I picked this up purely because I thought Drive My Car, the movie, was an absolute masterpiece. And I wondered if there was more insight or context given in the story it was based off of. And I was slightly curious if I’d change my mind about Murakami being for me. Turns out, no and no.

The short story has the same character names and the husband and wife have the same professions, as well as the woman driving his car has the same personality (and because it’s Murakami we know exactly how large her breasts are). But everything else, save for the unlikely friendship between the husband and other man, is different—including how the friendship-type thing happens, why he needs a driver, the drivers backstory. Nearly everything that makes the movie interesting, essentially, is not present in the short story.

What IS interesting, slightly, is one of the stories the wife tells the husband in the movie is one of the other stories in this collection, about the woman who thinks she’s a lamprey. But that entire story is about half of the one in the movie. Still. Kind of neat.

As for the rest of this collection, I think there is a pretty large generational gap. I’m of the mind that if you’re not okay without a person, you probably shouldn’t be inflicting yourself onto someone else. Codependency is not romantic. Though, the topic of mental health in men is a large one and can be interesting, nothing explored here really piqued my interest. Most of the time they are simply not equipped to know what’s happening with them, which is a thing with men, and The Loneliness Epidemic is a real issue, it’s just that the metaphors and abstractions used to elicit that sense here weren’t moving. Thats why I think there’s probably a generational gap at play.

As usual, McCarthy’s prose styling is something I gel with so much, that the somewhat trite plot beats never irked me. If anything, the long rumination on each one seemed like a reaction to the post apocalyptic works that came after the first generation. Weirdly, all the first gen ones that I’ve read are as slow and focused on daily life as this one, sometimes to the point of boredom.

I actually didn’t find it as brutal as I’d expected too, oddly enough. But I also already knew this story through cultural osmosis, despite never having seen the film. It’s one of the early ones where everyone wanted to talk about the ending, back in the day, for whatever reason. I actually thought it was the opposite that happened. So joy to misremembering, I guess.

Stephen King maintained that horror shouldn’t be explained, I think. That the unknown is what makes it scary. I liked that about the setting. Every other book of the genre trips over itself trying to tell you exactly the doomsday scenario they’ve thought up. Probably because the underlying anxiety about the thing is the way the narrative maintains tension. This could happen to us right now! Etc etc.. I don’t know if it was my projecting onto the text either, but it felt like the text opened up into excellent prose only when the characters had time and space to do so. Their thoughts and trouble were so circular that it was usually when something broke that pattern that the poetics would emerge. It also ramped up the tension by proxy, since the reader knows they are no longer safe for that very reason. You are not paying attention to the road. You are not being careful. You are busy being human, and doing so is to pay a human cost at every turn.

But there was a lot of hope from those moments too. Without them, could they actually have kept going? Would the close calls have been the final moments, instead? It manages to provoke far more thoughts about the kinds of things these stories typically want a reader to think about by being more quiet and methodical and grim in the absolute desperation of people, and their inherent morality being tried by their animal, craven need.

It looks like pretty much every iconic, excellent comic run I haven’t logged in Goodreads, and so begins my re read Journey. This is probably the most fun Iron Fist story I’ve ever read and that holds true still.

Where most previous runs struggle to make Danny interesting, this run uses the Iron Fists across time to spruce up the back story, and to start some furious king fu action. It reads like an old school flick and the artwork, while somewhat uneven, when features the mainstay artists especially, is absolutely great. Excellent start to the manageable run of only 5 or so volumes.

This plods along competently and I was warned ahead of time it’s best to treat the trilogy as one book. I waited until I felt like reading them like that, so it’s been years and years and years. As expected, this first one is pretty much all setup, save for some nice character building and small arcs.

The back matter explains the characters well, save for the best of all: Ferro. An escaped slave that gets embroiled with some mysterious magic user fella. She is by far the most interesting thread to follow here, though I also like the take on the ‘barbarian’, nine fingers.

And, as with everyone else it seems, the least interesting is the noble sword guy, jez or whatever. The characters slowly come together and the macro threat is introduced. It’s surprisingly light and funny sometimes. The fights aren’t overlong and generally brutal. There’s some neat world building, with most aspects being just a bit different than generic fantasy stuff. Not bad.

An extra star for Hild, an excellent new character, and the found family situation that is happening. It is inevitable that the arc of getting to Vinland would take a really long time, but this is pretty wild. They made it basically no where and already his past is catching up with him in many ways.

The plotting has become pretty simplistic, however. Yes, sure, challenge the notion of being truly peaceful. It’s getting a bit contrived now though, since each challenge is essentially the same thing, repeated. There seems to be a somewhat newer thing at the end, with the seat of power being vacated, but in the end, it’s just someone wanting him to fight again. Also. Being shot like 4 times in the leg with no permanent injuries feels like a wild hand wave, but I suppose the series hasn’t really made any considerations for injuries, other than scars when long swaths of time pass.

1.5 rounded up.

All but a full volume of filler content. How disappointing. This divergent story that brings in Floki and Thorkill is so boring and it boils down to trying to make the MC fight, yet he never actually is even tested, since it takes all its time with yet another diversion. Some new and young Norse wants to fight the MC now too, just because. No interesting plot development and the previous one isn’t concluded either.

An extremely weak instalment, especially because it’s also a long omnibus. This series moves far too slowly. And the continued tonal shifts make every tense moment deflated. No idea why that’s such a trend. What is the point of undermining your own story?

A pretty wild turn of events. Though, maybe a bit melodramatic, the groundwork is there, so I think it lands mostly as intended. I sure wish we could see Casca not solely a prop for a story beat or purely for the sake of a Guts or Griffith development, but it is what it is.

I think Griffith’s loss and subsequent action of sneaking in to bed the Princess is actually pretty interesting. Hopefully more of it comes to light. There’s some queer theorists that probably got really excited with that development. But we also see Griffith being completely vicious to the king, despite a severe punishment being handed down. This all seems, again, mirrored in the beginning chapters as well. I can’t recall if it’s the same people—I don’t think it is—if it is, it would pretty interesting. We know in a year from his leaving there’s to be this eclipse thing happening, which, with the time jump would be soon/now.

As for the development with Casca, it’s better handled than I expected, what with trauma surfacing, but also, again feels like a device to express Guts, and only Guts. I have mixed feelings about it.

Leans into the fact that Casca has her period so she can’t fight not only heavily, but actually makes it a running gag throughout the entire volume as well. Besides which, a number of bad tonal shifts are introduced for no real reason or substantive value, and the entire thing is basically just one conflict with the same guy from the previous volume, who apparently just will not die. We also return to really, really bad dialogue. A massive step down.

It isn’t interesting volume but the fight scenes are good. Too bad the entirety of it is almost all eye-roll-worthy.

Excellent recovery from the terrible former volume. Again, weirdly, a return to court, and to stakes that actually have some weight. I wouldn’t have expected a series like this to excel away from fights, but here we are.

With the Casca absolute mess of an attempt at character building centering pretty much solely around her having no agency or ability—despite us being told constantly she’s second to Griffith, no less—the band return to the kingdom victorious. A plot is hatched and thwarted against Griffith, and there’s a lot more internal dialogue and character building, as each member reflect on how far they’ve come and their respective relationships to one another.

Just so, as a nice continuation from the previous intrigue segment, Guts decides to strike out. But can he really follow through? The decision is a catalyst from my favourite scene of the series so far, where Griffith, atop a fountain, thinking he’s alone except for the princess (maybe?), talks about who he considers a friend and equal. Which shatters Guts idea about how he thought he was perceived by Griffith. It’s very well done and I’m glad something came from it.

The best ending to any of the volumes, by far and away, too. And the detailing has improved quite a bit. Again. Weird to see in a section that has nothing to do with battle. But it really is much improved from even the previous volume to this one.

This didn't feel like Grimdark until maybe the book's last quarter. It is always concerned with subverting expectations from the genre, but Grimdark usually denotes a lack of agency and grey to no morality. In the first two books, most of the characters have a distinct character arc, and then in this book, only this one is lack of agency conjured (somewhat in a deus ex machina manner).

It isn't entirely a problem. But it does create two pretty distinct issues in this installment: much worse pacing than the first two and no character growth, merely the end of their arc acting as it. This is far less satisfying. There is a point to withholding such catharsis, of course. The issue is that it must be more interesting than what you are subverting. I also could have lived without the only canon queer character being forced into straight sex. Again. It may fit the setting, yet it is also the only representation in the book. Without contrast, there is rarely something compelling to lead the reader by; at least, that was the case for me. We also use a bit of musical chairs in each book to see which character has a boring storyline. This time, however, a few of the characters are sitting instead of just one. There is a bit too much redundant exposition for my taste as well.

Prose wise, this felt like the worst one too. A character will say or do something and then think exactly what they just did, as if you couldn’t figure it out. He hacked at the man exhaustively. _he was getting so tired_. Yeah, I know, that’s what exhaustively means. I did read them all back to back. It’s possible I was just exasperated by the third.

The puppeteer is revealed was alright, though. Characters learn about what kind of world it is, similarly, along with the reader. It's just that by the time this was happening, I hadn't connected with most of the characters in any meaningful way--nor the world. So, I was left with a slow cap and a shrug. When nothing much matters because of morality, why should you care, as the reader, right? I expect that everyone will be brought low simply because that’s not what happens in traditional fantasy. That's the problem underdeveloped Grimdark has. When divorced from philosophical underpinnings, it all is rather pointless. Entertaining. But it's still meaningless. With commercial fiction like this, it still gets a pass. It was just trying to entertain, and it was entertaining sometimes. The real problem is fanbases giving authors inflated hype and readers' expectations—the king of Grimdark (Abercrombie)—the king of Fantasy (Sanderson). What it means is you're famous, readable, and, perhaps, slightly left of center at most. I will say this is better than Sanderson, at least. It isn't wholly sterile and soulless formulaic plotting, and it has something much better thematically to communicate, too: capitalism terrible. Power bad. People are mostly also bad. I mean, preaching to the choir. Maybe if you needed convincing it was mind altering.

Say one thing for Logan Ninefingers, say that I never have to hear that g damn line again, thank god.