octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This has a great ending, and I can see how it would have been a shocker back in the day. I can't help but wish that it had been a little shorter, though, or that it had justified its (admittedly modest) length with characterisation of more than just the protagonist. As it is, it feels like one very well-drawn character amidst a sea of sketches, and so it ended up sagging a little in the middle for me. It reminds me both of Ibsen's The Doll House and Flaubert's Madame Bovary in content, although it lacks the infuriating portrait of the husband in the first, and the delightfully cutting prose of the second. It's a little bit dreamier in tone than the others, and the stultifying horror of that dreaminess does work, don't get me wrong... but of the three books this is the last one I'd read again. 

I read and reviewed the five comics collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The rating for the collection is an average of the individual ratings, rounded up - they ranged from between three and four stars.

There's a lot here that I really love. The historical context and the characterisation of the main character are both excellent and kept me invested. The depiction of marginalisation, and how it echoes through professional and community life, is just so well done. The wide range of characters is for the most part interesting and sympathetic, and I'll definitely be reading the follow-up volume. Unusually, at least for me, the speculative elements are the least compelling part of this series for me. Honestly, I might have been happier if it were straight historical, because the fantasy/horror bits didn't quite grab my attention as much as the rest. I think that's largely down to the villain, who comes across as a bit stale, to be honest. He's routinely the least interesting part of what's going on here... I just feel as if I've read about him, or his type, a hundred times before, and I don't much care for a repeat. 

Honestly, the less time spent on the villain and his pontificating the better, as far as I'm concerned. He's nothing but a bore, and I wish that the same care given to the historical context and Elena's characterisation had resulted in a more compelling antagonist. That being said, the resilience of community ties here, and how they come to Elena's aid both personally and professionally, is really enjoyable to read. I'm glad she ends the arc of this particular volume as a working journalist again, rather than some sort of mystical hero, because the former is both much more needed, and much more interesting than the latter... at least it is to me! 

I've got the follow-up volume to this, so I'll be reading it soon because I want to see what happens next. 

I think one of the most appealing thing about this series, for me, is the sense of community that's building up amongst the more disenfranchised populations of Detroit. I like, too, that loyalties here are both to community and to other individuals, and that they can be stretched to breaking point, or at least to disappointment. The connection made at the city's Hall of Records helps an investigation; a professional connection can lend personal support but no more, because of his own family circumstances; a romantic relationship gone sour erodes necessary trust. Being part of a community provides resources, but not always reliable support, and when the experience of marginalisation requires that support... that's when being part of a community shows its real value. I've said it before in reviewing this series, but these shifting loyalties, and how they intersect with personal and professional ethics, are ten times more interesting to me than the rather boring villain and his played-out delusions of supernatural grandeur. I almost wish this was straight historical fiction, but I'm not stopping reading because of it! 

Somehow I have even less patience with the urban fantasy side of things - the ley lines made me sigh, they really did - but I really do like how the marginalisation here continues to drive characterisation and story. By virtue of her race and sex, Elena already lives on thin ice, and for more than her job. When seemingly irrational things happen to her, she's less likely to be believed, and she's less likely to be given leeway when things get difficult. I have very little interest in the villain here, who is essentially a cardboard character and the least compelling thing about this series, but that Elena's involvement in this story leads to the apparent end of her career... that's the part I'm interested in, the horrendous inequality of consequence, and it just about outweighs the rest here for me. 

Onto issue 2 of this series, and I'm still enjoying it! My reaction continues to be the same as it was to the first issue, though. I love the historical and social elements, but the urban fantasy parts of it leave me cold, and because the urban fantasy is a bigger element of this issue, I enjoy it a little less than the first one. There's this whole mystical section in the middle about how Elena is the Lightbringer - essentially a chosen one type of deal, and the older I get, the less patience I have for those types of narratives. It's not that it's not done well, it's just not my particular preference; people who like chose one stories will likely love this.

What I do like about the whole Lightbringer thing, and the use of the camera flash to ward off monsters, is that it's very much connected to journalism. That old saying, "sunlight is the best disinfectant" - the themes of investigation and ethical exposure very much resonate for me, and I get the feeling this imagery is going to become a whole lot stronger as the story goes on. 

This is a combination of form and genre that I don't think I've come across before - a historical urban fantasy comic, set in Detroit in the early 1970s, and it was super enjoyable. The protagonist, Elena, is a journalist known for her investigations into police brutality. Marginalised by both her race and sex, she's able to illuminate the social tensions of the time (before my time, and in another country at that) in a clear and vivid way. Honestly, I was so engrossed in the social commentary that I was actually a little disappointed when the urban fantasy bit came in - I had no idea going in that this was anything more than historical fiction, so the swirling monster that appeared in the alleyway was a surprise. It's not that I don't enjoy monsters and urban fantasy - I do - it's just that I find myself far less interested in it than I am in Elena and her community. 

It's a damn good thing that the opening pages of this comic collection have the names and relationships for all these people, because the cast is enormous and I kept having to flick back and forth to see who was linked to who, either as family or romantic interest. In fairness, it's partly my own fault for not starting with the beginning volume of this series - when I saw it at the library, I mistakenly thought that this was the first part of the "Palomar" section of Love and Rockets, but it isn't. It still works as a standalone, I think, but I might have had a better sense of the characters if I'd read everything in its proper order. Oh well, this is due back tomorrow, so I'll pick up the first volume then.

I vacillated between two and three stars, to be honest. The characters are... I don't want to say they're hard to relate to, exactly, but they're all so melodramatic that they're a little bit exhausting. The more I read, though, the more I got sucked in. This is soap opera on a gigantic scale, and trying to take it seriously does a reader no favours. It's best just to lie back and let the general insanity wash over you. 

This is a quick enjoyable read, and a type of graphic novel I haven't tried before - one that's a cookbook as much as it is cartoons. Blain spends time in Passard's kitchen, watching food being prepared, but he also spends extensive time with the gardeners who supply the produce used in those kitchens. And when I say produce, I mean mostly beets. Alright, that's an exaggeration, but Passard does love his beets... though I can't say that I blame him, because I love them too. Beets are yummy. I do like the emphasis on vegetables here, and the simplicity of the culinary approach. It's always a limited number of ingredients, treated respectfully, nothing overwrought. 

I do miss photography, though. If there's one thing most modern cookbooks are very good at, it's that gorgeous imagery, and given how much emphasis Passard gives to colour in his food, I would have liked a better look at it, I think. 

 

I enjoyed all the essays here, although I took particular interest in the papers on Lost Girl by Jennifer K. Stuller and Magi Madoka Magica by Lien Fan Shen - which is quite surprising, as I'm not familiar with the source material of either. I'd quite like to be now, though, so some things have been added to the to-watch pile.

Despite the fact that all of the essays here are informative and interesting, there's not, it must be said, a great deal of coherence in the book as a whole. I'm all for wide-ranging, but the subject matter here is so eclectic and little has been done to link it all together. The introduction, for instance, is a bare one-and-a-half pages; utterly inadequate for such a book. I tend to think that with a theme as broad as Heroines of Film and Television there needed to be some sort of generalist approach to go alongside what were often very close studies of heroines from very different genres... but there just wasn't.