Picking up where book 7 ends, the main cast drop their kids off for Hogwarts and Albus, the son of Harry and Ginny, and Scorpius (not even kidding), the son of Malfoy and someone random I never heard of, strike up an unlikely friendship. They both suck at school and are pretty endearing but are also friendless and pale in the limelight of their fathers. Especially Albus, who feels a let down from the moment he’s sorted into Slytherin. The two concoct a plan to get ahold of a time turner to change history, and things go wrong.

I had pre ordered this back when and never gotten to it. I listened to the people who said it was really bad, and they were right, unfortunately. While some allowances need to be made for the conversion from fiction to drama, it was still massively contrived even within the parameters it sets up and within the HP universe. A particularly huge contrivance. The characters also felt very smoother over in the conversion. Basically an em dash for any pause. Weird context is labelled within scenes, like the boys’ heads being “in hell”. Obviously, they wanted to make it family friendly and easy to for children to understand, but even then the diction is really swingy and doesn’t accomplish that goal. There’s a weird love potion joke thing Ron does, giving one to a kid, which just feels kinda gross and not thought out, especially after the info we have now, about Voldemort being conceived via one. And then that turns into an even further contrivance. But how Ron himself turned out is as little convincing as the other adults.

Really, all it has going for it is a semi zany fun plot and some cute lines between the children. Otherwise it’s contrived and solipsistic and has wildly terrible dialogue, which is a large issue for a play to have. It’s only heavily, heavily didactic, which is not my jam.

I -hated- this. I made it 82 pages into it and so far the stratification of class was vaguely interesting, since it’s about a kid who is very poor and really wants two hound dogs so he can go hunt some coons. He gets treated poorly by the town folk because of his clothes and manner and what not, and I identified with that. My mom would make us our clothes and we got teased. And then it turns into him training the hounds up and desperately wanting to go kill coons.

It’s just so… stupid to me? I mean I’m sure catching the coons would help out the poor family to some degree. Pelts and meat and all that, but it turns into didactic, heavy-handed lessons at every turn coupled with plot beats I do not care about at all. It’s hyper masculine and coaches this faux tenderness with his crying about nearly everything, but everything. He comes across as selfish not tender.

We grew up poor and couldn’t have pets, so I’m obviously missing the animal attachment thing that comes with that early life development. You’d think I’d identify more with a kid who can’t have a pet. But I just don’t care that you don’t have a pet, man. Your family is living hand-to-mouth. Stop being an asshole, adding stress on top of that just because you want dogs. And it has to be two! I don’t care that you want to kill something and now you gotta show perseverance to chop a tree down because a coons up there and your dogs won’t respect you otherwise. You can Fuck right off, Billy.

Quite the command performance, writing 200 pages about a simple act that would probably be a paragraph or a page described in another book. The synopsis is spot on: A woman traps a roach in a door being closed and proceeds to barrel into her personhood, riding the feeling of what she’s doing to another creature, as well as the thoughts provoked by the feelings. Drilling down and down until it becomes about the human condition and tempers her identity.

It was certainly an overwhelming experience sometimes. Operating on the symbolic level predominantly and concrete made it hypnotic, mesmeric to read, but also stuffed full as the character herself was inundated with thoughts and feelings about life and herself. I really like that what galvanized this internalization was the asserting of her humanity on another living creature. One that is far more equipped for life, in some ways, than humanity. It’s ancient and therefor provokes ancient thoughts when ruminated upon.

Stylistically, it feels and looked like an art house horror movie to me. Shifting and atmospheric. Circuitous and repetitious to effectively recreate the wrestling occurring internally. I think it’s a bit too obtuse for me, but on an additional reading would probably open it up further to me, possibly.

Hardcover review: Definitely the way to go, versus the audiobook experience. For one, the audiobook weaves in and out of the chapters so you cannot follow with the book, which is a bit baffling. For another, the artwork is just fantastic and obviously beats descriptions. It’s a shame that you pretty much just can’t predict where the audio is going and marry the experience; it would be the absolute best to browse the fantastic artwork while having the interviews and print voiced. It does, however, remain somewhat of interest if you don’t know anything about where the magic and lore comes from. But if you do, it’ll have but a few tidbits you don’t know, and not much else. Gorgeous layout too.


Audiobook review: So, I turned on the audiobook because I have the physical edition and I wanted to hear it read as I turned the pages and looked at the artwork. That… wasn’t possible, because the audio production is basically completely different. It’s got interviews and a different structure. It’s not concerned with merely narrating (via the fantastic Natalie Dormer) just the text, it’s helpful to think of it as a completely different thing. Im going to read my physical copy too… so I guess I’ll separate the reviews somehow in this same space.

As far as the actual content, aside from the production values which are really high, what with interviews of illustrators and audiobook narrators and the curators of the actual museum exhibit this book is concerned with. Substantively though, I think maybe there’s a few tidbits you’d be surprised with, but if you know about the real-life folklore and mythology of Britain, you probably won’t be surprised at all. It’s actually kind of funny because a criticism of the Harry Potter series is that it’s so vanilla with it’s magic system and folklore and stuff, whereas the exhibition celebrates that; using it as a means of point-of-entry for people who don’t know anything about it, but have read the books.

So, it’s fine. Historical points I didn’t know were welcome, but yeah, does what it says on the tin, basically.

This is really bad guys, I’m sorry. There’s a few reasons I dnf’d it at 60 pages: there are really important plot beats that are glazed over, unconvincingly, while paragraphs talking about what every single space she enters looks like take up more word count, just for starters.

She’s having a drink then she’s having some pretty iffy sex and gets handed some bills, no idea how she feels about that really, and then suddenly right after meets a hooker with a heart of gold who just knows she’s going go be a sex worker too, but she was just walking home, no? And then sets up a friend to watch out for her with her first appointment and you have no idea what happens in that car, pretty much. Her physicality is not convincing at all, and it is again, really important just in so far as to be able to know what the heck is actually happening in the scene, which should have a lot of gravity, but doesn’t. Or even how she feels about it. Or if she’s on the pill. Or if they even had sex in the car. Like what the heck is going on. Aforementioned friend wants to “take care of her” and she’s all, all I got is blood, my good for nothing brother and all so no, and then when he leaves she’s all like hope my brother will be “my shadow”.

It’s really unconvincing and melodramatic, has terrible, terrible similes All. The. Time. A weird always-on prose work that just smooths out absolutely everything happening, even when it’s better prose than you’d expect. It robs its own style of any punch. The character dynamics and issues are convincing, but foregrounded in a way that feels really awkward for people living in the area to talk about, fairly often. Then it’s granular about the innocuous, making it really, really boring. Until something interesting happens, only to be treated like it’s less than the description of her brother in a booth trying to rhyme. It’s not good.

I’d recommend trying it on audio, it has to be better than on the page, If it’s got a good narrator.

If you are a reader who enjoyed the first book, I think you’ll also like this. It’s more of the same: Hyper-empathetic characters, pretty well-timed and decent comedy beats, warm and fuzzy, kind of toothless, not overly prescriptive but with a definite point it attempts to make. It is nice to spend time with Less again, just because I like the character quite a bit. He’s a bit clueless and messy and earnest. It’s a combination that makes him a fun protagonist.

Some of the issues in the book are noticeably updated. Being a “bad gay”, on writers writing, juxtaposing queer issues from Less’s past and the present. But not so overtly as to offend anyone. The plot is much more predictable this time around. I think Less benefited a lot from a couple of change-ups that bring a lot of satisfaction. This doesn’t have that, but it’s nice to be in the world again, all the same, I think.

On audio, this is quite good. The same narrator as the first is back and he’s great. He really embodies the prose style and the vibe. On the page, I like the prose quite a bit. Readable and surprisingly good with descriptions that are very organic and suit the style so well.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book is intersectional with self help in a way that bugged me. I think it would have had impact if it weren’t so blatant with the ‘lessons’ and had the structure reiterate those things. It makes it so it will resonate with people who think/feel those things already, but otherwise doesn’t have much to cling to.

There are some moments that feel great but are then undermined by The Thing you ought to know about this particular life, punctuated by The Other Thing. It just sort of tramped on the scenes I quite liked, degrading it from a 4 to a 2.5 rounded up.

I listened to the audio with narrator Eddie Redmayne from the movie. It’s the way to go, I think. Excellent narration and you can just page through absolutely gorgeous artwork on thick card stock. I was pleasantly surprised, there’s plenty of “beasts” I hadn’t heard of, some of which are pretty neat.