I’m a bit disappointed. But let me get to that…

I read somewhere that this was ‘fan fiction’, and while there were faint similarities to another series based on thingies in the sky and certain characters from that story, this was different enough to be unique.

Guanzon’s writing style is addictive, her phrasing often delicious, with lots of food bits entwined—and even though she loses herself too often in over-telling about clothing and body details (some people love this), she balances it with the imagery of gorgeous landscapes and sunsets and starry nights over glistening seas (and I love that).

So. I started out loving this. It began well. Adventurous and intriguing, good world-build and feisty characters, but by halfway through it took a disappointing turn towards the all-too prevalent trope of enemies-to-lovers (a not-so-reluctant juvenile romance rife with sexual tension), and I don’t think that’s any kind of spoiler. Despite this distraction overtaking the plot (quite to the core), the rest of the story raced with politics and was jammed full of jungle-challenges and trimmed with the mention of dragons (a brief cameo) and you’d think these things would be redemptive to a spiralling one-thought plot. But the rest of the interesting action wasn’t near enough to counterbalance the overshadowing, all-consuming, tunnel-vision trajectory of getting these two between the sheets.

I didn’t <i>love</i> it.  It too rapidly became too much of a too-many-details romance. Sure, the riveting periphery was enough to keep it out of a shallow two-star pit, the fantastical world-build placed it on a good 3-star plateau, and the writing style (and brief bits of angry humour) added some shine.But I didn’t love it. 

The anatomical language this ‘new adult’ category is fraught with these days soon emerged: by Haley’s, we were deep in a cheap obvious lead-up to a cheap, somehow ‘morally acceptable’ sex scene, and this obsessive plot-direction really stole the potential beauty from an otherwise intriguing story.

This is a ‘new adult’ all-focus ‘romance’ with a fantasy setting as the functional-disposable backdrop, rather than great fantasy with an embedded romance. Maybe this su gente is just not for me (it’s not)…that said, I didn’t <i>hate</i> the bulk of it either. I just—based on my expectations developed by its riveting start—hoped it would be a lot more likeable by the end. But by the end, I was so disappointed by the ballooned juvenile sex-craze, even the lingering whiff of a limping plot couldn’t tempt me to carry on with a series, as that’s obviously where this is headed…

Picture a Julian Fellowes gone Bond, with the likes of Mrs Hughes and Mr Carson as the upside-down masterminds behind a brilliant social-revolutionary heist rippling with feminist undertones and the strong whiff of a midnight circus performance. 

Flipping incredible! Nonstop from the opening line. Loved every page. 

Horrific and heartbreaking and hopeful...  

An incredibly personal story of the realistic experience of young Syrians at the height of the conflict. Katouh takes us deep into the damaged psyche of one young woman as she considers how best to be responsible for the remaining family she clings to while the family she’s lost—and the personification of fear—continue to haunt her waking nightmares. She wants to make the best decision for her much-loved family and for herself, but she wants to make the best decisions for her beloved country as well.

An insight into the lives of our broken neighbours, who have been massacred and exiled, and yet somehow still manage to continue to hope…

Let your 12+ children read this and talk…

Well.
One part of me says ‘What in the seven hells was that?’
Another part hums and ponders and thinks lengthily on all the spiritual allegory tucked away in this emotionally manipulative mess…
The critic in me touts the overall concept, goes ‘meh’ on the writing, but appreciates the atmospheric vibe throughout.

So. Yes: Atmospheric.

I see the talent this woman had in creating an eerie, creepy, blood-curdling setting. It seems she lost her touch in later years, but this first of her lifelong series was certainly worthy of the accolades it received in its generation. 1977 people. Groundbreaking, when you think of the absolute gush of cultish vampire lit that has followed…

It seems many modern vampire-genre writers, since the time of Anne Rice, have used her Interview as a platform for writing their own broody, moody, semi-relatable, more-human-than-devil creations with whom we, the reader, are meant to empathise. She gave us a way in to souls and minds and hearts that previously were all shielded darkness; she opened the door to connect with the emotion and experience of the vampires. That was unique. If you read this now, you have to read it as written in its time, before the commercialised romanticising of sexy young vampires.

But anyways, despite not being the first, Bram Stoker is still the big cheese among those who wrote of the blood-drinkers. In comparison, in recent years, since Rice’s novel, only Dacre Stoker in his novel Dracul, and Elizabeth Kostova in her novel The Historian, have managed to replicate Bram Stoker’s tangible atmospheric sense of creeping terror. I’m not sure other authors have been as or near as successful.

Babette screams ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’ — and yes, this is the feeling that permeates the story of Louis and the vampires; people are terrified of these un-men who occupy bodies but have seared souls and thrive by taking the lives of others…and usually, in the genre, that’s our disconnected feeling, it’s the fear we’re used to having with vampires—but thanks to Rice, Mick Jagger’s words have been taken at face value, we consider Mikhail Bulgakov’s Devil in The Master and Margarita with empathy, and we contemplate the act of Faust with considerable thought…but no. No…

A note on the interpretations of the ‘pedo’ bits: The dilemma of Claudia is icky. Makes one see why even these devils forbade the ‘turning’ of children… she is a mature and sensual and vain woman—stuck in the body of a small child, and this, combined with other disagreeable life experiences, make her a vile sharp-tongued bitter ‘child’ who swells and reaches with the desires of a many-times scorned and still yearning woman. Clearly, an awful dilemma.

Philosophical questions about, but the most pertinent are: would we prefer Death or Eternity? Does anyone wish for Immortality? or would we wish an end to the misery life has inflicted? And what interpretation of eternal life is this?—no; this is eternal damnation…As with Stoker’s work, this puts forth these and other intense spiritual questions even Jonathan Harker grappled with. But here we gain the perspective of the mind of the conflicted vampire, our narrator, who is appalled by the sinful blood orgy, fiercely denying his desire to satisfy his inner thirst and join in... and this is his lingering humanity—something Dracula never gave us. Louis draws us into the battle of his flesh and blood, his theological turmoil, his philosophical conflict—all the darkest parts. And the hope of the author is that we all can somehow relate…can we…?

I see how this was an important work in her own spiritual journey…

(Also: That they eat rats makes vampires almost desirable and I’d like to say more cities should have rat-eaters hanging about to keep the streets clear of the danger of plagues and diseases. It’s an appealing idea. As as long as they don’t kill us when they grow tired of the rats.)

What a strange little book. It feels Japanese, if that makes sense. It’s just out of reach and so palatably real, throbbing with the pulse of the desires that drive us through life, itching with the dissatisfaction of a constant tickle in the centre of our spine… the revealing of the story takes place over the course of six hours between midnight and dawn, but it is decades long and centuries deep. 

 

The people Mari meets during these six hours walking the streets of Japan after hours will change her thinking and her relationship with her sister and her life. And here is a sad look at the effect mental illness has on the people it touches beyond the mind it inflicts, the lives of the people who love the afflicted. 

 

At once profound and painful and pertinent. 

Brilliant children’s stories with lifelong principles.
Still of great value these 47 years later….

This feels a lot less like poetry and more like modern feminist proverbs written for young scarred and ill-prepared millennials who were chucked into this patriarchal world without any kind of preparation and had to learn everything the hard way--by chance or by choice. This is a short book of proverbial empowering sayings and contemplations and declarations and confessions for a generation who might need it; this is a deeply personal 'waking up' of the author to herself... it's difficult to criticise this type of vulnerable exposure, but I'm going to try:

Look, I really love poetry. I believe reading and writing poetry makes you smarter as it requires the combined use of logic and creativity, a blend of emotion and calculation; to create rhymes with rhythm and metre, using a vast range of literary devices, and piece it all together in a flowing cascade of meaningful words is costly. To involve emotions in the work is priceless. In this work, we have the latter (emotion), but not so much of the former. In essence, it's an effort at epitomising the style of some ee cummings, but rather than sublime language, we get blunt, basic, stark eroticism…

I like poetry that flows and rhymes and is longer than 3 lines—unless it has a mic-dropping point to make, but even the master of English words in the Shakespearean punchline doesn’t deliver the sigh of satisfaction until we’ve felt the suspense of agony; the punchline comes after 3 quatrains: an introduction, the building exploration, and a cinematic climax, and then—bam! then it's delivered in a clever couplet that lands a comical blow or provokes an 'aha' moment or a smiling breath of relief. Every line cannot be a punchline or the punchline loses its punch, the reader becomes exhausted in the expression of the same pulsing emotion. Every poem cannot be a single phrased mic-drop statement, or the mic-drop loses the power of its effect.

But perhaps that is a distinguishing factor of this generation: they do not allow themselves a break from a driving intensity; they cannot for a moment stop and contemplate a process in light of the persistent demand to deliver a product. And in their world, they are the tireless (tired) product the world never ceases to malign for such minuscule imperfections. How exhausting…

All that said, and I do believe my review now contains more words than Kaur’s book of poetry, there is a place for her voice in our world, especially among this new generation of adults. Kaur lifts her voice for the sexually restrained and abused and manipulated, and she urges young women to speak up, speak out, find their own tongues and use them to good measure. There is merit to what she writes.

I just don’t know how ‘poetic’ it all is, though. I’d prefer to call it something like Kaur’s Mini Book of Mammoth Proverbs.

Sure. Some will still call it poetry.

Absolute genius.
Always a spooky yet hilarious delight to read Washington Irving at Halloween.
Read it the night before teaching it to my Grade 11 class, then we watched the terrifying yet comical Disney rendition--which is still (in my opinion) the best interpretation in film.

Finally. This one hits the mark with the mystery, character development, and of course, the continued detailed descriptions of all things pathology and medical. 

 

Another mystery solved by the combined declared genius of Sherlock’s daughter, with the now predictable help of the dog’s nose and without any help from her predictably unhelpful documenting husband. 

 

Again. 

 

But anyways, more entertaining this time because of the intriguing subject matter (a revisit attempt to solve the ole Jack the Ripper case, which of course, Joanna does without much difficulty because she is a chain-smoking genius). 

 

Some things are becoming familiar in a cosy sort of delightful way you’d expect a WWI context Sherlock-type mystery might be. A better than good read. I’ve accidentally skipped book #4, so I’ll have to go back and pick that one up, but to be honest, I never noticed. 

A new perspective on the story of Medusa, as told from within (and upon) her own head.

Haynes pieces together all these stories to make one vast whole centred around a marginalised cursed woman, her birth, early existence, and eventual downfall at the hands of selfish men and fickle gods. The dialogue between these gods is at times comical or playful, and nearly always sarcastic. The humans, especially the men in Haynes novels, descend into a pit of sheer stupidity at a baffling, yet consistent rate, and show no sign of redemption in the midst of their aggravating luck and daftly ignorant egoism. The characterisation of men in Haynes’ work verges on slapstick. Make of that what you will, at least it’s done with some measure of lighthearted humour. I think.

So. I listened to the the narrated audiobook, and my heftiest criticism lies primarily with the author’s choice to read the work for herself; it too often comes across as condescending and bitter…and maybe that’s what she’s intended, but it’s less appealing than if delivered as a more humble satire. I have the feeling this might have been achieved with a different narrator, but then, the author’s bitter accusations would have been dampened, and while I’d have preferred that, it’s obviously not what she intended. Anyways, my sole gripe is with the narration, and the tone of the ‘accusation’ chapters was made more harshly accusatory because the author herself was doing the reading.

Haynes’ writing is easy to read, and her content is always superior, unique, and incredibly interesting in the field.