Just letting rip, bellowing their little heart out, because holy fucking shit, Sarah J. Maas stuck a knife in my heart and swivelled.
...
And I don't know if I want to talk about it.
That's the funny thing about reviewing, sometimes you'll read something and it'll hit you in a way that feels too personal to put into words, to let loose into the world.
(Even if it's not the greatest story told, it means something to you, which in my opinion is the more important factor)
How do you review something you want to hold close and not overanalyse?
...
Fucked if I know.
To write or not to write, my eternal fucking struggle, especially with Milady Maas.
I don't know what it is about the way she wields stories/characters but I can't walk away from any of them without feeling like they're my fucked up children and I must protect them at all costs, even from myself (i.e. my verbiage-filled reviews).
Would I "die" for the entire Inner Circle? Yes, by the cauldron, I would.
(Especially Azriel, for the love of the cauldron, someone give my shadow-baby a hug)
And does that act of sacrifice now extend to Bryce, Hunt, Ruhn and their rabble of misfits?
...
But I'm all mixed up inside, twisting from one emotion to the next, quietly waiting for whatever Maas just did to my internal organs to kindly calm the fuck down and let me process.
...
It's been three days.
I don't know what to do, I don't know if I can write about this.
I've been hurt, I've rejoiced, I've agonised, I've been mortally wounded, I've lost loved ones, I've battled demons, and I've taken an unreasonable number of selfies, all in the space of one book, and I don't know what to do with it all.
I keep trying to order my thoughts, separate them out into neat little piles so I can make sense of them and finally write this damn thing, but those thoughts refuse to un-muddle themselves, refuse to leave their tangle of overwhelmed contentment for the regimented order I so desperately need.
In some ways it was, I was mired deeply in depression at that point, using books as an escape from reality, and when I randomly chose to read the first book in the series, I was gifted a story that changed everything.
(And rewrote my whole honour code when it comes to ship-jumping. Tampon the Tool, the flower-scented sanitary towel of the Maas-iverse, you fucker, I'll never regret leaving your gaslighting ass behind)
In my brain, in my feelings, in my interactions.
It didn't "cure" my depression, of course not, but this silly little story about a human girl fighting her way through Fae politics for some semblance of a happy ending for herself and her family, with little more than self-taught hunting skills and a metric fuck-ton of moxie jolted me back into the land of the living.
It's when I truly started to love reading again, when it became my greatest love, when that hollowness in my fucking bones started to recede enough for me to take a full breath again and slowly refill the internal sustenance I couldn't fuel myself.
(Coincidentally, I was reading Magic Bites at the same time and I hold it equally responsible for the alteration in my synapses. Ask me what my favourite books are, and I'll always hold these at the very top. Always)
Sounds dramatic, probably is dramatic, but there's truth to it, the power of stories to reach out to those who need them and provide the kind of solace only a land far, far away can.
To see your own struggles represented in a format that has no semblance to reality but can offer a hand and somehow deliver the assurance that you're not alone and you won't be broken forever is a heady thing.
That's what ACoTaR did for me, and what reading House of Earth and Blood reminded me so viscerally of, but in a new world, with new characters, and a new battle.
There is a reason for this, though, because let's be honest, the similarities between the two series are hard to ignore:
🌙 Lunathion is basically a future Velaris
🌙 Bryce is an amalgamation of Nesta and Mor (with a little Feyre thrown in)
🌙 Hunt's a mishmash of Rhys and Cassian (with a smidge of Az)
🌙 The Horn, a stolen, broken, Fae artefact with endless power is the Cauldron all over again
🌙 A heroine with the power of starlight (hi, Feyre)
🌙 A hero with formidable gifts in shackles (Rhys, my man)
🌙 Ruhn's Fae abilities are exactly like Rhysand's - shadows, telepathy, flight (are they related?!)
🌙 The Autumn King being an absolute, red-haired son of a bitch (Beron? Fuckhead, is that you?)
🌙 Viktoria's a wraith, a being that inhabits a body of their own choosing (AMREN)
🌙 The Sphinx = the Suriel (tea, anyone?)
🌙 A quest to save/redeem someone the heroine loves at great cost (I wanted to punch Sabine in the face just as much as I did Amaranthe, just saying)
The comparisons are endless, undeniable, and I really could go on, because I couldn't stop noticing them.
Would this have happened if I hadn't been spoiled by the Twitter-heathens that the second book's finale confirmed Maas' collective works as a multiverse and that the third Crescent City book will be when they collide?
Probably, it's pretty obvious, but being spoiled didn't help matters.
Once I knew, I couldn't un-see it, and that's when the endless barrage of questions started to tumble obnoxiously through my brain:
✨ Is Ruhn a descendent of Rhysand? Or Azriel, maybe?
(Shadows and telepathy? I call suss)
✨ Is Bryce related to Eris? Beron?
(Their powers don't seem to match up but it feels too coincidental)
✨ And Why doesn't Ruhn bear the same colouring and powers? Who's his mother?
(Rhysand's mother, maybe? Does that even make sense? Or Az? Is Truth-Teller connected to the Starsword?)
✨ How do the timelines match up? Do the two worlds exist concurrently or will the Inner Circle be much older?
(A greying Cassian does something to my brain chemistry, even though I know the Fae don't age like that, a girl can dream of silvery temples)
✨ Will this affect Azriel, Elain, and Lucien's story (and Gwyn, can't forget Gwyn)?
(If that's not the next book Maas releases, I'm gonna lose my fucking mind)
✨ Will we see grown up Nyx?!
(I wanna know what powers the little monster's collected. Maybe he's everyone's daddy?!)
✨ If we can cross worlds, do I need to finally read the TOG series so I don't miss anything crucial?
(I know, I know, how can I call myself a worshipper at the temple of Maas when I haven't read her full catalogue, yada yada. Gimme a break, too many books, too little a lifespan)
✨ Is Jesiba's library connected to the House of Wind's library?
(They both hold sentience, sooo...)
✨ Are there angels everywhere? In Prythian? Or is this solely a Lunathion thing?
(I need a Bestiary to keep these series straight, I swear...)
✨ Are the demons somehow related to Bryaxis and the Bone Carver, et al.?
(Do they all come from Aidas's realm? *dreamy sigh* Aiiiidassssss...)
✨ Will Bryce be sharing her collection of sportswear so the Valkyries can finally take their damn armour off when they train?
And all this anxiety is happening whilst absolutely losing my shit over the story, which is absolutely reminiscent of stories Maas has told before, but I actually don't care about that, what I do care about is that this is first time she's really hurt me.
(Fully aware of a particular hurt in TOG, still not prepared for when I finally get to it)
And more than once.
Starting your story off with the brutal murder of the protagonist's best friends is one way to make me swear a lifetime of vengeance and compensation for hurt feelings.
(I will accept this in form of new stories and collector's editions that aren't sequestered to their country of origin. I like bonus stories, too, Maas, but I don't like overseas shipping and surprise custom tax)
It happens right at the start of the story, and we're really not given enough time to even develop feelings for Danika and the Pack of Devils, but somehow Maas did enough to absolutely obliterate my heart and my trust in her.
...
Who does that?!
Right at the beginning of the story?!
A monster, that's who.
I mean, I get it, it was necessary to ignite the plot (or was it?), but bloody hell it was a blow to system that I simply wasn't expecting, and it remained a constant element of the story throughout.
How could it not be when a thoroughly broken and traumatised Bryce is tasked with the job of finding out who/what killed her friends, and in order to do this she, and as a byproduct us, have to trudge solemnly through Danika's life.
Her last days, her last movements, the secrets she kept from Bryce, the people who were privy to those secrets when she wasn't; it's messy and harrowing because every newly uncovered piece of the puzzle is death by a thousand cuts for Bryce.
This person she thought was her mirror, her other half, her soulmate, the one person in the entire world she thought she knew better than anyone else was harbouring life-altering secrets, and it shatters her.
It shattered me, too.
I would say that up until the last two hundred odd pages of the story, it's a long, long, long slog through the highs and lows of Bryce's depression and PTSD.
She wondered what would have happened if Juniper, on a whim, hadn't called just to check in that night. Right as Bryce had braced her hands on the rail.
Only that friendly voice on the other end of the line kept Bryce from walking right off that the roof.
Juniper had kept Bryce talking on the phone―babbling about nothing. Right until her cab had pulled up in front of the apartment. Juniper refused to hang up until she was on the roof with Bryce, laughing it off. She'd only known where to find her because Bryce had mumbled something about sitting there. And perhaps she'd rushed over because of how hollow Bryce's voice had been when she'd said it.
Juniper had stayed to burn the copies of the song, then gone downstairs to the apartment, where they'd watched TV in bed until they fell asleep. Bryce had risen at one point to turn off the TV and use the bathroom; when she'd come back, Juniper had been awake, waiting.
Her friend didn't leave her side for three days.
They'd never spoken of it. But Bryce wondered if Juniper had later told Fury how close it had been, how hard she'd worked to keep that phone call going while she raced over without alerting Bryce, sensing that something was wrong-wrong-wrong.
Bryce didn't like to think about that winter. That night. But she would never stop being grateful for Juniper for that sense―that love that had kept her from making such a terrible, stupid mistake.
One minute we're bicker-flirting up a storm with Hunt, the next we're on the floor with her, curled in a ball and barely moving, and at other times we're just weathering the blows of one fucking thing after another the best we can.
Honestly, it's a spot on representation of what depression is.
Good days, bad days, terrible moments, levelling out, bewildering contentment, thrilling highs and exhaustive comedowns.
It's a steady state of having no fucking idea how you're going to feel one second to the next and simply making it through. Or not, and hoping the next day will be better.
It's as simple and as cyclical as that, and I appreciate that Maas didn't glorify or romanticise how much it hurts or how tiring it is. Neurodivergence isn't a superpower, it isn't a quirk, it isn't something you choose or can turn off at will, it's not a personality type but an endless battle fought by deeply resilient people.
(And those who stop fighting aren't weak, they're just done, and that should be respected, too)
We see that in Bryce, and in Hunt, two people who've had extreme loss which should've been the end of them but because of circumstance or persistence of will, they've carried on and ultimately found each other.
I see you, Quinlan, he silently conveyed to her. And I like all of it.
💫 Viviane and Kallias - sidebar idiot but no less an idiot
And whoever ends up with who in the little love-square she's got going on with Elaine, Lucien, Azriel, and Gwyn, I'll probably be all over them as well.
(I don't wanna be basic and root for Elain and Lucien purely because they're mates, but I also don't want every Archeron sister to end up with one of the Illyrian babies; plus Gwyn's awesome and I can totally see her with Az, but a redhead power couple with Lucien could be cool, too... ? Ugh, help me)
But for now it's all about Bryce and Hunt, my reluctant chosen ones, my snarling bicker-flirters.
He gently set Bryce down before the shut fogged-glass office doors. Made sure she was steady on her feet before he let her go, stepping back to study every inch of her face.
Worry shone in her eyes, enough of it that he leaned in, brushing a kiss over he temple. "Chin up, Quinlan," he murmured against her soft skin. "Let's see you do that face trick where you somehow look down your nose at people a foot taller than you."
She chuckled, smacking him lightly on the arm.
They're so fucking cute.
And it's been fun to see one of Maas' OTPs in a modern setting, an Urban Fantasy setting, my favourite of all fantastical landscapes.
This is entirely new territory for Maas' characters, before now we've solely been based in high fantasy, alt-historical territory (Prythian and Hybern are the UK and Ireland, no question about it, even their names are corruptions of Britain - Brython/Britton, and Ireland - Hibernia) and I've loved every second: the over the top outfits, the forced, formal manners, the complete lack of technology, the unfamiliarity of just about everything, so being in that world wholly removes you from your own.
All that, I adore it.
It's true escapism, but as I may have mentioned TEN THOUSAND TIMES before, I loveUrban Fantasy, I love being dumped into the world I know and have it inhabited by impossible creatures and acts of improbable magic.
I'll be honest, though, I was a little worried when Maas announced she was writing a modern fantasy and extracting us from her usual mannered surroundings, not because of her ability to wield stories, but because I'd never experienced it from her before.
Gods forbid, what if I didn't like it?
Truthfully, I actually didn't want to like it as much.
Does anyone else do this? Actively want to be disappointed by a new series from an author you love because you've gone through so much before? Ripped your guts out with each book, been left entirely wrung out, and the very idea of giving so much again is too fucking stressful, even though you know if it's not any good you'll be ridiculously disappointed?
This can't be just me. I can't be alone in that much crazy.
(Please tell me it's not just me, I beg of you)
It's immaterial either way, however, because I do love this just as much.
Maas did it again, she clobbered me and I can't get up, and she did it in what is essentially a supernatural metropolis, with skies filled with angels and witches flying overhead on their commute to work (witches on brooms, though, Maas? Hokey much?), otters acting as an adorable delivery service (I'm never going to looking at the people who deliver packages to my hermit ass the same way again. Too fucking cute), vampires lurking menacingly around as they do in most situations, and human and Fae intermingling with all the usual hierarchical bullshit that comes with any society.
(I couldn't stop picture Zootopia - which I can't think of as anything other than Zootropolis- but full of eldritch horrors with pretty faces)
It's bloody gorgeous, and with the access to technology (some very much our own: phones, computers, tv, cars, medical equipment, etc., and more unfamiliar gadgets: I've forgotten them all, shut up) it ups the familiarity of an unfamiliar world.
...
And more importantly grants me access to one of my all-time favourite literary devices in romantic fiction: texting.
I love it, I love it, I LOVE IT.
The moment Bryce started snapping photos of Hunt, herself, changing her name to ridiculous things on his phone, and they started messaging, I knew I was done for.
I was a mess for it when Feyre and Rhysand winnowed physical notes to each other in ACoTaR, and I'm mess for it with Bryce and Hunt.
Why?
Because it provides an intimacy within an intimacy.
We're already a voyeur to the story with access to all the information we could possibly wish for, but the act of texting is something that happens solely between the two main characters, it's just for them, no one else is allowed to see.
Except us, perching on their shoulders, getting a good gander at how they behave towards each other in the privacy of cyberspace, and what Bryce was not so covertly building for Hunt in the process.
A life. These were the photos os someone with a life, and a good one at that. A reminder of what it had felt like to have a home, and someone who cared whether he lived or died. Someone who made him smile just by entering a room.
It's a secret only we get to know, the chosen ones, and that makes it feel immeasurably more intimate and just a little sacred.
I worship at the altar of text-romances, and having one of my all-time favourite authors get in on the action brings me the kind of joy that forces one to slap a bitch.
How else do you release the feels?
And I have way too many feels over this story, a bushel of feels, and they supernova-d in the last two hundred pages.
If you could grant Sarah J. Maas only one thing, which is miserly and unnecessary, but if you had to, it would be her ability to kindle a story from embers to an inferno.
She had eight hundred plus pages to do so, more than enough time and the standard for most high fantasy, and she did it slowly, methodically, and in the guise of your classic mystery noir (with barely any noir but you get the idea).
By leading us a little further into uncovering the answer to all Bryce's questions, with each hard won snippet of information, Maas lulls you into a false sense of security, moseying us along, making sure we know the answer will inevitably be unveiled, but keeping us firmly tethered.
...
And then blowing it all to hell in the last two hundred pages.
"Light it up, Bryce."
I won't spoil it by going into detail (Bryce Quinlan is a fucking badass, though), but in the words of my beloved Eleanor Shellstrop:
I'm pretty sure I forgot to breathe for the duration, which is risky when you've got mildly deficient lungs (not growing fully out of childhood asthma means that if you tickle me, I will automatically hold my breath, and you will be responsible for my "hilarious" death), but I made it unscathed through the hellscape Maas ignited in our faces like an unchecked kid with an illegal firework, all in one piece, just like everyone else, except for one.
My little one.
My flirty little sprite.
My devoted buddy.
My Lehabah.
The iron door opened on a sigh, revealing the pine-green carpeted staircase that led straight down into the library. Hunt almost crashed into her as Lehabah floated up between them, her fire shining bright, and purred, "Hello."
The angel examined the fire sprite hovering a foot away from his face. She was no longer than Bryce's hand, her flaming hair twirling above her head.
"Well, aren't you beautiful," Hunt said, his voice low and soft in a way that made every instinct in Bryce sit up straight.
Lehabah flared as she wrapped her plump arms around herself and ducked her head.
Bryce shook off the effects of Hunt's voice. "Stop pretending to be shy."
Lehabah cut her a simmering glare, but Hunt lifted a finger for her to perch on. "Shall we?"
Lehabah shone ruby red, but floated over to his scarred finger and sat, smiling at him beneath her lashes. "He is very nice, BB," Lehabah observed as Bryce walked down the stairs, the sun-chandelier blinking to life again. "I don't see why you complain so much about him."
Bryce scowled over he shoulder. But Lehabah was making mooncalf eyes at the angel, who gave Bryce a wry smile as he trailed her into the library's heart.
She's the character I fell in love with immediately, the one I wanted to protect at all costs, the softest little soul you'll ever meet in fiction.
And she did it with purpose, with bravery, with an ending befitting a queen.
She doused her glorious little light in selfless, regal glory.
And I'll never forgive her.
"I am a descendent of Ranthia Drahl, Queen of Embers. She is with me now and I am not afraid."
Lehabah glowed, bright as the heart of a star.
"My friends are behind me, and I will protect them."
[...]
"My friends are with me and I am not afraid."
[...]
"My friends are with me and I am not afraid."
[...]
"My friends are with me and I am not afraid."
[...]
"My friends are with me and I am not afraid."
Not unless she brings her back.
I knew as soon as these five words appeared on the page...
"Let me buy you time."
...that Maas was about to do something unforgivable, and I instantly fell to pieces, cried for an hour, gave myself a migraine, and haven't been okay since.
She was free, she was finally free, and I won't be okay again until I see her lounging on her miniature fainting couch, watching Fangs and Bangs with the relaxed glee of every fangirl in their happy place, and coaxing a grumpy Bryce into conversation whilst playfully threatening her important paperwork with drops of wax.
I need her to call Hunt, "Athie" again.
I need to see her nuzzle into Syrinx's fur for a nap, flirt shamelessly and coquettedly with Hunt and Ruhn, balance neatly on the branch of Hunt's finger.
I need her to call Bryce, "BB", once more.
Even if it's at the very end of the entire series.
Okay, I'm calling time, I've lost control of the review, it's time go.
There's so much more to say, things I've forgotten, things I've missed out, and things I wish for the future of the story (the return of Lehabah, Sabine's painful death, a better focus on the slavery, and Ruhn to get a haircut - I laugh every time he's described, a screamo princeling, ie. every boy I went to high school with), but I'm tired and grieving, and I don't think my laptop can survive yet another deluge from my stupid eyeballs.
So, farewell, adieu, off I fuck to sob in private with what's left of my Easter chocolate supply.
Wish me painkillers, Omeprazole, and happy thoughts: the ultimate care-package for the devoted bookworm.
Special shoutout to Syrinx:
"Come . . . on," Bryce grunted.
Leaning against the wall beside the front door of the gallery, sunset mere minutes away, Hunt debated pulling out his phone to film the scene before him: Syrinx with his claws embedded in the carpet, yowling his head off, and Bryce trying to haul him by the back legs toward the door.
"It's. Just. Water!" she gritted out, tugging again.
"Eeettzzz!" Syrinx wailed back.
Bryce had declared that they were dropping off Syrinx at her apartment before going out to FiRo to investigate.
She grunted again, legs straining as she heaved the chimera. "We. Are. Going. Home!"
The green carpet began to lift, nails popping free as Syrinx clung for dear life.
Cthona spare him. Snickering, Hunt did Jesiba Roga a favor before Syrinx started on the wood panels, and wrapped a cool breeze around the chimera. Brow scrunching with concentration, he hoisted Syrinx from the carpet, floating him on a storm-wind straight to Hunt's open arms.
Syrinx blinked at him, then bristled, his tiny white teeth bared.
Hunt said calmly, "None of that, beastie."
Syrinx harrumphed, then went boneless.
Hunt found Bryce blinking, too. He threw her a grin.
You wondrous, fuzzy chonk.
I think you're more important to the story than Maas is letting on.
Perfect casting (truly, everyone ticked all my boxes but especially Camila, Karen, Graham, Teddy and Rod - I'm stupid for them), perfect interpretation of the band's sound, perfect visual tone, perfect amount of me wanting to slap Billy and Daisy around a bit for being such self-destructive disaster monkeys.
(I do love them, and Sam Claflin and Riley Keough had shit-hot chemistry, but ffs, these two are the worst)
Perfect everything.
I didn't even mind the things they changed.
Would I have loved that harrowing moment between Camila and Karen (if you know, you know) to have been more faithful to the story?
Or the ending to have played out as originally written?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Because I loved those moments.
But if I hadn't read the book, it wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest, not one tiny bit, because the show managed to take the heart of Taylor Reid Jenkins' story, change it just enough to work better for tv, and rocked the shit out of it.
That ending, where everybody's heartache and anguish finally comes to a boiling point and spills over.
It's messy and heartbreaking and yeah, as if there was any question of it, I cried my stupid heart out.
This show is not a life-changer, it's still not Almost Famous perfect, but damn, it really kicks you spectacularly where it hurts and it's so damn watchable.
I love it.
And it will be watched to death.
And it will be bought if it gets a UK blu-ray release so I can keep it forever (or until dvd players become defunct)like the materialistic millennial I am.
Digital's awesome, but Amazon can't come into my house and delete my dvds whenever they want, now can they?
...
Ps. The music slaps, and the fact that the actors learned and performed makes it slap even harder:
And it punched me so unexpectedly in the heart, I've felt a little funny ever since.
This movie deserves every award it was given (except Jamie Lee Curtis' Oscar, she was good, love her, but the BSA belonged to Stephanie Hsu who was adorably malevolent and just wow. So very, very wow), every accolade, and all the luck in future endeavours for each cog in the EEAaO machine.
Don't watch this movie if you're not comfortable in the anarchic absurd.
EEAaO's crushing weirdness won't feel right in your bones.
For me, it's a home away from home.
Where everything, and everywhere, feel just right, all at once.
I probably won't see Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves until it magically appears on some streaming service or I cave and buy the blu-ray, so there's no certainty as to my falling in love with the the weighty wyvern known as Themberchaud.
But as one with their own chonky dragon prone to temper tantrums who wyrmed (invaded and took hostages) his way into both heart and home...
If, like me, you're a little over depressing as fuck apocalypses, and would rather watch a bunch of Aussie women trapped together go full Lord of the Flies at their ten year reunion, then Class of '07 is just the show for you.
In all honesty, it couldn't have ended any other way.
Since the beginning of The Collector series there's been a shroud hanging over the the CAC team, a spectre cobwebbed to their collective shoulders, nuzzling into their necks to remind them I'm still here, don't forget me, never stop looking, I'm still here.
As if they ever could.
As if Brandon ever could.
He keeps these photos here at his desk because they're his reminder of why he does this painful, difficult job. So that, hopefully, no family has to wait five years to find out who killed their sister and daughter, like Priya and Deshani did. So that, hopefully, no family has to go twenty-five-plus years without knowing what happened to their child.
Like the Eddisons have, and will continue to do.
For someone with over sixty distinct scowls in his repertoire, Bran Eddison live a life of astonishing hope.
The loss of his sister decades ago rewrote his entire life, it shaped his career, his relationships, his mindset; to forget Faith would be akin to commanding his lungs to shut down and simply stop pumping air throughout his body.
It cannot be done.
And for three books we've waded dedicatedly through his solemn, maintained grief, from the Butterflies to Priya to Mercedes, and now to another little girl, seemingly snatched into thin air, spirited away, not a trace left behind but a family in despair.
Just like Bran's was, like they always will be until their missing piece is found.
The Vanishing Season isn't like the other books in the series, it isn't flashy, it doesn't feature an almost fantastical villain who revels in mind-games and poetic murder tableaus, it isn't a game Bran and his team have to play to solve the puzzle.
It's simpler than that, so simple it's devastating to realise the answer's been there all along, hiding in plain sight, just down the road, in a soundproofed basement, with a little blonde girl inside, one of many, all the same.
This story, Bran's story translated through Eliza, his other half in life and work, is one that is far more possible than the previous three Dot Hutchison artfully laid out for us.
How many children go missing a year? In the UK? Approximately one hundred and thirteen thousand.
In the US? Four hundred and sixty thousand.
In the world? Eight million.
A truly devastating number of innocents snatched from their lives in broad daylight, often in their own neighbourhoods, likely never seen again
And two thirds of them will be girls.
Once when I was home from college for spring break, my dad and I caught a movie. It was dark when we came out, and the movie theater had a large parking lot that wasn't especially well lit. It was the first time he'd ever noticed how I carried my keys threaded through my fingers to make a punch as painful as possible if anyone tried to grab me. Aba asked me about it over milkshakes and fries, the diner's fluorescent lights headache-inducing and bright, and I walked him through the many, many things a girl or woman out on her own does.
He was baffled.
It wasn't that he didn't believe me, it was just that he had absolutely no frame of reference for that kind of caution being a routine. Couldn't understand that it didn't really have anything to do with where you were or what kind of area it was, that this was just good sense if you were a woman walking alone.
When a child gets kidnapped, people wail and point to safe neighbourhoods as if that should be protection against opportunity. As if money is the only thing needed to make a child safe.
A lot of the girls on this list lived in safe neighbourhoods.
It's not hard in the slightestto read The Vanishing Season as anything other than entirely possible, because it is, it's happening right now, and not always for the reasons we'd presume.
Killers were bad man. They were supposed to be noticeably bad men [...] They were supposed to be scary and evil and alone, not laughing and cheering as the girls outhit the boys at the local Little League home run derby while the rest of his family laughs along with him.
[...]
How could they not know?
Because someone good enough to avoid suspicion for twenty years didn't manage that by showing his evil to his family. He gave them all the good in him and then went a safe distance away from them to let that evil out against others.
Because not all murders are born of perversion, not all serial killers are the kind of evil we'd "hope" could only commit such heinous acts, but pitifully broken people who've been so bent by grief it fractures their minds.
Does that excuse it?
Never.
But is it important to acknowledge the existence of such people and the things they do?
Absolutely.
If Dot Hutchison had written this last story as another fantastical tale of moral bankruptcy that focused dutifully on the chase, it wouldn't have been nearly as horrifying, the ache and impotence of missing children yet to be found would have been more akin to the Fae and their changelings than it would to the reality of very human misdeeds.
The violence of it would have been lost in the absurd, and this is a violent story, but an oddly peaceful one.
In many ways it could be accused of lacking drama, of existing in a hum of sustained static, neither dipping low or escalating in its progression, and those accusations would be correct, but truthfully, that creeping, sleepy pace only adds to its horror.
In reality, the solving of a case like this would most likely not play out like it would on tv, there wouldn't be high speed chases, there wouldn't be cries of eureka, there wouldn't be hyperbole.
Instead, it would be the slow, methodical putting of the pieces together and the resulting horror of full comprehension.
Of knowing yet again the depths the human race can plunder.
What's more horrifying than what humanity is capable of?
I'm really not sure, and Hutchison illustrates that by refusing to let us escape into fantasy, refusing to adorn her story with a surreal bow to shield us.
This is why The Vanishing Season is in my opinion the most terrifying of the series, because it's a truth we know but don't talk about, something we all face, even if simply through our tv screens watching the news.
If you're a parent, sibling, relative, friend, it's a constant worry, letting your child out into the world is always fraught with potential danger.
It's a fact that cannot be written away in fantasy.
Dot Hutchison knows that and she didn't let us look away, not for a minute.
There's an overwhelming amount of care and love in this tale of missing girls: the way a neighbourhood can band together, the kindness of strangers, the persistence of law enforcement to a case unsolved, the specific care attended to a child's body uncovered (you can only hope this is how the professionals truly behave irl), childhood friends never letting go, a found family simply holding on and refusing to falter, etc.
It's overflowing with that ineffable thing we call love, and that's ultimately what carries the story through, what solves the puzzle and finally provides Bran and so many others with the closure they need.
Tears stream down Paul's weathered cheeks, perpetually sunburned because he never remembers to put on sunblock before running yet can't ever manage to tan. Xio isn't crying, but her eyes are bright.
"I know it's not the answer you hope for―"
But Xio cuts me off with a brisk shake of her head. "It is an answer, Eliza. At long last, it is an answer, and our daughter is coming home. We hoped," she continues ruefully. "How could we not? But it has been many years since we truly believed her to still be alive."
Paul hiccups, burying his face in the hand not clinging to his wife.
"At least . . . at least she has not been suffering all this time. There's mercy in that. Esos pequeños consuelos." Her lower lip and chin start to quiver. "My baby. My baby girl."
Bran shoots off the couch, stumbling to his knees in front of his parents. They fold into him, his arms around their backs. I can see Xio's shoulders shaking as she weeps.
Yes, The Vanishing Season is full of all too true horrors, but it doesn't leave you horrified, if anything, it sends you off with Hope.
Just a little, but just enough.
"Just a little longer now, sweetheart; you're almost home."
I haven't wished for the death of chauvinist character with this degree of bloodthirst for a while, and the payoff was somewhat predictable but no less satisfying.
Season two, though... not even an inkling who's gonna hit their shit list next.
The countless number of ways I've seen my husbands depicted, the various styles and soft, marital situations they get lovingly dropped in never ceases to amaze me.
But Aziraphale as a secretary bird might just be my favourite thing in the universe.
I'm trying to be less of a stickler for accuracy in the adaptations I watch.
Both because it's exhausting to constantly strive for perfection which ultimately results in feeling let down when those expectations aren't met, but also because as Molly Templeton put it:
The uncertainty makes it all feel more fresh.
She's not wrong.
My sister and I were practically apoplectic when we saw the make up test shot of Henry Cavill as Geralt(can you say mediaeval barbie?), both vehemently denied Tennant and Sheen could ever play our beloved Ineffable Husbands (much to my other sister's delight when we watched the first minute of the first episode together and her naysayer siblings turn to each other and utter the fateful word: Fuck - she's still smug), and I took one look at Julia in The Magicians and thought: nah, she's not my Julia, where's her rage?.
...
And I was wrong on every count.
And more so, my feelings towards those characters were either improved or grew in affection by their redirection (except the Husbands, that's an unshakeable love story between them and I, Tennant and Sheen simply brought them to life).
It's hard to let go of what you've experienced whilst reading, what you've envisioned, what voice you've heard inside your head, but my experience of a story won't be another person's.
A prime example is the Dead Marshes in The Two Towers, which my eldest sister (my fellow naysayer, not the smugly one - I love her too, don't worry) and my mum found inherently creepy and unnerving, whereas I found them unspeakably sad and wasn't frightened at all.
And again with Kafka's The Metamorphosis, a book I read in my early twenties and dissolved under a weight of deep pity and sadness for Gregor Samsa; his fate and the treatment by his family due to a transformation he had no choice in felt to me abhorrent and deeply unfair. I felt no disgust or fear of him, but my Dad and my sister did.
The translation of a story can be a deeply personal thing, so to expect everyone else to feel exactly as you did is fairly ridiculous, and furthermore, to expect the adaption of it to live-action to stand up to the individual's standards would be near impossible.
Yes, there have, for me, been perfect adaptations:
These shows aren't as I pictured them, and some have made choices I can't agree with (GoT, those endings, wtf?), but I love them all, and what's more, I hold them in the same place in my heart as I do their origins.
I can make space for both.
Does it take the nervousness away that something terrible will go wrong in production and translation?
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