Ok, if you haven’t read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by now, that’s your own fault. Consider this your SPOILER WARNING.
(And yes I know I am months behind the rest of the world, but that is what happens when you’re writing a book. 😛 )
In case you need a plot refresher: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is basically Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: The Epilogue: The Play. Harry is a dad of three and the harried and overtired Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and his middle child Albus hates him, proving that adulthood sucks even if you’re a wizard. As if that’s not bad enough, his past keeps coming back to haunt him in the form of scar pains and lingering threats that Voldemort may somehow be returning. This past haunts Albus, too, as his father’s legacy weighs heavily on him, but he is his father’s son, and when it comes time to get into trouble to save the wizarding world, he does just that.
I’d really hoped to first experience The Cursed Child as a play rather than a script, but I also hate spoilers, and this is the Internet age, and none of those things combine well. After reading, I do think The Cursed Child probably works better as a performance, and it is ultimately entertaining. However, it has some very problematic parts that not even performance can save it from.
One is pacing; plays have very different pacing demands than novels do, and a reading of The Cursed Child suffers for this. Years pass in the first act within the space of a few pages. While the visual metaphor used to convey this is cool to behold (I imagine), it robs the reader of the connection one would form with the characters if given a chance to see those years played out in prose form. I didn’t feel any connection to most of the characters for much of the book (except Albus and Scorpius; more on that later), which was especially disheartening, considering that I spent seven years of my young life reading about the younger versions of some of them.
The second is that it bends, if not totally breaks Harry Potter canon to make its story work. For complicated reasons, the plot hinges upon Albus and Scorpius using a Time-Turner to keep Cedric Diggory from dying during the Triwizard Tournament of The Goblet of Fire…even though The Prisoner of Azkaban clearly establishes that Time-Turners can’t be used to alter history. The story tries to wiggle its way out of this by having Harry lament that Time-Turner technology has changed since his day, as if Time-Turners are as (comparatively) simple as computers – and also as if anything in the wizarding world has advanced in the past several hundred years.
This disregard for the rules of its own world contributes to the third problem, which is that 80% of the play reads like fanfiction – well-written fanfiction, albeit, but fanfiction nonetheless. Each of Albus’ and Scorpius’ trips into the past (there are several) alter the timeline in ways that eventually become nothing but fan service. Umbridge shows up so that readers/viewers can hate her more; Snape shows up and admittedly steals the scene he’s in, but the fact that the play undoes his death – however briefly – inadvertently cheapens it. In fact, the whole idea that the future can be so radically and easily changed by a simple Time-Turner trip makes the entire Wizarding World seem very breakable, which is jarring for a reader who’s accustomed to the solid world-building of the main series.
Because of all these, there were moments when I was afraid the script was going to be a disaster.
However – and it’s a big however – despite these flaws, the play is worth reading for what it does well.
In fact, it’s worth reading for Scorpius Malfoy alone. Ah, Scorpius. You were destined for an unfortunate school experience the moment your parents named you Scorpius, but you took your insecurities and rocked them.
Scorpius is adorkable in the best way, a shy, awkward nerd who inadvertently spins that awkwardness into endearing charm. (A discussion where he tries to compliment Rose Granger-Weasley by telling her she smells like bread is priceless.) He’s isolated from all other Hogwarts students because of a nasty rumor that he might be Voldemort’s child (another bit of fan thinking, with equally fannish developments), but when he and Albus bond over their respective daddy issues, the relationship that results is worthy of J.K. Rowling at her height. Any scene featuring the two of them together is a delight to read, not only because of their interactions, but because these are the scenes that most closely approach what longtime fans love about Harry Potter – the adventure, mischief, and magic. In particular, the scene where the sweets-purveying Trolley Witch tries to prevent them from escaping the Hogwarts Express is so fun that it feels like a genuine piece of Rowling’s imagination.
If this play had been nothing but Albus and Scorpius going on adventures, it would have been perfect.
Unfortunately, the scenes involving the adult versions of the iconic characters were my least favorite part. It’s simply not fun to read about overworked, miserable, grownup Harry, Hermione, and Ron. In the original books, readers could read them and say, “Sure, things may be terrible, but at least they have magic!” but in The Cursed Child, it’s “Ugh, they have magic, but things are still terrible.” All of them have lost the spark that made them so interesting in the original books, and Ron in particular is reduced to nothing but comic relief (even more so than movie Ron). It’s like looking at enchanted portraits that only captured their least heartening qualities. One could argue that it’s a realistic depiction of adulthood – After all, even happy adulthood can’t compare to the high points of childhood – but who reads Harry Potter for realism?
All the characters become a little more interesting when the father-son issues are resolved, and the climax – which sees grownup Harry Potter at Godric’s Hollow in the past, at the very moment when his parents are murdered, unable to do anything without ruining the timeline – is deliciously heartbreaking for fans. But so much potential was squandered on the rest of the story that it’s depressing to even think about it.
The actual identity of the titular Cursed Child is also left ambiguous – maybe it’s Albus, maybe Scorpius, maybe Harry himself. Maybe it’s even this other character, who I will not disclose but is also fan service. It’s neat to have all of those possibilities, but I would have at least liked the story to hint significantly at one and then invite the reader/viewer to go “Ooo, but what if…?” Compared to everything else, though, that’s a quibble.
All this said, my reactions to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were nearly as convoluted as the play itself. The parts that I disliked, I really disliked, but the parts that I loved have me desperate for some good Albus/Scorpius fic.*
*Or perhaps to read Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On because let’s be real, Albus and Scorpius are basically Simon and Baz and you know they’re going to Discover Things About Themselves when they reach the right developmental stage.
Holo Writing at AWA 2016!
We’re back and recovered from Anime Weekend Atlanta! This year was a little slower than our last year, but apparently election years always are (Thanks, Washington). Still, we had H.P.’s favorite location ever.
RIGHT NEXT TO THE FOOD TRUCKS.
And that was hardly the best thing about the con! Last AWA, only the first two books of the Seraphim Revival trilogy had been released. A lot of readers came to the Dealer’s Room looking for us specifically, and for a while Disciple of the Dead – the third in the trilogy – was our top seller! Naturally, we’re delighted that all of you liked the first two enough to seek us out.
AWA also saw the convention debut of The Wizard’s Way, which SOLD OUT halfway through the con!
Never has a box been so happy to be empty.
Several readers who bought it also came back the next day to say it was their new favorite series. Looks like we have a winner on our hands! If you’re among those who loved it, you’ll be delighted to learn that H.P. plans to start work on the sequel, The Wizard’s Circus, next week!
Speaking of writing, we had a lot of questions about upcoming books and projects, so for the benefit of those who weren’t able to be at the con, here’s are some answers.
Will there be a sequel to…?
We had lots of sequel questions, especially about our earliest books!
The Dragons of Jupiter – Jacob intends to follow Dragons with two sequels, The Dragons of Mars and The Dragon Revenant. Each book is roughly planned out in his head, but it’s just a matter of finding time to put it on paper!
Time Reavers – We’ve planned two sequels to Time Reavers, too – Mind Reavers and Slayer of Reavers. Jacob has already outlined Mind Reavers, but in efforts to get it out a little faster (and because collaborating on The Wizard’s Way was so much fun), he’s going to write it with H.P. once the first sequel to The Wizard’s Way is done.
Seraphim Revival (Bane of the Dead, Throne of the Dead, Disciple of the Dead) – For now, the trilogy is complete. However, if Jacob finds the time, he’d like to write a follow-up trilogy set 20 or so years after the main storyline that follows the children of the main characters. Again, finding the time is the challenge!
The Wizard’s Way – Officially, the series is called The Wizard’s Quartet, so four books are planned. H.P.’s project for the moment is the first sequel, The Wizard’s Circus – basically, Chaucey Goes to Wizard College – but it will eventually be followed by The Wizard’s Citadel and The Wizard’s End.
What are you working on now?
Jacob has several projects up in the air right now. His main project is splitting Humanity Machine into two books. You may recall that novel from a few years ago. Beta readers (and most importantly, his wife) wanted to see the end of the first draft expanded, and said expansion ended up requiring a second book to do it justice.
More excitingly, Jacob is also working on a SECRET PROJECT with David Weber, though, given that it is a SECRET PROJECT, you’re not supposed to know about it just yet. 😛
Where are the cosplay pictures?
Ok, no one actually asked this, but if you were perchance looking for the cosplay pictures H.P. usually takes at cons, they’re over on our Instagram page!
Well, as you can see above, there’s plenty of writing to be done, so we’re off to work on some books! See you next post! 😀
Countdown to The Wizard’s Way!
It’s been eventful here at Holo HQ!
Stars aligned so that H.P. could transition to working full-time for Holo Writing, which means that you’re about to see many more updates, contests, giveaways, appearances, and yes, BOOKS.
Speaking of which, The Wizard’s Way is well on its way to being released! Comments from beta readers have come in, edits have been made, layout is complete, and now all we’re waiting for is that final glorious proof copy. Once we’ve affirmed its perfection, it’ll be time to release the Steelgore!
We love all our books, of course, but we’re especially excited to bring you this one.
Though Jacob contributed a lot of content, The Wizard’s Way is primarily H.P.’s weird, hyperactive brainchild, and in it, you’ll see a face of the Holoverse that you’ve never seen before. Namely the face involving fire-breathing steel lions, pug butlers, bear libraries, and lots of general mayhem. But the latter is nothing new. 😛
And hey, if you’d like to receive an update when the novel releases, be sure to join our mailing list!
The Wizard’s Way – Cover Reveal!
Well, it’s been an adventurous month, but it takes more than a malfunctioning eyeball and a collapsed lung to stop me, which means that Draft #4 of The Wizard’s Way is DONE!
Our next step is to see what our beta readers have to say, apply their advice in the next round of edits, and then drop this bad boy – okay, bad but well-intentioned; Chaucey is complicated – on September 1st!
Who’s Chaucey, you ask? Read on to find out—and then to get your first official look at the cover art!
J. Chaucey Thatcher has a monster inside him, but this is the least of his worries.
A murderer prowls the Iron City, slaying inventors. An angry mob storms close behind, blaming wizards. Any they find, they burn alive.
Chaucey is an inventor. He is also secretly a wizard, and the only person who can help with this secret was just murdered before his very eyes.
But when it comes to investigating, Chaucey is as dogged as his best friend is dog. With the help of his loyal pug butler, his sparky (almost? maybe?) girlfriend, and a sleuth of rambunctious bears, he has vowed to unravel the mystery of these murders and save the city from the grips of terror.
But the monster inside him burns for escape.
Will he save the Iron City? Or will the monster destroy it first?
And now, drum roll please…
…
…
…
Though really, forget drum rolls. Let’s bring out the whole band for our illustrator, Mandy O’Brien (aka Painted-Bees on DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Twitter).
I’d been following her art for years on Deviant Art (I mean LOOK AT THIS), so when I started pondering illustrators for a colorful fantasy adventure with two civilizations of talking animals, I didn’t have to ponder long. Her vibrant style combined with the animated quality of her art meshed perfectly with the world I’d pictured in the novel, and looking at these illustrations is like looking at characters that walked right out of my brain onto a computer screen!
Read about them this Fall!
Monsters. Murder. Swashbuckling Pug Butlers.
Coming September 2016.
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Holo Writing at SC ComiCon 2016!
Another SC ComiCon has come and gone, and – as always – we had a great time! We premiered two new t-shirts (coming soon to the Etsy shop!) and the final cover of The Wizard’s Way (coming soon to this blog!). We also met several new fans, saw several familiar faces, and to answer several recurring questions:
- Time Reavers and Dragons of Jupiter sequels are indeed in the works! In fact, Jacob recently finished the outline for Mind Reavers (that is, Time Reavers 2)- but the novel itself is currently in the queue behind:
- Splitting Humanity Machine into 2 books (Remember that one?)
- Finishing the final draft of The Wizard’s Way
- Writing a story for an upcoming Safehold anthology
- And a Super Cool Super Secret Project
So, it will be some time before Mind Reavers happens, but expect lots of cool stuff in the meantime.
Of course, we also snapped some awesome cosplay pics!
We don’t have nearly as many this year, though, because HP is master-in-chief of cosplay fangirling, and she actually couldn’t see for most of the con. Turns out what we thought to be a persistently weird contact lens was actually a detached retina (#conlife #partyhard).
Then, because she likes to multitask, she suffered a spontaneous partial lung collapse 5 days into recovery, spent 10 days in the hospital, and is now at home recovering from that with a bunch of ice cream, Netflix, and a load of editing to do.
As you can see, it’s already been a busy con season, and we haven’t even made our second appearance!
We’ll be at Free Comic Book Day at The Tangled Web on Saturday, May 7th @ 8am, so if you missed us at SC ComiCon, be sure to stop by! 😀
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Movie Review
I consider myself a connoisseur of terrible movies, an Austenite, and mildly interested in zombies, so there was no film that I as more excited to see this year than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
I wasn’t let down – it was a hot mess – but is it a hot mess worth watching? That will depend on how much you enjoy any of its definitive elements.
First, you have to love bad movies, Pride and Prejudice, and zombies. There’s no way around that. It’s not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination; the zombie designs are appropriately gross and their heads explode nicely, but the acting is only okay, some of the costume choices look like an anachronistic costume closet dump, the plot is so jankily handled that it reads like Pride and Prejudice Spark Notes with a few pages ripped out, and with two notable exceptions, nearly every role is horribly (and hilariously) miscast.
The casting is easily the most egregious flaw in (slash-greatest-strength-of) this movie. When Mr. Collins is the most interesting character in your P&P adaptation, you’re doing it wrong. When you see Mr. Darcy for the first time and wonder why Mr. Collins is showing up so early, you’re doing it APOCALYPTICALLY wrong.
Jane was hard to pick out from the other Bennet sisters because all of them are generically pretty (except Mary, who was perfect). Bingley looked like an escapee from a boy band. Wickham looked like Gaston’s smarmy middle-aged cousin. Mrs. Bennet is the best-looking and least-annoying Mrs. Bennet ever (so, not Mrs. Bennet at all. More like a Real Housewife of Longbourn), and Mr. Bennet is Tywin Lannister (and Havelock Vetinari!) but spends the whole movie looking harried rather than doing anything remotely interesting. He doesn’t even have good sass. Honestly, the awfulness of the casting went to such depths that I wondered if it was intentional, but even if not, it becomes one of the funniest parts of the film.
That said, two bits of casting were perfect (if not entirely accurate): Matt Smith has the admirable distinction of being the only likable Mr. Collins in the history of P&P, managing to turn a truly cringe-worthy character into someone absolutely adorkable. For real, I’d tap that Mr. Collins.
Lena Headey as Catherine de Bourgh (LANNISTER FAM REPRESENT!) is a delight, though this may have more to do with the fact that this Catherine de Bourgh is a kickass, eyepatch-wearing, zombie-killing savior of the realm rather than an old arrogant fart.
But you have to know that Catherine de Bourgh is an old arrogant fart to begin with to even appreciate what she does, which highlights one of the film’s legitimate problems.
It’s not enough to have read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or even Pride and Prejudice itself. You almost have to be steeped in the teas of Pride and Prejudice fandom (miniseries, movies, and all) to get any true enjoyment out of this movie – either so you can appreciate the parody when it happens well (i.e. Catherine de Bourgh), or so you can appreciate when it goes wrong (i.e. in how not-Colin Firth Mr. Darcy is). Someone involved in production was obviously a P&P fan because they knew to include a scene of Mr. Darcy jumping into a lake. I don’t think enough people involved were fans, though. Otherwise Mr. Darcy would have been hot and Wickham would have at least been deceptively good-looking.
The film has some tonal issues, too. It can never decide whether it wants to be a tongue-in-cheek action movie, a straight-up parody of P&P and its fandom, or a clever piece of alternate universe fiction. This is a movie in which the opening scene clearly and expertly sets up the alternate circumstances of this universe (Mr. Darcy, a skilled zombie hunter in this fiction, crashes the hell out of a party where a zombie is present) and the first battle scene sets up the Bennet sisters as certified zombie-killing badasses. There’s also a lot of hinting at the possible intelligence exhibited by the zombies in question, but before any of that can be explored, the movie quickly shifts away from it, hurries through iconic P&P scenes, or leaps to a forced bit of humor (Did we really need to hear Charlotte Lucas snoring that long?).
Fortunately, not all of the humor is forced. The simple premise of combining Regency England with zombies naturally makes the film hilarious, and I have to admit I spent most of the film laughing entirely at small changes that were made to the Regency environment – estates surrounded by brutal-looking spikes, ladies of quality talking about martial arts they studied in China or Japan, Mr. Darcy himself being a prized zombie hunter rather than just rich, etc. The exaggerated extent to which some characters are played is brilliant, too. You know exactly who Charlotte Bingley is the moment you see her sour face at the Netherfield ball. Mr. Darcy’s sickly sister Georgiana communicates entirely through groans. When Mrs. Bennet embarrasses the family, she does it hardcore, sprawled all over a couch like a drunk socialite. And then there’s the iconic proposal scene, wherein Lizzie answers Mr. Darcy’s backhanded offer with a fistfight. And Catherine de Bourgh’s subsequent (and in this case, literal) attack on Lizzie, wherein Lizzie beats de Bourgh’s thug by dropping a ceiling on him.
Really, the film is at its absolute best when it’s parodying the novel of manners Austen fans have come to know and obsess over. It loses a lot of its entertainment value in its second half, where it diverges from both sets of source material to become a more drama- and action-oriented film. While some of its changes were admittedly cool (avoiding spoilers, St. Lazarus), they would have worked better in a film that viewed itself as serious alternate fiction from the get-go, rather than a comedy. And let’s face it, all of us are going to see this movie for the comedy. None of us are going to see it to watch Lizzie cry dramatically over Mr. Darcy’s unconscious body on an exploded bridge.
All this said, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is certainly not for everyone. But if you’re one of those readers who leapt with joy at the announcement of the book and then did an astonished happy dance at the announcement of the movie, you already know it’s for you. It’s not nearly as good as it could have been, but let’s face it, at the end of it all, we have both this and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which is more alternate history/classic movie weirdness than we ever thought we’d get. It’s not for everyone because it was made for us, and that makes it a special movie.
Still one that’s better watched on Netflix than on the end of a $15 movie ticket, though.
P.S. Here’s the perfect Mr. Darcy and the perfect Lake Scene because no way am I going to pass up an excuse to post this masterpiece.
The Story of Owen – Book Review
In an alternate version of the present day, the world has a dragon problem. Dragons are drawn to the carbon emitted by burning fuel, which means that wherever there’s a fire, a car, or any sort of industry, a dragon will come looking to feast. Fortunately, for as long as there have been dragons, there has been a proud tradition of dragon slayers.
These days, most dragon slayers work in cities, contracted by governments and corporations to protect the considerable interests in these carbon-heavy environments. This is awesome for people who live in cities (least of all because it results in cool, if ill-advised, iPhone videos. And, you know, safety from dragons). People in the country don’t have it so easy.
This is why it’s “like freaking Mardi Gras” when injury brings Lottie Thorskard to her rural hometown of Trondheim. She’s the most famous dragon slayer of her day, and brings with her a fellow dragon-slayer brother and her sixteen-year-old nephew, Owen. Wimpy and bad at algebra and English, Owen is like many teenage boys, except for one big difference. When he’s not being tutored, he’s training to fight the dragons of rural Canada, and his tutor-turned-bard, Siobhan McQuaid, is ready to sing him into legend.
E. K. Johnston’s The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim has Starred Reviews galore and won a Morris Award this year, so it has a lot going for it. However, despite its impressive pedigree, my reactions to it were mixed. Ultimately, I liked the idea of the novel more than I liked its execution. When it was at its best, though, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Contrary to its title, The Story of Owen is less the story of Owen, more the-story-of-a-quirky-speculative-version-of-a-dragon-ravaged-world-but-mostly-rural-Canada. It’s obvious that Johnston had a lot of fun working dragons into the history of our world, as every other chapter takes a break from the story to pour new tidbits upon the reader. Take this excerpt, outlining one of the story’s conflicts, as an example:
Most postmodernists blame the decline of the dracono-bardic tradition on the sudden and soaring popularity of the Beatles. The Lads from Liverpool were exactly that: four guys with accents who sang about love and truth, who never once mentioned a dragon slayer. The world split around them. There were many who loved the simplicity of the music, the harmonies and the earnest quality of the lyrics. And there were many who were afraid of the example they were setting.
For the first time since Shakespeare…the English-speaking world was confronted by a cultural phenomenon that was insanely popular and entirely bereft of danger. An entire generation of young people…threw themselves at the Beatles, much to the concern of their elders, who worried about the effect listening to the Beatles’ music might incur.
Note all the ellipses. Then imagine another sentence or two in their places. This to say, for patient readers who enjoy intensely detailed world-building, The Story of Owen is a delightful read. All this world-building, though, presents a big hurdle to less patient readers; Johnston often builds her world at the expense of everything else in the story. Truly, the world is more of a character than the actual characters, and readers have to take in a lot of fictional history before they can begin to process the significance of what the characters are up to.
And for me, though the characters were interesting, they weren’t nearly as interesting as the world in which they live. For people who live in a world consumed by dragons, they’re all astonishingly normal. Here’s where my opinions become extremely mixed. On the one hand, it was cool to read that normalcy. In this world, dragons are just another problem occurring in nature, like tornadoes or bears wandering into the neighborhood. People have plans for how to handle them. This chillness in the face of scaly, fiery death is amusing at first; the downside is that it becomes a little boring to read about after a while. Also, whatever tension is created when Owen actually fights a dragon is often counteracted by the way Siobhan tells the stories, beginning by narrating the version that she told the media (which is heroic), and then telling readers what actually happened (which, while still heroic, is less climactic). The climax itself, too, runs so smoothly and with such little threat to the lives of the defended population that there’s not much tension even there. The characters are simply too competent! (However, this does render a tragic twist at the end that much more unexpected.)
All this said, though I was comparatively indifferent to the characters, and though I found the pacing a bit janky, the world was interesting enough that I plowed to the end of the novel on the momentum of it alone. Most of the other things that I enjoyed about the novel are subtler. You wouldn’t know it from the cover, but Owen is biracial—Venezuelan-Canadian—and a significant lesbian relationship within his family is classily handled. Also, Siobhan is intensely thoughtful about music in the way that only an enthusiastic teenager can be; though it reads awkwardly at times—as when she describes her emotions in terms of the instruments that would play them—it’s not unrealistic for a creative teenage narrator.
It also makes her a much more convincing bard. Character-wise, the novel is the Story of Siobhan learning to become a bard even more than it is the Story of Owen learning to slay dragons! The novel is even (loosely) structured in a way that harkens back to the oral traditions that conveyed Beowulf and monster-fighting epics like it, which was a neat touch, even if we never actually see any of Siobhan’s compositions.
The Story of Owen, then, is an ambitious novel. Sometimes it falters under the weight of its own ambitions. Still, overall it’s a noble and amusing effort. It’s not for everyone, but readers who have the patience to give it a chance will find it rewarding.
***
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Princess Knight, Part I – Graphic Novel Review
Before God sends children down from Heaven, he gives them hearts. A child who swallows a blue heart will be a “brave boy,” while a child who swallows a red heart will be a “graceful girl.” However, when the mischievous angel Tink decides to play a trick, a child destined to be a girl ends up with both, and she’s on her way to being born before God can stop it. God thus curses Tink to life on Earth as a human; the only way for Tink to become an angel again is to reclaim the girl’s boy heart.
This task is not as easy as it seems, for the girl has just been born to the royal family of Silverland. This family needs a boy to continue the royal line, or else risk being usurped by the evil Duke Duralumin. The king and queen thus decide to keep her true gender secret, raising her as Prince Sapphire to protect their crown. Thus begins a fast-paced tale of adventure, mistaken genders, and the hijinks that ensue.
I usually don’t enjoy gender-bender manga, as the gender-bending aspect is often played for silly humor, but Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight, Part I is a rare exception. It reads like a twist on even modern fairy tales, where the princess is both damsel in distress and literally her own prince, and where her ever-changing gender is a source of legitimate drama, rather than an amusing plot point.
This permeates nearly every conflict she faces. Most prominently, the constant threat of Duralumin finding out that she’s not really a prince looms heavily, not only because of what it means for her but what it could mean for the kingdom. This conflict affects her in even small, if convoluted ways, too. At one point, a prince of a neighboring kingdom falls in love with her female “disguise,” only to pledge to kill Prince Sapphire in a later (unrelated) plot twist, not realizing that he and “the flaxen-haired maiden” are one and the same. (Talk about a complicated relationship!)
Despite the gendered nature of its plot, though, the novel is surprisingly unconcerned with gender roles or politics (at least, beyond the basic OMG A GIRL CAN’T RULE A KINGDOM LET’s PANIC ABOUT THAT trope). The closest it comes to commenting on such topics is in a scene where Sapphire briefly loses her boy heart and thus, with only the girl heart remaining, becomes weak. At first the scene inspires an “UGH of course she would become all faint and pansylike without her boy heart,” but upon rereading, it also begs the question, “Is it better to have the associated qualities of only one gender? Or is it better to have a combination of both?” Though it’s a small scene and a simple question, it’s thematically very relevant, and the whole book is a positive answer to this question.
Refreshingly, it’s also not loudly self-aware of its theme, like many Strong Female Character books can be. More than anything, the novel is concerned with taking readers on an adventuresome romp through a fairy-tale-inspired fantasy land, rather than offering any commentary at all. And romp it does! Sapphire teams up with pirates, fights evil witches, swordfights through pretty much everything, and never once stops being anything but a swashbuckling hero/heroine (even though she occasionally does stop to cry over stuff). At 346 pages, it’s a pretty good size for a graphic novel, and yet I was still surprised by how much action was packed into it.
Because of its structure, Princess Knight is bound to appeal to both male and female readers who like this kind of story. There are some hurdles to jump, though, especially for readers who are accustomed to modern manga. Tezuka’s art, while iconic, may look a bit too cartoony and dated for some readers today. In fact, I’d initially avoided his work myself for that reason. Something about the art in Princess Knight, though, was absolutely charming to me, perhaps because it matched the storybook flair of the setting so well. It should also be noted that the art is printed very cleanly, and though the style is simplistic, many of the panels are quite pretty to look at. Another hurdle is the themed naming of the bad guys—Duke Duralumin (a type of alloy), Lord Plastic, Lord Nylon—which doesn’t contribute anything to the story other than inexplicable goofiness. (There are plenty of other goofy elements in the story, but they’re much better handled than this.) Lord Nylon also has a lisp that is rather insensitively played for humor, but it also contributes to a significant early plot point, so it’s not like it’s there without a reason. Still, after that plot point happens, it does read a bit unkindly.
These bumps are minor compared to the delight that is the rest of the book, though. With plenty of adventure, several unexpected twists, and a fun storybook quality, Princess Knight has quickly become one of my favorites.
The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills – Book Review
I picked up Joanna Pearson’s The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills because the audiobook is short, but also because it met my “Read a not-fantasy every now and then” goal. In it, Janice Wills is a high school junior in rural Melva, North Carolina who looks forward to getting out so she can study anthropology. Until then, though, all she has to look forward to is the whirlwind of culture that is the Livermush Festival, fend off her mom’s determination to enter her in the Miss Livermush pageant, and generally survive the perils of high school.
The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills is cute, light, and uniquely suited to small town academic teen readers who feel smarter than the world around them. Beyond that, it’s a pretty standard coming-of-age-in-high-school story, complete with mean girls, parties, friend troubles, first loves, disagreements with parents, and a climactic dance. However, the execution makes it stand out a little further than other novels of its type.
The book’s most unique detail—and what attracted me to it in the first place—is the anthropological lens through which Janice views her world. After all, how many books feature teen anthropologists? In North Carolina? Janice makes life in Melva tolerable by viewing it like a research project on a strange, unique culture. Sometimes the book pushes this interest a little too hard, but just when it becomes annoying, the book turns it from a teenage quirk into a legitimate piece of character development. Janice loves anthropology for what it is, sure, but she also uses her place as an “anthropological observer” to stay on the sidelines and make snarky comments (i.e. “truthful observations”) about her surroundings. For the first half of the book, she’s a queen of wallflower wit, but twists in the second half lead her to discover that her friends sometimes find her observations condescending, overly critical, and even mean, which was not how she perceived herself at all. She also discovers that, because she has only observed the world around her, rather than interacting with it, she has missed out on many important details that end up coloring Melva and its people a little more positively. I hadn’t expected that type of character development out of this type of book, and its presence was refreshing, even meaningful.
It was also neat to read about a self-professed geek who, though geeky, doesn’t understand the appeal of standard geek fare like Dungeons & Dragons and Cheetos. It’s not often that one reads about geeks who tend toward the semi-normal side of the teenage social spectrum, so that was a welcome surprise.
Speaking of positivity, said positivity was another element of this novel that I quite enjoyed. The book does have its dramatic spots—the school’s queen bee is a genuine queen b*tch; Janice goes to a party, has a few beers, and stuff almost happens —but overall it’s a very heartening book to read. Most of the relationships in the book are positive, if occasionally-challenged ones, and most of the interpersonal conflicts introduced have meaningful resolutions. Most notable is Janice’s relationship with her mother, which becomes a significant and amusing part of the climax, and the love triangle—well, like triangle—well, complicated maybe-like triangle between Janice and an old childhood friend and the school’s cool, depressed loner boy who doesn’t know she exists, was thoughtfully-executed. Some coarse language keeps it from being a truly clean read, but that combined with Janice’s story of self-realization (and resultant confidence) makes it a good read for any geeky teen girl facing similar conflicts.
Overall, The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills is not a must-read. However, its positive elements definitely move it up the maybe-read list, especially for teen girls who can relate to its main character’s quirks.
Eyes Like Stars – Book Review
Beatrice Shakespeare Smith is in trouble. She’s always been notorious for the mischief she creates around the Theatre Illuminata, but after an incident involving a cannon, the destruction of several set pieces, and a spectacular fire, she finds herself stuck with two options—make herself useful, or leave the Theatre forever. Bertie isn’t like other members of the Theatre Illuminata. Everyone else has a defined purpose—They are all characters in famous plays, and without them at the Theatre, the plays cannot be enacted. Bertie was a foundling, with no written purpose, and for her, leaving the Theatre means leaving the only home she’s ever known. She decides, then, to give herself a purpose by restaging Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet, setting it in Egypt rather than Denmark. Her efforts begin roughly. Further complicating her problem is a plot surrounding The Complete Works of the Stage, otherwise known as The Book, a magical tome containing every play ever written, and the force that holds the Theatre Illuminata together. Without its influence, the characters are free to leave the Theatre, and one handsome and cunning player (and close friend) wants to escape at any cost, even if it means sending the Theatre into chaos…
Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev is a unique book. While I’ve encountered plenty of novels about the re-written or reinterpreted doings of famous literary characters, I’ve never before read one where the world was set up quite as creatively as this one. The experience of it is a bit disorienting at first—The Theatre Illuminata is not only a theatre populated by famous characters, but a theatre in which the set pieces are more wonderful than even the most imaginative set pieces in our world. Sets change themselves, as if by magic. Underwater scenes literally take place underwater. The sets themselves are also fully functional pieces of setting, rather than the mere suggestion of place that real-world sets tend to be, which means that if a character wants to take a break in a decadent Turkish bath, she only has to pull up the set piece for it, and Ta-Da! Instant luxury. Because of these elements, the Theatre Illuminata easily falls among the more interestingly established worlds in teen fantasy, and is bound to appeal particularly to theatre geeks.
The author herself had years of theatrical experience upon which to build the world in this novel, and it shows in both the details of the plot and the writing style itself. Bertie’s dealings with the various department managers—from props to scenery to wardrobe—read like fictionalized versions of actual experience, as does the energetic chaos surrounding every action requiring the cooperation of cast and crew. In clever keeping with its subject matter, the novel is also presented in both prose and script form. The switches are a little infrequent—the script format is only used early in the novel, despite there being several places later in the novel where it could have appeared—but they serve their purpose, and help to establish the theatrical setting of the story with greater clarity.
Mantchev’s personal love of theatrical literature is also apparent, as she packs a number of detailed theatrical references into the novel, mainly in the form of familiar characters. Said characters are mostly Shakespearean, which is a little bothersome, given that the Theatre is supposed to gather characters from every play ever. (A few characters, one a major character, hail from other plays, but the dominance of the Shakespearean characters makes the non-Shakespeareans feel out of place.) However, the characters are depicted well enough to compensate for this imbalance, especially Hamlet’s Ophelia and A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s fairy quartet, the latter of which, despite being minor characters in Shakespeare’s play, are amusingly written as main characters here, and through their mischief and snark are bound to become reader favorites. In further homage to the Bard, Mantchev also works in some elegant bits of wordplay. While she never goes so far as to write entire scenes in iambic pentameter, she frequently slips in little jewels of almost-poetry, which, combined with the imagination behind the setting, renders the novel an inventive read on several levels.
Unfortunately, the novel does struggle with a small, yet notable set of flaws. Its largest is that it juggles more major conflicts than it should have, and the conflict that it seems to set up as the major one—Bertie’s restaging of Hamlet—ends up falling by the wayside as trouble ensues with The Book. In fact, the Egyptian Hamlet is never actually staged in the novel, and though the play that replaces it is vastly more interesting and relevant to the narrative, the absence of Egyptian Hamlet made the novel feel incomplete. (Though I could be biased, since Hamlet is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, and I like seeing neat interpretations of it). It also isn’t clear until the end of the story whether the Theatre Illuminata is a theatre in our world, a theatre in a fictional world, or a universe unto itself, which, though only a minor detail, was nonetheless one that I found annoyingly distracting for the first half of the book.
Still, for its flaws, the novel does have charm. It also has sequels! It’s a trilogy completed by Perchance to Dream and So Silver Bright, so readers who love this first book have more to look forward to!
Princeless, Volume 1 – Graphic Novel Review
I came across Princeless by Jeremy Whitley and M. Goodwin at a local comic convention and didn’t have to think twice before picking it up. The cover alone promised all kick-butt girls, dragons, and adventure galore. It did not disappoint.
In Volume 1, when Princess Adrienne comes of age, she’s locked in a dragon-guarded tower because that’s A Thing That Happens to Princesses. Between the boredom of waiting and the dim-witted knights who show up to rescue her, she tires of this quickly. She decides that she’s going to be her own knight and so, with the aid of her dragon pal Sparky, rescues herself and embarks on a quest to free her sisters from their own towers.
A blurb on the front of this book calls it “the story Disney should’ve been telling for the past twenty years.” It’s entirely true. Adrienne is smart; the first few pages show a younger Adrienne tearing apart the plot holes in a traditional fairy tale. She’s also resourceful, and though she admittedly has a lot to learn about adventuring, she’s a capable heroine, well worth admiring.
Granted, she is entirely the “Not the Typical Princess” trope – a trope which, given that nearly every fictional princess these days is “Not the Typical Princess,” is becoming somewhat tired. However, Princeless makes this work by surrounding her with inversions of many other medieval fantasy tropes. Most obviously, despite the European-inspired setting, nearly every character in the main cast is a person of color. Likewise, Adrienne’s prince brother, who would normally be a heroic manly man in this sort of story, is meek and hesitant to inherit the throne, to the point where his father tells him to “stop being a woman.” Instead, his strength is found in his loyalty to his family and, unbeknownst to Adrienne, he plays a small but significant role in the beginning of her adventure.
Even the adventuresome elements are somewhat inverted. While it is all rollicking and fun, Adrienne encounters several practical bumps on her way to saving her sisters, discovering that dragons are hard to ride without saddles, and that it’s hard to fight in jangly armor that isn’t fitted to one’s body type. Though I usually prefer over-the-top adventure, it’s a nice change of pace to read about an adventurer whose problems are more mundane (well, for a person who has a dragon as a friend).
The comic is not without its flaws. However, most of them are minor. For some reason, the quality of the third chapter’s art falters in comparison to the art around it. It’s never off enough to be distracting, though. A bigger problem for me was that there are points where it feels like it’s trying too hard to be a commentary on sexist fantasy tropes. One chapter (also the third, in fact) is blatantly titled “On Sexism in the Armor Industry.” As relevant as the chapter is, I found it hard to believe that the female blacksmith introduced here designed and hand-made a whole line of armor for women without once realizing how impractical battlekinis are for protection—at least until Adrienne points it out. Throw in some stereotypical piggish behavior on the part of nearly every male in the scene, and the chapter reads like it was constructed solely to make a point. Fortunately, though, its actiony bits maintain the rest of the book’s sense of fun. And even with this forced point, it never reads like a preachy political pamphlet. Ultimately it treats its messages with the same sense of fun that it does its adventure.
That said, Princeless is a must-read for those who like to read about heroines with no time for princes. Still, casual readers of fantasy, comics and non, will find much to like in it, too.
Buzz – Graphic Novel Review
If you’re part of that rampant, raving crowd looking for books about illicit underground spelling bees, boy are you in luck!
In Buzz! by Ananth Panagariya and Tessa Stone, Webster just wants to survive his first day of high school. But on the way, he stumbles upon a street brawl of a spelling bee and is quickly flung into a world of spelling battle royales, where spoken letters transform into explosions of force, where champion spellers must go by aliases, lest they be swamped by overzealous fans, and where the secret Spelluminati has darker plans that may involve Webster himself…
Buzz! might be the most fun piece of print material that I’ve read, ever, y’all. It takes talent to take a concept as ridiculous as this and turn it into something more than a B-grade guilty pleasure, and Panagariya and Stone, combined, are that talent.
As one would expect (or at least hope) of a story that is centered on words and wordplay, Panagariya has a blast with all the potential inherent in his topic. Some of his plays are obvious (The main character’s name is Webster. His sister is Merriam.), but the words chosen for the characters to battle-spell are often thematically relevant to the area of the story in which they appear. Beyond that, Panagariya recognizes the basic silliness of his concept, and he runs crazy with it. His story reads like a spelling-bee-turned-Hollywood-action-movie. Webster’s opponents, in particular, become increasingly outlandish in the best way as the story progresses. My favorite was The Cosmonaut, a combat-trained Russian cosmonaut who, through an accident, was left adrift in space with nothing to do but read books and play word games until he was rescued, at which point we’re treated to this delicious description:
“After a while, when he looked into the darkness, the stars themselves seemed to take on the shapes of letters. He was rescued six months later. They said you could see stars in his eyes, carrying messages only for him.”
P-O-E-T-R-Y
Stone’s artwork is a massive delight on its own. I was familiar with Stone’s work prior to this book, having followed her delightful (if incomplete) webcomic Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name. (In fact, I discovered this book when researching what exactly happened to the webcomic.) The exuberance established in Hanna continues here. Energy bursts palpably off of every page, facilitated in no small part by the coloring of the artwork. In a clever color design choice, the art is in black, white, and selective uses of golden-yellow—perhaps a visual pun on the “bee” in “spelling bee?” Relatedly, her illustrations of the bees themselves are giddily wonderful to look at. Letters spring dynamically off the page in the early battles, or are illustrated in ways reflective of their word’s meaning. Later battles are illustrated with fun absurdity matching Panagariya’s writing. Especially adept spellers can manipulate the words they spell to have physical effects on their targets, or speak letters into existence for use as weapons, and Stone has as much fun with this as Panagariya does with his plot.
Granted, for all its goodness, it does take a certain sense of humor to appreciate this book. If you see “spectacular spelling battle royale” and instantly think “omg that is so stupid,” you’re definitely not the audience for it. But if you have just enough curiosity to pick it up and flip through it, that’s all you need. After that, you’ll be H-O-O-K-E-D.
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