strange and random happenstance

The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Published by: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 7th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 369 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Twenty years ago a tragedy befell the Hawthorne family. Tobias Hawthorne's only son, Toby, went on a cross country roadtrip of debauchery with friends he met in rehab that ended in a conflagration on his family's private island. The fire was blamed on a local girl to cover up any culpability on Toby's part as he was seen buying the accelerant. But as for Toby's body, it was never found. And that's when Tobias Hawthorne changed his will. Yet for twenty years Tobias believed his son was out there. Somewhere. So when his youngest grandson, the only one to know he was dying, requested one final game just for himself he knew he would ask Xander to find Toby. Little does Xander know that Avery might have already found him. When her mother died she took up playing chess in the park with a homeless man named Harry. When she sees a picture of Toby she realizes that she was playing chess with him. Only he has fled. Avery knows this because she tried to give "Harry" some money from her inheritance and he was already gone. The only place that she and Jameson can think to search for clues is in the bricked up wing of the house which was Toby's. There scrawled across the walls, only visible under blacklight because he was a Hawthorne after all, is the truth that drove Toby into a reckless tailspin. He was adopted. This revelation sends Avery into her own tailspin. Could it be that she really is a Hawthorne despite the DNA test? Could she be Toby's daughter? Her mother sure loved games and had a secret about the day Avery was born that Avery never learned while her mother lived. But the writing is on the wall. Literally. Toby's handwriting looks so familiar to Avery and then she realizes that she's seen it before. On her birth certificate. It might be her father's name, but Toby signed it. This makes Avery's desire to find Toby her number one priority. Nothing else matters. Not even losing her inheritance. She will find the truth whatever it takes. And it takes a lot; sifting through old wills, travelling to dangerous locales, discovering secrets long since buried, and family no one ever knew. But is the truth worth a life?

I think the problem I had with The Inheritance Games is I didn't feel there were real stakes. Sure, there was "a fortune at stake" as this book's cover proclaims but a fortune in the balance where wealthy people are concerned isn't really compelling. What is compelling is what the fortune makes other people do. Aside from some gunplay I didn't feel like anyone was really in danger. Avery was going to survive to see out the trilogy, them's the facts. The Hawthorne Legacy though upped the stakes to be about life and death while performing a wonderful bait and switch. Because anyone reading the final pages of the first installment would be convinced that this volume would be all about finding Toby, the missing Hawthrone. And while it is, it's more about Toby's legacy. The actual corpses he's left in his wake. While, like Emily's death, the death's in Toby's past were an accident, he is far more culpable. He did toy with the idea of burning it all to the ground, it's just that a tragically timed storm made the final decision for him. But another death changes everything and actually puts death on the table versus just another game. People could actually die now, and not just in the past. Finally life and death stakes! Yet oddly enough that wasn't the driving force of The Hawthorne Legacy, the driving force was the legacy of all the Hawthrones. Because here there's an interesting mirroring of the first book with the first will that Tobias wrote when Toby disappeared. That will, like the will that left everything to Avery, was meant to bring his family together. Though his daughters never saw that will it too was strewn with clues for them to reconnect and find Toby. And in their search for Toby they all learn something about themselves, Avery learns she isn't a Hawthorne by blood, Jameson and Nash find their fathers, and we learn about the truly convoluted nature of the relationship between the Hawthornes and the family retainers, the Laughlins. We get ALL the family secrets, ALL the tea is spilled, combined with actual stakes? More like this please!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Avery Grambs, Family, Family Secrets, Jameson Hawthorne, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Murder Most Foul, Stakes, The Hawthorne Legacy, The Inheritance Games, Tobias Hawthorne, Toby Hawthorne, Wills, Xander Hawthorne

If you're anything like me you have an old stack of catalogs in your bathroom. Signals and Acorn are perennial favorites even if they're over a decade old. Of course this leads to the problem that most of the DVD sets I'm coveting are now long out of print. One such DVD I desired was The Blackheath Poisonings. Oh, how I longed for it. It's in the British tradition of everyone in a large extended family living together who them start dropping like flies. Add in the fact that the family runs a successful toy company and live on the edge of a heath and the Gothic atmosphere is turned up to eleven. One day when I was checking my external hard drives I discovered that I had somewhere along the way acquired a copy. Which meant that all other shows were dropped because it was time for some poison! Three episodes later I wished I had taken the poison. Such potential wasted with too many tropes. Literally the only thing I liked was their house. It was a unique and highly tiled entryway that helped distract me from how completely stupid each and every character was in this series. I honestly don't know how it was possible for each and every character to be too dumb to live. Literally ALL OF THEM. The patriarch becomes severally ill and is recovering if his food is carefully prepped and monitored. But occasionally he relapses and eventually dies. Don't you think that, I don't know, someone would look for some food secreted about his room or a flask filled with liqueur that he might be sneaking against doctor's orders? When his son bothers to look after the death the flask is found in under a minute. But then again our earnest young crime solver is also in love with his "aunt" who was also his father's mistress and he spends all his time when he's not trying to connect the dots of criminality plighting his troth. To a women who could easily be his mother. Though of course the killer isn't done with one death, the elderly matriarch, Sister Monica Joan from Call the Midwife, she starts exhibiting the same symptoms and seriously, the family and the family doctor are like, what could it possibly be!?! She deserved to die. They all deserved to die. And I felt cheated with them using Patrick Malahide as a red herring. He's so wonderfully malevolent and scheming, but alas, this show is nothing more than a family bickering, having affairs, fighting for dominance, and wanting to sleep with Ian McNeice's wife. And that right there is why the first murder happened, because Ian McNeice is the killer. But it's SO much worse than that. Because he likes to dress in women's clothing and go to secret clubs and wander the heath dressed in widow's weeds. That's why his mother had to die, she saw him on the heath. Though there was no way that was Ian McNeice. There is no fat shaming on this blog, but it has to be pointed out that even in the early nineties Ian McNeice was an ample man. There was no way he fit convincingly into a corset to wander the heath. That's a body double. Which is why I didn't guess he was the killer, it wasn't that I didn't add up the pieces I just hoped that this was above hateful anti-trans tropes. But it wasn't. Though in my desperation to follow this up with something I would enjoy I rewatched all of Father Brown, so I have to thank The Blackheath Poisonings for being so bad, stupid, and hateful, for me to remember how much I love the denizens of Kembleford.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anti-Trans, Call the Midwife, Corset, Family, Father Brown, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Gothic, Ian McNeice, Kembleford, Patrick Malahide, Poison, Red Herring, The Blackheath Poisonings, Too Dumb to Live, Transvestite, Tropes

The Only One Left by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: June 20th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Kit McDeere is out of options. When she became a caregiver she never thought it would mean that years would pass by without barely even noticing. The patients changed, the routine didn't. And then her name was splashed across the papers. She was taking care of her mother who had terminal Cancer. Only her mother died of a drug overdose. Her name has been cleared but it is not clean and no one is willing to take a chance on her. No one except for another person with nothing left to lose. Lenora Hope was an urban legend when Kit was growing up. There was a rhyme and everything, "At seventeen, Lenora Hope. Hung her sister with a rope. Stabbed her father with a knife. Took her mother’s happy life. 'It wasn’t me,' Lenora said. But she's the only one not dead." Kit never thought Lenora was real, and yet she is. Lenora needs constant care, she's in her seventies and confined to a wheelchair from a series of strokes. The only way she can communicate is using her left hand, mainly taping out yes or no answers. And yet when Kit arrives at Hope's End she is terrified of this bedridden woman. It doesn't help that the previous beloved nurse disappeared in the night never to be heard from again. The story that Kit is told, that she had to leave for a family emergency, doesn't add up. Especially when Kit tries to put unpack in her new room. Because there is no room for her possessions because their place is taken up with the previous nurse's possessions. Clothes, books, even her medical kit. This doesn't make any sense. The other staff aren't that comforting, a house keeper, a cook, a young maid, and a groundskeeper. They all seem to be a part of the pall that hangs over the estate. And as for the house itself? How does anyone live here? The floor is canted as the whole house leans towards the ocean, promising that one day it will crash off the cliffs into the cold waters below. Could that be what happened to her predecessor? One day she got too close to the edge and over she went? Kit doesn't know what or who to trust, is the schoolyard chant tainting her perceptions, or are the cracks in the walls getting bigger, the creaks in the night, the shadows under the crack in the door to Lenora's room, everything is imbued with menace. And yet, she stays, because Lenora is able to laboriously type with her left hand, and she has promised to tell Kit the truth. But what if the truth is the most dangerous secret of all?

Riley Sager perfectly understands the building blocks of a good Gothic novel. It all goes back to family and location. Just think of Flowers in the Attic, AKA incest in the attic, the Gothic pulp of it's day, family and location. Here we have two families full of secrets and a location that is to die for, literally, it might just collapse into the ocean at a moments notice. The way that Sager weaves Lenora Hope's tragic history of lost love is the stuff of Gothic nightmares. A mother, father, and sister tragically murdered, and her, alone, living at the scene of the crime, trapped forever in the past, with only her loyal retainers. A woman who should be a subject of pity but instead is a subject of fear. Fear that works it's way into Kit McDeere's mind as her own family trauma is revealed. A mother dead, the Cancer was killing her but that isn't the cause of death. That death is why Kit is at Hope's End. But there's more. There's always more with Sager, and the way these two women's lives start to come together shows what a master storyteller he is. As for the house? I never really feel that a book can be considered Gothic without a memorable location. There are so many pretenders out there who don't realize this necessity. Hill House, Manderley, Wuthering Heights, Belasco House, and now Hope's End, these are the gold standard. These are places you dream about, places that haunt you. Places you never want to visit but after you read about can never leave. Hope's End is perfection, in the most decrepit, moldering, uninhabitable way possible. It's not just that the evidence of the murders still lingers, blood spots on the stairs, a missing pool table, and a broken chandelier, it's that the house is literally falling into the ocean. You could call it hubris to build a house on a cliff, but that just adds to Lenora's father haunting her forever, his vanity destroyed her in more ways than one. But what really got to me was the fact that once you're on the second floor there's a cant the house. It is leaning towards oblivion. This makes Hope's End a kind of fun house, or should I more correctly say a house of horrors? An attraction at a local fair that has an air of menace about it, where dark carnies prowl the space between tents, and the fun house is the most terrifying place you could be trapped. Every second that they stay in the house is a second too long. You know as they do, that everything will come crashing down in the end, but the wait for that end is agonizing. This book had me reading with baited breath, a not uncommon occurrence with Sager's writing, but the ending crashed on me like the weight of those stones on the ocean as Hope's End fell. That was some ride.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Belasco House, Cancer, Family, Flowers in the Attic, Gothic, Hill House, Hope's End, Kit McDeere, Lenora Hope, Lizzie Borden, Manderley, Murder Most Foul, Riley Sager, Stroke, The Only One Left, Wuthering Heights

Dubliners by James Joyce
Published by: Wisehouse Classics
Publication Date: 1914
Format: Kindle, 142 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

In Dublin, as in any town, people's lives are interconnected. They form friendships and relationships and create families. The young learn from the old but sometimes the old have their own epiphanies. A young boy experiences death for the first time when his friend, Father Flynn, dies, and as he listens to the stories surrounding him he realizes that the Father Flynn he knew wasn't the one they knew. But death is just one thing children learn, they also learn about rules and how to break them and then, worst of all, what happens when you break your heart. But as you age, sometimes you learn that love isn't everything, as Eveline chooses her family and her home over love overseas. Though what can you get overseas that you can't get at home? You can wine and dine with the best of them. Drinking, dancing, cards, games, just be wary of your wallet. Of course, if your wallet does end up a little empty, who's to say you can't con your way to being flush again? You just need to find the right people to swindle, like housemaids in wealthy homes. And for every young person contemplating marriage there's another contemplating the road not taken. The carefree life of the intellectual with no ties to bind. Though it's the saddest of cases when you lash out at those who love you who you view as chains around your neck. No child should ever be hurt. Because family and those who you care for should be held precious. Sweets and cake and joy in each other's presence is the greatest of gifts, even if you accidentally forget the cake. One never knows when your chance at happiness might pass you by. Love those who love you, marvel in their presence in your life. You don't want to only be a memory. Though if a memory, raising a glass and reciting a poem wouldn't go amiss. And that is all life is. Love and loss. We never know the pain of others. We never know what the person in bed beside us might have suffered. We only know that we need each other and have to be kind and true and hopefully our better angels will triumph.

The Irish are one of the most stereotyped cultures; everyone can hold their pint and tell a story and is a little light-fingered. But is this stereotype true? Is the belief that Ireland is full of drunk thieving storytellers based on truth or based on tropes that writers such as James Joyce disseminate and have therefore ingrained in society? This was my constant struggle while reading this book. Was he picturing the world he knew or the world that would be an accepted truth? And I can't come to a conclusion. I've tried to discuss this before and all I ever get out of people is that "James Joyce is classic." Well, what about these issues I have? Being classic doesn't mean you can't be wrong! And I know, I'm a neophyte when it comes to Joyce, I haven't read any of his other works, just these fifteen short stories about drunks and creepy priests with abrupt endings. So I don't get the larger context, I don't have the intertextuality. He obviously loved his country and this book brims with national pride so I would assume he wouldn't want to be a contributing factor to the stereotyping of his countrymen and women. But I can't get around that this is exactly what it feels like. When I was younger I always went to Irish Fest in Milwaukee. I went for the culture and the music, most everyone else went to get blind drunk. Not helped once they stopped selling funnel cake. And all these midwesterners thought that this is what it is to be Irish. To just get plastered. I mean, the same can be said for every Saint Patrick's Day everywhere. But Ireland and Irish culture are more than this. So maybe what I'm saying is that James Joyce is limiting. He's limiting his country to the cultural stereotypes of the day. Because there is progress. Look to a television show like The Irish R.M. based on books from the turn of the last century where it was all about the British being exasperated by those wiley drunks to the late nineties show Ballykissangel where, yes, there were still cons and drunks, but they talked about their problems and actually helped one of their own get sober. And yes, I might have been on a weird nostalgia trip recently and rewatched these shows. But there was progress. There was something more. And that's what I expected of this classic writer. Something more.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Ballykissangel, Classic, Community, Drunk, Dublin, Dubliners, Epiphany, Family, For the Love of Book Clubs, Ireland, Irish Fest, James Joyce, Milwaukee, Short Stories, Stereotype, Storytelling, The Irish R.M., Thieves

Rowankind by Jacey Bedford
Published by: DAW
Publication Date: November 27th, 2018
Format: Paperback, 473 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

When freed many of the rowankind took the Fae's offer to return to their homeland, Iaru. Yet there are those that stayed behind in Britain. They have made lives for themselves and have no desire to return to a homeland that they've never known. The humans though don't feel safe. They have treated the rowankind worse than slaves for hundreds of years and now those slaves have the power to fight back. And they are. In retaliation the humans are killing the rowankind. Reports of mass executions happening all over the country have reached the ears of the Fae and they want to take revenge. But Ross and Corwen beg the Fae council to let them attempt a diplomatic approach first before razing all of Britain. A major problem though is in educating the Fae that the world has changed. They have cloistered themselves in Iaru for so long they don't understand that being King isn't as powerful as it once was. The King has to answer to Parliament and they have to answer to the people. This will not be an easy fix and yet the Fae expect it to be. They expect Ross and Corwen to just walk up to the King and get him to make his subjects behave. In order to stop more bloodshed the couple are willing to attempt the impossible. And it really looks like it shall be impossible, George III isn't well, and the reason shocks Ross when she discovers it, the King has magic. Magic he isn't using. Much like Corwen's brother denying his wolf half, the King is denying his magic and it's making him very ill. Yet once contact is made Ross really hopes that they can reach some sort of agreement. But the Fae think they are taking too long and start demonstrating what they are capable of. If the populace was scared of a few rowankind with not much magic how are they going to feel about the Fae turning their beer into water and bringing about a blight to their crops? If everyone would just behave and trust each other for one minute perhaps everything will work out and Ross and Corwen can have their happy ending. Perhaps.

Rowankind doesn't really bring anything new to the table with regard to this trilogy but it does satisfactorily tie up all the loose ends. And there are many, from rescuing missing men to reinstating Gentleman Jim on his island. And there is also much politicking. Because the merging of two worlds, with magical citizens living in a nonmagical world, needs policies. There need to be laws to protect their rights and their bodies from harm. And it's a sad day when fictional Fae end up having more rights than many people do today. But that's just the world we live, and proves once again why I want to live in books and in particular this series. But while the politics do take center stage along with several notable politicians of the day, that's not all this book is about. We get one last piratical adventure, another shooting of London Bridge, a final Walsingham showdown, some more family drama, and lots of happily ever afters. Because this is fantasy and that means the good prevail, the bad fail, and everyone gets to sail off into the sunset. Plus there's just this wonderful message of the healing powers of love and that love is love. Ross is able to find love again even though she thought she never would after the death of her husband Will. Her brother David finds love with a rowankind servant Annie. Her brother-in-law is able to tame his beast due to the love of his partner Roland. Her Aunt Rosie reunites with her lost love Leo. Even the servants get in on the love with her maid Poppy marrying Yeardley. And, now that I think about it, this whole series is about finding your family, those who you love with your whole heart and soul. You don't have to be related by blood, I mean look what Ross had to do to her brother.... It's about finding your tribe. Be they pirates or pixies, when you find your people the world is so much better because they are there for you in good times and in bad and most importantly, they will fight for you and even help you burying the bodies. So here's a shout-out to all my family, I love you like I love books, and you know how much that is.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Britain, Corwen, Execution, Fae, Family, George III, HEA, Jacey Bedford, London Bridge, Love, Magic, Pirates, Politics, Regency England, Regency Magic, Ross Tremayne, Rowankind, Silverwolf, Trilogy, Winterwood

Rowankind by Jacey Bedford
Published by: DAW
Publication Date: November 27th, 2018
Format: Paperback, 473 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

When freed many of the rowankind took the Fae's offer to return to their homeland, Iaru. Yet there are those that stayed behind in Britain. They have made lives for themselves and have no desire to return to a homeland that they've never known. The humans though don't feel safe. They have treated the rowankind worse than slaves for hundreds of years and now those slaves have the power to fight back. And they are. In retaliation the humans are killing the rowankind. Reports of mass executions happening all over the country have reached the ears of the Fae and they want to take revenge. But Ross and Corwen beg the Fae council to let them attempt a diplomatic approach first before razing all of Britain. A major problem though is in educating the Fae that the world has changed. They have cloistered themselves in Iaru for so long they don't understand that being King isn't as powerful as it once was. The King has to answer to Parliament and they have to answer to the people. This will not be an easy fix and yet the Fae expect it to be. They expect Ross and Corwen to just walk up to the King and get him to make his subjects behave. In order to stop more bloodshed the couple are willing to attempt the impossible. And it really looks like it shall be impossible, George III isn't well, and the reason shocks Ross when she discovers it, the King has magic. Magic he isn't using. Much like Corwen's brother denying his wolf half, the King is denying his magic and it's making him very ill. Yet once contact is made Ross really hopes that they can reach some sort of agreement. But the Fae think they are taking too long and start demonstrating what they are capable of. If the populace was scared of a few rowankind with not much magic how are they going to feel about the Fae turning their beer into water and bringing about a blight to their crops? If everyone would just behave and trust each other for one minute perhaps everything will work out and Ross and Corwen can have their happy ending. Perhaps.

Rowankind doesn't really bring anything new to the table with regard to this trilogy but it does satisfactorily tie up all the loose ends. And there are many, from rescuing missing men to reinstating Gentleman Jim on his island. And there is also much politicking. Because the merging of two worlds, with magical citizens living in a nonmagical world, needs policies. There need to be laws to protect their rights and their bodies from harm. And it's a sad day when fictional Fae end up having more rights than many people do today. But that's just the world we live, and proves once again why I want to live in books and in particular this series. But while the politics do take center stage along with several notable politicians of the day, that's not all this book is about. We get one last piratical adventure, another shooting of London Bridge, a final Walsingham showdown, some more family drama, and lots of happily ever afters. Because this is fantasy and that means the good prevail, the bad fail, and everyone gets to sail off into the sunset. Plus there's just this wonderful message of the healing powers of love and that love is love. Ross is able to find love again even though she thought she never would after the death of her husband Will. Her brother David finds love with a rowankind servant Annie. Her brother-in-law is able to tame his beast due to the love of his partner Roland. Her Aunt Rosie reunites with her lost love Leo. Even the servants get in on the love with her maid Poppy marrying Yeardley. And, now that I think about it, this whole series is about finding your family, those who you love with your whole heart and soul. You don't have to be related by blood, I mean look what Ross had to do to her brother.... It's about finding your tribe. Be they pirates or pixies, when you find your people the world is so much better because they are there for you in good times and in bad and most importantly, they will fight for you and even help you burying the bodies. So here's a shout-out to all my family, I love you like I love books, and you know how much that is.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Britain, Corwen, Execution, Fae, Family, George III, HEA, Jacey Bedford, London Bridge, Love, Magic, Pirates, Politics, Regency England, Regency Magic, Ross Tremayne, Rowankind, Silverwolf, Trilogy, Winterwood

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: May 3rd, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Beatriz lost everything with the death of her father. Branded a traitor he was executed and she and her mother moved in with relatives who treated them worse than slaves. When Beatriz catches the eye of Don Rodolfo Solórzano she jumps at the chance of a new beginning and a home of her own. He's well off and has a position of power in the new Provisional Government and is wealthy enough to support two residences, a house in the city and his family pulque plantation in the county. Her mother's dislike of him can be overcome in time, and as for the rumors of what happened to his first wife? She thinks little of it, which might be just what her new husband wants, someone desperate enough to not ask questions. His job keeps him in town while Beatriz will primarily reside at the Hacienda San Isidro, an arrangement that suits him perfectly. Of course Beatriz had pictured San Isidro as her husband romanticized it in stories of his childhood. She did not expect the rundown house with the verdant growth gone to rot. She also didn't expect to be dumped there. Surely a newly wedded man would want to spend time with his wife? But she is soon left alone in a hostile environment. Her sister-in-law Juana wants nothing to do with her or the house and the staff keep themselves apart. Beatriz got what she thought she wanted and is more alone than she's ever been. If she can restore San Isidro, bring the house and the gardens back to life, she can lure her mother to live with her and perhaps then she will feel less alone. But the house doesn't want this. She hears voices and sees things that cannot possibly be real. She looks to Juana for confirmation but gets none. Yet why does Juana only enter the house when she has to and only during daylight? Beatriz has nowhere to turn but the church. Padre Andrés is a newly ordained priest and he is the only one who will listen to Beatriz. He grew up at San Isidro and as soon as he returns he can tell that something is horribly wrong. This isn't the home he knew and Beatriz is right, there's danger here. Thankfully Andrés is willing to help the young bride, but as they battle San Isidro they have to battle their growing attraction and victory is not assured. Not in the least.

This book was lauded as Rebecca meets Mexican Gothic. Now I, for one, will admit that PR for a book has to always go for the biggest names, the one haunted house book with true name recognition to compare to the haunted house book they're trying to get you to pick up. It's all designed to grab our attention, and I totally fall for it. Every. Single. Time. You liked this? Well you'll love this, it's the same but better! No, it never is. Except once in a great while. Whenever I see a book compared to my beloved Rebecca I read the book and wonder if the author or the PR department had actually ever read Du Maurier's classic. And as for the Mexican Gothic comparison, after that book became a surprise hit every Gothic book coming out had to somehow be "like" it. Here's the thing though, Mexican Gothic wasn't that good, whereas this book is. Oh my, they really delivered on the "same but better." I should find those PR people and apologize for how I've always trashed them for their cunning deceptions. It's their job after all... I've even been known to do it! The reason The Hacienda beats Mexican Gothic hands down is Isabel Cañas didn't complicate this story with mushrooms and what have you. She went for the standard tropes of the Gothic genre, dead first wife, hostile family, lonely outsider newlywed, recalcitrant servants, haunted house, conflicted priest, forbidden romance, and wrote these tropes to the highest standard. There isn't much original here, but it is so well crafted, so well drawn out, that you will love it completely. The story of Beatriz is propulsive. How will she survive? I kept turning the pages late into the night. I could see it all before me and yet somehow it maintained my interest. The Hacienda has all the goodness of a true Gothic haunted house story paired with what it means to belong and want a home. And that's where it set itself above the tropes, that's where it was unique, in Beatriz's desire for a place of her own. Her family had been cast out and degraded and she took the first opportunity she had to break free. Yes, it was a dangerous decision in the end, but who wouldn't risk it all to find their place in the world? To finally feel safe? I know I would, wouldn't you?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Place to Call Home, Daphne Du Maurier, Family, Forbidden Romance, Ghosts, Going Gothic, Gothic, Haunted House, Isabel Cañas, Mexican Gothic, Mexico, PR, Priests, Pulque Plantation, Rebecca, The Hacienda, Tropes

Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn
Published by: Mira Books
Publication Date: January 1st, 2008
Format: Paperback, 489 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Lady Julia Grey has been recuperating in Italy after the scandalous events that ended in a fire at her house. Yet staying in Italy with two of her brothers and her newest sister-in-law is starting to wear a little thin. Therefore a summons back to the family estate for Christmas is just what she thinks she needs... though her brother Lysander might disagree as he has gotten married without their father's permission. Bringing along a rather adorable and young Italian count, Julia Grey arrives at the deconsecrated Bellmont Abbey. There not only does she find her rather distant poor relations, Emma and Lucy, ensconced in the house, but Lucy has brought along her fiance, Sir Cedric, with the intention of being married from the Abbey over the holidays. But family is to be expected, and Nicholas Brisbane isn't family. The enigmatic dark knight who she had a previous run in with... and it may have resulted in their lips running into each other, is also at the Abbey after not once contacting her since they solved her husband's murder. She had been trying to forget him and that's hard to do when he shows up for Christmas! Yet here he is affianced and celebrating the holidays with her family. She'll just have to distract herself with Alessandro. She KNEW he would be useful! Yet Julia can sense that her father invited Nicholas for some other reason than just to celebrate the season and Nicholas's unexpected upcoming nuptials... and soon things start to go amiss. The new curate, Lucian Snow, is suspicious of the gypsy encampment on the land, especially when Julia's jewels go missing. It's not long before the long winter nights close in on them and they become snowbound with someone with a mind to murder. Soon Lucian is dead and Lucy is confessing to the crime! Lady Julia knows this is all wrong, which means she'll have to team up with Nicholas to get to the bottom of things before the snow melts. Why can't life be simple?

After the first book in this series I was uncertain as to whether I wanted to pick up the next one. But the fact that I already owned it combined with so many people whose opinion I respect loving this series I was willing to give it another go. I mean, it wasn't that I hated the first book as such... there where redeeming qualities, like Julia's crazy family... and seeing as this was about the holidays with said crazy family, it looked like it would fit the bill. A family, reunited at their crumbling estate for the holidays, when the snow traps them inside with thieves and murderers... and that's just the family members they like, this sounded like my jam and for the most part I heartily enjoyed it. For quite awhile the book had me in it's spell. All the secrets and plots and double crosses. Jewels going missing, a possible ghost, inappropriate liaisons and engagements and marriages. I was in happy little mystery land but then the spell broke. The story went on overly long and started to drag. I date this failing to when the snow melted and they where no longer trapped. There's something delicious about a locked room mystery that loses it's allure once they can just walk free. Because in the end, it's the tension that kept me flipping the pages, and sure, some people would say that the imminent melting of the snow provided the best tension, and I might be willing to agree, but the actual melting, no, because this allowed some of the guilty parties to walk free. While this might be more true to life it does not a satisfying ending make. An ending that wasn't neat or tidy and was too broad and sloppy because while I figured out what was happening Deanna could have derailed my theories yet didn't, instead just using the twist from Agatha Christie's The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding. I call shenanigan's on Deanna Raybourn. While I guess if you're going to steal, steal from the best... but Lady Julia isn't Poirot and Deanna isn't Dame Agatha. Yet.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Abbey, Agatha Christie, Christmas, Deanna Raybourn, Family, Holidays, Jewel Thief, Lady Julia, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Nicholas Brisbane, Poirot, Silent in the Sanctuary, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Published by: Doubleday
Publication Date: 1814
Format: Hardcover, 496 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Fanny Price is a burden to her poor and ever expanding family. Her two maternal aunts decide to help their disadvantageously married sister by taking Fanny in at Mansfield Park, separating the young girl from the only family she has ever known and her beloved brother William. She is to be raised with her four cousins, Tom, Edmund, Maria, and Julia. Given all the advantages they have but never once allowed by her aunt, Mrs. Norris, to ever think herself their equal. She is a part of the family but always apart, not really one of them, but not even fitting in with the servants. She is truly alone. If it wasn't for the kindness of her cousin Edmund to that undersized ten year old, Fanny would have despaired. Instead she has grown up "knowing her place" and hopelessly in love with Edmund. A love she knows her family would never embrace. So she loves him in silence, not wanting to cause trouble. But the eldest, Tom, is causing trouble. He has racked up debts that require his father to sell the living of the local parsonage that was to be Edmund's and the Grants move in. This wouldn't have been a catastrophic event except for what happened next. Fanny's uncle and her cousins' father, Sir Thomas Bertam, was called away to Antigua, taking Tom with him. The power vacuum at Mansfield Park was filled by Mrs. Norris. She sees this time as coming into her own, she finds a wealthy dunderhead of a fiance for Maria, and encourages an intimacy with the parsonage, an intimacy which is far more interesting to the inhabitants of Mansfield Park when Mrs. Grant's two siblings, Henry and Mary Crawford, arrive. Mrs. Norris hopes to marry Henry to Julia and Mary, well Mary initially thinks only of Tom, until she begins to see what Fanny sees in Edmund. But the trouble caused with Henry and his ever roving eye, going from Julia to Maria to Fanny, will change Mansfield Park forever.

When I first read Mansfield Park I took a bizarre pride in being one of the few to actually love it more than Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. I thought anyone who didn't view it as Austen's best work was deluded and therefore not worth my time. I have often felt myself against the Austen mainstream. Bucking treads and going my own way and listening to my heart and not to academic discourse. Because if there's one thing I can be certain of it's that Jane Austen herself would despise many of the people who populate the higher ranks of her so-called "societies." What this book captures, more than any other, is the darker side of familial obligations. Fanny is slighted, imposed upon, nothing more than a tool to be of use to other people. Part of their lives without one of her own. An identity subsumed into theirs, nothing more than a dogsbody. She was basically sold into service. And yes, I will grudgingly admit that with Antigua there is an underscoring of slavery, the real slavery Austen was interested in here is adoption. And while she might have been telling the story about Fanny's adoption into her cousins' family, I think it was actually a thinly veiled reference to her own life. Jane's brother Edward was "presented" to his wealthy relatives Thomas and Catherine Knight, the same relatives who gave Jane's father the living at Steventon, when Edward was twelve and Jane was five. Edward became their legal heir and left Jane's family unit. How might this have effected young Jane? Could she have written Mansfield Park as a way to handle this trauma in her life? I personally think she did. Because while everything turned out alright for Fanny as it did for her brother Edward, one might say that Mansfield Park is about working though her issues. But I hope writing this book was cathartic. I know it was reading it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Caregivers Syndrome, Edmund Betram, Edward Knight, Family, Fanny Price, Jane Austen, JASNA, Mansfield Park, Mrs. Norris, Pride and Prejudice, Regency Romp, Sense and Sensibility, Slavery, Steventon

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1912
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
To Buy

Here we go people! Another orphan story! Can't say my mom wasn't consistent! She liked unconventional families, be they big and rambling, or the families you found after being an orphan. And isn't it the time of year for orphans? It's very bleak Dickensian Christmas to be one... Anyway, my mom became obsessed with this book because of the 1955 film starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron. Now usually it's me that falls in love with books after first seeing the movie, but I guess that turns out to be hereditary... The thing is she had issues with the movie, she thought it odd that a young girl would fall in love with her benefactor and the age difference she found creepy. So she read the book to see how much was changed and fell in love with the book, which is quite different and told in a wonderful epistolary style. In fact she was so obsessed with Daddy-Long-Legs that when she learned there was an out of print sequel, Dear Enemy, she spent months scouring shelves of used bookstores for a copy. So one year, for Christmas, I found a copy online, a first edition inscribed "Christmas 1915" and gave it to her. I think she liked it. She oddly didn't read it for quite a few years. I think by that point she was worried it would disappoint her and then it came back into print and I found her reading a paperback copy one day but she wouldn't comment on it being good or bad. So I at least know the first book in the series is a classic... the second is up in the air.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Classic, Daddy-Long-Legs, Dear Enemy, Families, Family, Film, Fred Astaire, Jean Webster, Leslie Caron, Orphan, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay
Published by: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication Date: 2001
Format: Paperback, 256 Pages
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Again, leave it to my mom to fall in love with another series that is impossible to find stateside. In fact, despite being an Anglophile myself there's a strong likelihood that the majority of my overseas book purchases over the years have been down to my mom. Once again it's a large rambling non-conventional family and the adventures they get up to, this time in the wake of their grandfather's death and his bequests to the Casson family. What my mom loved most about this series is that all the children are named after paint colors. Or should I say colours because this is a British series? My mom was always going back and forth between books and art and loved when the two commingled. Though what I am most grateful for is that this series didn't come out until long after I was born. I don't think I could be a Saffron or a Cadmium or a Indigo and definitely not a Permanent Rose! It's a very cool concept for a fictional family, but I don't think it would work without a few raised eyebrows in the real weird. But if you want to escape for awhile into a family that you wish you could be a part of, quirky names and all, then start with Saffy's Angel, because this series might just be for you!   

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anglophile, British, Cadmium, Casson Family, Family, Hilary McKay, Indigo, Permanent Rose, Saffron, Saffy's Angel, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
Published by: Bullseye Books
Publication Date: 1936
Format: Paperback, 281 Pages
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Fun fact time. My mother wasn't a fan of ballet. Extra odd because she was a Russian major and I know studied the Ballets Russes. So either she didn't like ballet because of her studies or it was just something she said to me because she didn't want me to do it. In fairness I would have been a horrible ballet student and she was just heading off a battle before it started. But here's the thing, I couldn't care less about ballet. I never wanted to take ballet, the shoes just transfixed me the first time I saw them in a store window at West Towne Mall. So if my mom's outward dislike of ballet came about because I was eyeing those shoes, I feel bad that we couldn't unite in our dislike. Despite her "dislike" of ballet she adored Ballet Shoes. In fact, she adored any book written by Noel Streatfeild, an author that is shamefully underrepresented on US shelves with only a handful of her many "shoes" books available here. In fact I had to often order her books from England for my mom because she couldn't get enough of her writing! Thankfully Noel Streatfeild's books are a little more accessible stateside after the adorable 2007 adaptation of this book staring Emma Watson. So if you're an author whose books aren't showing up on the shelves just get a movie adapted of your work staring someone from Harry Potter and you're set apparently! As to why it's a favorite of my mom's? She loved historical fiction about children foisted into situations meant to test their mettle. Extra points if they're an odd conglomeration of a family with lots of quirks and ambitions. And if that's your jam this book will be up your alley too.   

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Ballet, Ballet Shoes, Ballets Russes, Emma Watson, England, Family, Harry Potter, Historical Fiction, Mall Rats, Noel Streatfeild, Russia, Shoes, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, West Towne Mall

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
Published by: Yearling
Publication Date: June 14th, 2005
Format: Paperback, 288 Pages
To Buy

If you haven't been paying attention you might not have noticed a trend in my mother's favorite books. That trend is a love for big families and summer vacations that seem to last forever. My mom has four siblings. Two of her three elder sisters were married when my mom was young, making several of her nieces and nephews closer to her own age than her sisters. Family was always around, be it her nieces or nephews or cousins, her love of a large family unit was born through her experiences as a kid. As for idealized summer vacations... from what I've gathered any vacation usually was an excruciatingly long ride to somewhere only my grandfather was interested in, often insisting everyone stay in the car while he went off and did what he wanted to do. Alone. I can picture my mom in all those cars dreaming up a vacation worthy of a family like the Penderwicks. So I think it's easy to say that she longed to have the perfect family summers that books, like The Penderwicks, encapsulated and she devoured by the shelf. When this series was first published it was obviously going to be an instant favorite with my mom, I mean, seriously, just look at the cover and the fact that it's basically combining Magic by the Lake with The Secret Garden. Timeless tales of youth and a golden summer that she dreamed of having. Well, if you can't have it in life at least you can have it in literature.    

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Edward Eager, Family, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Jeanne Birdsall, Magic by the Lake, Sisters, Summer, Summer Vacation, The Penderwicks, The Secret Garden, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, Vacation

The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories by Daphne Du Maurier
Published by: Virago Press
Publication Date: 1981
Format: Paperback, 180 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

From first hearing of the abandoned estate to several failed attempts to finally glimpse the house, Menabilly captured Daphne's imagination. She would eventually sit for hours on the lawn, gazing at the boarded up house imagining what once was and what ghosts might lurk there still. The seeds for Rebecca were thus planted and came to fruition years later while stationed with her husband in Cairo. She mapped out her story, staring an unnamed heroine and her husband Henry and the ghost of his dead wife haunting them still. Du Maurier was inspired by Cornwall and Menabilly, but her inspiration came from her family as well. The lauded author and grandfather she never knew, George Du Maurier, to her father, the famous stage actor, Sir Gerald Du Maurier, to her "uncle" J.M. Barrie. She was surrounded by artistic genius and it almost seemed predestined that she would make a name for herself in her own right. But seeing her name in lights? That was a humbling experience for the author. She longed for the days when authors would disappear behind their work and let it speak for itself. Yet, if called upon to give her opinion, despite her caustic wit tearing other authors to shreds for doing so, she would give it, without censor. Daphne Du Maurier might be remembered most for Rebecca, but that's not all she was.

Years ago, when I rediscovered Daphne Du Maurier by stumbling on a hoard of books at my local used bookstore I took to the Internet to see what other works she had written that were no longer in wide release, especially in the United States. That is when I first heard of The Rebecca Notebook. Not only is Rebecca the seminal work of Du Maurier, but one of my most favorite books ever. Therefore I needed The Rebecca Notebook to get further insight into Du Maurier's masterpiece and was willing to pay the exorbitant shipping from England in order to learn more about one of my favorite books. So was it worth it? Yes and no. There are insights to be learned but with the "other memories" there is a lot of filler, which is saying something as this slim volume is only 180 pages. I felt that seeing as Du Maurier cherry-picked essays from her back catalog she should have stuck with pieces relating to Cornwall and the house that inspired Manderley, as "The House of Secrets" is a wonderful little piece showing the genesis of Rebecca and has the lyricism of her fiction, which is sadly absent in her non-fiction, making it clunky and often painful to read.

As for "The Rebecca Notebook" itself? It's interesting to see how she plotted her writing chapter by chapter, showing what big reveals needed to happen when with snatches of dialogue she had hoped to use. Yet at the same time I feel this only truly interesting to writers or lawyers. Why lawyers? Because Rebecca was at the heart of a plagiarism case and "The Rebecca Notebook" was brought forward as evidence for the defense. This fact makes me leery of the veracity of the notebook. I don't doubt that Du Maurier wrote Rebecca and it was all her own creation, but I do doubt the notebook... it's a bit too convenient to have a chapter by chapter breakdown of the book being questioned. Yes, it could be real, but it could also be fabricated. I know this might seem very cynical of me, but Du Maurier was talented but also, as evidenced in her writing, she was devious. So it's more a compliment then a criticism to say that she fabricated this entire notebook just to win a court case. As for the book that supposedly was similar to Rebecca? Edwina L. MacDonald's Blind Windows? I'd really like to get my hands on a copy to see for myself the similarities but the book is lost to the mists of time.

Yet for how technical "The Rebecca Notebook" is and how depressing Rebecca's original "Epilogue" with the second Mrs. de Winter and Maxim, originally called Henry, were disfigured by a car accident, there was a very interesting reveal. Between these two pieces you see that Du Maurier had originally planned Mrs. Danvers to be insignificant. She is almost irrelevant until they need her to dig out Rebecca's planner and show that Rebecca had an appointment in London on the day she died leading to the reveal that Rebecca was dying and her greatest fear was pain. While this is very important to the resolution of the story not having Mrs. Danvers looming over the second Mrs. de Winter the whole time makes Rebecca an entirely different book! That this mousy second wife would just accidentally choose the same portrait Rebecca did to emulate at the masquerade? That seems unlikely. To have Mrs. Danvers push here to do it? Evil genius! There's a reason Hitchcock took Mrs. Danvers even further to her fiery end, it's because he knew that she is the linchpin that holds Rebecca together. Of course I disagree with what he did, but that doesn't mean he wasn't right in the significance of this one character.

As for the filler that makes up the rest of The Rebecca Notebook? In my mind it's best avoided. It's not just the fact that Du Maurier isn't the best writer when it comes to nonfiction, it's that she sometimes reveals things you really didn't want to know. A theme she keeps returning to is her family, from the more direct tales about her grandfather and father, "The Young George du Maurier" and "The Matinee Idol" respectively, to her ideas on love and the importance of family in "Romantic Love" and even to what it is like to lose love in "Death and Widowhood." While she tries to paint it as a lovely family unit, it's really a fucked up family unit. Seeing as she views Emily Bronte dying months after her brother Branwell from a cold she caught at his funeral romantic and just, because obviously Emily couldn't live without her "genius" brother, an opinion only held by Du Maurier I might add, gives you a hint at where she's going. And yes, she's going straight towards incest. And it's interesting to point out here that the only time she refers to it directly and not obliquely she refers to it as something "denied to us." Like we'd all be clamoring like Lannisters if it wasn't a sin? Eww. Just no.

Even putting aside the whole yeah incest, she has a lot of politically incorrect views. Yes, you could say she's a product of her time, but her stance against religion would have been viewed divisive even in it's day. As for comparing the stigma of widowhood as similar to the oppression suffered by people of color, I'm going to pretend I never read that. It's just SO offensive I can't even and that's why I've now categorized her as one of my favorite authors with reservations. I have many authors on this list, Lewis Carroll is one because he was a pedophile. J.M. Barrie, interestingly enough the adoptive father of Daphne's cousins, is another pedophile. Daphne's cousin Michael Llewelyn Davies, the favorite of Barrie's, committed suicide, which should easily prove the whole pedophile charge to any doubters. But my problem is I had already read and fallen in love with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Rebecca long before I learned anything of these authors personal lives. And unlike authors like Orson Scott Card and the dog whistles peppered in his writing, these authors work stands apart. You wouldn't know anything about the ick factor of their lives unless you read up on them, or in the case of Du Maurier, read their non-fiction. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. But I prefer in the end to be an informed reader.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Daphne Du Maurier, Du Maurier December, Family, George Du Maurier, Gerald Du Maurier, Incest, J.M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, Mrs. Danvers, Pedophile, Plagiarism, Rebecca, The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories

Star of the East by Tasha Alexander
Published by: Macmillan
Publication Date: October 28th, 2014
Format: Kindle, 65 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Emily prefers to avoid her mother as much as possible. As the holidays near her and Colin are of a mind to stay as far away from Kent and Darnley House as possible. Only this time Countess Catherine Bromley’s invitation is backed by the weight of the Queen who has requested Colin to go and that causes Colin concern. Emily's mother is hosting the Maharaja Ala Kapur Singh and his family. The maharaja was recently awarded the Order of the Star of India from Queen Victoria and will be spending Christmas itself with the Queen at Osborne House. So why would the Queen want Colin at Darnley House? Emily and Colin dutifully pack themselves and all three of their boys off to Kent. The house party, despite being a lavish affair with Christmas trees in every room and a feast the Countess views as worthy of the subcontinent, is rather small, being made up of the maharaja, his maharani Parsan, his two children, 18 year old marriage obsessed Sunita, and Oxford student Ranjit who brings his best friend Ned, and a few select neighbors. Everything seems to be perfect, even the fresh blanket of snow outside. Though that night the valuable, and cursed, diamond maang tika, the Star of the East, and it's companion golden bangle engraved with words of a spell of protection is taken from Sunita's room. Could the Queen have predicted this and sent Colin to avoid a scandal? Or is there another reason he and Emily were needed at Darnley House?

Tasha knows how to spin the perfect Christmas yarn for the anglophile in us all. A missing jewel, a narrow suspect pool, and all the possible culprits gathered around a Christmas tree in the proper drawing room waiting for Emily to do her version of the Agatha Christie denouement. But it's that cursed jewel that really has my heart going pitter-patter. Tasha has always included literature and authors of the day in Emily's stories, from Mary Elizabeth Braddon to Charles Dickens. In fact I've always felt that her work holds a bit of a debt to a friend of Dickens, Wilkie Collins, especially in Emily's second adventure, A Poisoned Season. Therefore to have Tasha do a full out homage to Collins's The Moonstone while also bringing back my favorite thief introduced in Emily's second adventure, Sebastian Capet, I couldn't have been happier. Though it's not just the fascinating story of how the Star or the East was cursed and then made wearable by it's companion bangle alone that made me so happy while simultaneously giving me a chill down my spin. Oh no, I have always had a love of India. I don't know it this is an offshoot of me being such an anglophile, but there's something about India that has always drawn me in. Therefore seeing the maharaja's family talking about their culture and heritage while set in a very traditional British tale made me happier than I could have thought. But isn't Christmas all about happiness?

Well, we hope Christmas is all about happiness, usually it's about familial guilt trips and bad memories. While Emily's struggles with her mother have been a continuing theme throughout this series I think that Star of the East, being set at her family's estate, gives us much more insight in one go then we've been able to string together over the course of the previous nine volumes. The story about how when her mother learned of Emily's terror of the "Chinese" bedroom that she vowed that Emily would be placed there once out of the nursery shows how controlling the Countess is. That she would be willing to scar a child to make them stronger makes me shudder. Luckily for Emily she had her father on hand, who is the Mr. Bennet of the lot. He was able, through the clever placement of his mother in the Chinese bedroom, to help Emily without incurring too much of his wife's wrath. You can see why Emily clings to the love and life she has formed with Colin. The joy her children give her, even Henry who is a bit of a troublemaker, is wonderful. She has created the life and family she wanted despite her upbringing. Contrasting Emily's past with Sunita's future is almost heartbreaking. For Emily to see a family, one who is very traditional, willing to embrace their daughter and her dreams once they realize how much it matters? Well, it's wonderful for Sunita, and more than a little sad for Emily.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Poisoned Season, Alexander Autumn, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Cursed Gem, Family, India, Kindle, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Parents, Queen Victoria, Star of the East, Tasha Alexander, The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins

Altered Carbon was one of the shows I was most looking forward to this past year. This had nothing to do with the desire to see an ambitious cyberpunk book series brought to life and everything to do with my love of James Purefoy and Joel Kinnaman. I watched that horrid adaptation of Mansfield Park for you James Purefoy, I will watch anything you are in! And the truth is, at times, this show was brilliant. The problem was the moments of brilliance made you realize they were capable of achieving perfection so when the show lagged you really felt it. Set in the future where human consciousness can be downloaded into new bodies, AKA sleeves, this allows death to no longer be an obstacle and the rich can literally live forever. Enter Joel Kinnaman as Takeshi Kovacs hired by the wealthy James Purefoy to find out who murdered his previous sleeve. Takeshi is downloaded into Joel's beautiful body and has to deal with this new body's history, his own history, and his job. If the show had stuck to a linear storyline of who killed James Purefoy instead of going off on long expository rants mainly dealing with Takeshi's fucked up personal life this show could have really worked. But going forward I don't know if I will be interested in watching. The show hinges on the interesting conceit of different actors playing the same role. Now this conceit isn't that original, even Woody Allen has done it, but where this conceit fails is I have this connection to the characters played by these specific actors, do I want to see Joel replaced by Anthony Mackie? Eh, I'm not sure.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Altered Carbon, And the Emmy Goes To, Anthony Mackie, Family, James Purefoy, Joel Kinnaman, Mansfield Park, Takeshi Kovacs, Woody Allen

Emma
Based on the book by Jane Austen
Release Date: October 4th, 11th, 18th, and 24th, 2009
Starring: Michael Gambon, Jodhi May, Robert Bathurst, Tamsin Greig, Valerie Lilley, Romola Garai, Jonny Lee Miller, Dan Fredenburgh, Poppy Miller, Blake Ritson, Veronica Roberts, Louise Dylan, Jefferson Hall, Laura Pyper, Rupert Evans, Liza Sadovy, and Christina Cole
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Emma Woodhouse grew up motherless, raised by a father always expecting the worst. Yet she made the best out of what she was given and dotes on her anxious father and never strays too far from home, unlike her sister who moved an unacceptable distance, less than 15 miles away to London! Therefore Emma's little community of Highbury is her entire world and they view her as their queen. Yet one might pity those in Highbury for an active imagination like Emma's trapped in a small circle of friends they have become the beneficiaries of her schemes. Even if they don't want to be her playthings. Emma thinks she excels at matchmaking, which Mr. Knightly says isn't matchmaking so much as wishful thinking that sometimes comes true, as in the case with their respective siblings and Mr. Weston and Emma's governess Miss Taylor. She will prove him wrong though with her new project, Harriet Smith. Harriet Smith is the natural daughter of who knows whom Emma plans to marry to the Reverend Elton. But Mr. Knightly is right and she doesn't really know people well and Mr. Elton has another wife in mind, Emma herself! Trying to extricate herself from this mistake and the harm it's caused to Harriet leads Emma into more mistakes. The worst might be a lack of propriety when Mr. Weston's son, Frank Churchill, finally returns to Highbury. Emma knows that he has been marked out for her. If she were the marrying sort Frank would be whom she would marry to make everyone, except her father, happy. Therefore she is more open with her feelings, more cutting with her words, all in the pursuit of a good time with Frank. But Frank has hidden motives, reasons for his being in Highbury other than paying his respects to his new mother and his old home. If only Emma would take a moment to stop and look inward versus outward she might see the world in a whole new light.

With every prior adaptation of Emma I had strong reservations, be it an oddly healthy and robust Jane Fairfax to an overly creepy Mr. Knightly, yes I'm looking at you Andrew Davies. Though in some fairness to Andrew Davies I don't think anyone could have succeeded in doing Emma any kind of just given only ninety minutes to tell the tale. Therefore when it was announced that a new miniseries of Emma was on it's way and me having just started my blog, I went a little overboard with the blog posts about the actors and the new adaptation. With four hours there was a far higher chance of them getting it right or at least keeping in everything that needs to be there in order to be moderately faithful. Four glorious episodes, four glorious hours so that they don't relegate Mr. Woodhouse to a chair and only vaguely reference him (which once you cast Michael Gambon you'd be hard pressed to do!) And while I've enjoyed it every time I've watched it, this time it just struck me harder. I adored it. Yes, it has pacing problems with the plot not clicking until Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax arrive, but that's the same problem the book has! In my initial review I was lenient on changes, because it's an adaptation so of course they're going to fiddle with it. The best adaptations aren't word perfect, look to the Harry Potter franchise for proof. But this time there were some little things, little shifts that got to me. All of them to do with Frank Churchill. My main gripe is actually one against all adaptations of Emma, why can't Frank be introduced just as Austen wrote it? Instead there must be some amusing confusion, some meet cute that is just wrong in my mind. In the Gwyneth Paltrow version Emma is driving a carriage!?! What nonsense is this? She would NEVER do this and her father would never allow it. But what I really objected to here was Frank being viewed as a resident of Highbury. No. This changes too much to be allowed. His father settled there long after Frank was off with the Churchills it was NEVER his home. This makes Emma and Frank's meeting some sort of predestination a lifetime in the making instead of just a few months. Frank doesn't deserve any more importance, he's full enough of himself already.

But anyone who's anyone has issues with Frank Churchill, it's the fatal flaw of Emma. Therefore I should console myself with what they got oh so right, and that's the inclusion of Emma's family, the extended Woodhouse clan. They are the first to go as being "extraneous" when time is considered in most Emma adaptations. But you can't really understand anyone unless you see them with their family. Their family is who forms them and whom they either surround themselves with or run away from. To omit Emma's family is to omit a true understanding of her. I can remember actually fuming in the theater watching Gwyneth Paltrow quickly showing off her slumbering father to visitors to Hartfield because that was his only real scene. No dialogue due to being unconscious! Emma's father is the central figure in her life, the figure around which everything happens and is decided! To push him to one side is unacceptable. But then again most people would be even more surprised from the aforementioned Gwyneth Paltrow version as to the importance of Emma's elder sister Isabella and her brother-in-law, Mr. Knightly's younger brother John, and all their children. Because while Emma is set apart in her community, she has love. She has a bustling family with all its pros and cons. Nephews paying extended visits and nieces to comfort her in her old age. Which makes her situation sadder. Her love has made her make sacrifices that others, especially her sister, haven't had to make. Isabella is like a mirror image Emma. That is what Emma's life could have been. And while we have the knowledge that Emma will get her happily ever after and perhaps daringly visit the seaside, when we meet her, when we get to know her she might be the queen of the castle, but it's a sad castle with a shut-in she loves dearly, but a shut-in none the less. You feel Emma's pain, Emma's loneliness amongst the bustle and familial love. This brings a little humanity to Emma by showing her as coping bravely with the loneliness of her life by being outgoing and scheming. A lonely existence no matter how little there was to distress or vex her is still lonely.

Though to bring this all across, to show the joy in the sadness, the humor in the everyday, the right actors were needed. It must be said, Gwyneth Paltrow was too haughty, too cold, and the less said about the poultry and pervy Kate Beckinsale version the better. Romola Garai though is perfection. She brings that joy that Jennifer Ehle did to Pride and Prejudice. An infectious smile that couples well with Emma's scheming and mischievous nature. As for Jonny Lee Miller? He's the perfect balance! He himself is quite goofy with his laying about in chairs, his eye rolls, his sighs. His comedic timing is perfect. The two of them form a very good double act which makes their romance believable. Because, the thing with Mr. Knightly and Emma is that if not properly cast they come across as just a convenient not a realistic couple. They just get married because Emma doesn't what her nephew to lose out on his inheritance to a child of Harriet Smith's and well, what's good for her sister is good for her, so how about a Knightly! Here you actually believe it. Yes, there's a beautiful dance and lots of swelling music to help sell it, but what's interesting is that those aren't the moments that make my heart hurt. It's when he scolds Emma about her behavior or when she is just sitting and looking at his usual chair now empty. Their being apart or fighting or just not talking physically hurts me. And while I could easily believe Romola Garai capable of this, loving her in everything from Daniel Deronda to I Capture the Castle to The Hour to The Crimson Petal and the White, the only thing Jonny Lee Miller had in his favor was Trainspotting. But the negatives were stacked against him, Plunkett and Macleane anyone? Dark Shadows? The most boring Sherlock Holmes currently around? Yes, he was passable in Dracula 2000 and that Byron movie, but the biggest negative was that he'd been an Austen hero before. Yes, our Jonny Lee Miller was Edmund Bertram in the horrid 1999 version of Mansfield Park, which is not only a bad adaptation but it is distinguished as being one of my most hated films ever. So to have this depth, this humor, this snid perfection that would give Emma perfect happiness? A delightful surprise indeed!

Then again, this adaptation was full of surprises. Mainly because it understood that the purpose is to adapt the story, make it true in feeling if not in word. While Austen purists might say "but that's not in the book." There is nothing done in this adaptation that isn't supported by the text if not directly than in supposition! Personally I hate Austen purists, and I'm sure she would have hated them too. She wrote for fun so if you have fun reading the book or watching the adaptation I'm sure Austen would be happy. As I say again and again if you question what adaption means look at the first two Harry Potter movies which are really horrid and how slavishly Chris Columbus tried to stick to the books, then look at Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and the mood is so perfect the film switched the franchise up a notch and made it not just viable but enjoyable, not something you just watched to pretend Harry Potter was real but you knew wasn't very good deep in your heart. Back to Austen, what struck me most in this adaptation was the visual imagery of dolls used throughout. This works so well because Emma basically treats those around her, especially Harriet Smith, as her playthings, and therefore to have doll imagery is a natural extension. This isn't something Austen would explicitly spell out but seems like something she'd love. The implications are all there, Emma's very nature makes it logical, so therefore it just makes this adaptation feel right. And it's not just Emma playing with her dolls under a table as a young girl in one of the best time lapse scenes with Miss Bates ever, it's that the dolls appear again when she's scheming about Isabella, then Mr. Elton, and then later Mr. Knightly even references them in passing. The adaptation has created a through line that is perfection. Added to this is the delightful opening credits that depict famous scenes from the book in silhouette, or, as they look to me, in paper dolls! But I wouldn't expect less from Sandy Welch who did two of my favorite miniseries ever, Jane Eyre in 2006 and North and South in 2004.

Yet this review can't all be glowing... there is a flaw. Now it's time for my rant against PBS. PBS, you treat your British shows and by extension your viewers like shit. You hack the shows up, aka "edit for time" and speed up the frame rate so that you can show more ads for cruises no one watching the show will ever go on. As a viewer you can only see the "original UK broadcast" by buying your DVDs. And it's your DVDs I want to talk about, in particular THIS DVD. How could you release such a wonderful show with such a sub-par release? The transfer is abysmal! What the fuck is with this transfer! I mean, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK! It's grainy and horrid. The first fifteen minutes was me trying to come to terms with having actually paid money for something that was barely a step above a bootleg VHS tape you'd buy of some lost Doctor Who episode or Red Dwarf special at a science fiction convention. The first disc has a constantly flickering weird green bar in the lower right corner of the screen. Plus there was some weird shift that made the right edge of the screen vibrate on both discs. I thought, well, it's not Blu Ray so now that I'm into Blu Ray I could upgrade, but guess what? There is no upgrade! This is the only version they released in this piss poor quality. I'm not joking when I say that the winter scenes looked like they were from a nature documentary from the 70s. I expected some Brit with out sized specs and corduroys to appear screen left and start talking about the mating habits of some birds or fluffy field vermin. I mean, I don't want to piss on PBS, they offer so much, but compared to how the channel used to be, with lovely long intros to these shows that were well researched and presented versus Alan Cumming just coming on at the beginning of only one episode of Wallander to complain about how dull and dark he was? I mean, yes, I agree about his bitching about Wallander, but I could at least use a little more Alan! Masterpiece No Longer Theatre isn't even repeated and where are the lovely old British comedies on late at night? All that is gone and instead we have shitty overprice DVDs and edited sped up shows. Not cool PBS. Not cool at all. So while I adore this miniseries, just stream it, don't give them money for this shitty treatment of their consumers.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrew Davies, Bicentenary Ball, Edmund Betrum, Emma, Emma Woodhouse, Family, Gwyneth Paltrow, Harry Potter, Jane Austen, Jonny Lee Miller, Mansfield Park, Masterpiece Theater, Mr. Knightly, PBS, Romola Garai

Pride and Prejudice
Based on the book by Jane Austen
Release Date: September 24th- October 29th, 1995
Starring: Colin Firth, Crispin Bonham-Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Susannah Harker, Julia Sawalha, Polly Maberly, Lucy Briers, Benjamin Whitrow, Alison Steadman, Marlene Sidaway, Anna Chancellor, Lucy Robinson, Rupert Vansittart, Lynn Farleigh, Joanna David, Tim Wylton, David Bamber, Lucy Scott, Lucy Davis, Christopher Benjamin, Norma Streader, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Nadia Chambers, Harriet Eastcott, Anthony Calf, David Bark-Jones, Roger Barclay, Christopher Staines, Tom Ward, Paul Moriarty, Victoria Hamilton, Alexandra Howerd, Adrian Lukis, Bridget Turner, and Emilia Fox
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

As Mrs. Bennet screeches to her family that "Netherfield Park is let at last" little does she know that this one event will so significantly alter the fate of her five daughters. Of course she had planned that the eligible young man who had rented the estate, Mr. Bingley, would marry one of her daughters, though she didn't think that in the end she'd have three of her five daughters married within a year of each other. While the eldest daughter Jane falls instantly and irrevocably in love with Mr. Bingley, her sister Lizzy's path is far murkier. Mr. Darcy is at first nothing but pride and hauteur, refusing to even dance with Lizzy at the local assembly. Soon after her fine eyes catch his attention, but could his previous snub spell doom of ever getting Lizzy? The path of true love never runs smooth and as Mr. Bennet states, "a girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then." And when a ghost from Mr. Darcy's past reappears in his present and quickly wins over Lizzy and all her confidantes it appears she might have finally found the man to lose her heart over. But no one and nothing is as it seems and sometimes life has other plans in store. In a time when marrying for love might not be in the cards, marrying for money is a necessity, more so for the five Bennet girls as their estate is entailed away on their cousin, the odious Mr. Collins. But can love still find a way? Can that which before was unwilling to bend learn to? Can character flaws be fixed? Can love, the marriage of true minds, with a tidy fortune for felicity be obtained? Or are they doomed to heartache and unhappily ever afters?

There are only a handful of films, television shows, and miniseries that are touchstones in my life. From The Princess Bride to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to The Inheritance these are part of my DNA. The 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is one of them. Every time I have watched it is a special and cherished memory to me. From my first watching it on a blazing July day in the summer of 1996 with all the shades drawn to weathering an ice storm trapped at the house of my friend Sara's parents while she was visiting from graduate school to "P P and P" (Pride and Prejudice and Pizza) last celebrated in Cambridge on an early summer night wherein they got our pizza order at the wrong location and it resulted in us only getting to watch the first episode that night. Each of these moments is special to me and I can easily transport myself to that moment in my life in an instant. I wore out the VHS set that had pride of place on top of my dresser and was my prized 18th birthday present. I have more DVD copies then I can count, always wanting to upgrade to the newest edition. I even have the tie-in edition of the book, just so I can look at the lovely Colin Firth forevermore. This was the miniseries that made me a miniseries addict. Prior to this I was all about movies, but I realized that miniseries and later TV shows with strong mythology appealed to me more because they weren't restricted to two hours, they expanded and had a life of their own. A scale, a scope that was able to capture all that was needed for the story to be told with no omissions, no ellipses. Pride and Prejudice, you might not know it, but you changed my life, and not just because of a wet shirt.

Yet that wet shirt is what this miniseries is known for. I remember seeing an interview that summed up the phenomenon that was Colin Firth in this miniseries in that his emerging from that lake forever changed the world. And I don't think anyone can deny it. After all there was that atrocious statue to mark Pride and Prejudice's bicentenary of Colin Firth in the Serpentine. But the shirt scene isn't the be all end all, yet it's indicative of why this adaptation is so successful, and that's because it's brimming with life, it's vivacious. I'm not just talking outdoor pursuits or horseback riding or Mr. Darcy fencing and then taking a dip or Lizzy running through the country side, I'm talking about the life in the Bennet family. They are a real family! They are talking over each other, they are laughing, they are rolling their eyes, they are experts at the side-eye and arched brow, they are living their life fully and enjoying themselves. The smile always playing about Lizzy's lips, THIS is the Lizzy Austen envisioned in her book and that Jennifer Ehle perfectly brought to life. The book can be a little staid for those who aren't into clever wordplay and character studies. Yet the key is this timeless book is alive! These characters live and this adaptation brings this home to the audience. The background of each scene is peopled with life, surrounding the characters with life. Animals, drunks, people talking, dancing, everything about this adaptation is just alive. Over twenty years later and I'm still in love with this miniseries and seeing new things each time. I mean Lydia and Kitty actually had red cloaks to match the officers!?! Priceless and yet, so human.

What is interesting about how Andrew Davies decided to adapt the novel is that he externalizes almost all Lizzy's thoughts through conversations with Jane. In the book when Lizzy announces her engagement to Darcy to everyone it's kind of a "haha fooled you, you all thought I hated him but I LURVE him" moment. Because while the readers of the book will know her changing feelings over time her family has been kept in the dark. Yes, even Jane. This sisterly bonding goes back into the life poured into this adaptation. By them confiding in each other every night it's something the audience can relate to. Everyone has at some point in their life poured out their heart to a confidant and this therefore becomes a touchstone for the viewers. What's more it also allows greater insight into the Bennet family, the power dynamics, and why Lydia gets her way, while Mary is often ignored. It's a little time in every episode to reflect on what's happening. This is almost a built in recap without being all cheesy and annoying. Yet what I think it does most successfully is deepen the character of Jane. Yes, I know, you're all thinking I should be talking about how it allows more time to swoon over Darcy while gazing into mirrors, but while it does do that, it does more for Jane. Jane is almost too perfect. She's like a little porcelain doll. It's no wonder why Darcy didn't think she was in love with Bingley. In these conversations we not only see Jane's reserve, but we see beneath it, to her heart. You truly feel for Jane as you do for Lizzy.

Though externalizing Lizzy's thoughts has a flaw, in that they sometimes don't come out quite right. The part I'm thinking of is when she first sees Pemberley. The entire time she's walking the grounds and the house and listening to these marvelous stories about a young Darcy her feelings are in tumult. You can sense that her opinion of him is moving quickly from admiration to love. Later when she announces her engagement to Jane and jokingly dates her love as starting when she first saw his house the joke falls flat, despite their smiles and laughter. Because the joke comes across as callous. This isn't how it comes across in the book. Seeing his house did change her opinion, but it wasn't the structure, it was the people within that structure, the love and care he has for his staff and all those connected to him. By putting an emphasis on this joke and reinforcing it with lines about how she could have been mistress of "all this" makes her appear the basest fortune hunter which she dreaded Darcy to think her. This one line delivered in this way, without any of her internal admiration, diminishes their love story. Darcy and Elizabeth is a love story for the ages. Literally one of the greatest literary love stories ever, and Davies ever so slightly knocks it down a peg. Davies has always had interesting takes on the books he adapts, and I love the hear his reasons for changes, but I don't think there is any reasoning that could make me OK with this.

What I find most amusing in this adaptation is that Davies is SO shipping Mary and Mr. Collins. The truth is I don't think anyone who has read the book hasn't thought, well, if only Mr. Collins had set his sights on Mary all would have turned out alright. But they never really go deeper into the fact that Mr. Collins would never accept Mary. He is an ambitious man, Lizzy satisfies his ideas of what a wife should be, without knowing her, and Mrs. Bennet is glad to get her least favorite daughter out of the house. He would never lower his sights to Mary. He would never condescend to even consider her. Therefore you do feel bad for Mary, but at the same time, her character got a bit of a boost by being next to the whole reason for Pride and Prejudice, and that's Mr. Collins. See, I think most people, even Austen herself, were so caught up in the love story of Lizzy and Darcy that they never realized that Mr. Collins with his pretensions and rhapsodizing about Rosings Park was stealing the show. Thankfully David Bamber knew he was the star and seriously, gives a star performance. Every second he is on scene is a delight to behold, while at the same time you're cringing. Just little things like how he waves to Charlotte when Lizzy and Maria are departing the parsonage, priceless. I mean, despite how sometimes Andrew Davies annoys me, he knew the necessity of bringing back Mr. Collins after Lydia's elopement, so, just for that one scene, any issues I have with this adaptation, which are few, are forgiven. My issues with he adaptation of Wives and Daughters though...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Andrew Davies, Bicentenary Ball, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Colin Firth, David Bamber, Family, Jane Austen, Jennifer Ehle, Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice, The Inheritance, The Princess Bride

City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments Book 6) by Cassandra Clare
Published by: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication Date: May 27th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 752 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

The Shadowhunter Institutes all over the world have been attacked. Emma Carstairs and the Blackthorn children saw the fall of the Los Angeles institute first hand. The Dark War with Sebastion has officially begun. All the Shadowhunters have been recalled to Idris to plan their next move. But Sebastian is unstoppable. They can't even locate where his base of operations is. He has made only one demand, hand over Clary and Jace and the Shadowhunters and Idris will be spared. Clary and Jace are willing to go, but the Clave doesn't want to bargain with terrorists. It's Emma Carstairs who gives Clary and Jace the key to destroying Sebastian. She tells them that she believes he is hiding out in a demon dimension called Edom. Jace, Clary, Alec, Isabelle and Simon travel through fairy and enter Edom where Sebastian reigns. Will this group of kids be able to win the Dark War when all the other Shadowhunters combined aren't a match for Sebastian and his army of Endarkened?

"I'm free-I'm free, AN' I'm waiting for you to follow me!" Yes, finally finishing this series has led me to break into spontaneous song. In particular "I'm Free" from The Who's Tommy. It's better then earlier in the week when I was singing Queen's "I Want to Break Free." Why is it better? Because the freedom is here! The reading is a fait accompli. I never ever have to pick up a book written by Cassandra Clare EVER AGAIN! The Mortal Instruments series, which is quite possibly the worst series of books I have ever read, has put a serious cramp in my reading mojo this summer.

I hate having my reading mojo sapped. It would have been one thing if the book was draining me from sheer awesomeness, but that was not the case here. I think my previous reviews of the preceding five books covered my feelings quite well as to why I hate these books, no character development, no continuity, atrocious writing, but I will take a little time here to muse on what the final installment brought home. And yes, there's a part of me that doesn't want to waste my breath (or in this case, my words) on talking about this book further... but I can't let Clare get away with her crimes against writing, I just can't.

I seriously thought that the overwhelming integration of Clare's "universe" couldn't get worse then in City of Lost Souls... I should not have underestimated Clare's ability to lower the bar. A third of this book was references to her Infernal Devices series that just went over my head (I will NOT be drawn into another badly written series), another third of this book was setting up her new series, The Dark Artifices (wherein she finally just embraces she's writing Buffy Fanfic and sets it in California with a character named Dru), and the final third was actually about this series, The Mortal Instruments. I can not tell you how aggravated I was by this. Instead of focusing her efforts on writing a passable finale for the series she was more concerned with setting up her new series then wrapping up the old.

I mean, seriously? Here are what, twenty children and now you must remember all their names because they'll be so important in the future series. No! No more! I'm walking away from the series and NEVER looking back. In time hopefully I can rewrite my brain so that all this stupid Shadowhunter bullshit stops taking up valuable space in my memory. Oh, and that's not even the product placement for her one-off books, The Bane Chronicles and The Shadowhunter's Codex, oh, and fuck me, it looks like she's doing a Simon book... no more. NO MORE!

Ok, maybe a little more... ranting that is. I think Clare's inability to write is most obvious in how she always tells and doesn't show. Her books are very much about what makes us family and how we redefine this for ourselves. Blood doesn't make us family in this day and age so much as these connections we forge. In other words, just go watch the amazing Buffy season five episode "Family" and realize that in the time you read this series you could have been watching quality television, not reading sub par drek that wishes it was written by Whedon.

Ok, getting off topic. Instead of showing us these connections, Clare must always label them. This is my "sister" this is my "daughter" you get the point. We should know that the connection between Clary and Luke is strong without Luke every second yelling about his "daughter." Technically, she's not. Yes Luke, she's your family, but you don't need to label it. Family just IS. Family doesn't need signifiers. Right there, that's the fatal flaw. This series spends so much time justifying itself and being composed of other things that it just can't be itself. This book just isn't.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Buffy, Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire, City of Lost Souls, Dark Artifices, Family, Infernal Devices, Joss Whedon, Magnus Bane, Mortal Instruments, Queen, The Bane Chronicles, The Shadowhunter's Codex