Jacob and I reached a point last month where we couldn’t take Crunchyroll‘s repetitive commercials anymore, so we sprung for a Premium membership. Since then, I’ve been using that as an excuse to fall asleep to the sweet, sweet sounds of anime.
My most recent binge has been Charlotte, which I watched primarily because I was curious what the title had to do with its premise of “teens with superpowers at a superpower school.”
In the series, Yu Otosaka has the ability to take over other people’s consciousnesses. The catch? He can only do it for a few seconds at a time, and his own body loses consciousness while he’s out of it. Even so, it’s useful for things like cheating on tests and rising through the ranks of his school…which catches the attention of Nao Tomori. She’s the student council president of a school for students with similar abilities, and if he doesn’t come with her, there’s a significant chance he might be captured by another organization that has plans for people with superpowers – and they’re not good ones. With a threat like that – and a little sister to take care of – how could Otosaka turn her down?
The unique twist in the series’ premise is that all the teens’ powers will disappear after adolescence, and as powerful as they are, all their powers come with some pretty significant drawbacks. One character can turn invisible, but only to one person at a time; another can move at super fast speeds, but can’t control his stops – all of which, in a way, make the characters’ situations more unfortunate, not because of the inconvenience, but because people with torturous intents are hunting them for abilities that won’t even last.
That said, if you’re into superpowers and uncontrollable crying, Charlotte is a show for you.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB5qUxR6ch4&w=560&h=315]
As evidenced by the opening titles alone, the production value of the series is quite high. The studios that collaborated on it – Key, P.A. Works, and Aniplex – were also responsible for Angel Beats, which was gorgeous to watch, if a bit boring in spots. The animation and music are on par with that (even if the accent on the English singing is a little heavy), and are so infectious to experience that I’d have probably finished the series even if it was otherwise mediocre. Fortunately, it’s not.
Charlotte is a more character-driven show than one might expect, with the superpowers being a vehicle for a surprisingly emotional story. All the main characters are complex and flawed: Yu loves his little sis but isn’t very grateful for her own expressions of love; Nao is clever and determined to save teens like her, but also comes across as self-centered and self-righteous to the point where some other students beat her up for it. The first several episodes are fairly light, even goofy examinations of these relationships as these characters seek out a superpower-of-the-episode. Then comes Episode 6, where the plot takes an almost Madoka Magica-like turn, rips your heart out, and then sends it careening through the next seven episodes to the end. I was in no hurry to watch the first half of the series, but the last half I finished in a single, voracious sitting.
Strong characterizations aside, Charlotte‘s greatest strength is its sheer unpredictability. Sometimes this results in weird tonal conflicts: It’s hard to believe that the first episodes and intense last episodes are even part of the same series. Some of the humor even in the early part comes across as over the top, and some episodes (8 and 9 in particular) rely on an enormously convenient coincidence. However, the good parts are structured so well that those don’t diminish the entertainment value.
The only exception to this is the very end, which is so stupid that I sincerely wish I’d skipped the last episode. SPOILER ALERT: Without giving too much away, the characters decide that the best way to prevent anti-powers atrocities from happening is to remove superpowers from every teen in the world indiscriminately, which is an enormous waste of a rare and awesome resource – not to mention hugely unethical. Despite his righteous intent, one main character becomes famous in the international powered community as a power-stealing terror – and yet is still depicted as a good guy, complete with uplifting inspirational music and his own happy(ish) ending. I understand what the story was going for; after all, a lot of the kids were genuinely suffering because of their powers, often imprisoned in labs or camps specifically intended to exploit those powers. But when he took healing powers from an un-oppressed girl in a rural village – without her consent, all for the sake of completeness – the story lost its credibility.
TL;DR: You will do yourself a huge favor by ignoring the last episode entirely. The main arc wraps up in the previous episode, anyway, so you’ll literally miss nothing.
Final episode aside, Charlotte‘s still a pretty entertaining show. It’s not the best series I’ve watched this year, but it definitely deserves a watch if you enjoy both emotions and superpowers in your anime. Just skip the end – I mean it – unless you want to exercise your eye-rolling muscles.
Reviews
Berserk (2016, S1) – Anime Review
Sometimes you just want to watch a grimdark drama where everything is a disaster and you can’t do anything about it so why bother? This year’s election coverage should sate that thirst.
But if it doesn’t, there’s Berserk.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAkl2uJEuA4&w=560&h=315]
Note: I’m about to spoil a whole TV series and three movies and several volumes of the Berserk manga, so if you haven’t experienced any of these yet, consider this your SPOILER WARNING. Also might as well throw in every TRIGGER WARNING ever because if Berserk hasn’t made it to one yet, chances are it will eventually.
Berserk is basically “Everything sucks and then you die” given anime form. The series’ Golden Age arc, covered in a 1997 TV series, the 2012-2013 movies, and the manga (duh) is a medieval epic of warring nations, charismatic mercenary leaders, and badass swordsmen (and one swordswoman), but it ends with the infamous Eclipse Ceremony, wherein said leader sacrifices his whole mercenary band to become a god and everyone is eaten by grotesque hellish demons – except the main character, who loses one arm and one eye and has to use the other to watch his former-BFF-now-hella-enemy rape his girl until she literally goes insane.
Welcome to the Conviction Arc.
This year’s bright and cheery series picks up where the Golden Age arc left off (*in the anime. In the manga, the Black Swordsman arc bridges the two). Protagonist Guts has left former-awesome-woman-soldier-now-witless-girlfriend Casca under the watch of the blacksmith Godo and is off to find and kill the Apostles of the evil God Hand. (Also Griffith because there’s no way a man can watch another man do that do his woman and not kill the heck out of him). Before he can accomplish this, though, he has to chop through all the evil spirits attracted by the cursed brand on his neck – and on Casca’s, once she inadvertently escapes from the safety of an enchanted cave. His search for her leads him to a refugee settlement surrounding the Tower of Conviction, where he is frequently thwarted by Mozgus, the Chief Inquisitor of the Holy See, and not really thwarted by Farnese de Vandimion of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, though she tries, bless her heart.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Berserk is absolutely an adult anime. There’s blood and gore galore, grotesque and disturbing situations, and thoroughly creepy character designs, though the much-needed comic relief of the fairy Puck serves to alleviate some of this.
However, it’s also a fantastic medieval horror fantasy based upon what is possibly the best dark fantasy manga out there, and the strength of its characters and story is what keeps it from descending into torture porn.
Content aside, the first thing you should know about this Berserk series is that it seems to be made for existing Berserk fans, more so than newbies. Though the plot will make sense with minimal context, you absolutely need to have read the Golden Age arc in the manga or watched the 1997 TV series to appreciate the emotional baggage behind what goes on, especially regarding former-bro-now-evil-god Griffith, who is a likable, even admirable character in the Golden Age (until he’s not), and Casca, who is one of the best female characters in anime (until she loses her mind). I leave the movies out because, though they cover the same material, and though they’re entertaining, they aren’t so good at establishing the necessary emotional connections.
Once you know what you’re starting, you’re in for a pretty solid series. The pacing is good, and though some features of the story are exaggerated – pretty much every scene with Guts and that person-sized metal bludgeon he calls a sword; Mozgus; the horror elements in general – the story itself stays grounded with relatable side characters, in particular a group of prostitutes who take in the lost Casca:
Luca is a motherly figure who just wants to keep her girls safe; Nina is well-meaning but also abundantly terrified by their situation, enough that she frequently flip-flops between loyalty to her friends and a sense of sheer panicked self-preservation (so, the most realistic character in this series). Outside of that group, Farnese is a flagellant who punishes herself for not living up to her position as leader of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, even as she struggles with the perceived rightness of the Holy See’s actions; and Jerome is a soldier who’s just tired of this sh*t but can’t say anything because really who’s going to challenge this guy?
Still, if there weren’t characters like Guts to make this face back at Mozgus every once in a while, Berserk wouldn’t have a story – just pages and pages of carnage:
Arguably, Guts is the weakest character in terms of development. He literally has about three expressions, which are angry, Resting Badass Face, and the iconic Berserk Grin above. It’s not that he isn’t a complex character. He is. It’s just that all his development happened in the previous arc, and with that out of the way – not to mention all the trauma he met at the hands of Griffith – all his personality has room to do is care for Casca and kill demons.
Likewise, the series’ antagonist is not very complex, either. Mozgus thinks he’s a good guy but he also keeps a lavish, bloody torture chamber and carries portable breaking wheels on his carriage in case he has to whip them out on the road. (You never know when you’ll have to do an impromptu holy scourging!) There are moments where he seems merciful, but nah, it’s a trap.
Nothing in this series is good without 1) being a trap or 2) dying fast.
So far so good, but if anything in this series has been a point of contention for fans, it’s the animation. The movies’ blend of 2D and cel-shaded 3D was controversial when they released, and this series’ blend was no less so, largely because Berserk has a rough art style that suits its content, and you can’t achieve the same effect with CG (or at least the movies didn’t). Though the CG in the movies wasn’t necessarily bad, it was still robotic and clean enough to be distracting.
This is still true of the 2016 series. However, it’s not quite as bad here, the reasons being that the series does a vastly better job of capturing the roughness of the manga’s art, and also that most of the series is CG, as opposed to the movies, which were roughly equal parts both. In fact, in this case, the hand drawn parts are the ones that stand out as inconsistent and strange.
Could the animation have been better? Yes. I’d have loved to see a fully hand-drawn Berserk series rendered with today’s animation technology. But given the complexity of the armor designs and the comparatively narrower audience to which a series as mature as Berserk appeals, hand drawn – i.e. more expensive – animation would likely not have been an economical choice.
Plus, the animation in the original Berserk anime was awful and it still made fans of us.
At this point we anime fans have just grown spoiled on a glut of really awesome animation, and frankly I’m so glad that the series even exists that the animation is only a minor bummer for me.
All in all, this year’s Berserk series is worthy of fans’ anticipation. If you can get past the animation (for fans), know the preceding story, and if you can stomach all the grotesquerie (for new watchers), it’s twelve episodes of time well spent.
***
Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.
Pokemon Go: Halloween Event – Game Review
I’ve been a Pokemon Go player since day one, but when I first learned of this past weekend’s Halloween event, I was only cautiously excited. After all, for everything Pokemon Go does right, there are ten other features that amount to “could have been awesome but were ruined by stupid problems.”
It was a pleasant surprise, then, when the event turned out to be a rousing amount of fun – with very few problems to speak of! 😀
For the uninitiated, Pokemon Go’s Halloween event ran from Wednesday, October 26th through Monday, November 1st.
During it, players could earn twice as much candy for basically everything – catching Pokemon (which earned 6 candies vs. the normal 3), trading Pokemon (2 vs. 1), hatching eggs (variable numbers depending upon the egg distance), etc.
Buddy Pokemon also yielded candy 4x faster than usual, with 1km buddies finding candy at .25km, 3km at .75km, and 5km at 1.25km.
And of course, select Pokemon fitting the Halloween theme appeared in greater numbers.
Oddly, though I imagine the increased Pokemon sightings were meant to be the big draw for the event, they were the least exciting part for me. Plus, I’m not sure why anyone at Niantic looked at Pokemon Go and said, “You know what this game needs? MORE ZUBATS.” 😐 Frankly, it’s not like any of the Pokemon featured were especially rare to begin with, but I went from having one wimpy Gastly and Meowth before the event to a whole army of Haunters and Persians during, so I can’t complain too much.
The real success of the Pokemon offerings was not in the Pokemon featured, but the sheer number of sightings in general. In my neighborhood and favorite haunts (pun intended), I’m lucky to occasionally see a Pidgey. Heck, it is exciting to see a Pidgey. But for those few days, all those areas had Meowths and Drowzees and Cubones and Gastlies galore, such that I was actually able to play without making a special trip, which is what I usually have to do (a perk of being your own boss: scheduling dedicated Pokemon Go days). That said, thanks, Niantic, for making your game playable in suburbia, if only for a week.
As fun as that was, though, the best part of the event was its candy-related perks.
Due to the aforementioned suburban lack of Pokemon, I use Pokemon Go as a glorified walking app, more than a game:
Each day I assign myself an egg or a certain number of candies and walk the distance necessary to hatch/find them. I’ve really enjoyed the introduction of the Buddy Pokemon system because it tricks me into walking more. After I hatch a 2km egg, I’ll usually see that I have 1km left to go on a Buddy candy; so I start a new egg, find a candy, see that I now have 1km on my new egg, etc… It is a vicious cycle that has resulted in some sweet leg muscles. Anyway, given the way Pokemon Go updates distances (in .2km-ish chunks rather than by step), the diminished distances introduced in this event led to A LOT of “Oh, just .1km to go” loops and resultant candies. Hooray for app-assisted health!
The candy perks had high strategic value, too (if the word “strategy” can be applied to a game like Pokemon Go). Prior to the Halloween event, I had several uncommon Pokemon that were within 10 or so candies of evolution – not a huge number, but no small amount of walking, either, given that most were egg-hatched Pokemon not common in my geographic area (and that I thus couldn’t evolve with candy from wild Pokemon). After a Halloween of plugging those Pokemon into the Buddy system, though, I evolved nearly all of them on walking alone! Combine those with all the Meowths and Zubats and Cubones and Gastlies (SO MANY GASTLIES) that I was able to evolve from catches, and this event made for an XPpalooza!
I can almost literally say that there was nothing wrong with this event.
Almost. It wouldn’t be Pokemon Go without a random problem.
Early in the week, I encountered a glitch that kept my distances walked from updating, but that was fixed within a day with a quick patch. More significantly, one of Pokemon Go’s new features/issues is that it dampens the sounds of programs running in the background of a device. Which, I guess, is cool if you need the extra quiet to concentrate on flicking Pokeballs at cute little monsters. Not so much if you want to listen to music while you play – or, as I do, listen to audiobooks while you walk. With Pokemon Go’s new sound settings, I have to turn my iPhone’s volume all the way up to even begin to hear my book. (I don’t run with headphones in for safety reasons, so the book has to compete with environmental noise.) It’s not a problem worthy of nerdrage, but it would be nice to have the option to turn it off.
But really, that was the biggest problem I had with this event. Overall, though Pokemon Go’s persistent general problems have gone unaddressed (WHERE IS TRACKING? TRADING? BATTLING YOUR FRIENDS?), the Halloween event was a huge step in the right direction, and I look forward to seeing what other seasonal events Niantic has up its sleeve.
Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Vol. 1 – Book Review
After months of curiosity, I finally decided to dip my toe into the light novel waters with Fujino Omori’s Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Volume 1. In the end, it didn’t make a fan of me, but it still made for some fun before-sleep reading.
Much of my reaction was due to the quality of the writing (or perhaps the translation). It’s full of awkward exposition dumps, dialogue with minimal transitions, and even dialogue that consists solely of punctuation. It all gets the meaning across, so it’s not that it’s hard to understand, but the former English teacher in me wonders how an editor even let that slide into publication. Even the title is clunky, though I do admit it does a better job of drawing attention than any possible abbreviation could have.
Once you get used to its general clunkiness, tough, it’s a cute little read. In it, Bell Cranell is a new adventurer who, well, wants to pick up girls in a dungeon. In the meantime, he must also work to support himself and his patron goddess, Hestia. In the world of Orario, gods live among mortals, with a few mortal limitations, though they are able to grant boons to members of their Familia so these people can literally level up in various skills. (The world is not subtle with its RPG inspirations.)
Despite the epic potential of the setting, it’s not an epic story at all. Mostly it consists of Bell being awkward around girls and looking at jiggly boobs – but he’s far from am oogler or peeping tom, which is what keeps the story palatable. In fact, beneath all his awkwardness and hormones, Bell is quite likable – courageous, well-meaning, and not nearly as stupid as protagonists of these kinds of stories can be. And let’s face it, he’s only 14 years old; most 14-year-old boys are going to be at least marginally fascinated by boobs, and it was refreshing to read about one who’s at least subtle and shy about his love of the ladies. Given the nature of the series’ premise, we could have been stuck with someone much worse.
That doesn’t make it a feminist work by any means, though. xP Nearly all of the girls in the series are things for Bell to have crushes on, and all fill some anime girl stereotype – the distant, aloof tsundere; the cute moe girl; the girl who greets other girls by honking their boobs 😐 , etc. Sitting down to write this review, I literally can’t remember much more about each one than that, but Bell’s interactions with them are still endearingly sweet, and the way he uses his various crushes to motivate himself to level up and be a more capable person (as opposed to a chick magnet) is refreshing. Plus, the monster fights are fun.
It’s not a complicated read at all (I mean, it is a light novel), and I imagine the best audience for the book is young teen boys who like to imagine themselves in situations like Bell’s (so, not me). It did make me curious to try the anime, just for comparison – and because the story wants so hard to be an anime – but it didn’t leave me wanting more.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – Book Review
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.
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.
***
Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.
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.
***
Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.