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REVIEW: The Songbird and the Heart of Stone by Carissa Broadbent

Okay friends, when I tell you that Carissa Broadbent is on FIRE in The Songbird and the Heart of Stone, I mean she set my heart and soul aflame and then remorselessly left them burnt to a withered crisp by the end. Get ready to sink your teeth into a brand-new exquisitely soul-stirring and divinely epic slow-burn fantasy romance full of death, desire, treachery and heart-wrenching emotions that just bleed off the page.

First things first, let me share an important message: The Songbird and the Heart of Stone might be the first book in the new Shadowborn Duet, but you do not (I repeat, DO NOT) start your journey into the Crowns of Nyaxia world here. Sure, Broadbent’s writing is absolutely strong and captivating enough that you could be a rebel and skip the preceding Nightborn Duet, starting with Serpent and the Wings of Night, but why would you do that and miss out on a lot of important context as well as deprive yourself of another phenomenal blood-soaked love story?

Okay, with that out of the way, it’s time to let the gush fest begin! From the moment I met Mische in The Serpent and the Wings of Night, she immediately became one of my favourite characters of the entire series. Although she could come across a bit vapid and shallow at times, I had a feeling there was a lot of pain and trauma hiding behind the mask of giddy smiles and relentless optimism, which I could not wait to dig into in The Songbird and the Heart of Stone.

Now, when Mische set off to discover the world on her own at the end of the Nightborn Duet, I was not expecting to meet her again as she is thrust into the underworld together with the bastard heir of The House of Shadows (and his spirit wolf, Luce, the true MVP of the show) on a deadly quest to resurrect the God of Death. But holy smokes, did this end up to be exactly the adventure that my dark hole of a soul wanted and needed; to my huge surprise, there wasn’t even a single moment where I missed Raihn and Oraya, and I am now just as (if not more) invested in Asar and Mishe’s story.

First of all, these two are quite literally the perfect embodiment of the grumpy/sunshine trope, and I absolutely loved how their effortlessly amusing dynamic added so much heart and humour to this otherwise dark and emotionally draining story. Broadbent really is the queen of the slow-burn for me, and the way that Mische and Asar semi-reluctantly started to bond throughout this harrowing journey and eventually help each each other understand what honest love and devotion is supposed to feel like just tugged on my heartstrings in all the best ways. The reason why their romance feels so believable and intimately vulnerable to me, is because the physical/sexual attraction comes second to their emotional attraction and bonding; this is exactly what ultimately makes The Songbird and the Heart of Stone stand out in the crowded romantasy space for me.

Moreover, while there is plenty of action (of both the fighting and the steamy kind, hello delicious blood sucking scene!!!) to satisfy the plot-driven readers, my character-driven heart was truly sucking up all the inner turmoil, unpacking of trauma and the unravelling of all the complex interpersonal relationships. Especially Mische’s complicated dynamic with her god Atroxus had me in an absolute chokehold, and I really appreciated the authentic and deeply vulnerable exploration of themes of (childhood) trauma, faith, devotion, vengeance, forgiveness (of others and oneself), and the dangerously thin line between love and hate.

The emotional character journey in The Songbird and the Heart of Stone is honestly more multi-layered and tear-inducing than an onion, and I absolutely loved how Broadbent meticulously heightened the stakes, increased the tension, and peeled back a new layer of complexity and emotional depth every time these characters progressed to a deeper level of the underworld. In both flashbacks and the present, we see Mische and Asar as they are quite literally being hunted and haunted by the ghosts of their pasts, which not only unveiled their intriguingly dark backstories in the most enticing way possible, but also established such a deep emotional connection for me that was honestly not safe for my own sanity.

Now, while this book started out with immediate ‘new favourite’ potential for me because its vibe and aesthetic reminded me so heavily of other deliciously dark fantasy favourites like Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff or Asunder by Kerstin Hall, I do personally think the second half is where the true gold can be found. Especially parts 2 and 3 felt slightly hectic and oddly paced to me, with some important character/relationship progression happening off screen and side characters not getting the development I was hoping for.

Those little nitpicks didn’t stop me from obsessively devouring this book like nobody’s business, yet it was in part 4 (of 7) that I think Broadbent just fully hit her stride; from that point onwards, we just go through the wildest emotional rollercoaster, leading straight up to a brutally bittersweet ending that I could/should have seen coming yet which still ripped my heart out of my chest and left me staring blankly at a wall for a few minutes. The audacity to end with such a diabolical cliffhanger of an ending, and then make me wait for book 2… unacceptable, but I love the heartache.

In my humble opinion, The Songbird and the Heart of Stone is not only Broadbent’s best work to date, but it also just raised the bar for every other dark romantasy to come. With its deeply flawed yet lovable morally grey characters, cutthroat vampire politics, haunting imagery, blood-soaked history and rich lore, fickle meddling gods, dangerous necromancy, and exquisite levels of emotional destruction, even the most cold-hearted grimdark enthusiasts will find much to love in The Crowns of Nyaxia series; also, it’s got a loyal skeletal spirit wolf companion, what more could you ask for?!

Thank you to Tor Bramble for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. The Songbird and the Heart of Stone is scheduled for release on November 19, 2024. 

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REVIEW: Conan the Barbarian #16 by Jim Zub (W) and Doug Braithwaite (A)

Last issue, Conan experienced a close encounter with the divine. Sole survivor of a battle between rival tribes of Northmen, Conan found himself visited by Atali, daughter of the mythic frost giant Ymir. Conan the Barbarian #16 opens with Conan back at the Aesir camp, reflecting on his brush with the otherworldly. Left with a scrap of Atali’s diaphanous garment as the only physical proof of his experience, Conan recalls his own religious upbringing in Cimmeria, where the inhabitants worship the grim and notoriously distant deity Crom.

Conan the Barbarian #16 serves as a denouement to the Frozen Faith storyline, following the expanded retelling of Robert E. Howard’s short story “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter.” Doug Braithwaite’s artwork matches the standard we’ve seen from him to date, and Jim Zub’s script features its usual punchiness.

However, from both an art and storytelling perspective, this four-issue arc felt like a misstep. His earthly women are fine, but as an artist Braithwaite was not up to the task of effectively rendering Atali’s ethereal beauty. For Zub’s part, I don’t feel like this was particularly an episode that needed telling. In addition to the original prose short story, readers have a number of comic adaptations of  “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” to choose from. The Braithwaite/Zub interview included in the issue’s backmatter provides some interesting insight into the genesis of this version: Braithwaite was a fan of the 1970s Marvel Comics adaptation by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith and wanted to try his own take on the tale, and Zub felt that positioning Atali herself as narrator would be novel enough to justify the retelling. While Zub succeeds in making Atali more of a three-dimensional character and less a cipher than in the original Howard story, he doesn’t go far enough. Atali is depicted appraising humanity through her close observation of Conan and his indomitable fighting spirit, but her ultimate objective remains as murky as ever. What is her endgame here?

Apart from “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” being well-trodden ground, the emphasis on Conan’s childhood and religious beliefs does not sit well with this reader. Unlike some other varieties of fantasy fiction, Sword & Sorcery heroes do not need elaborate backstories and are rarely given them. The genre is almost always concerned with the here and now: what fresh hell has the protagonist found himself embroiled in, and how is he or she going to extricate themselves? Flashbacks of Conan as a sullen child dealing with village bullies and butting heads with his apparently devout Crom-worshipping father are not something I seek in Conan the Barbarian. Conan’s creator never gave readers more than the barest sketches of the barbarian’s origin, and they were sufficient to make him the enduring character he is today, more than 90 years later. In comics, films, and pastiche novels, other stewards of the character always seem irresistibly tempted to backfill, but readers don’t need it. They really don’t. Tell me what Conan is doing NOW, not what he did when he was eight years old.

The preoccupation with Conan’s religious faith is likewise unnecessary and does little to enhance the character. The passage is touched upon in the accompanying essay by Jeffrey Shanks, but as far as this reader is concerned, the last word about Conan and religion is captured in Howard’s “Queen of the Black Coast” (1934):

“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. … I know not, nor do I care. … Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

In short, Conan has been around and encountered some strange things. He knows the supernatural exists, and has concluded that gods are likely to be present as well. Regardless, he has elected to remain unconcerned by questions of religion and live his own life. Granted, the Conan of “Queen of the Black Coast” is older and more seasoned than at the time of the Frozen Faith storyline, but the spiritual journey of Crom-skeptic to Crom-believer told here feels inappropriately pensive for a character that is overwhelmingly concerned with the tangible, the here and now. Howard had other characters better suited to stories about religious belief. King Kull was a philosopher, for example, and Solomon Kane’s fanatical Puritanism motivated every action he took. Conan, however, shrugs at your religion. Try to crowbar a crisis of faith into a Conan story and you risk getting into “Are You There, Crom? It’s Me, Conan” territory.

Conan the Barbarian #16 marks the end of a flawed experiment. While it ultimately didn’t work for me, it was interesting to see the creative team’s take on an expanded adaptation of a classic story. Thus far, over the course of Titan Comics’ Conan the Barbarian we’ve had a continuity-heavy year-long plot, time travel, numerous flashbacks, and multiple crossovers with other literary Howard characters. Now that the breadth of Howard’s universe has been demonstrated, here’s hoping that the series returns to its core appeal: fast-paced, original episodic adventures showing the barbarian operating at the height of his powers.

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REVIEW: Before the End by John Palladino

In Before the End, John Palladino gives a grimly entertaining and morbidly captivating glimpse into the darkest corners and most twisted minds to be found in the world of Cedain. Full of dark humour, tragic irony, morally grey anti-heroes, and prose sharper than any knife, this short story collection is a true feast of deliciously sickening grimdark delights.

“There wasn’t a person Royal cared more about than himself, or alcohol. He did have morals though. But to stand up for those morals? That was a different matter. If he stood up for them, he’d jeopardize himself. Can’t do that.”

I have said it before and I will say it again, no one comes as close to Abercrombie’s tone and character voice as John Palladino does. Within just a few pages, I was immediately reminded of why I fell in love with his writing in the first place, and I found myself stunned by how many little details of both the world and the characters felt familiar to me considering how long it had been since I had last visited Cedain. See, Palladino’s characters have so many memorable quirks and recognizable idiosyncrasies, which not only makes them leap off the page with personality (for better or worse), but which is also exactly what makes each story in this collection feel so refreshing and uniquely exciting.

Although the eleven stories in Before the End aren’t told in a chronological order and don’t feature a connective red thread like in Abercrombie’s Sharp Ends, Palladino manages to infuse this entire collection with an addictive ‘just one more chapter’ quality that just keeps you turning the pages to discover the next dark and tragic mess to cry or laugh over. Whether it’s the shocking backstory of the most beloved (or let’s be real, most hated) characters from The Trials of Ashmount and Buzzard’s Bowl, or an introduction to a completely new character who provides a refreshing perspective into this dark world and devastating magic system, each of these stories is just a true train wreck that you simply can’t look away from (and I say that in the most loving way possible).

“Velturo wanted to retch. No respect. But life was politics, and there wasn’t respect within politics. He ground his teeth together. “Fine, ah-hah.” That damned laugh. It’d never make him sound fearsome.”

Before the End kicks off with a deliciously dark and depressing story that went straight down the gullet for me (iykyk), and from there on out I just could not stop reading. Now, while my dark hole of a soul was truly eating up the relentlessly dark, depressing and hopeless tone running through this entire collection, I can see how some readers might feel like these stories are pointless or dissatisfying because they share a certain level of predictability regarding the inevitably tragic fate of the characters.

But hey, grimdark is not the subgenre to come to if you want sunshine and rainbows, and I ultimately think Palladino more than nailed his vision for this collection. While some stories worked better for me than others, I think they were all inexplicably captivating in their own uniquely messed up way. If I had to pick favourites, I’d say my personal highlights include A Royal Mission, Child of Children, Hiding in Plain Sight (featuring a very well-named tavern, btw), Bloody Gums, No Respect, and, saving the best one for last: A Tale of Two Twins. These stories had just a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ that made them hit harder than I was anticipating, making me tear up from both laughter, frustration and pain.

“She’d do whatever he wanted if it meant a better life. Murder would be just fine. Well, ain’t this a way to end an urchin’s story?, she thought. Of course, it didn’t turn out the way she hoped. But did it ever?”

In Before the End, John Palladino proves that a skilled storyteller doesn’t require a lot of words to deliver one hell of a memorable reading experience. While this collection was originally intended as a bridge between books 1 and 2 in the Tragedy of Cedain series, the stories are very self-contained and feature zero spoilers, so I personally think this could serve perfectly as a tantalising first taste of Palladino’s exceptional writing skills. Ultimately, the point is not where you start with Palladino’s writing, but when you start; the Tragedy of Cedain series is honestly a dream (or nightmare?) come true for any true grimdark fantasy lover, so do yourself a favour and don’t miss out.

Thank you to the author for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Before the End is scheduled for release on 11 November, 2024. 

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REVIEW: The Queen by Nick Cutter

Sometimes, obsession is sparked by one defining moment. An all-consuming tragedy can mutilate a person’s mind, flaying it layer by layer until only fixation remains. Obsession can be a nest. Rotting twigs of unreciprocated love and fear as its foundation. Nick Cutter burrows into the human psyche and concocts unfathomable horror in his new book, The Queen.

The reader is immediately swallowed by Nick Cutter’s nightmare in The Queen. Its first scene is disconcerting and unrestrained. It doesn’t tease the awaiting horror. It is a bloodbath exhibition. The bold opening in The Queen leaves no doubt, this is Nick Cutter writing in his element.

Nick Cutter’s writing is best known for pushing the limits on body horror and human wretchedness. The Queen is Nick Cutter’s MO perfected. Amongst chaos, Cutter cultivates a sobering tale about the loss of youth.

Four students are missing from Northfield High. Margaret Carpenter’s best friend Charity is one of them. The Queen follows Margaret as she unravels the mystery surrounding her best friend. Prior to Charity’s disappearance, they had been growing apart. The intensity of Margaret’s guilt gives a gnawing dark impression. It forces readers to wonder. What did Margaret do to feel like she is a bad friend? The reader is also privy to some of Charity’s perspective and the insight of other students. Northfield High feels real. A school bustling with gossip and traditions. Its horror stories spill from the student body.

Nick Cutter captures the painful experience of nearing adulthood; the internal war with identity, and fear of outgrowing friendships and childhood expectations. The ease in which Nick Cutter progresses the corruption of thoroughly relatable characters is unsettling. Cutter blasts this damning message each time; monsters are born within us. They are us.

A distorted concept of nature versus nurture is mused throughout Nick Cutter’s works. In his earlier book The Troop, there is something…other regarding the character Shelley. Characters may sense something is off or not quite normal but are unable to pinpoint why. A similar vibe is felt with Rudyard Crate, the second main character in The Queen. His tragic childhood stirs sympathy, but such feelings are muted due to the man he becomes. These characters breach the lines of morality. It strokes a certain curiosity and desire to understand real monsters, if such a thing exists.

It may be impossible to count all the easter eggs and references strown throughout this novel. The Queen by Nick Cutter is a tribute honoring the pioneers of horror. A perfect collage of classic horror pasted beside snapshots of modern pop culture.

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REVIEW: Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado

Last Updated on November 8, 2024

In Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado (Tordotcom) humanity has discovered pocket worlds, tiny entry points into other worlds, sometimes a few kilometres square, other times barely large enough to fit a person. They hold beautiful opportunities to start over, find wondrous histories of small civilisations come and gone, discover and cultivate new flora and fauna, and to experience exploration like few in this modern era have done. It’s an opportunity for us to do better, but, we are humanity, and we are experts in ruining things.

Raquel and her wife Marlena work for The Institute, a scientific organisation on the bleeding edge of pocket world discovery. Pocket worlds run with time dilations, which can have some unintended consequences on time agent’s lives. When Raquel tries to help a woman who has just lost her son to a pocket world point, she breaks the rules and in a moment finds herself thrown forward in time from the excitement of her career and the rush of discovery, to a world where corporations have taken over from The Institute, commercialised pocket worlds, and her daughter has been killed in the ensuring war Raquel accidentally kicked off.

Time’s Agent is a novella I could not put down. The writing is just gorgeous throughout, delivering a story so layered in deep themes that I actually feel like I’ve imbibed a full-sized novel. Throughout this book, we delve into corporate greed, societal blind-spots, motherhood and loss, the impact of modern society on the spirituality of our history, time travel, relationships, and so much more. This is a novella for the awards lists, if I’ve ever read one. Peynado’s voice is on point, driving feelings of the weary excitement of discovery early on, and then going deep into the soul-crushing depression of late-stage capitalism, of a society eating itself alive for a dollar, that I would consider up there with T.R. Napper‘s cyberpunk voice.

What brings Time’s Agent truly to life, however, is not just the pocket worlds, or society’s decline–it’s the story of how Raquel and Marlena deal with the loss of their daughter. I really enjoyed the central story of what they had to go through to get what they wanted, and the way two people deal with what’s happened. I loved the message in there about understanding what you have, versus always striving for what you think you’re missing–something I think is quite poignant in our modern social-media driven society.

Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado is warning shot to our modern species. It’s a lens into humanity’s ability to destroy the naturally beautiful for profit, to sequester that profit for the fortunate few while the rest slave to live, and a mirror to our society who collectively allow this to happen by participating, turning blind eyes, and only realising what we’ve done as a society once it’s too late to undo it. An absolutely harrowing must-read novella.

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REVIEW: A Quiet Place: Day One

Third in the series and acting as a kind of prequel, A Quiet Place: Day One, directed by Michael Sarnoski, offers something thematically different to the previous films. Taking place on the first day of the alien invasion, this morphs from a muted, pessimistic mediation on what it means to live with terminal illness to a loud, high-energy action horror, to a life-affirming commentary on friendship and community. This is not what people were expecting from the franchise, and I can see why so many people were disappointed as result. However, taken on its own terms, this is an interesting character study, a deep, thoughtful look at what it means to live, especially when it’s all going to be taken away anyway (as it will be for us all, even without a cancer diagnosis), and is well worth watching for that alone.

Still, unless you are a particularly loud person for whom the idea of being quiet long term produces a deep, existential dread, A Quiet Place: Day One is not going to be a film which frightens you all that much. Save a few jump scares and the notion that a wickedly fast and endlessly hungry alien race could land on Earth out of the blue and attempt to eat everyone, there’s not really that much to fear in terms of typical horror here. What you get instead is a film that makes you think about what it means to be human, what it takes to survive, and whether you could save your cat from being a predator’s lunch. As an aside, one of the best things to come out of A Quiet Place: Day One is the TikTok trend in which people attempted to run around their house with their cat(s) or dog(s) in an effort to see whether their pets could be quiet and therefore allow the whole family to survive… spoiler alert, most didn’t, including me and mine. That the cat is the real hero of the show surprises no-one and for those who agree that animal deaths are a dealbreaker even when the rest of the movie is knee deep in blood and gore, don’t worry, you’re good. Frodo the cat smashes it out of the park with his acting role and I’ve had a serious word with both of my own cats about their shocking lack of ambition when it comes to making Hollywood movies.

The human actors are just as effective – Luipta Nyong’o is great in everything she does, but she gives a kind of deep anger and despair to her role here. I would have gone straight to pissed – I already have terminal cancer and now I have to deal with this shit – but she takes her already bad hand and somehow grows under the pressure of the end of the world. She was nothing short of mesmerising and this played well against Joseph Quinn’s shell-shocked but quirky and humorous role. This nouveau family, brought together by the cat, struggle against the end of the world – and I’ll leave it to you to see who wins.

When it comes to cinematography in A Quiet Place: Day One, some of the close up scenes had that slightly fuzzy look where the CGI becomes very clear against the much sharper background or actor, but there’s a thrilling number of aliens and there are some effective scenes of them rampaging round like cats during 3am zoomies. Even so, my preference is always for the horror unseen and this film excels in the first moments of contact, when there’s destruction and screaming and people being ripped away into the dust and darkness by creatures unknown and only slightly glimpsed. There’s something deliciously appealing about watching the very human reactions to shock and trauma – shouting, crying, screaming – turned against them by creatures with an ear for the slightest sound.

Certainly, there are lots of positives to be found in A Quiet Place: Day One, especially if you go in without expectations of seeing exactly what you’ve seen before in the first two instalments. Perhaps that, in itself, could be a criticism – this is not really a horror, after all. But there’s some excellent acting, lots of people die horribly, and a cat. What more do you need?

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REVIEW: The Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks

If you thought Stephen King had conjured up the weirdest and darkest tower in existence, then Dan Hanks is here to prove you wrong in The Way Up is Death. In turns brutally disturbing, hysterically funny and soul-stirringly poignant, this extraordinarily bizarre acid trip of a survival adventure will melt your brain and crush your soul without remorse, and I love it all the more for it.

What would you do if one day, out of nowhere, you are mercilessly pulled out of your daily life and dropped along with 12 other strangers before a mysterious floating tower that demands you ASCEND. That, my friends, is just a tiny glimpse of the stupendously intriguing premise of The Way Up is Death. And as you can maybe guess from the title, it doesn’t take long for things to get disturbingly dark and absolutely batshit crazy in the best way possible.

Through the eyes of Alden, a lonely and grief-stricken teacher by day/singer by night, Nia, a weary and angry concept artist, and Dirk, a self-obsessed walking red flag of a celebrity children’s author, we get to experience the nightmarish madness contained within the tower from the front-row seat. While I sometimes had a hard time visualising the increasingly weird and mystifying settings that the tower contained, I never felt lost because these characters’ strong voices kept me so grounded throughout all the madness. Their virtues and vices are truly on full display (for better or worse; looking at you, Dirk), and I loved exploring how they each reacted in such an authentically unique way to the horrors that they were faced with over the course of the single day that they spend in this tower of terror (if they even make it that long).

See, on the surface this story might seem like just another brutal thrill fest of a race against death, but at its core it’s a deeply emotional and beautifully human story that just tugged on my heartstrings in all the most unexpected ways. The Way Up is Death is honestly more multi-layered than the twisted labyrinthine tower it’s set in, and I loved how with each new level the characters ascended, another layer of complexity and emotional depth was peeled back. Heavy themes such as grief, sexism, female rage, loneliness, sacrifice, morality, memory, love, humanity, and, naturally, mortality are all explored in surprisingly deep though often darkly entertaining ways without ever detracting from the addictive thrill factor of the narrative, which is exactly what makes this story stand out from the crowd to me.

Now, I do have to admit that I found some of the (side) characters to be little more than obvious cannon fodder or a mere vessel for the theme they were supposed to represent, which not only made some of the thematic messaging feel a bit on the nose, but also took away some of the stakes and unpredictability of the story for me. The slightly caricaturish character work combined with the break-neck speed pacing somewhat hindered my emotional investment in the wider cast of characters, and that ultimately made some of the supposedly hard-hitting moments fall a bit flat for me. 

However, the key characters of the narrative absolutely carried the story for me (Rakie is the MVP, just saying), and I can’t deny that all the emotional gut punches just hurt oh so good in the end. For the longest time I was just along for the crazy ride, uncertain if or how we would get any satisfying answers to the deeper purpose behind the inexplicable mysteries and challenges of the tower, but Hanks managed to surprise me in all the best (or worst?) ways with the shocking revelations. The brutally bittersweet conclusion to The Way Up is Death was more satisfying than I could ever have hoped for, leaving me with only one big unresolved mystery in the end: how in the hell did Hanks manage to write a story that is simultaneously so bizarrely alien yet beautifully and relatably human?

Regardless of what your typical reading preferences are, The Way Up is Death is guaranteed to lure you in with its dangerously addictive storytelling, darkly alluring mysteries, visceral emotions, and scarily evocative imagery that will haunt your mind for days and nights to come. It’s got a bit of fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, thriller, and arguably even a sick and twisted version of LitRPG, but ultimately it’s a powerfully moving and truly transcendental story that just speaks to the soul and showcases the incredible resilience of the human spirit. This is one of those stories that you simply can’t do justice to in a review, so please do yourself a favour and go experience its brilliant madness for yourself, if you dare.

Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot Books for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. The Way Up is Death is scheduled for release on January 14, 2025.

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REVIEW: V for Vendetta

Remember, remember the fifth of November. It’s time for your annual rewatch of V for Vendetta. Oh, wait, no, that’s just my version. Watching V for Vendetta has been my little Fifth of November tradition since the early 2000s. It occurs to me, like the Alan Moore comic of the same name, that the V for Vendetta movie ticks many boxes of things grimdark fans may enjoy. If you haven’t picked up this graphic novel or watched the film, I humbly suggest them for your autumn reading pile or a movie night.

For those who don’t know, the rhyme is ‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November—gunpowder, treason, and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.’ It commemorates the Gunpowder Plot when, in 1605, Guy Fawkes and his conspirators attempted to blow up the House of Lords and the King on that fateful fifth of November night.

As a brief history lesson, and because it is pretty grim and dark, we Brits burn effigies of poor old Guy on a bonfire each the fifth of November (and let off fireworks terrifying the local four-legged residents) but Mr. Fawkes wasn’t burnt at the stake as this method of execution was only used for women. Lucky us. Instead, Guy was sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered, where he would have been hung until nearly dead, then taken down from the gallows, emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and then hacked into four chunks. Supposedly, Guy “accidentally” died during the hanging part of this torturous execution, but still. Awful.

V for Vendetta opens with the voice-over of this rhyme and a brief historical recap, with Evey Hammond, the movie’s leading lady played by Natalie Portman, pointing out that everyone remembers this rhyme, this idea of revolution, and the name of Guy Fawkes as a revolutionary, but no one remembers him as a man. This is an idea that will reoccur throughout the movie.

Set in a dystopian near future, V for Vendetta has a far-right totalitarian government. Movements are restricted, food and water are rationed, and state-controlled media churns out propaganda to the masses. In addition to leading lady Evey Hammond, the main man is V, played to perfection by Hugo Weaving. V is a masked vigilante with a violent vendetta. Like his historical inspiration, V plans to blow up parliament on the fifth of November as a catalyst for change.

Although not entirely like the graphic novel that inspired it (movie V is more of a romantic freedom fighter than a ruthless anarchist, and Evey’s traumatic life and more traumatic transformation are toned down for film watchers), V for Vendetta is a better adaptation than some of Moore’s other graphic novels which have been treated to a movie makeover. It may have been the Thatcher era that inspired Moore, but even now, nearly 20 years after the film was released, the fictional Britain portrayed here doesn’t feel like it is an entirely unrealistic scenario. That thought alone is enough to give a slight pause while watching.

With a screenplay by the Wachowski siblings and the directorial debut of James McTeigue, who was their assistant director on The Matrix, it is unsurprising that, at times, the audience can see style parallels between The Matrix and V for Vendetta. The final fight scene of the movie is particularly reminiscent of this, but it still stands out to me as one of the film’s memorable moments.

The casting is my favourite part of V for Vendetta, except for Natalie Portman’s questionable British accent. Hugo Weaving is a magnetic screen presence, and I still remember the awe with which I watched him on the big screen as V all those years ago. We never see his face in any of the guises in which he appears, and with only his voice and physical presence, Weaving steals every scene he is in. Some stellar actors are in supporting roles too, including John Hurt as Chancellor Sutcliffe, Stephen Fry as gay TV executive Gordon Dietrich, and Stephen Rea and Rupert Graves as disillusioned police officers investigating V.

V may have been turned into the unlikely hero of the film adaptation of V for Vendetta, but he still has some questionable morals. Lines like “violence can be used for good” and torturing one of the people closest to him still suggest that the ends always justify the means here. Speaking of which, the ending of V for Vendetta, where parliament explodes to classical music, and the hundreds of “V” s unmask themselves to reveal the victims of the corrupt government, is another of the many visually remarkable moments in the film.

As with almost all adaptations, part of me wants to point out that Moore’s graphic novel is “better” than McTeigue’s version of V for Vendetta, but as this is one of my favourite films, I shan’t do that too loudly. Every rewatch, I pick up on something different (I haven’t even had a chance to touch on the Valerie sub-plot and its portrayal here), and the fact that the film still feels entertaining, relevant, and politically significant today should speak volumes about the standard of V for Vendetta.

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REVIEW: The Book That Held Her Heart by Mark Lawrence

Last Updated on November 4, 2024

The feeling of emotional devastation lingers long after closing the back cover of Mark Lawrence’s The Book That Held Her Heart, the final volume of his mind-bending Library Trilogy, which began with the highly acclaimed The Book That Wouldn’t Burn and continued with its sequel, The Book That Broke the World. I will keep this review completely spoiler-free for readers who have not yet started the series.

The centerpiece of the Library Trilogy is the Athenaeum, an infinitely large library that, according to legend, was designed and constructed by Irad, the grandson of Cain and great-grandson of Adam and Eve. Irad is embroiled in an age-old battle with his brother, Jaspeth, who vows to destroy the Library to free humanity from the yoke of memory and the corrupting influence of knowledge. The Library becomes a literal and figurative battleground in this epic war between knowledge and ignorance, a battle that began between Irad and Jaspeth but continues with their proxies across every age and land.

The two lead protagonists of the Library Trilogy are Livira, a young woman whose fate becomes intertwined with that of the Library, and Evar, a young man who grows up trapped inside the Library and raised, together with his four adopted siblings, by two android-like figures known as the Assistant and the Soldier. While Livira and Evar’s storylines are already well established during the first two volumes of the Library Trilogy, The Book That Held Her Heart opens with a new point-of-view character, Anne Hoffman. Anne is a Jewish girl living under Nazi rule in prewar Germany. She grows up in the peace of her grandfather’s secondhand bookshop, until her sanctuary is pierced by the twin evils of antisemitism and fascism.

Mark Lawrence has taken a major gamble by incorporating a real-world storyline in his fantasy universe, but in a trilogy about book burning, the inclusion of Anne’s perspective seems both natural and timely. Lawrence quotes the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote in his 1820–1821 play Almansor the famous admonition, “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen,” which translates as, “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.”

The Book That Held Her Heart deals with some very weighty themes, including dehumanization of “the other,” the double-edged sword of memory, and the inherent danger of knowledge in the absence of wisdom. Mark Lawrence handles all of these themes with depth and nuance.

Fortunately, these heavy themes never bog down the story itself, which maintains a brisk pace throughout. This is a hard balance to pull off, and I marvel at Lawrence’s ability to keep the reader thoroughly engaged and entertained while also delivering a philosophical and emotional gut-punch to his unsuspecting readers.

Mark Lawrence writes with wit and gusto throughout the entirety of the Library Trilogy. His casually subversive epigrams at the beginning of each chapter remain a highlight in The Book That Held Her Heart. I especially enjoyed the quote attributed to Boris, one of my favorite under-the-radar characters from the Lawrencian universe, who debuted (perhaps?) in the brilliant Dispel Illusion. Just as I thought the series couldn’t become more meta, The Book That Held Her Heart even quotes itself.

Although Mark Lawrence is known for his perfectly conceived opening sequences, the Library Trilogy truly shines in its endings. Each book in the Library Trilogy has a shockingly unique ending that left me intellectually and emotionally destroyed in three completely different ways. The ending of The Book That Held Her Heart hits so hard that I feel like the publisher should include a packet of tissues between the last page and back cover.

The Book That Held Her Heart is the perfect conclusion to Mark Lawrence’s most ambitious trilogy to date. Altogether, the Library Trilogy is one of the most profound and wholly original works of fiction that I’ve read in the past two decades. The Library Trilogy should place Mark Lawrence’s name in the same breath as other twenty-first century masters of speculative fiction, including David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, and the 2017 Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro.

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REVIEW: The Genesis of Change by Livia J. Elliot

If you’re feeling mentally dialled in and keen for a complex magic system based on learning and the philosophy of cognitive bias, then Livia J. Elliot’s The Genesis of Change is very likely going to hit your dark fantasy sweet spot. In a universe where the select few get to evolve to treat humanity as lab rats, this novella has some interesting and thought-provoking themes delivered by some fascinating non/post-human characters.

In The Genesis of Change an order of alchemists (magicians / wizard-style characters who transcend humanity) led by the god-like Rector are attempting to further their understanding of their philosophy-based magic system by teaching pupils and studying humans. The Rector engages Elan and Verve, two alchemists, as it is a time for change for the alchemists and The Orders their magic is built upon. Elan’s charge is to teach a human novice named Aurea, and with one mind link she finds a young person looking for revenge. Verve goes to find Iurdan, a healer at a clinic with an odd way of thinking, who the Rector thinks is the key to change.

The writing style for me was a bit hard to get in to at first. It’s an odd but enjoyable mix of whimsical and scientific in nature as you are brought into this world by an eternal being, have the magic system explained to you by two alchemists who are markedly non-human—a crow and a smoke being thousands of years old—with Aurea’s teachings happening in the past, now, and future, and Verve’s observations of Iurdan occurring across years. I quite liked the style, the more I got into it.

With a cognitive-bias based magic system that is quite complex to wrap your head around, you definitely also need your thinking cap on for this one. The author delves into some relatively deep philosophical questions of the self which are interesting reading—some of which I have to admit I was not of the intellectual level required to realise during the reading, and only understood during the author’s note at the very end.

What will appeal to a grimdark fan is an interesting question with this book. The way it reads, it shouldn’t really appeal at all. It’s somewhat lyrical and high fantasy in taste. But when you break down the flavours within, the way the alchemists treat people as little lab rats to train and mentally break and rebuild Aurea and to push Iurdan to unknowingly reveal his secrets is quite brutal. Through the scope of the alchemists’ points of view it makes sense, and only to us, the human reader, is the horror of what’s happening obvious.

Having said that, I think The Genesis of Change suffers from the prequel short-form curse, in that it doesn’t work tremendously well as a stand alone piece of writing that the casual book buyer could pick up and read without knowledge of the rest of the work and get a complete experience. The two story arcs never really find their way back together to create a climax that I understood. It felt like this needed to be a short novel to allow for a climax to create a clean break and a conclusion for the reader. I imagine The Genesis of Change would create an enjoyable segue into the interactive book Mien (which is just a cool AF method of storytelling) if you were to jump straight from one to the other, or if you had already read and experienced Mien and were coming back to this novella. For me, I just wanted that clear ending to round out my reading experience.

The Genesis of Change by Livia J. Elliot is an enjoyable short read that is really going to get your grey matter churning. If you’re ready to be challenged–and ready to jump straight into the following novel so it becomes one cohesive reading experience–then I’d grab this one and give it a go.

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