The Strain Trilogy by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

So it's been a little while since I read Guillermo del Toro's The Strain and The Fall, but after finishing The Night Eternal I had to go back and do a little brush-up to see if I was remembering them accurately. I'd rated The Strain four stars on Goodreads, its successor three, which are solid ratings that mostly held up under a second scrutiny. I had high hopes for The Night Eternal, but sadly it didn't live up to the hype, and forced me to reassess my rating of the entire series.

It starts off so promisingly, too. The Strain was touted upon its release as "the book that makes vampires scary again", a bounceback from the supposed decline the neckbiters have been on since Bela Lugosi first donned an opera cape. And while I agree that the Cullens, Salvatores, Spikes and Erics of the pop culture world haven't been balanced out by an appreciable weight of run-for-your-fucking-life scary vamps, Del Toro and Hogan sought to tip the scales and ended up overbalancing them. As the series goes on the emphasis is very much on quantity rather than quality-- the characters devolve into predictable tropes; the plot gets bogged down in sidetracks that are boring, transparent or both; and the lion's share of the work seems to have gone into describing battles in as much cinematic detail as possible rather than giving any emotional weight to the characters' development. It is possible to have scary vampires and still tell a good story, and I'm going to point out the main areas where I think GDT and CH went off the rails.

cool shit i found online, part 2

pretty sure 12-year-old me chose French
because of the food. but in my defense,
i didn't know what a burrito was back then.

Happy Monday, lieblings! After listening to a dude on the bus this morning chattering away on his phone in German, I'm wishing I hadn't let all my foreign language chops fall by the wayside. I used to be nearly fluent in French, dammit, and I knew some really horrible-sounding Russian curses for awhile there too...

But I digress. It's time for round 2 of Cool Shit I Found Online. Any suggestions for a name for this series would be appreciated, otherwise this runs the risk of sticking. And I can do way better than CSIFO for an acronym.

• Good timing! Not long after posting my Casino Royale review, I came across this list of 5 great spy books and this list of 10 international crime noirs, none of which I've read. Yet. 
• Like Tor books? Well, at Tor.com they're celebrating their fifth birthday by letting you download all 151 stories published on the site for free. :D
• The Atlantic spawned a discussion last week about favorite and memorable first lines. The Guardian jumped in and now I'm curious what you guys have to say. One of my all-time favorites will forever be from Lois Lowry's inimitable The Giver: "It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened." What's one that's always stuck with you?
• Feminist Yog-Sothoth.
  
  
  Yeah. That's a thing now.
• In "Charles Dickens is a wanker" news, he's probably responsible for popular imagination's concept of scary clowns. I knew I hated him for a good reason. Other than Great Expectations, I mean.
• And in "Oh my god, my childhood" news, the actor who voiced Mr. Freeze on Batman: The Animated Series passed away this week. I think Freeze and Magneto were my first introduction to the deliciously murky world of bad guys you can't help loving (as opposed to Clayface, who just straight up scared the shit out of 8-year-old me).
• Speaking of scary, reading this article about 25 years of Hannibal Lecter made me remember that I hadn't ever gotten around to those last 3 episodes of Hannibal. So I did. And then I remembered why I never watch TV shows as they're first airing; I frakking hate cliffhangers. I hate waiting. Damn you, Tumblr, for sucking me into this mess!
  
  To slake my rage, I had to go look up some spoilers about what Bryan Fuller has planned for future seasons, but it only made me more impatient. Anyway, the article is really good, especially if you're a fan of crime novels and psychological thrillers. (And if you're a fan of 'Hannibal', this article on the food styling for the show is pretty cool.)

And that's your lot for today. Got any cool shit you found online you think I'd enjoy? Drop it in the comments!

'Casino Royale' by Ian Fleming





I was in middle school the first time I saw a James Bond movie. My brother and I were hanging out at our grandparents' house on New Year's Eve and some network had on a marathon. "For Your Eyes Only" was, to my twelve-year-old brain, a feast. Dramatic, suspenseful, ridiculous, full of explosions and just enough sex to get all my hormones and adrenaline fizzing at once. I was enthralled, not only by the spectacle, but by the character of Bond-- this dashing rake who charmed his way into opium warehouses and ladies' ski suits with equal felicity, fought bad guys while running, driving or rock climbing, prevented the sabotage of the British navy and looked great doing all of it.

In that light, maybe it's weird that I'm only just now digging into his source material-- starting, of course, at the beginning. Casino Royale happens to be one of my favorite Bond movies, so I was excited to sink my teeth into the superspy's origin story. As much for my own self-analysis as anything else, I was curious to investigate the source of Bond's popularity. What is so engaging about this man, this figure, that he's managed to occupy a significant place in our cultural consciousness for over half a century? Based just on Casino Royale, at least, the sad fact is that I have no idea.

'A Matter of Blood' by Sarah Pinborough

The opening act of Sarah Pinborough's urban fantasy horror trilogy is dark. It's gory, it's harsh and unflinching in its descriptions of an ugly world; no romps with city-dwelling fairies here. It's urban fantasy at its most brutal, illuminating a bleak potential future where-- as our killer makes a habit of pointing out-- nothing is sacred. It's that idea of the sacrosanct that winds its way throughout the book, touching each of the characters in turn, leading the jaded Detective Jones to a thorough examination of not only the ways in which his society is broken, but in which he is as well.

cool shit i found online: part 1 of a series

I'm gonna try doing something new here at P.O.P., and every week or so (maybe more frequently, if warranted) I'll post a bunch of links to posts around the internet that made me go "Huh", or "Ooh", or "THIS THIS THIS" while accompanied by manic handflapping. With the stipulation that they will be at least tangentially related to stuff that this blog talks about-- geek culture, sci-fi/fantasy, YA lit, feminism, queer representation, etc Maybe eventually I'll come up with a catchy title for these linkdumps (your suggestions appreciated, of course) but for now, here's the goods.

• For any of you who have ever lambasted John Green (who, let's be clear, I love, but more for his digital media projects than his writing) for his endless parade of Manic Pixie Dream Girls, here's a great article about how Skins deconstructed the trope. (Flavorwire)
• 14 things you may not have known about Labyrinth, most of which I totally did, because I'm that much of a geek. (Buzzfeed)
• Why Carrie Bradshaw is not the female Tony Soprano (besides duh) and what's missing from SatC's female characters that would make them more feminist, and more interesting. (Flavorwire)
• The Guardian talks school libraries and whether or not it's better to keep collections current or stick with the classics. Even though it's talking about school systems and reading curricula in the UK, it's still pretty interesting stuff.
• Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle is getting turned into a TV show. Because HBO has proven that there's literally no reason not to turn an unfinished book series into a TV show! No but really, this is probably going to be awesome. (io9)

 Happy Thursday, kittens. Today after work I'm going to go get the last dregs of my possessions out of my old apartment and take them to the new one, so I never have to see the wretched place again. And then drink a huge glass of wine in defiance of my 6AM wake-up call. :D

<3 emily="" p="">

'Doll Bones' by Holly Black

Still working on my review of Sarah Pinborough's A Matter of Blood, but I finished Doll Bones this morning and couldn't stop myself from writing about it instantly.

'Bronze Gods' by A. A. Aguirre

So, in complete contrast to my reaction to Fade to Black, Bronze Gods surprised me by how much I loved it. I won't say I didn't expect to enjoy myself, because a crime fighting team in a steampunk universe with magic sounds like bona fide enjoyment material in my book. But I expected fluff-- a quick read, nothing heavy. I was pleasantly surprised to discover instead a wholly engaging read with characters that leapt off the page and a world I wanted to explore every nook and cranny of.

Fade to Black (Rojan Dizon #1) by Francis Knight

Holy funemployment, Batman, two in one week! 

So I hope that whoever wrote the jacket copy for Fade to Black has their own publishing deal, because they did a great job. Based on a quick scan, the book sounded edgy, dangerous and exciting. It was featured on bn.com the week I bought my new nook, and I was SO close to paying for it... But, luckily for me, I borrowed it from a friend first. It turns out I would've been pretty mad had I shelled out money for it. 

The book isn't terrible, and there are some aspects of it that are great-- okay, actually, I take that back, there is one aspect of it that is great, and that is the worldbuilding. The city felt real, the descriptions vivid even when they weren't overly verbose, and the atmosphere thick enough to taste. It's clear that Francis Knight put a lot of thought into her world, that she knows it well down to the small details. But it's useless to have a great world if you don't populate it with great characters, and in that Knight failed pretty spectacularly.

There are three main characters in the book-- the protagonist, bounty hunter and pain mage Rojan; the girl swordfighter Jake; and her best friend / would-be lover Pasha. Pasha is easily the most interesting of the three. He's a pain mage like Rojan, with a painful past-- he was sold into slavery to be used as fodder for another pain mage's power and endured years of constant abuse, all when he was mostly a kid. He's in love with Jake, but she's got the same past trauma that manifests in a deep aversion to being touched, therefore taking intimacy of any kind off the table. He sticks by her because it's their secret mission to find other people who've been sold to the mages (like Rojan's niece, which is what crosses his path with theirs) and get them to freedom. He's pretty badass and bold when it comes to acting on behalf of others, but emotionally passive when it comes to himself; a nice duality. He got flatter and more predictable as the book went on, but he was the only one who made me feel any real sympathy.

Jake has all the trappings of an interesting powerful female, but unfortunately she isn't any of those things. She's a statue on a pedestal to Rojan, not a person. Some reviewers have compared this construct to the archetypes found in classic noir, but that's not a comparison I can get behind. She's certainly no femme fatale, and while it seems Knight intended for her to play the part of the elusive ice queen who gets under the private eye's skin, she misses the mark. She doesn't need Rojan's help, so there's no give and take in their relationship, and she's so closed off emotionally that most of Rojan's response to her seemed to be based on physical attraction-- which is fine, but isn't a carrier for the intrigue and emotional desire Rojan claimed to feel for her.

But my real problem with Jake is that Knight had a great opportunity to paint the picture of a strong, independent woman who had overcome adversity to take control over her life, and didn't. Jake is a pit fighter, really strong and agile, and she's a subversive freedom fighter working behind the scenes to go against the rule of law. But in the moments I most wanted her to shine, she caved. Pasha kills a man so Jake doesn't have to (she's very proud of her no-kill record in the pits) and she drives him away, a disproportionate response that's clearly a device to get her and Rojan alone, and one that makes her look unreasonable and unstable. 

Then, in spite of her explicitly stated aversion to touch, Rojan kisses her and she doesn't even fight back. Instead it's like an eye-opener-- oh, I really was fine with making out all this time, who knew? Probably pretty disturbing to read if you're a survivor of that kind of abuse. And the icing on the disappointment cake was that she never overcame her fear and got back at the man who enslaved her. Instead, another clumsy plot device had Rojan step in to do it for her. I liked Jake alright, but she didn't grab me either as a heroine or as a love interest, and in terms of the power and agency of women in the book she left a lot to be desired.

She got a really kick-ass entrance, though, I'll say that much.

And Rojan. Oh, Rojan. I can't decide if this is how the author thinks jaded and world-weary men actually think and talk, or if she personally knows someone who's simultaneously this misogynistic and this boring, but either way, he doesn't play well. He hovers in this limbo between actually being a womanizing sleazebag and only pretending to be one-- it's like the author wanted to make him unlikable and have a bad attitude towards women, but didn't have the stomach to take it all the way. He isn't like Barney Stinson or Han Solo-- I never once bought the image of Rojan as a cad who treats women like they're disposable because he's afraid of emotional intimacy. The book opens with him getting notes from the three women he's seeing who've all just found out about each other and trash his apartment for it, and he talks a lot-- incessantly-- about how bad he is at relationships, how much of a womanizer he is, etc. But we never meet any of the girlfriends, or even see first-hand what they do to his apartment, so there are no consequences for his jerk behavior. There's never even a hint of the fact that he might want something more out of relationships, just more casual contempt for the idea of them.

All this means that when Jake finally appears on the scene and Rojan suddenly starts spouting off about how much he likes her and how she makes him want to be a better man, the intended revelation falls extremely flat. Because Jake isn't as well rounded as I'd like, and certainly neither is Rojan, I didn't feel the supposed connection between them at all. The author kept talking about it, but it never grabbed me in the gut. Especially when contrasted with Mikani and Ritsuko in Bronze Gods (which I'll be reviewing next), who had chemistry and tension enough to drive me to drink, I felt like both Rojan and the author were just going through the motions of the typical transformative falling-in-love experience, rather than actually... well... experiencing it.

I didn't completely hate this book. It was a quick read and it wasn't the worst urban fantasy I've ever read. But it disappointed me so much in relation to my expectations that it left a sour taste in my mouth. Ultimately I wanted the author to delve into Rojan's actual weaknesses-- his fears, his self doubts, his shitty relationship with his brother (which is the only arena in which I really felt sympathy with him), his dead mother-- instead of having them all glossed over and then neatly tied up at the end. I'm not even sure how the author plans to make a sequel happen, since so many of the problems were resolved by the end of the book. Hopefully the next one won't give such token nods to Rojan's issues, and will have a supporting cast that's a lot more fleshed out. Unfortunately, unless it's recommended to me by someone I trust, I won't be taking the time to find out.