february

Things I enjoyed in the month of February:
But first, a little housekeeping:
The URL for the blog will be changing from stickyelbows.blogspot.com to theswearwolfreview.blogspot.com by mid march.Hopefully.If I remember to do it.But it's definitely happening, so if you want to continue reading my inane bullshit, take note, gremlins!
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Carissa Broadbent's, The Serpent and the Wings of Night:

[Things are about to get very spoilery; you've been warned]

[The king] reached for the girl, and she snapped at him. He let her bite—did not move his hand, even as he teeth, tiny as they were, sank deep into his bony index finger.

She looked him straight in the eye, unblinking, and he returned that stare with mounting interest.

This was not the stare of a panicked child who didn't know what she was doing.

That was the stare of a creature who understood she was confronting death itself, and still chose to spit in its face.

"A little serpent," he murmured.

Okay, let me set the scene:

You’re the adopted human daughter of an all powerful vampire king, entirely surrounded by bloodsuckers who are one missed snack time away from savaging your carotid, and you can do nothing but make yourself as unappetising as humanly possible. To say the least, you’re done with their slavering shit, so you enter a Hunger Games-esque tournament to the death to have your one wish granted to become a vampire and seek out your long lost family. Sounds easy, no sweat, you're scrappy and stabby, should be a cakewalk, but the minute you enter you meet the love of your life, which you don’t know yet, so obviously you stab him in the thigh and book it towards the clamouring chaos of human screams where you immediately lose your only friend, decide taking bloody revenge on the suckjob who offed your buddy is the best use of your time, which results in an uneasy alliance with your future hubby, sparring montages, heated eye fucking, fucking fucking, a bushel of trauma-laced interactions, and finally the ultimate betrayal: you win the tourney, kill your boyfriend/soulmate, discover daddy is a lying dick, bf’s also a lying dick - but with, like, integrity or whatever, and now you’re trapped once again in your moon glow tower, the head of a rebellion you never wanted because you just liked stabbing vampires in the chest meat as a mental health release before you eventually got the fuck out of dodge to hook up with the fam, and worst of all, the new queen of the nighty night vampires for some reason that kinda doesn’t make sense but meh, chosen one shit rarely does.

What’s a knife wife to do, huh?

Marry the guy who killed your pops, aka. your reanimated future hubs, of course.

Sounds fun, right?

Well, that's because it was fun. SO MUCH FUN.

I haven't read a vampire book in years, decades, because after a certain strain of emo, sparkly forest dwellers seized the crown and took all the bloody fun out of being undead (sorry to the fans, not yucking your yum, but the Cullens gave me chronic eye roll-itis), I tapped out of the pointy sub-genre and focused my attention elsewhere, and haven't been back since. But everyone just kept talking and talking and talking about this new series with winged vampire courts and a short serpent girl who kept spoiling their revelry by sticking them with the pointy end, and, sorry, but there is no universe where I say no to reading tiny, violent women fuck shit up with knives and sarcasm. I can't do it, it's my ultimate weakness, and so I ended my vampire hiatus, cracked The Serpent and the Wings of Night open, and instantly felt the buzz.

You know the one, the new favourite series one, the oh shit, this is gonna be gooooood one, the buzz that feels like getting shot in the ass with dopamine and not knowing what to do with your limbs, aka. the best goddamn feeling a reader can experience when starting a new book. And it just kept going. For chapters, and chapters, and five hundred plus pages later it was over and I experienced that well versed moment of: well what the fuck do I do now?!

But seriously, what the fuck do I do now?

And it's not that the book in itself is perfect or anything particularly new in the world of Romantasy, in fact it's the kind of story and writing that feels like it could be an offshoot of any of the big hitters stories within the genre (Maas, Draven, Jensen, Yarros, etc.). It didn't blow my mind with new concepts or fresh characterisation; the protagonist, Oraya, was more introspective and softer than the vicious bitch I was hoping she'd be; Raihn, her love interest was an amalgam of the Illyrian babies - attractive, amusing, but ultimately a little forgettable; and the world-building was lustrous and decadent, though perhaps lacked the grit needed to ramp up the terror. This story is inarguably flawed, there's no denying it, but in its predicability, in its familiarity, it sparked this wonderful thing where it reminded me acutely of how I felt when I first started reading fantasy, when I'd gotten over my need to devour literary fiction and wanted to get back to my one true love: speculative narratives, and how welcome and cushy that experience was. It's a singular affair to find the genre that captures your entire heart, that no matter what will always feel like home, and since I was little, before I was a reader, I was always hardcore into the impossible. My childhood bedroom walls were adorned with unicorns and fairy tale castles, I watched Labyrinth on repeat and hid under the covers when the Skesis crumbled in The Dark Crystal, tumbled head first into the walls of Gormenghast castle with a headiness particular to the delightfully inebriated, and when Buffy landed on UK screens I pledged my unwavering allegiance to tiny, acerbic women skewering the undead like it was their greatest pleasure. I love this genre, I love everything about it, the ridiculousness of it, the impossibilities it repeatedly flips the bird to, the humour and brutality it wields with equal fervour, and this book reminded me, like a slap to the head and punch to the heart, just how potent a new story within the genre can be. No matter its level of ingenuity or competency, when a story appears and something clicks inside of you, something that points true fucking north towards, it's only ever to be treasured and every moment of enjoyed.

And I did, I enjoyed it so much.

The trials, the banter, the tension, the gore, the betrayal, and the moments of joy; I enjoyed it voraciously and with absolutely no abandon. None whatsoever. Hedonism, thy name is I.

And there's more, five books more, with two novellas in between; a veritable feast in an already cornucopian genre, my blood filled cup runneth over, splashing on the obsidian tiles of the Nightborn Palace, beckoning these petty little fuckers in to try and take a bite.

And I'll let them, just open my throat and let the lifeblood flow, as long as I get to stay a while longer, just until the lights finally go out.

"Are you going to kill me, Oraya?"

[Raihn] said it just as he had a lifetime ago, as dawn encroached on an alleyway in the human slums. And just like that night, I didn't pull away from his touch.

Instead, I pressed my palm flat to his chest. Behind him, my kingdom burned.

I thought, Maybe.

"Not tonight," I said.

SO good.

So fucking GOOD.

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February Fanfares:
Also, I've been hyper-fixated on Hadestown since it debuted, and have yet to see it (damn UK productions not making it past London *shakes fist*), but it's going to haunt me for fucking ever that I'll never see Jack Wolfe's turn on stage as Orpheus.I'm obsessed with this:
Someone described his performance as self-aware, as if he, as Orpheus, already knows his and Eurydice's fate is doomed, that with every song he sings he knows its over before its even begun....
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Watching:Veep★★★★★
It's not really satire anymore if you're living through something much, much worse, is it?

Euphoria season oneShow: ★★★Zendaya: ★★★★★
The end of season specials for Rue and Jules were the best part of this. Pure emotional torment.All the screen time for Hunter Schafer and Zendaya, everyone else is inconsequential - sorry.

The Artful Dodger season two
I didn't need it, but I sure am glad it exists.Season three, now, please.I want some chaotic domestic bliss and farcical nuptials with a side of criminal behaviour and complex surgery.

Heated Rivalry(third rewatch)★★★★★
Still obsessed. Still all I talk about. Still very much at the cottage, aka. Shane's personal boy aquarium.One question, though: why isn't there more stanning for Kip's dad?I'm so deeply in love that emotionally intelligent, sweet as syrup, free with affection marshmallow of a man!
Truly, a tv dad for the ages.
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Seanan McGuire's, The Brightest Fell:
It was difficult to believe that less than six hours ago, I'd been laughing and happy, and feeling like the world was finally starting to go my way. That would show me not to relax. It was just an invitation for life to kick me in the teeth as hard as it could.

There's no polite way to say it: Toby's birth family are the fucking worst and I hope they die horribly in a castle fire.
It's no revelatory thing that fantasy main characters' DNA-donors aren't exactly beacons of warm and fuzzy parenting, it'd actually be harder to root out fictional MCs that aren't fucked up because of their formative years, if they exist at all. Like I said, this is not a new experience in the world of chosen one parentage, but Oberon's tits, Toby's bloodline might sincerely be the most hateful bunch out there. I've waited eleven books for Amandine to play a more significant role in Toby's life, to gain more on page insight into why she treated my girl the way she did, to maybe catch a glimpse of something human instead of the vitriolic bitch she's described as by others, and lo and behold, who comes knocking on her daughter's door to squash those hopes with a quest and a hostage situation.Amandine Torquill, Firstborn fae, daughter of Oberon, sister to The Luidaeg, mother of Toby, and all-round sociopathic bitch queen from hell.She's everything I expected, and so much worse. She's a blunt instrument that cuts Toby at the knees with brutal slights, direct threats against her found family, prejudice-laced comments on the "lesser" fae, aka. Toby and her people, and complete disregard for the harm she continues to inflict upon her daughter. Toby has bled buckets of blood throughout this series, taken on and defeated greater monsters than her mother, lost her only child to the mortal world and her first love to an elf-shot arrow, but none of that has ever been as hard to read as the way Amandine rejects and is revolted by the very core of who Toby who is: a hero, a changeling, not August. It's unbearable, to be honest, to love this character so much and witness the person who gave her life treat her like a pest she can swat at whenever she feels the urge; to turn up after decades at Toby's home and blackmail her into finding her long lost sister, someone she's never met and has been weaponised against her since infancy; and to violently take two people she holds dearest as collateral until said sister is found, while she abuses them in the interim to the point of irrevocable damage. And the worst part of all? Toby would've done it anyway, she would've searched the entire world and Faerie for August if Amandine had simply asked, because that's who she is, as much as her mother may hate it, Toby's a hero, a truly good person, and a better daughter than Amandine ever deserved.I hate Amandine Torquill, I hate her fucking perfect looking guts, to the depths of my October-loving heart, and I hope Seanan McGuire never redeems her, never reveals a backstory to justify the hurt she's caused because sometimes a villain is simply a villain, and their offspring is wholly better off without them. The whole of the universe would be better off without Amandine, to be frank, which, strangely is something I never felt about Simon Torquill, Toby's stepfather and captor, the man who upended her life. It seems an odd thing to think about the person who started it all, the one who transformed Toby into a fish and stole fourteen years of her life, her daughter's life, but there was always something about the way Simon was written that felt too simplistic to me, too overtly wicked, too something out of a fairy tale - ironic, I know. And I've always wondered: did he turn her into a fish to ultimately save her life? There's no question that Simon has done bad things, the crimes he's committed against his own brother and his family are heinous beyond belief, perhaps even unforgivable, but he could have killed Toby that day, he could have let Oleander kill her, he could have made a completely different choice but instead he altered her life trajectory to one that would harm but not destroy. There's mercy in that, from an apparent "monster". But is he? A monster? All the way through? No, I've never thought so. The Simon we're introduced to is charming and affable; he saves colonies of pixies, one of the most abused species of Fae, and is still beloved by them (I'm gonna need more Poppy, Seanan. Way more); he's kind to humans and wishes them no ill will - an anomaly amongst pureblooded fae; and he cares for Toby, more than she'll probably ever be able to accept.He's just... a man.A man who lost his daughter and chose the wrong path to find her, a decision that changed him irrevocably, forced him to hurt people who didn't deserve it, put his faith in those who would use his desperation for their own nefarious means. He sacrificed it all, his very being, and it still didn't get him his daughter back. He lost his entire family and it was all for nought. That's heartbreaking, Simon's entire story is heartbreaking, but who wouldn't make that choice if it meant saving the person you love the most? Who wouldn't break all the rules if you could simply see them again? The morality in us says we wouldn't, but the beast in us would drop its jaws in a heartbeat if it meant salvation. I guarantee it. Which makes it all the worse when the Simon Torquill who might've been, the Simon who was earning back his humanity, who could possibly have be forgiven for his crimes one day and forged a place in both August and Toby's lives has to once again sacrifice not only them, but the person he would've been to them....Fuck, Seanan. Just... fuckkkkk. Is this how it's going to be from now on? Endless books of pain, pain, and more pain? Because I'm not wholly sure I can take it. I'm not sure I can watch Toby fight for people who don't deserve that kindness from her, not after finally finding August and her turning out to be this... disappointment, this entitled brat (I'm up for more page time with her, though; lets dig deep into the trauma and rewire the prodigal child's programming into something a little less spoiled and prejudiced). Not after Amandine putting the nail in the coffin of their relationship. Not after Simon; God, Simon - this one's going to burn for a while. Not after Tybalt - my guy, my fuzzy, traumatised guy; the next book's going to be a real motherfucker, I can just feel it.You're killing me, here, Seanan.There's blood everything and the knife's a'twisting.

Every time it seemed like my strange little family was starting to heal, something else would come along to split it apart. Maybe that was how things were going to be from now on. Maybe we were never going to be whole again. Sometimes things fall apart, and that's just the way it is.

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Seanan McGuire's, Of Things Unknown:
There is no other word to describe me. "Dryad" contains the seed of me, if not the tree, and so Dryad I am, although I no longer know exactly what that means. My roots are silicon and titanium and electricity; my sap is light racing through a thousand bright channels, reaching, reaching, reaching for a sun made of information and power.My sisters dies untransplanted. I found new soil, and I thrived there. I ran from death, and death spared me.But it did not spare my mother.She has been away too long. I will have her back again. I am a Dryad, and I am not a Dryad, and if there is one thing I know for sure, it is that nothing is impossible. Not when I can be here, alive, surrounded by this light.

After the suffering and the unrelenting loss in The Brightest Fell, this short story felt like a gift, a brief recess in Faeries time for it give something back, to right a terrible wrong. To prove that with all it consistently takes from Toby, it remains a place of impossible wonder, and April O'Leary is possibly the most deserving recipient of this astonishing power....Seanan, you've got to stop making me sob like this, I've got less liquid left in my body right now than Toby does blood on a bookly basis.Let an emotional girl replenish!