strange and random happenstance

Smoke and Ashes by Alexis Hall
Published by: Carina Press
Publication Date: November 12th, 2020
Format: Kindle, 332 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

About three years ago, shit has it been three years? Kate Kane's life went to hell. Technically literally, but that's another story. Her life was saved but in the process it also fell apart. She was betrayed by her girlfriend, Julian Saint-Germain, once again proving you can never trust vampires, and her best friend, Elise, was turned back into a statue. But the worst fate belonged to her ex Nimue, who lost half her face in the battle for the very soul of London and now lies in a coma. Since then Kate's done exactly what you'd expect her to do, drunkenly wallow. Although the thread count of the sheets in the bed she's been wallowing in have gone drastically up since she started banging Tara Vane-Tempest. Posh werewolves really do have a nice life. Although this posh werewolf is even starting to question Kate's life plan. One can't stay in bed forever drunk. Of course when Kate does get out of Tara's bed she often ends up in someone else's... Which she's not sure if Tara is OK with. But Kate's life is a train wreck so what does it matter if she destroys the one kind of good thing in it? Though things are about to change. Not for the better. The werewolves have been attacked. One was skinned. The perpetrator has links to Kate, links she'd rather not think about because the attacker happens to be the vampire that sired Patrick, her intolerable ex who is still listening to "Clair de Lune" on repeat. Her arrival would be problematic enough if she hadn't teamed up with the vampire who almost killed Kate three years previously, Sebastian Douglas, who has allied himself with the Queen of Winter, the King of Shadows. This is a clusterfuck of vengeance coming right for Kate and those few people she still tries to care about even if she's kind of lost touch with them. But Kate knows things are really about to kick off when her prophetic dreams return. The green lady who is and isn't Nimue tells Kate that all that is wrong is because Nim's life is in the balance. She needs to be killed or restored so that London can recover. Of course Kate doesn't want Nim to die, which means she has to find the Holy Grail. Yes, THAT Holy Grail.

How would I describe Smoke and Ashes? A damn stupid interminable vision quest without an actual ending. This volume, and to an extent the previous volume, seem to be prologue to whatever is coming in the final volume, Time and Tide, which is now two years overdue. Not that I actually care. Other than if the final volume was out I could read it and then never look back. Because all that I mildly enjoyed in this series has been slowly stripped away. The narrowing of focus has made this nothing more than bad King Arthur fanfic. And I like King Arthur fanfic, my love of Merlin, both the campy BBC series and the Sam Neill miniseries, should be enough to prove my bona fides. But I can't stand this. This stripping down of characters, this myopic drunken vision quest. If you would have told me I'd react so strongly to the removal of a Pudding Nun and Pygmalion I would have laughed at you. And I would have been so so wrong. And yes, I know Pygmalion was the sculptor, it just has such a nice alliterative ring that I couldn't pass it up. Taking away the most "memorable" characters has been tantamount to suicide. The supposed three years since the events of the previous book has seen Kate become a committed drunken whore. Which proves to me, time and again, that the main problem with this whole series is it's star, Kate Kane. And this volume really let me get to the heart of why I hate here. Kate is an immature ass. Literally. She has no emotional maturity. I mean, this could have something to do with Patrick and her traumatic teens, that somehow her development has been stunted at a time in her life where she wasn't fully formed and instead of dealing with the trauma she has created a persona versus a personality. But this might just be me trying to justify her being drunk in Tara's bed for three years. Because Kate is what an ill-informed teenager would think a PI is, a drunk who bangs the dames. Yes, I guess this could be a valid life choice, but it's so damn depressing and nihilistic. Kate's always assumed she'd die young so she doesn't bother to work on herself, she doesn't actually try, she's willing to stay childish, even needing bedtime stories. She stumbles around when she has to, but really, if you think about all her actions, they are really only reactions. I want to smack her and tell to grow the fuck up. But I really don't think that would help, she knows how to take a punch.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alexis Hall, Drunk, Elise, Fanfiction, Holy Grail, Julian Saint-Germain, Kate Kane, King Arthur, London Calling, Merlin, Nimue, P.I., Sam Neill, Smoke and Ashes, Tara Vane-Tempest, Time and Tide, Vampires, Werewolves

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: November 2nd, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Robin Blyth's life changes in an instant because of a bureaucratic error. Despite being of the landed gentry the baronet has to take a job because of his recently deceased impecunious parents. He has an estate to oversee, a sister to shepherd through the world, and all of it needs money. Therefore he takes a job in the civil service. And that's where the error happens. He is mistakenly appointed to the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints. The mistake is that Robin, unlike his predecessor who mysteriously disappeared, doesn't know that magic exists. Therefore it is left up to his new colleague, Edwin Courcey, the liaison to the Chief Minister of the Magical Assembly, to "unbushell" him. Edwin figures it's the safest course for the time being to let Robin see a bit of this secret world, after the administrative error is corrected Edwin will administer Robin Lethe-mint and Robin won't remember a thing. But there's a time limit to Lethe-mint and the longer it is not administered the more likely it won't work. On his way home from his eye opening first day of work Robin is attacked. The thugs are magicians and curse Robin agreeing to remove the curse only if he hands over a powerful magical object that his predecessor has hidden. Seeing as Robin didn't even know of magic twenty-four hours previously it's unlikely he would know where the magical object is secreted, so he turns to Edwin. They scour the office but find nothing. What's more the curse is violently attacking Robin. He has severe attacks of pain accompanied by visions of the future. And it's spreading. This is serious. Which makes Edwin take a course of action he usually avoids. He goes home to his family estate. There the family has a massive library that might contain a clue as to how to help Robin. But there there is also family. A family that treats him as their whipping boy. While the little bit of magic Edwin has performed for Robin is amazing in his eyes, Edwin knows the truth. He barely has any magic. A fact his family likes to remind him of. And he's walking into the belly of the beast for a stranger. But their battle against curses, thugs, and family brings them closer than either of them could have thought of in their most detailed fantasies.

Touted as "Red White and Royal Blue meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell...featuring an Edwardian England full of magic, contracts, and conspiracies"A Marvellous Light was my most anticipated read in November of 2021. After reading it I have to say it's blasphemy that they invoked Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to try to sell this dreck that everyone else seems to love. I just don't get it. What is so great about this book? Yes we get copious amounts of gay sex, but that needs to be balanced by the narrative, for example actually bothering to define the magical system in the world this book is set in instead of having people say it's similar to The Magicians. No. Bad Freya. You need to have your own unique magical system that is well defined. I repeat, WELL DEFINED! I should not know more about Robin's cock than I do about how the magical system works! A BALANCED NARRATIVE. That shouldn't be too much to ask for in this day and age now should it? Apparently it is as everyone just loves this book. OK, how about I attack the writing style, would that help? Well, it would help me, because I'm still pissed this book didn't deliver. The writing style is not polished, confusing, and at times so elliptical that I would have to re-read whole sections to try to get the gist of what the author was attempting to say. Also while the book is seen through both Robin and Edwin's eyes sometimes the transition from one to the other is fumbled and it's really confusing for awhile until you realize whose POV you're reading. In other words, this book is in dire need of an editor. I find it hard to believe that Tor actually published a book that is more fanfic than it is literary endeavor and really pushed out the boat to promote it too. And I want to make it clear, it's not the explicit gay sex that is what I object to, it's that the book needs to have an explicit magical system to balance it and overall it just needs to be better written. I don't even buy Robin and Edwin as a couple. They are two gay men who a thrown together in a life and death situation who learn each other's secret and therefore decide to have lots of steamy sex. And I'm not buying the whole "opposites attract" theory either. In the normal course of things neither would have considered the other as a romantic partner, and what they've been through doesn't make them bound together, it just makes them need an outlet. And that's not really romantic at all.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Marvellous Light, Baronet, Curse, Editor, Edwin Courcery, Fanfiction, Freya Marske, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Magic, Pride, Red White and Royal Blue, Robin Blyth, Sex, The Magicians, Worldbuilding

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
Published by: Doubleday
Publication Date: July 11th, 2017
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

What if your life hinged on a single night? In 1977 the Blyton Summer Detective Club, a group of kids known locally to the inhabitants of Blyton Hills for foiling those up to no good, solved their final case. After that night the four kids drifted apart but were forever haunted by what happened during their final foray into crime solving. Usually the villain turned out to be someone in a rubber mask, but they weren't too sure about what happened with the fortune hunter they thwarted looking for the famous treasure in the Deboën Mansion. Something otherworldly was going on that night and it has stalked them ever since. The four precocious kids full of potential are long gone. More than a decade later those still alive are living lives of quiet desperation, slinging drinks, fleeing arrest warrants, and trying to forget in mental institutions. But Andy, she of the arrest warrants, is sick of always being on the run. She shows up on Kerri's doorstep and says it's up to them to find out what really happened that night at the Deboën Mansion. None of them can actually have a life without closure. Of course this means breaking Nate out of an asylum in Arhkam, Massachusetts, and hoping he can keep it together.

As they travel cross-county to the sleepy mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon where they spent every summer solving crimes the ghosts of their pasts haunt them. Nate more than most because the ghost of Peter, their erstwhile leader turned famous movie star who killed himself, is literally his constant companion. Why couldn't his companion be like Kerri's? An excitable Weimaraner would be way better than a ghost! Arriving back in Blyton Hills and holing up in Kerri's old bedroom, despite all the intervening years they feel like they used to; full of righteousness and possibilities. If only this were just a trip down memory lane and not a trip to uncover the darkness that lurks in the Deboën Mansion. Yet they are determined to solve their final case properly. To trek out to the Deboën Mansion on it's deserted island and lay the evil to bed. Only jumping back into their old investigative life isn't as easy as they thought. Knowing that something evil is lurking out there is far more terrifying to adults then to kids who think they are invincible. But they've come this far! What is a journey through abandoned mine shafts and looking into the true face of evil to being forever trapped in one night in 1977?

To me the biggest mystery of 2017 was that this book was wholeheartedly embraced by booksellers and readers everywhere. I don't think the origins of it's popularity could even be solved by the Blyton Summer Detective Club. Because the nostalgia factor just can't cut it when a book is this badly written and is so insensitive to LQBTQIA issues. This book brings nothing new or interesting to the table. The writing and action is repetitive. The characters flat. As for the Big Bad? Lovecraft did it better. So that leaves nostalgia as the only logical reason people picked up this book. Nostalgia is currently playing a huge role in popular culture and media. Just look to the behemoth successes of Stranger Things and the 2017 adaptation of It, which was so popular it (haha) is getting a sequel. But the reason I have chosen these two examples is they got it so right. They bring out all the feels of a kid growing up in the late seventies and early eighties and make it somehow fresh at the same time. Whereas the nonsensical Meddling Kids seems to just be wanting to tap into that cash cow without realizing you either get it right or go home. Edgar Cantero should have gone home.

The nostalgia Meddling Kids is attempting to cash in on is the continued love of all things Scooby-Doo. OK, here's the thing with me, I've spent my entire life worshiping Scooby-Doo. Perhaps in fact this is where my love of mysteries and all things Gothic started because rumor has it that shortly after I started saying "mommy" and "kitty" I started saying "Scooby-Doo." I even had a stuffed animal of Scooby-Doo that was literally bigger than me at the time my parents bought it. I fully believe that The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show/The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries was the best incarnation of Scooby, because Fred and Velma were nixed, and if only Scrappy had met the fate Eddie Izzard suggested in his Dressed to Kill special it would have been perfection. Therefore I can, without a doubt in my mind, say that this isn't an homage to Scooby-Doo, this is just really badly written slash, aka a fanfiction subcategory pairing two male or two female characters together. This book is just Edgar writing prurient scenes of the Daphne and Velma characters for no reason other that to fulfill his own fantasies. Now I don't have a problem with fanfiction or with slash, what I have a problem with is when it's badly done and is sold as a book and is not available in some forum online, I'm looking at you Cassandra Clare. This does a disservice to nostalgia and makes it pornographic.

And for some reason this slash angle has resulted in making Kerri's hair another character. Andy has been in love with Kerri for forever and Kerri by the end of the book is willing to accept the love but not really reciprocate it, but that's an entirely different issue I have with the book. What this results in is that Andy watches the moods of Kerri's hair because it somehow embodies the essence of who Kerri really is. Andy's heightened awareness of Kerri's hair is like some weird spider-sense. I just call it Kerri's stupid ass "living" hair. If it was used once or twice, I wouldn't have had a problem with it, but again and again with the hair! The over the top descriptions of Kerri's hair get to the point where it's like a masturbatory fix for Andy. She can't just watch her hair but has to fetishize Kerri's hair. When I think of all the time wasted in this book that was in desperate need of some forward momentum spent on a character's hair it just enrages me. And what's more, I don't know what to do with this information. Why is it important? Did Edgar have a real thing about Daphne's hair on Scooby-Doo? Or does he just have a hair thing? I seriously am baffled by this choice and the fact no editor went, "What's with the hair Edgar?" But then again I had so many issues with this book if I had been it's editor I would have just thrown in on the trash heap.

Because the problematic crux of this book is that it is transphobic. At first I wasn't sure. Perhaps I was reading into something that wasn't there. Perhaps all the nasty asides about Andy wanting to be a boy was more a sign of the times, the book being set in 1990, and that Edgar figured that Andy being labelled as gay wasn't a mean enough taunt for the bullies to hurl at her. But the more this happened the more I was unnerved by the book. I started to read other reviews and saw that I wasn't the only one thinking this way. In fact, I missed something big right in front of my face. Edgar's first book, The Supernatural Enhancements, had some issues with pedophilia, and from everything I've heard about his newest book, This Body's Not Big Enough for the Both of Us deals with twincest, so I'm guessing it's a trend that his books handle big issues in a tactless manner... But that means it's even more important for the reader to call him out on this! He is a modern writer who has decided to set a book in a less enlightened time and he has a duty to be better. To call out the creeps and say that calling Andy a boy isn't right. But instead he builds it all to a reveal that shows his insensitivity and that for me makes it so that anyone who loves this book in my mind has a bigoted small-mindedness that I don't want to be around. On the surface it might look fine, but look deeper, find the monster in the lake... it's a whole lotta hate.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Dressed to Kill, Eddie Izzard, Edgar Cantero, Enid Blyton, Fanfiction, Going Gothic, H.P. Lovecraft, It, LGBTQ, Meddling Kids, Nostalgia, Scooby-Doo, Slash, Stranger Things, Transphobia