – something the Prince is immensely satisfied with.

That’s the thesis of this strange, whimsical story – that the most important things remain unseen. As a child, you’ll probably take the Rose, the Fox and the Snake in your stride, but as an adult, they contain echoes of lost love, departed friends, and the spectre of death always on the horizon. In other words, you’ll look back and realize that this book really messed with you when you were a kid, but you didn’t notice until you were much older.

Riddell doesn’t stint on the illustrations: there’s one per page, often full-length, and occasionally depicting the exact same scene or character from a slightly different angle. But his quirky style works well with the material, from the little prince’s angelic face, to the grotesquerie of the grown-ups he meets, to the details added to the various asteroids – I particularly liked the tiny floating boat pulled by two large birds on the prince’s journeys through space, as well as the cross-section of his home within the hollowed-out asteroid.

Riddell mentions in his foreword how intimidating it was to replace Saint-Exupéry’s own iconic illustrations, though I suppose he had precedence, having illustrated two new editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass just prior to The Little Prince. In any case, I don’t think an illustrative “face-lift” does any damage to the story (though you do want to read the original edition at some point). If anything, it gives you a chance to experience the familiar tale from a different angle and with fresh eyes.

And if that sounds like an endorsement of live-action remakes – it isn’t. Books are different, end of story.

Kristy’s Mystery Admirer by Anne M. Martin

I had this book as a child, only for it to meet an unfortunate end, so it was nice to catch up with it all these years later – even if it’s a repeat of Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery, right down to the fact that it’s Cokie and her mean girl squad who are writing creepy letters to girls in the Babysitters Club.

In any case, Kristy is chilling at home when she gets a call from across-the-road neighbour and back-up babysitter Shannon, who tells her that a letter has been dropped in her letterbox that’s addressed to Kristy. She comes around to hand it over, and the girls are excited to realize it’s a love letter from persons unknown. Everyone is convinced it’s from Bart, though Kristy isn’t sure.

Over the next few weeks, as Kristy prepares the Krushers for an important match against the Bashers, she receives more notes – which then take a turn for the sinister. The whole thing is resolved when she confronts Bart and he admits to sending the nice ones (the reason the first letter was in Shannon’s letterbox was because Bart sent his little brother to post it, and he got the houses mixed up) while Cokie is revealed as responsible for the creepy ones after she caught a glimpse of them in the school cafeteria while Kristy was showing her friends.

She and her posse turn up at one of the Krusher/Basher games, and Kristy has a very stilted conversation with her that’s solely designed as a lead-up to Cokie quoting one of the scary notes. Kristy is completely out of character when she brags about having a boyfriend and says: “We plan to spend our lives together,” at which point Cokie replies: “aw, that’s nice. Eternal togetherness?” This gives the game away since Kristy recognizes the phrase from one of the notes, but c’mon. People just don’t talk like this.

Here are some other weird issues. First of all, why they called it Kristy’s Mystery Admirer instead of Kristy’s SECRET Admirer is a mystery for the ages – every time I tried to look it up online the search engine got deeply confused, as I was typing in the wrong title.

Secondly, in her introduction to Shannon, Kristy informs us: “Shannon told me once that she wants a nose job – to straighten it out – but her parents say no. They aren’t strict. They just think she should wait until she’s an adult before she makes a decision like that.” Um, why does this comment need the disclaimer: “they aren’t strict”? I’d say that parents forbidding their underage daughter from undergoing permanent facial plastic surgery is an entirely reasonable stance to take.   

Thirdly, when Kristy points out to Shannon that a girlmight have written the notes since the all the is are dotted with hearts, she replies: “A girl who wants to go steady with you? Kristy, grow up.” I guess lesbians didn’t exist in Stoneybrook back in the nineties.

Later, the Krushers and the Bashers decide to hold a “World Series” match but since they’re comprised of two teams that only play each other, I fail to see how it’s any different from all the other games they hold. And having received the creepy love notes, Kristy floats the possibility that some nutjob is out to kidnap her because she’s Watson’s stepdaughter and he’s a wealthy man, which ignores the fact they’re more likely to go after his actual children, and that kidnappers aren’t exactly wont to send a victim multiple threats to put their guard up and provide ample opportunity to contact the police before they nab you.

Also, she decides not to tell her mum and stepfather what’s going on because “they might think I was crazy.” Even though she’s got physical proof of threatening letters! And if the world’s greatest babysitter really DOES think a psycho is out there, isn’t she putting Karen and Andrew in danger by NOT saying anything?

This book also marks the THIRD Halloween that has passed in these books, which means that the older girls should collectively be coming up on their fifteenth birthdays. Claudia and the Phantom Phone Caller was the year they (explicitly) went from twelve to thirteen and Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery (implicitly) from thirteen to fourteen. They even talk about the events of Bad Luck Mystery like it happened the previous year, yet they remain in chronological stasis.

Finally, I’m pretty sure this book runs parallel to the Little Sister book that was published at the same time – Kristy mentions that Karen and her friends are going trick-or-treating as the characters from The Wizard of Oz, and during one their sleepovers it’s mentioned that Karen wakes up from a nightmare. My memories are vague, but I’m pretty sure Karen’s Ghost relates these things from Karen’s point-of-view. In any case, it makes for a cute crossover).

It all culminates in a dance at the Halloween Hop, to which Kristy and Bart go in giant lobster costumes, leading to this comment during a slow dance: “I had a feeling that I wasn’t getting the full effect of things, what with those layers of foam between us.”

It’s a crazy-funny book, is what I’m saying. The girls leap to insane conclusions, nothing makes any sense, and the solution to the mystery is obvious from the get-go. But hey, it was nice to get a bit of coverage for Shannon, who proves herself to be a pretty good friend after the events of Kristy and the Snobs. On pondering the possibility that Bart is sending the notes to put Kristy off her game during the World Series, there’s a cute exchange between the girls in which the following is said:

Kristy: “If that’s what Bart is doing, that is really... that is despicable!” Shannon: “I know. I agree. I refused to speak to him in school today.” Kristy: “Thank you.” Heh, that’s female solidarity for you!

Poor Mallory! by Anne M. Martin

Her plight is so grave, it gets an exclamation mark. As has been foreshadowed in the books for a while now, Mr Pike is on the brink of losing his job as a lawyer, and the hammer finally falls in this book. The company he works for is downsized and the Pikes are thrown into mild turmoil. Mrs Pike starts to do some work as a temp, requiring Mallory to babysit her siblings on a regular basis (for free) and the Pike kids brainstorm ways of saving and/or earning money in order to help their parents out.

The Babysitters Club comes to the rescue by offering Mallory all the babysitting jobs she can take, including an afterschool job at the Delaney residence, which was originally scheduled for Kristy. They even find a way to incorporate Mallory into Charlie’s timetable when it comes to taking Kristy to and from club meetings, since she’ll be babysitting in Kristy’s neighbourhood.

But unlike the cover art and blurb would have you believe, Mallory isn’t particularly fazed by the wealth of the Delaney family. Instead, the story creates a parallel between the two households, in which some of the Pike kids (including Mallory) are bullied at school because their father has lost his job, while the Delaney siblings struggle with the fact that although they’re popular, a lot of the neighbourhood kids are only being friendly with them in order to take advantage of their new swimming pool.

How do they know? Because every time Amanda or Max get tired of the pool and want to do something else, the babysitters find themselves in a predicament: do they order the other children to get out of the pool or do they tell the Delaney siblings they have to continue with what the greater number of visitors want to do? Turns out that guest rights aren’t as sacred as they used to be, as the babysitters think that because it’s the Delaneys’ house, they have the right to decide on the activities. At which point, a lot of the other kids simply leave.

So both Mallory and Amanda, on opposite ends of the financial spectrum, find out who their real friends are. This series is usually incredibly bad with these types of false equivalences, but this one... is not as bad as usual. At least no one is comparing their plight to racism.

By the end of the story Mr Pike has found a new job (though not before becoming a layabout in the middle chapters, where he just watches television and gets increasingly surly at his million kids) and it’s all’s well that ends well. There’s not really a lot to say about this one, aside from all the very weird slang, from “dibbly” to “distant” to “stale”.  At one point Adam Pike says: “I’m gonna blow cookies!” Er... what?? Big “fetch” energy here.

Also, the whole thing ends with one of the famous Babysitters Club sleepovers, in which the girls decide to prank call Mallory’s classist bullies. The most notable thing about this is that Mary Anne totally commits to a very elaborate series of calls concerning a pig farm and the whereabouts of the pigs, which culminates in her weeping down the telephone – which to me, is just proof that this girl can fake!cry convincingly on cue.

The Harvest by Richie Tankersley Cusick

Yes, along with my great rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m also attempting to track down as many of the tie-in novels as I can, just to get the full immersive experience. Once upon a time, popular television shows would regularly release cheap paperbacks based on their characters and premises. Not strictly canon, but not fanfiction either, they were a way to get a fix of your favourite show during any hiatus (whether weekly or seasonal).

The first one would always be a novelization of the pilot episode (it happened for Charmed, Sabrina, Angel, Roswell, and I’m pretty sure Smallville as well) but after that they were a great way of enjoying tie-in stories that could stretch the budget a bit, with more elaborate settings and monsters that could only ever exist on the page. Some even took the opportunity to fill in the narrative gaps left in the show itself – I’m pretty sure an upcoming book explains how exactly the Master came to be trapped inside that underground church.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, since this is book is a straightforward translation of the scripts “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Harvest” – nothing more, nothing less. The only bits of interest that you couldn’t glean from just watching the show is mention of the fact that the Master was originally a man called Henrich Joseph Nest and a tiny foreword that states: “Virginia, 1866: The frequent disappearance of local Civil War widows shocked an already grieving community. These events ended when Lucy Hanover arrived in town. Chicago, May 1927: Forty-one bodies were found near Union Station. Shortly after the arrival of a certain young woman, the mysterious murders stopped.”

You know, one of my greatest disappointments in the show was that they never explored the lives of Slayers prior to Buffy in any great detail. I’d give ANYTHING to learn more about Lucy Hanover – though a quick Google search tells me she comes up quite a lot in the expanded universe of novels and comics. Something to look forward to...

One last thing, I’ve had this book for years, but only just realized that it was penned by Richie Tankersley Cusick, one of the big teen pulp horror writers of the eighties/nineties. Small world.

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve

Philip Reeve is one of my all-time favourite authors, even though his most famous books are slightly outside my preferred-genre wheelhouse. The Mortal Engines series and the Railhead trilogy are fantastic, but are also dystopian and science-fiction, respectively. So just imagine my reaction when I found out his latest book was not only fantasy, but bore the enthralling title of Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep.

Then I learnt that “Utterly Dark” was the name of its protagonist. Then I saw that stunning cover art. THEN I discovered that it was the first of a trilogy, continuing with Utterly Dark and the Heart of the Wild and Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time.

Reeve doesn’t know this, but he definitely wrote these books for me. Absolutely everything about them caters perfectly to my tastes, interests and aesthetics. They are my books. As such, the first one was at the top of my reading list for my annual leave, and with its emphasis on rugged coastlines, isolated watchtowers, faraway islands and churning ocean currents, it made for perfect seasonal reading material. I could almost smell the brine and taste the salt in the air.

When Utterly Dark was just an infant, she was washed up on the shores of Wildsea Island, the westernmost knub of land in the small archipelago known as the Autumn Isles. There she was found and taken in by Andrewe Dark, the Watcher on Wildsea, whose solemn duty is to ascend the tower of Sundown Watch every day without fail and scan the sea for any sightings of the Hidden Isles.

These isles are shrouded in myth and legend – all anyone really knows is that centuries ago, a terrible creature known as the Gorm rose from the waters and rampaged across the land until she was driven back only by Andrewe’s forefather and his ancestral sword. Since then, there has always been a Watcher on Wildsea.

This is why the entire community is thrown into a tailspin when Andrewe Dark is found drowned on the beach, his pockets full of stones. Utterly has no idea if Andrewe took his own life, or why he might have done so if he did, but while everyone waits for his brother Will to be fetched from London society to resume his position as the next Watcher, Utterly takes it upon herself to do the job in the interim. Climbing the stairs to the watchtower each night, she begins to uncover some of her foster-father’s secrets, which suggest that the Hidden Isles might not be as inaccessible to humankind as everyone has been led to believe…

As ever, the story unwinds in Reeve’s exceptional prose, which is such a joy to read, whether it’s the elderly Mr and Mrs Skraeveling being described as “a short, kindly, sturdy pair, who had been married for so long that they had come to resemble each other like matching salt and pepper pots” to the experience of being on the ocean: “they floated in silence for a while, rising and falling… there was a rhythm to it, as if they were resting on the chest of an immense and gently breathing animal… all around them the big waves shone like hills of shining ice.”

The characters are wonderful too, from the wise troll-woman Aish, to the out-of-his-depth Will Dark, to the wonderfully deranged sea-witch Thurza Froy, to Utterly herself: tenacious, determined, curious, brave and clever – as befits any Reeve-written heroine. Then of course, there’s the Gorm, who comes straight out of a Lovecraftian tome on ancient leviathans, but with a couple of surprises in store.

The best writers know that it’s not just the telling of a story, but the way in which it’s told that makes for a great reading experience – the gradual unravelling of mysteries, the insights as to how characters view themselves and the world they inhabit, the descriptive prose that brings everything to life. Reeve never fails in this regard. On to Utterly Dark and the Heart of the Wild.

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

This was not the first time I’ve read King of Scars, but it is the first time I’ve read it in the correct chronological order. For some reason, I first read the Shadow and Bone trilogy back in 2014 and then went straight to King of Scars in 2019, skipping the Six of Crows duology. This ended up spoiling a lot of the plot points found in Six of Crows, most particularly in regards to Nina and Matthias’s love story, which is picked up here in order to deal with its aftermath. So yeah, I was completely spoiled as to Matthias’s fate when I eventually picked up Six of Crows.

That said, I’m glad to be finally able to read this ongoing story in the proper order, as Leigh Bardugo has crafted what can be rightfully called an epic by this point. High politics, grand romances, socio-economic landscapes, countries on the brink of war... it’s all here, and it actually fits in beautifully with what’s gone before. She takes the stories of Prince Nikolai and Zoya from the original trilogy and weaves them in with Nina Zenik’s undercover adventures in Fjerda, exploring the ongoing conflict between the nations and everyone’s attempts – on several different fronts – to alleviate them.

At the end of Ruin and Rising, Nikolai was infected by a scrap of the Darkling’s power, which is now manifesting as a terrible winged creature that his closest associates can barely keep under control. Only Zoya’s constant vigilance has kept it at bay so far. Meanwhile in Fjerda, Nina is working undercover as a simple factory worker to smuggle Grisha out of the country, but on hearing some strange rumours about disappearing girls, she follows them to their source: a factory on the outskirts of a remote village.

There are some other links to the previous books. One of Nina’s fellow spies is the young girl that Jesper’s mother died for, after healing her from poisoned well water but absorbing too much of it into her own system. Nina also meets a young woman at a local convent who ends up being the daughter of a significant enemy in Six of Crows (which is a bit of a contrivance in my opinion, but never mind) and about halfway through the story, another point-of-view character joins the groupchat; a guard at the palace who is called in to impersonate Nikolai while he’s indisposed (no spoilers).

There’s stuff to like and stuff that I’m fairly neutral about. Nina coping with her grief and the insurmountable-ness of it all is gripping stuff, and Bardugo captures the inner landscape of a girl who loves life, but can’t see an end to her own suffering. The only problem is that it’s so far removed from the rest of the story set in Ravka, and though I’m sure events will intersect in the next book, it still made for a sharp shift in gears every time we returned to her.

The stuff in Nikolai’s chapters are more interesting, as he struggles to keep the kingdom afloat, grapple with the monster inside him, juggle the dozens of opposing factions both in and out of the country, ignore his growing feelings for Zoya, and discover the mystery behind why so many miracles are occurring all over Ravka – and why they seem to be pointing to what remains of the Shadow Fold.

In many ways this character was treated as a magic bullet at the conclusion of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, so it’s rewarding to see that healing Ravka wasn’t just as simple as putting the right king on the throne. Getting it was half the battle, now he has to settle into the lifelong business of keeping (and deserving) it.

Bardugo also delves into her own world-building on the subject of the Grisha and merzost. I’ll admit I never fully got my head around certain concepts like the Small Science and “the making at the heart” of the world and the amplifiers, but it’s interesting to see where she takes some of the characters in regards to their abilities, and how it’s all linked to the discovery of jurda parem and its effect on Grisha powers. You really feel like this world is on the brink of irrevocable change, for better or worse. And it’s almost adorable watching her justify the fact that Grisha are called “Gregs” by introducing an ancient saint called Grigori and establishing that they’re named after him in honour of his teachings.

As ever, some of the witty repartee between the characters can become wearying (people just don’t talk like this, and a lot of it isn’t that clever anyway) and it ends on a cliff-hanger that makes me a little apprehensive about what the next book is going to be about, but the truth is that I’m invested in this world and the people that inhabit it. Since Shadow and Bone’s publication, YA has been flooded with books based on Slavic/Russian culture, but Bardugo’s world-building has always been solid and her characters lovable. I want to see them all get out the other side of this.

Mirrormask (2005)

This was the last movie I watched on my very last day of annual leave, though it felt nice revisiting it after so long (and I’m slightly amazed that I’ve never written about it on this blog before). It wasn’t until recently that I found out it was conceived as a Spiritual Successor to the likes of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, though with computer animation instead of puppetry (I kind of wish they’d stuck with the puppetry).

You can see its inspiration in Labyrinth in particular, as each involve a young girl traversing a fantasyland made from her own subconscious on a quest to right a wrong she committed in the waking world, learning more about herself and relationships in the process. In this case, our Sarah is now Helena (Stephanie Leonidas), who is fed up with life in the circus (“I want to run away and join the real world!”) and makes a cruel comment to her mother right before she collapses with a brain aneurism (or something, I don’t think they ever clarify what’s wrong with her).

On the night before her mother’s operation, Helena falls into a deep sleep and “wakes up” to the sound of violin music. Investigating the block of flats she’s staying in with her grandmother, she runs into three masked performers, who quickly scatter at the arrival of a strange shadow. Following the sole survivor, Helena finds herself in a world that appears to be made entirely out of the pictures she’s drawn and hung on her bedroom wall. Whenever she peeks through a window, she finds herself looking at her own room.

But this City of Light is under threat from those aforementioned shadows. Learning that the White Queen (who looks just like her mother, and is also played by Gina McKee) has fallen ill and the charm to wake her has been stolen by a Dark Princess (no prizes for who she’s played by) Helena sets off from the White City to the Darklands, on her very own quest to save the day.

It’s a pretty engaging trip down the rabbit hole, though I wish it had spent a little more time on its world-building. In this, it is the exact inverse to The Dark Crystal, which had fantastic world-building, but very little character work. Here, the likes of Helena and her parents, not to mention the various doppelgangers and her quasi-love interest Valentine, an Irish juggler who accompanies her on her quest, are vividly rendered, but the world in which they inhabit slightly... fuzzy is the only word I can think of to describe it.

Granted, this may be because the whole thing is set in Helena’s dreamscape, and rendered in now-rather-dated CGI. But aside from doubling-up on certain actors to play different versions of the same character (much like in The Wizard of Oz, or the character of Mr Darling in performances of Peter Pan) there’s not a lot of connective tissue between the two worlds. It’s clearly made up of Helena’s drawings, and based on her guilt that she’s the cause of her mother’s sudden illness, but certain places and creatures seem to have no real-world parallel, or to have any reason to exist beyond making for a cool visual. It also lags in a couple of places: the cat lady, the monkeybirds, the floating giants that are completely inaudible (I think they said something important, but I’ve no idea what it might be).

The script was penned by Neil Gaiman, and it’s got his trademarks all over it – riddles, books, wordplay, fairy tale quests, mythological creatures... now that I think about it, there’s a generous dose of Coraline in here too, especially with the Dark Queen embodying the role of a controlling, imperious Beloved Smother. His interests go well with director and artist Dave McKean’s style, who created all the drawings and designs that feature so heavily throughout the film – even if they’re a bit too surreal for my liking.

The likes of Stephen Fry, Lenny Henry, and Robert Llewellyn also lend their voices to a couple of cameo characters, and there’s some fun material when it comes to Valentine (especially his final appearance, sans mask). And there’s something charming about the fact that this was obviously made on a very limited budget.

Song of the Sea (2014)

For my birthday, I treated myself to a rewatch of this, one of my favourite films of all time. And much like Utterly Dark, it feels like it was made for me personally. I’ve also discussed it at length in another post, and can’t really think of anything to say that hasn’t already been said in great detail – just that it’s a gorgeous film on so many levels: the artistry, the themes, the voiceovers, the plotting... it really is the closest thing to perfection I’ve ever seen.

What I can say is that my very restless two-and-a-half-year-old nephew was engrossed by this for well over half the run-time before he finally wriggled out of my lap and went to play with his trucks. Granted, that might be because my sister is very good at managing his screentime, which means that he’s always pretty captivated by the television when it’s on regardless of what he’s watching, but I like to think bits of this film have buried themselves into his subconscious. As formative stories go, you can’t go wrong with this one.

When Marnie Was There (2014)

Joan Robinson’s When Marnie Was There is a book that could have been adapted in one of only two ways: by the BBC in the eighties, of grainy visual quality with a miniscule budget, or by Studio Ghibli. Don’t ask me to explain this, but if you ever get around to reading the original 1967 novel, you’ll hopefully understand what I mean.

Studio Ghibli’s take on Robinson’s material is fascinating, as it’s an incredibly faithful translation of the story from page to screen... only it takes its original setting in Norfolk, England and changes it to Japan's Hokkaido prefecture. The food, clothing and culture is clearly Japanese, and yet it also can’t shed its distinctively English spirit in a way that’s hard to explain.

All this vagueness and prevaricating in my review is actually a testament to the story’s ambiance, which is dreamy and soft and unknowable. Anna is a self-loathing young girl struggling at school, who is eventually sent away to live with relatives on the seafront, where it’s hoped she’ll come out of her shell. She fits in quite nicely with her foster mother’s sister and brother-in-law, but grows rather ornery when it comes to other children her age.

There’s nothing wrong with her exactly, she’s just socially awkward and likes her own company. While on a solo jaunt through the marshlands she spots a beautiful old mansion across the water, and is instantly transfixed by its grandeur. Though it seems abandoned and dilapidated, she returns the following evening to find it filled with light and warmth – and meets a young girl called Marnie.

In the strange liminal space between day and night, land and water, the two become fast friends – though it’s obvious to any viewer that there’s something strange about Marnie and how she can appear and disappear so abruptly. Anna is just happy to have finally found someone she can talk to, and as the days roll by, the girls start to confide in each other.

(In fact, the vibe is downright Sapphic at times – they slow dance on the lawn, go on sunset boat rides, hold hands and talk earnestly into each other’s faces. At one point Anna gets visibly jealous when Marnie starts paying attention to a boy. And yet, it’s not remotely what the film is going for, as the reveal makes obvious).

I don’t want to give too much of it away, so suffice to say that this is a deliberately slow and dreamy film, beautifully animated and scored, which gradually unfolds the meaning of the girls’ encounters and the reason behind them. It’s uplifting and bittersweet, and nobody but Studio Ghibli could have had the patience and skill to do it justice. Essentially, one of those films that you can’t believe even exists. Now ten years old, it’s safe to say that even at the time of its release, you don’t see them like this anymore.

The Little Prince (2015)

This film completed my “birthday trilogy,” as along with Song of the Sea and When Marnie Was There, these three films just seem to go together despite being made by different studios (I also could have thrown in Kubo and the Two Strings if I’d had time). There’s something about the animation, the pacing, the subject matter, the general vibes, that puts one in mind of the others.

Of course, this is definitely the weakest of the three, taking the famous story of The Little Prince and placing it within a larger framing narrative, which (in its third act) also purports to be a sequel to Saint-Exupéry’s original story. It doesn’t always work, and you’re definitely going to need familiarity with the book to appreciate what this film does, but I’ll always prefer an experiment to a formula when it comes to storytelling.

The big problem is that The Little Prince is an allegorical musing on the nature of life and death. The Rose represents the burden of love, the Fox the complexities of friendship, the Snake the kiss of death. The story in this film is about a little girl reclaiming her childhood and learning to moderate her mother’s high expectations of her. Sure, there’s a lot about how grown-ups are foolish and that the clock is ticking on the Aviator’s lifespan, but it still doesn’t mesh tonally with how Saint-Exupéry handled this material.

They even hold off on explicitly depicting the Aviator’s death, despite setting up for it throughout the story... not that I can really blame them, since the death of a major character really wouldn’t have gone with their new “stay in touch with your inner child” theme.

A Little Girl who is never given a name botches her application to a prestigious school, leading to her Mother putting them under financial strain in order to move the two of them into the schooling zone. The Girl’s entire life, right down to the minute, has been mapped out for her in a “life plan,” and the crushing restrictions of this schedule means that a wayward paper plane comes as an unwelcome distraction... then a compelling mystery.

It was thrown by the Girl’s next-door neighbour, an eccentric old man who is (as is very heavily implied) the Aviator and author of The Little Prince, who is now trying to pass his story on to someone before his own death. He introduces the Little Girl to adventure and imagination, but of course it’s only a matter of time before this gets her into serious trouble with her mother, who wants her to stick to her life plan.

Strewn throughout the film are stop-motion sequences of the original Little Prince story, in which he grows his Rose and meets his Fox and is eventually bitten by a Snake – but they’re so truncated that they can’t convey the full richness of meaning and poignancy that Saint-Exupéry’s story captures.

The film’s third act is a dream-like sequence in which the Little Girl apparently flies into the world of the Little Prince and ends up interacting with several of its characters (the king, the conceited man) in slightly skewered circumstances, before meeting the Prince himself, who is now a young man working a menial job as a chimney sweep in a grimy city. By saving him, she’ll... save herself? The Aviator? Her relationship with her mother? It’s not really clear what’s at stake.

Like Kubo and the Two Strings, it gets close, so close, to something truly transcendent, but whereas Kubo tripped right at the finish line, The Little Prince can’t quite keep track of what it’s trying to say.

And yet, it’s well worth the watch. The animation is beautiful, particularly when it moves into stop-motion for the retelling of The Little Prince, and there are some beautiful narrative echoes throughout: the use of the word “essential,” the Fox as a soft toy in the real world, the vacuum cleaner full of paper stars that’s paralleled by the glass case where the businessman hoards real stars to power his city, and the Little Girl getting a glimpse of the city early on in one of the snow globes her absent father sends to her.

The voice cast is stacked, though I wouldn’t have twigged half of them – Rachel McAdams in particular is unrecognizable as the Mother, though it’s a beautifully realized character. Obviously putting too much pressure on her daughter, she’s nevertheless doing so out of genuine love, not to mention fear given that the two of them have been abandoned by their partner/father. And she’s a good mother – she never raises her voice or gets angry or blames the Little Girl for things beyond her control.

Also present are Jeff Bridges, Mackenzie Foy, Marion Cotillard, James Franco, Benicio Del Toro, Ricky Gervais, Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti – !!! Some of these big names are only in tiny roles, and the likes of Gervais, Rudd and Franco are genuinely unrecognizable. Well, Gervais isn’t, but he’s surprisingly subtle as the conceited man.

The whole thing feels like it was written with so much care and thoughtfulness, so much so that it’s strange it botched the delivery. That said, I enjoyed it much more watching it for the second time. Sometimes imperfections can make something much more loveable and memorable, which is a message that goes well with a story like The Little Prince.

Cocaine Bear (2023)

Much like Snakes on a Plane, this is a movie that aims for cult classic status while not realizing that such things cannot be engineered. They simply are. Based on a true story in which a black bear found some cocaine dropped in a forest, consumed it, and immediately died, this is a paint-by-numbers B-movie in which a drug dealer jettisons his stash out of a plane (not sure why, as if he was planning to retrieve them, the packages would have been spread over miles of territory) and tries to parachute to safety, only to knock himself out and plummet to his death.

Fun fact: this guy was played by Matthew Rhys, who is married to Kerri Russell and whom I’m currently watching as Perry Mason in the HBO show of the same name.

Various characters end up converging in a national park in Georgia, either drawn by an attempt to retrieve the cocaine or for some other reason: a cop trying to track down some local hooligans, a drug-dealer trying to bring his grieving friend back into the fold on the behest of his drug lord father, and a couple of pre-teen kids who ditch school in order to go hiking in the wilderness. Throw in some park rangers, some paramedics, and a harried mother chasing after her child, it’s a smorgasbord of potential run-ins with a bear that’s high on cocaine. Predictable chaos ensues.

But for this to be a successful B-movie, it needed to be less glossy, less slick. The acting should have been genuinely shit, not accomplished performers hamming it up. There should have been entire subplots that went nowhere and meant nothing. The fairly impressive CGI effects on the titular character should have been a guy in a bear suit. The weirdness needed to be organically weird, not deliberately weird.

For the record, the true story is that in 1985, a black bear did indeed consume about seventy pounds of cocaine before dying. It was thrown out of a plane by drug smuggler Andrew Thornton, a former lawyer, narcotics police officer, and the son of wealthy Kentucky horse breeders, who did indeed die when he hit his head on the aircraft hatch and failed to open his parachute. He was found in a neighbourhood driveway in Knoxville wearing night vision goggles and Gucci loafers. The bear was nicknamed Pablo Eskobear and its taxidermized body is now a tourist attraction in a mercantile store in Kentucky. The truth really is stranger than fiction.

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

20th Century Studios must have cackled with glee when they realized they had the first post-Oscar Michelle Yeoh movie on their schedule, even if she DOES get killed off pretty early in.

In a time when franchises are getting culled left, right and centre, it’s a minor miracle that this one has made it to a third instalment, even with a rather lacklustre Kenneth Branagh as Poirot (though anyone would naturally pale in comparison to the great David Suchet).

Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile were two no-brainers when it came to movie adaptations of Christie’s novels: ensemble casts, famous plot-twists and (most importantly) exotic locations. Yes, I’m going to use the word “exotic” because that’s very much how Istanbul and Egypt are treated in the novels themselves: as strange and somewhat eerie locales where anything can happen.

It’s no coincidence that both have been adapted for the big screen before, because they translate very well to blockbuster material. A cozy mystery in a faraway land. So, what to do with a potential third instalment of this particular series? There’s Murder in Mesopotamia, set in a self-evident location, or Appointment with Death, set in Jerusalem. But through decisions unknown, they decided to take the plot of Hallowe’en Party and transpose it to Venice.

Now, my recollections of reading Hallowe’en Party are a little fuzzy, but I’m extremely certain that its plot bore virtually no resemblance to the story that’s contained here. The book involved a little girl who claimed to have seen a murder, and a strange Edenic-like garden, and a murderer who was most definitely a man... none of which is the case in this version of events. The only similarity is that a murder is attempted by shoving a person’s head into an apple-bobbling basin.

All that said, the film is stylish enough to pass muster, and what more do you really want from one of these things? The ensemble is not as stacked as you’d expect, as I only recognized Kelly Reilly, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh out of the half-dozen or so suspects, but they make the most of the location, with canals and gondolas and crumbling mansions and thunderstorms a-plenty.

Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver might raise a few eyebrows – not only because she’s now an American (the original was clearly an Expy of Christie herself) but proves herself to be rather two-faced in her friendship with Poirot about halfway through the proceedings. Where’s poor Bouc when you need him?

It remains to be seen whether Branagh will get a fourth outing as Poirot, but even though I can’t say I totally love these adaptations (they’re too frothy for that) I kinda hope they’ll continue. They’re fun, what more can I say?

Nancy Drew: Season 3 (2021 – 2022)

The first two seasons of Nancy Drew were entertaining enough, albeit rather kooky (even by CW standards) though I’m afraid season three lost me a bit. It was always a strange choice for the show to add a supernatural element to the proceedings, but its decision to model itself on Buffy the Vampire Slayer paid off when it came to assembling the best Scooby Gang since the actual Scoobies. The dynamic between Nancy, Bess, George, Ned (or Nick) and Ace has been the show’s main drawcard, with various friendship/romance dynamics branching out all over the place. Everyone has great chemistry, and for a core cast of five, every character manages to have a unique and meaningful relationship with everyone else.

Unfortunately, the storylines go a bit off the rails this season, and you can tell there were some difficulties behind-the-scenes when an abrupt cast change of the overarching villain takes place (they handwave it with magic, and even manage to give it a certain emotional gravity, but it’s obviously something they hadn’t prepared for).

I also couldn’t tell you anything about the plot itself. There’s a witch in town called Temperance Hudson, who is one of Nancy’s ancestors with a plan to resurrect her dead daughter. There’s also something called the “Frozen Hearts Killer” on the loose, who kills his victims by... well, freezing their hearts. These two are connected somehow (I think the Frozen Hearts Killer was once in love with Temperance’s daughter? Maybe?) and are running around the town, murdering the direct descendants of everyone who holds a piece of Charity Hudson’s split-soul in their bodies.

I think. It’s all very convoluted. If you’re going to watch this show, it’s not for the lore. Instead, enjoy Nancy’s circle of friends, her two dads, her relationship to the community, and how they all interact with each other. Not to mention the fact that this show provides Scott Wolf with a steady pay check. I’m not trying to be a dickhead, it’s genuinely nice to see him after so long. He even gets to a enjoy an episode in which his character mistakenly takes a de-aging potion which makes him act like a teenage boy again. I’m not kidding.

Evil: Season 3 (2022)

Like Nancy Drew, this show stumbles a little in its third outing, though it still maintains its manic energy when it comes to the portrayal of chaotic evil and the effect it has on ordinary people. As ever, the trio of Kristen (psychologist mother of four whose husband is frequently off mountain climbing), David (newly ordained priest who still grapples with worldly thoughts) and Ben (atheist “science guy” who is finding it increasingly difficult to do his job in the midst of so much unexplained phenomena) work for the Catholic Church in the investigation of potential miracles and demonic infestations.

The problem with the show at this point is that the ongoing Case Of The Week format, in which the team looks into paranormal activity and comes up with rational explanations that nevertheless leave just enough room for a little doubt, is kind of pointless, since we KNOW that Satanic forces exist. Leland Townsend (the show’s main antagonist) and Kristen’s mother Sheryl are six-feet-deep into devil worship, and giant goatlike demons with several eyes and spiral horns are openly featured on the show.

In fact, a lot of the individual cases are left unresolved, which is not only unsatisfying in and of itself, but also makes it feel like they’re taking precious screentime away from the overarching plot – which at this stage, is far more interesting. The show returns to long-gestating issues such as the demonic sigils and what they represent, Kristen’s missing egg (taken without permission by a dodgy fertilization clinic), the odd forces surrounding her daughter Lexis, the whereabouts of Grace Ling the prophet, and shadowy organizations within the Church – but other things, such as the creepy dolls that Sheryl prays to, Ben’s ex-girlfriend who believes she’s haunted by her conjoined twin, or David’s father’s insane commune remain up in the air, and are unlikely to be revisited.  Or so it feels to me.

But the characters have kept me coming back. Katja Herber’s Kristen is so wonderfully deranged at times, whether she’s hitting a line-cutter in the face with a leg of ham, or dealing with a chauvinistic construction worker’s bullshit by taking a sledgehammer to his work. No, it’s not behaviour I’d condone in real life – but damn is it cathartic to watch. Mike Colter also brings a great energy to his role: David is somehow wise and peaceable, but also conflicted and frustrated at any given moment – I really think it’s some of his best work.

Aasif Mandiv has steadily moved away from comedic relief to a more intense role, and I love that they’ve given more screentime to his character’s sister Karima, just to give him someone else to bounce off of. Then there’s Sheryl, going deeper down the rabbit hole of Satanism, and Sister Andrea, who sees (and fights) demons on a regular basis, and Kristen’s four daughters, who are still largely interchangeable, but start their own brand of demon-hunting this season.

In other words, there’s never a dull moment, or an uninteresting character, no matter how convoluted the myriad of plots and subplots get.

Just as I finished this season, the news broke that the show was ending after its upcoming fourth (with a couple of movie-length features to wrap it all up). I suppose four seasons is nothing to be ashamed of these days, and hopefully it’s enough time to gather up all these strands and pull them into a satisfying conclusion. Fingers crossed.

The Great: Season 3 (2023)

Just as I made peace with the fact this show was not going to be about what I wanted it to be about (which is to say, Catherine successfully taking control of Russia) but instead the portrait of a very bizarre marriage, it finally goes and kills off Peter. Not at the hands of Catherine as part of her coup, but as a random accident involving literal thin ice.

Then once we finally get into the nitty-gritty of Catherine taking the reins and consolidating her power, the whole thing gets cancelled. And so another great show reaches its premature end. I’d been told that at least it ended on a fairly conclusive note, which may be true for its titular character Catherine, but not so much for the entire supporting cast, who are still in various states of distress and/or confusion.

Sigh. I suppose at three seasons, I should be grateful that we got this far.

Having attempted to assassinate her husband at the end of last season, only to find that she accidentally stabbed his body double, Catherine isn’t entirely sure how to proceed. She’s discovered that she loves Peter, in all his moronic, violent, irreverent, self-obsessed glory, and is finding it hard to square that with her rational, intelligent, forward-thinking sense of identity. Yeah, I don’t get it either.

So she decides to get over the fact that he killed her lover, burnt down her school and fucked her mother out a window to her death and tried to cover it up, and gets on with the business of ruling Russia with Peter at her side. She’s got little Paul (their son) to worry about, and Pugachev (the body double, also played by Nicholas Hoult) riling up the peasants with how awful she is, and the usual interpersonal dramas at court.

I have to admit, the supporting cast is more entertaining than the leads this season, with special mention made to Freddie Fox as the disposed King of Sweden, who spends his time desperately trying to talk others into winning his country back for him, and Henry Meredith as the eleven-year-old Maxim, who almost steals the entire show as a pompous little aristocrat who loves shoes and tries to kill anyone who crosses him. The show may have stagnated a bit this season, but it’s worth it for these two performers strutting their stuff.

As for everyone else? Orlo gets taken out way too quickly (I can only assume Sacha Dhawan was booked elsewhere), Marial and Georgina squabble with each other (it’s sometimes amusing, but mostly not), Grigor, Elizabeth, Velementov and Archie just sort of mill around in the background, and Jason Isaacs pops back in for another couple of cameos as Peter the Great.

All things considered, the material did seem to be winding down a little, though that only makes me wish that the show had reinvented itself by killing off Peter sooner. Catherine trying to tame the bear that is Mother Russia was a ripe premise, though as it is we only see her step up in the very last episode. Ah well, at least she gets to dance it out: