"When my breath blew across the girl, the spark of life lit within her, and they could see her eyelashes twitch, her tresses shiver. The child began to move. Her little limbs were slender and nearly as pale a blue as the reflection of the sky on the snow she'd been made from. Her hair, a deeper blue, like the flowers that are nearby. Her eyes, that of the lichen that clung to rocks. Her lips, the red of that fresh-spilled blood.
You will be our daughter, the kind and queen told her. And you will give us Elfhame."
I feel... underwhelmed, and it's bothering me.
As a reader, you want every single story you feed into your brain to be the best thing ever, to erase everything that came before and be your new favourite thing, which is, frankly, impossible.
Your mood can affect what you're reading, your age, your current interests, whether you've inhaled enough carbohydrates that day (never enough); it's impossible to have such good taste and instincts that everything you read will be perfect.
And yet, the expectation never wains, the hunger for satisfaction is never sated, and there's a masochistic habit when you find an author you love and will insta-buy without taking a breath, that you expect everything they produce to be literary gold.
...
Which is fucking madness, and entirely subjective, because like most things, my yum will undoubtedly be another person's yuck, and vice versa.
My favourite in a series will not be everyone else's, even if it's undeniably the best one; my ride or die characters will be loathed with vehemence by a large percentage of the fandom; I will be raked over the coals for thinking Edward Cullen is a toxic as shit "hero" while he's beloved elsewhere.
It's simple readers maths.
Do you have any idea how many people fucking abhor the Fae, when it's probably my favourite genre of the supernatural?
SO MANY PEOPLE.
You can't stop, and shouldn't give a shit about what other people enjoy versus what you do, it's a waste of time and fundamentally pointless.
But more importantly, I shouldn't expect the sequel to a series I fell headfirst into without a safety helmet be as good as its predecessor.
Hope for it, but not expect it, which is exactly what I was doing while reading The Stolen Heir.
I thought I was being level-headed, I thought I'd put Jude and Cardan safely to the side, I thought I was going into Oak and Suren's book solely invested in them.
...
I was a fucking idiot.
I spent three hundred and fifty pages, unbeknownst to me until the end, being an itchy little weirdo begging for a glimpse of my beloved, gilded monsters; I was feral in my want of them, ravenous for a piece of them to swallow.
And what a massive mistake that turned out to be, how detrimental it became to Suren and Oak's story, to my overall investment in being once again inside the chittering, etherial boundaries of Elfhame.
There was a breathless kind of excitement to reading Jude and Cardan's story, an unhinged element to what they could possibly do to each other next and how every wound would turn out to be a perfectly calculated step closer to their union.
Those two earnt each other through blood, and poison, and vitriolic whispers in the dark, and I soaked up every second of it like it was goblin wine and I was the lush in the corner with their mouth agape under the barrel tap.
I love them, I will always love them, and I unfairly expected Oak and Suren to be just the same when they are undeniably not.
Oak, especially.
I won't go on a tirade about how underdeveloped and underwhelming Oak's characterisation turned out to be, how as the brother of Jude I anticipated him being simply "more".
More charming, more underhand, more surprising.
But it's an undeniable fact: Oak's all tell and no show.
Holly Black sets him up as the louche, honey-tongued princeling with a reputation amongst the fairy courtiers as a "good time" and nothing more, when in fact he's a devoted sibling who purposely draws danger to him and away from those he loves.
He fights with a berserker rage, void of compassion and humanity, with a determination that frightens even himself, but when the bloody veil lifts, he lights up a room with a smile full of warmth and playfulness, all viscera stains obscured by the glow.
...
Sounds good, right? Appealing characterisation? A pretty face with a heart full of carnage?
I thought so, too, but unfortunately Holly Black didn't put her money where her mouth is when it came to putting all that unhinged charm into practice.
It's not even that he's competing against someone like Cardan for his time in the Elfhame spotlight (because really, who could compare to my sullen, pernicious prince?), for space in our greedy little hearts, it's that he's simply, and it burns to say, a tad uninspiring.
He had his moments, of course, with unexpected instances of maleficence, tenderness, and intelligence; he seems like a true friend and loyal to the extent of his fae capabilities; and he seems to genuinely care for Suren, even if his intentions remain mercurial.
But as a standout character in the series? I'm afraid not.
That crowning glory goes to his better half, Princess Suren of the Court of Teeth, better and more fondly known simply as, Wren.
A passerby discovered a toddler sitting on the chilly concrete of an alley, playing with the wrapper of a cat-food container. By the time she was brought to the hospital, her limbs were blue with cold. She was a wizened little thing, too thin, made of stick.
She only knew one word, her name. Wren.
As she grew, her skin retained a bluish cast, resembling skimmed milk. Her foster parents bundled her up in jackets and coats and mittens and gloves, but unlike her sister, she was never cold. Her lip color changed like a mood ring, staying bluish and purple even in summer, turning pink only when close to a fire. And she could play in the snow for hours, constructing elaborate tunnels and mock-fighting with icicles, coming inside only when called.
Although she appeared bony and anemic, she was strong. By the time she was eight, she could lift bags of groceries that her adoptive mother struggled with.
By the time she as nine, she was gone.
[...]
As a child, Wren read lots of fairy tales. That's why, when the monster came, she knew it was because she had been wicked.
From the moment she appeared on the page, I felt my heart start to break for her.
I should be inured by now to Holly Black's determination to stay true to the Fae of old, to not water down their callous playfulness, their lack of moral fibre, and distain for both each other and the human race. I should be used to it, especially after what they did to my beloved Jude, but the difference is Jude took their distain and their hungry punishments, and turned them into weapons of her own, she fought them at their own game and made herself worse.
They didn't break her, they made her.
But oh, how they broke Suren.
She's the opposite of Jude whilst in the exact the same position: an innocent changeling stolen back from her human family by her faerie progenitors, forced to serve the court in chains, beaten for her existence, tormented for her humanity, treated as nothing more than a dog-child heir to the throne.
When we first met her in the The Queen of Nothing, she was still shackled, still a pawn in a game she had no desire in playing, and when we meet her next in the woods outside her human family's house, a ghost looking in through curtain gaps, starving for the unconditional love she once knew, she's still that caged little girl.
No longer shackled, no longer enslaved, but undeniably a prisoner to two lives she can no longer enter, and it's fucking heartbreaking.
By the time I return to my childhood home, my unfamily has all gone to bed.
I lift the latch and creep through the house. My eyes see well enough in the dark for me to move through the unlit rooms. I go to the couch and press my unmother's half-finished sweater to my cheek, feeling the softness of the wool, breathing in the familiar scent of her. Think of her voice, singing to me as she sat at the end of my bed.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
I open the garbage and pick out the remains of their dinner. Bits of gristly steak and gobs of mashed potatoes clump together with scattered pieces of what must have been a salad. It's all mixed in with crumpled-up tissues, plastic wrap, and vegetable peels. I make a dessert of a plum that's mushy on one end and the little bit of jam at the bottom of a jar in the recycling bin.
I gobble the food, trying to imagine that I am sitting at the table with them. Trying to imagine myself as their daughter again, and not what's left of her.
A cuckoo trying to fit back into the egg.
She's a queen with no kingdom and a daughter with no home, and Holly Black makes bloody sure you feel how much pain that causes her.
And fuck, I felt it.
She sleeps in a den in the woods, more animal than fae/human; she breaks fairy deals to save human's from their bargained torment; she forages more than she hunts; she's a wild creature with a heart far too big than any fairy should possess in order to survive in a world of unforgiving barbarity.
I have learned many things in the woods. I could tell you the flight patterns of crows, how to collect water droplets off leaves after a storm. I could tell you how to unravel the spells of the half dozen Folk who seek to bind mortals into their unfair bargains. But I have learned nothing of politics.
She's a marshmallow with teeth and I love her, I love her, I looooovveeee her, it's practically Cardan-esque how much I adore her, writing her name with devoted madness on the parchment lining of my brain (all readers have parchments brains, it's how we soak up all the stories).
There are characters who steal your heart, break your heart, eat your heart, and then there are those who you'd go to war for, burn the world for, and they don't even exist.
Wren is one of those characters, and with every betrayal, every undeserved lash against her skin, I wanted to break Elfhame just so she could be happy, so she could be with her family again, so she could be truly free.
"Mom?" I say so softly that I imagine she doesn't hear me, the connection being as bad as it is.
"Who's this?" she asks, voice sharp, as though she suspects me of playing a joke on her.
I don't speak, feeling sick. Of course this must seem like a wrong number or a prank. In her mind, she has no other daughter. I stay on the line another moment, though, tears burning the back of my eyes, the taste of them in my throat. I count her breaths.
When she doesn't hang up, I put the phone on the bed, speaker on. Lie down beside it.
Her voice quavers a little. "Are you still there?"
"Yes," I whisper.
"Wren?" she asks.
I hang up, too afraid to know what she might say next. I would rather hold her saying my name to my heart.
But of course, this isn't that kind of story.
This isn't the sweet tale of the unloved girl stolen away to Faerie by the ethereally beautiful prince and they live happily ever after (ps. yuck) in a kingdom of ensorcelled castles, devouring goblin fruit, and dancing until their feet drop off at twilit fairy revels.
Nope, that's not Black's style, instead, this is a story of duplicity, bloodshed, mind games, and fracturing the pieces of a heart already broken irrevocably.
Where Jude story was a desperate, machiavellian bid for power and love, Wren's falls classically into the category of a quest, by way of a coerced bildungsroman.
Always a pawn in someone else's story, Wren's forced into a rescue mission for a man she barely knows, to meet once again with the fae who birthed her, and to use her power to silence that evil with a word.
It's a journey she's inarguably unprepared for, a task she couldn't desire less, and it ultimately changes everything.
And takes the reader acutely away from the insides of the High Court to the viciously siren-esque landscape of Elfhame, which, truthfully, I found devastating to begin with, because stupidly, once again, I was desperate for this to be like it's fore-stories.
For another cicatricial tale to unfold within Jude and Cardan's domain, for the same familiar dangers to pounce; I desperately wanted that.
But instead, I think what Holly Black did was infinitely the wiser and more compelling choice, because, other than the mortal realm and the Undersea, we've never seen just what delightful travesties exist beyond the kingdom's gates, we've never taken a step into the unknown until Wren led us there and Oak beckoned her further.
I cannot express the admiration I have for the gift Holly Black has for world-building, I've yet to read any of her books without a clear vision of where her stories are taking place, and Elfhame is truly the most vivid.
We veer off to the east, skirting the edge of the forest. Even from this distance, it appears remarkable. Trees of ice grow blue fruits the size of peaches, encased in a frozen crust. Some have fallen and split open like candy apples. Their scent is that of honey and spice and sap. The leaves of the trees give off a haunting sound not unlike wind chimes when the air blows through the branches.
There's a lushness to her descriptions, a verdant, gilded glean to each setting, whether it be the depths of unnatural, eternal winter, or the muggy, languorous summers of Elfhame; even the mortal realm has a gorgeous, rusted patina that defies reality.
And I was more than delighted to be taken on a death defying trek through the various courts and territories of her imagined kingdom, even if it resulted in further harm coming to my feral princess.
I'm not sure how long it'll take for me to forgive Black, once again, for inflicting so much pain on her creations, for playing the unforgiving deity; probably not until Wren and Oak's story comes to whatever bloodied conclusion Black deems wicked enough.
Which is perhaps where my problem with this first half of the duology lies: it feels like an introduction to the true story to be told.
To be clear, I enjoyed The Stolen Heir, it was a pleasure to be back in Elfhame, a world I adore, and to finally meet Suren again to glean some context of her history, but that's just what it was, a gleaning.
We have her history, we have her present, but her future is where the meat of the story lies, especially with where Holly Black left us: Suren on the throne having accessed the frightening extent of her power, Oak her captive princeling, and a storm brewing between the realms of Elfhame.
The power dynamic has been completely flipped on its head, and I'm dying to know how this will change Wren and Oak's relationship, whether she'll able to control her newfound abilities, and, not to rabbit on about them or anything, if I'll finally get to see my darling dickhead monarchs, Jude and Cardan, when they come to retrieve baby brother and potentially engage in a little warfare.
(I do understand why they weren't in this at all, only mentioned here and there, because they do tend to pull focus, and this story really isn't for them, but fuck shit damn, I miss them all the time *cries in faerie*)
That is what I'm dying to see, that's what I'm hoping the finale to this duology will dive into, but who knows what hurtful thing milady Black will decide to inflict on us next.
She's an evil woman with a gift for torture, and with a character like Suren at her hands... I shudder to think what she'll conjure up.
But I'm itching to find out.
"Talk to me!" he shouts, standing and coming to the bars. I see the gold of his hair, the sharp line pf his cheekbones, the glint of his fox eyes. "Wren! Wren!"
Coward that I am, I flee. My heart thundering, my hands shaking. But I can't pretend that I don't like the sound of him screaming my name.
And oh wow, oh boy, oh holy historical fuck did The Artful Dodger ever.
There is no part of my brain that doesn't find it entirely believable that Dodge grew up and became a surgeon savant whilst still retaining his scheming, pickpocket, quick-tongued ways.
Who better to fiddle with your insides than a light-fingered chancer with nothing and everything to lose? And who better to play him than Thomas Brodie-Sangster.
Honestly, he's always been one of my least favourite parts of Love Actually - kid love is weird to watch, but as soon as he showed up in Nowhere Boy and The Queen's Gambit, he became one of my favourite upcoming actors.
Confident, a little cocksure even, delivers lines like he thought of them himself, and really, really bloody watchable
He embodies Dodge, completely disappears into the role, and yes I'm basing my comparison on Jack Wild's iconic performance in the musical and nothing else, it's the definitive interpretation, you can fight me on that if you want, but it is, and TB-S feels like he was born to play the grown up version of that role.
Physically, charismatically, emotionally; he just fits, and that's in large part why this adaptation is such a triumph, in my opinion.
That and the rest of the casting:
David Thewlis as Fagin is a stroke of genius, he feels like the more up to date twin to Ron Moody's legendary spin on the pseudo-father of prepubescent pilferers.
Just as manipulative, just as cunning, just as loving, and his chemistry with TB-S is so good it felt like a physical substance.
Maia Mitchell's a new face to me, and one I basically fell in love with instantaneously because Belle is, well, she's Belle.
Hot tempered, a little cruel, aggressively ambitious, and the kind of tiny terror gremlin that calls to my own tiny terror gremlin heart.
With it's anachronistic music, Australian setting, dark wit, punchy narrative, gorgeous costumes (a true bravo to the costume designer Xanthe Heubel for all of her work but especially the outfits she created for Belle), and for taking me back to characters I've had a soft spot for years and retaining their familiarity but making them wholly new again.
If this doesn't get a season two, I can live with it, but fuck, I won't be happy.
Go watch it so Hulu has to make more, it's one of the best things I've watched in ages.
May I introduce Göttfried Chonk(birth name, Jasper, but he's so not a Jasper), he was named on January 1st and his puffy cheeks were soundly fondled like the stress balls of my anxious dreams.
...
Sounded less weird in my head.
Also, apparently he's a dog but nah, he's totally a squirrel.
Rewatching all my comfort movies available on streaming to stave off the brain rot/crippling anxiety... and a single gif (I'm so tired) to explain why they're iconic as fuck and you should watch them, too:
You should see the reviews on the IMDB, they are... not complimentary, and the only reason I can think as to why such a genuinely fun addition to the otherwise gloomy, boring-as-fuck, taking itself waaaaay too seriously, and in desperate need of a decent scriptwriter Marvelverse would be picked on like this?
...
It's a movie with three women as the protagonists, and the villain.
Simple as that, because other than the story being a little light (not a bad thing, see: above:), there's nothing not to enjoy.
Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani all have great chemistry with each other (Vellani's Carol Danvers fangirling was adorable), the fight scenes were genuinely fucking cool with them constantly trading places, and simply kicked ass without being broody about it and flexing their steroid-grown muscles unnecessarily.
The jokes were funny, the octopus(s)es were horrifying in an on point feline way (I will be forever afraid Charlie Bear has secret tentacles in his mouth *shudders*), and it was all so much fun.
I was genuinely happy throughout the whole thing, and that hasn't happened since Ragnarok.
...
It's gotta be the dude bros, my misogyny-senses are tingling.
Technically this is a rewatch, but it hasn't been available anywhere for over a decade, so it gets its very own spot on the Monthlies.
If only because of this absolute goblin:
It wrinkles my brain why some shows get to air for twelve-ty seasons and ones like this get cancelled after two.
Why does the trash win and the irreverent nonsense get put to sleep?!
...
I do actually know why, I just remain no less infuriated over it, especially for a show like Don't Trust the B because it's funny, it's weird, it's grey-moral as fuck, shiny like a sitcom without the sanitisation, and it made Dawson Leery likeable! Loveable, even!
No mean feat, especially when he's been on my teen drama shit list since the 90s.
That's a fucking great show, which you should watch, now preferably so it doesn't get taken down and I don't see it again for another decade.
This illustration with the complimentary contrast of blue and yellow makes my brain supremely happy.
Also, Gingko are one cool tree species.
They're said to have existed for over two hundred million years, surviving the Ice Age - dinosaurs would've eaten their leaves - and because they're so old they retain characteristics that no other trees share.
Each individual tree can live for over a thousand years, dropping their golden leaves in one coordinated drop every Autumn.
Their fruit smells disgusting, tastes like a lacklustre plum, and are mildly toxic.
They were the first trees to grow again after Hiroshima.
And if you're like me with circulation problems, you take Gingko Biloba medicinally.
"Oh," Thaniel said softly. He looked away. "I wish you'd turned up five years earlier. You needn't have been so long working for Ito."
"You weren't my Thaniel yet. You weren't finished."
Have you ever read something so soft, so tender, so quaintly understated that you can physically feel yourself softening as the story unfolds, feel the substance of it adhere to your skin like a well-loved but misplaced jumper mysteriously left by the fire, serenely waiting for you to put it on and feel its warmth?
Have you ever?
If you haven't, if you've yet to experience the comfort in the quiet mystery of a story like that, the softly spoken surprises and lullabied narration, then I beseech you to read The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, it's the warm stroke of a secret whispered by your ear you didn't realise you were longing to hear.
And one I feel myself keenly unwilling to review.
Review. It's such a clinical word for what we do as readers once we've finished a new tale to place in our mind's library, the surgical way we pick the narrative clean, analyse the internal organs, diagnose the triumphs, the ailments, and whilst sewing the story back together oft lose something of its original substance, its mystique, why we loved it so dearly at first thumbing.
Some stories require that analysis, to be plundered for secrets too deeply buried whilst being read and command post-mortem as soon as the last page is turned, while others, like The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, their magic lies in their obscurity, in remaining a confidence for the reader to keep solely for themselves, but to pass the word on, to leave a trail for new readers to follow.
So, in keeping with those who came before, who's sirenic call led me here, my trail will be a love letter in obfuscations to a book I could never have seen coming but I hold so tightly within myself now it feels crucial to my biology.
A story that is measured out by the chime of the hour in proud proclamatory tones with differing echoes, but synchronously announces itself softly like the ticking of a muffled pocket-watch: quiet and vital, loud and anticipatory.
A story that winds itself in an era of old timey charm specific to Britain, familiar and nostalgic, quaint and polite, but fresh like that first breeze in summer, newly shorn grass mushed by April rain, Earl Grey brewing sedately on the kitchen table, steam exhaling idyllically from its surface as Natasha Pulley beckons us briefly away to memories of Japan, just for a moment, to help us understand.
It's a love story in reverse where the entanglement of the protagonists hastens with the hand of the hour, methodical and reliable, but the devotion itself clicks contrarily as the minute hand speeds backwards, desperately searching for the chink in the hour's armour, that place where they fit, they belong, where they'll move in unison.
It isn't the cure for chapodiphobia, but it offers an exception; I've never loved an octopus more, socks and all (you'll see).
It's a story that alters the composition of the body, the way the lungs inflate, osmosis occurs, the nerves rebel, and while reading it you steadily become more buoyant, more undisturbed, like an otter at rest, puffed up and content to float.
It's about determinism, precognition, chaos theory, threads of fate, friendship, academic excellence, aether and weather systems stoppered in glass vials, and about love, of course about love.
And for some it will be a story too slow, too sedate for their anatomy, whilst for others it will peal to the same beat as their heart, twin tones echoing back to each other, cogged together by metal teeth, chanting infinitely in call and answer.
It was that book for me; it called and I answered.
And I hope, more than anything, with love, this "review" does the same for someone else.
These are such a flex, especially in a genre dominated by badly manipulated stock images - which I'd still rather see than AI, which is immoral thievery singlehandedly dismantling artists' quality of life every fucking day and being utilised by major publishing houses who can definitely afford to pay artists. For fucking shame.
Woodcock's work brings texture and emotion to the monster-fucking sub genre of romance and I am living for it.
Especially the colour pallette, those are some rich as fuck earth tones.
This is a PSA to authors: hire artists to do your cover work.
You can't protest AI stealing your words and then rob artists of their images.
It's a double fucking standard.
Be like Lyonne Riley and have covers like these, which look immense and come with the bonus of knowing you supported a fellow creative.
This show is soooo not for everyone, you have to not possess a prudish bone in your body in order to appreciate how much heart is radiating from every stabby stab wound for funsies, every poppy serenade to dicks and dildos, and every swear-happy demon with Tartarean deep emotional problems.
Not to mention the fucking brilliant musical numbers.
They're so bloody good, I've had a confusion of them cacophonously playing over one and other, banging around my head for going on two weeks with no respite in sight, and I'm fucking delighted about it.
They're that good.
Genuine broadway musical goodness.
With characters I've gone feral for singing them.
But none more than this precious marshmallow:
Y'know those characters that are unrepentant assholes who push everyone's buttons but you know on the inside they're crying desperately out for someone to take care of them and soothe away their trauma?
That's Angel Dust.
The sweetest fuckhead needy porn star from Hell you're ever gonna meet, and I love him truly.
If you're into singing your feelings out via the medium of show tunes whilst fucking up some truly hateful angels with a hard-on for causing my precious demons eternal pain, then you gotta watch Hazbin.
You just gotta.
Also because I want it renewed more than anything right now, okay, thanks, bye.
It's probably been a decade since my last Buffy rewatch, and that is mostly because I'm a no good lazy gremlin who doesn't have enough daily spoons to get the dvds down from the shelves I'm too short to reach without a stool that they sit on, and then get up every five episodes to change discs.
...
Streaming has turned me into a fucking monster.
But to be fair, if you're an OG fan like me who owns the full series on dvd, then you know exactly how rage-inducing the episode menus were.
No one needed a full tour of a shoddy cgi graveyard before each individual episode. No one.
Streaming apps might be 90% shonk but at least they don't turn you into an angry werewolf who whips their remote at the screen with a howl of WHYYYYYY?! and no thought to the consequences .
Thus, the ten year gap between watches, and whilst rewatching my original favourite show, I came across something distressing:
I love the boys, love them dearly, and I'm so sad this was Bobby's last season, but urgh, this was kinda bleak.
I can't exactly tell why, because the format's the same and the tone's still joyful and accepting, but I dunno, I get the feeling the Fab Five are kinda done with all.
The heart wasn't there, and that's really sad for a show that's always been nothing but heart.
And now with Bobby gone?
I don't often want shows to end, especially my happy place shows, but maybe, just maybe, it's time for them to all move on.
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