Ghosts of Fanon!Dracos past; or, a review of The Cruel Prince

This is not political intrigue. This is Riverdale with pointy ears, except Riverdale goes harder. A million possible worlds to explore, untapped legends to excavate, and you set your story in…fairy high school. Instead of plot, we get 200 pages of Cardan, the hero (?), sexually harassing Jude, the heroine, in a high school that she could easily drop out of, but won’t because she has to ‘prove herself’ to fairies who want her raped and dead. Fine, people concoct unrealistic fantasies in response to abuse all the time, and I love nothing more than a character from a despised class who claws their way up to the top, but the fantasy isn’t that all the terrible people respect you in the end and Really Acknowledge that You’re a Team Player. The fantasy is that you have the court in such a chokehold that everyone hates you and can’t do anything about it. Am I doing power fantasies wrong?

Wish this was Cardan.

Jude wanting the respect of would-be rapists isn’t bad writing, maybe she’s in a bad place or whatever, but the narrative rewarding her delusions is a terrible, unrealistic ending. I could go on Twitter and talk about how much of a tradwife I am to get culty misogynists to respect me. BUT WHY. WHAT DO I GAIN. Am I not better off if I leave the cult compound for good?

Jude refuses to leave the fairy cult (AKA the High King’s Court), despite signs that humans are treated better in other fairy societies. She has the option of leaving Fairy Land with her sister, Vivi, but doesn’t take it because she loves Fairy Land, which I would have bought if the book had focused less on her high school wannabe rapist boyfriends. Even if she has no friends and likes spending time with nature, I would need more nature descriptions, more long walks, more flowery poetry…

Maybe I should read Mysteries of Udolpho instead. Anyway.

I also wasn’t convinced that Jude could attain power that easily without facing obstacles and resistance that should have logically popped up. Am I supposed to believe that Madoc killed two people to get custody of his heir, Vivi, but is totally okay with the HEIR TO THE THRONE noping off to the human world with minimal supervision for a few years so that he can be “saved from the corruption of the Fae” instead of, idk, learning to rule his future kingdom? Oak is the heir to the kingdom in a family where the fairy father murdered his human ex-wife and got away with it. That corruption arc has already sailed.

What has Jude accomplished, besides making a more complicated version of Madoc’s plan and involving Cardan, a ticking time bomb who doesn’t want to be on the throne and is also friends with her attempted rapist, Locke (it was strongly implied). Oak becomes the king either way. Why get involved in this nonsense? The safest position for Oak is on the throne, according to the magical laws that govern their inheritance. Delaying his coronation and playing games with spare heirs and sending him to the human world is delusional. Why? Because Jude wants so badly to be a Team Player and Influence Things. This is all about ego, not her brother.

Then there’s the lack of communication in Jude’s family, which puzzled me. Sure, they hate each other, but in a political family like theirs, everyone has a job. You have to talk to coworkers you don’t like to make sure you’re betraying the same people and not accidentally siding with opposing factions (NOT THAT THIS WILL COME UP OR ANYTHING). If the family is supposed to be read as incompetent, that’s one thing, but they’re not? Madoc is shown as a formidable and deadly foe. If anything, reading between the lines, Jude gives Madoc one more reason to betray Dain because she’s given a psycho fairy prince (Dain, not Cardan) power over her life. I hate this book for making me stan the guy who killed his ex-wife, but everyone else is that dumb.

The only character who’s written well is Locke, who’s a scumbag, but I hated him for the right reasons. If I was supposed to interpret Jude as an incompetent dingbat who’s an unreliable narrator, I apologize.

Maybe I’m too old for YA, but I never want to read a book set in high school again.

We stan good boys only in this house; or, a review of The Red Palace

So, another June Hur book, which means court intrigue, feminism that doesn’t suck historical realism out of the story like a vacuum, lots of murder, and a light at the end of the tunnel. Silence of Bones was very good, but I love this one a little more. The Red Palace kept me going when my cat was poisoned last year, so this book will always be number one in my heart.

Also, I’m a romance junkie, RIP, RIP. And this one has one of the best OTPs of the year. I can say this because 2022 is already over, even though I started this review MONTHS ago. I read it last January, and no ship has done it better since. (Someone tell me what Hyeon and Eojin’s ship name is. Hyeonjin?)

Hyeon is a palace nurse who has made the most of herself while maintaining financial independence, which is quite an accomplishment for an illegitimate daughter in eighteenth-century Joseon (modern day Korea). Her dad still isn’t impressed, because emotionally abusive dads never are.

The life she has meticulously created comes to an painful pause, however, when several palace women get murdered and her mentor becomes a suspect and gets tortured under government interrogation. Eojin, a police inspector whom no one else takes that seriously, either, is the only one who believes her when she tells him that her mentor isn’t guilty.

Pretty much everything about this book is perfect. The family relationships, the treatment of Prince Sado as an ambiguous historical figure, the mystery, the romance…

Speaking of family relationships, June Hur brings her usual sensitivity and insight to the neglect, disinterest, and sexism that Hyeon experiences from her father. I appreciate her take on family conflicts–family dysfunction causes aching psychological wounds that may never truly heal, and there’s no guarantee that the abuser will ever see the light and be the perfect relative of your dreams. Instead, a suitable resolution is entirely up to you, the aggrieved party. Whatever contact you decide to have with the problem relative, whether you decide to forgive them completely or never see them again, only you can decide the best way to heal. Either way, the only person you owe is yourself. I won’t spoil Hyeon’s decision, but it’s completely satisfying and I couldn’t ask for more.

Now, the elephant in the room, Sado. For those not familiar, Sado was a real-life serial killer/rapist prince whose guilt is debated by historians. Most historians agree that he committed the crimes, but it’s difficult to determine how much of a role his insanity played. On the one hand, the historical records seem to indicate Sado suffered from some form of mental illness, but on the other, an author doesn’t want to imply that he did those things because of mental illness (well, most authors…). June Hur states in her author’s note that she decided to leave his mental health issues vague because it’s not her area of expertise and and she didn’t want to fall into the trap of tying violent behavior to mental illness. I think it was a good decision, not least because Sado is such a polarizing topic and I didn’t want him to overpower the other characters. Also, if I want an entire book about serial killer rapists, I can just read Game of Thrones. Instead, June Hur focuses the narrative on actual nice people? Which, after this year full of twists and turns, was very welcome. This book got me started off on a good note in 2022, and it was one of the things that stayed with me throughout the joys and horrors of the last twelve months.

As for the mystery, I did NOT see the plot twist coming. Anything I say will be a spoiler, so I will refrain, but TRUST ME.

Finally, the romance is so, so good. The Red Palace asks the question why not go for it, if you like them? Sure, they might be like your problematic parents, but what if they’re not? How do you know? You simply have to find someone who values you and wait for them to reveal themselves. The ability to rewrite your parents’ history is always in your grasp. Eojin and Hyeon are a team first and foremost, there is no weird misogynist bullshit, and I love that for them. Eojin is very hardline but treats everyone ethically, which is my FAVORITE kind of hero from years of watching historical K-Dramas. I also thought it was a nice refresher that Eojin disregards social status and respects women because his unconventional parents raised him that way, as opposed to being a 21st century alien in a family from hell. Here’s to normal in-laws in historical fiction!

Finally, I’ll close with my favorite quote, which kinda changed my life:

Chewing nervously on my lower lip, I could imagine the days ahead unfolding before me. I would bid him farewell, promise to perhaps see him again, then avoid him for weeks, and weeks would turn into months. Growing distant, severing the ties myself before I could get hurt. We would go our separate ways, and years later, I would see him passing down the street one day and wonder–Why were you so afraid, Hyeon?

20,000 Leagues of Homoerotic Science; or, HOW Long Was that Elephant Seal Again?!!!?

The face of all evil. In an environmentalist novel. Somehow.

20,000 Leagues under the Sea is one of those books that seeped so deeply into the cultural conscious I never bothered to learn what it was about. I knew Captain Nemo was a person (probably a villain?) who lived underwater (maybe with a kingdom?). That was it.

It was so much more. It was so gay. It had so much good science. It had so much bad science. And just the sheer–I cannot even DESCRIBE the antiheroism of it all. Google thinks that’s not a word, but Google can suck it. At one point Captain Nemo sails to Antarctica, which is an oasis with improbably big elephant seals for some reason, plants a black flag with a gold N on a cliff or whatever, and I’m just gonna quote it in full, honestly–

“I, Captain Nemo, on this 21st day of March, 1868, have reached the South Pole on the ninetieth degree; and I take possession of this part of the globe, equal to one-sixth of the known continents.”

“In whose name, Captain?”

“In my own, sir!”

Saying which, Captain Nemo unfurled a black banner, bearing an “N” in gold quartered on its bunting. Then, turning towards the orb of day, whose last rays lapped the horizon of the sea, he exclaimed:

“Adieu, sun! Disappear, thou radiant orb! rest beneath this open sea, and let a night of six months spread its shadows over my new domains!”

Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Part Two, Chapter Fourteen

This is so sexy, and I mean that unironically. A bunch of shippy things also happen, like Nemo installing his favorite captive audience member, M. Aronnax, in the room next to his own so that M. Aronnax can come in at any time and look at the submarine’s “machinery,” which just so happens to be located in Captain Nemo’s bedroom. Hmmmm.

Oh, I didn’t even get to the plot, which is the most harlequin setup ever, wait for it: The world is aghast at some strange new oceanic entity which seems impossibly large and has already sunk a ship by making a giant hole in it. NICE. It’s an iceberg! It’s a Narwhal! No, it’s CAPTAIN NEMO, come to ram imperialist boats with impunity and maybe slaughter sperm whales because sperm whales oppress the virtuous right whales. No, really.

As an acclaimed naturalist, M. Aronnax sets sail to prove his thesis that the Unexplained Phenomenon is a narwhal, BUT THEN his ship starts sinking, he ends up overboard, the world goes dark, and he wakes up in a dark place with sailors who speak an unknown language. So far, it’s your standard nineteenth century adventure, no harlequin in sight. Fine. Wait till Captain Nemo walks in:

Whether this individual was thirty-five or fifty years of age, I could not precisely state. He was tall, his forehead broad, his nose straight, his mouth clearly etched, his teeth magnificent, his hands refined, tapered, and to use a word from palmistry, highly “psychic,” in other words, worthy of serving a lofty and passionate spirit. This man was certainly the most wonderful physical specimen I had ever encountered. One unusual detail: his eyes were spaced a little far from each other and could instantly take in nearly a quarter of the horizon. This ability—as I later verified—was strengthened by a range of vision even greater than Ned Land’s. When this stranger focused his gaze on an object, his eyebrow lines gathered into a frown, his heavy eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision, and he looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the deepest seas . . . !

Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Part One, Chapter Eight

Yes, “Most wonderful physical specimen ever encountered,” whatever THAT means. Also, there’s this:

“No doubt, sir, you’ve felt that I waited rather too long before paying you this second visit. After discovering your identities, I wanted to weigh carefully what policy to pursue toward you. I had great difficulty deciding. Some extremely inconvenient circumstances have brought you into the presence of a man who has cut himself off from humanity. Your coming has disrupted my whole existence.”

Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Part One, Chapter Ten

Waaaah, it’s so inconvenient that I punched a hole in a British ship and have to hold survivors hostage, waaaah. But then it turns out that M. Aronnax has written Captain Nemo’s favorite academic text ever (about Captain Nemo, incidentally), and THEY’RE MORE THAN WELCOME TO STAY, BUT THEY CAN’T EVER LEAVE because secrecy or whatever. I guess Captain Nemo doesn’t mind having his whole existence disrupted THAT much. HMMMMMMMM. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? It’s the classic captivity narrative with the chivalrous kidnapper and if M. Aronnax were a hot girl there would be no questions asked.

And the rest is history. They have a first date in Atlantis, which is super cool, but also kind of a side quest. They catalogue every underwater species known to man and try the Ocean Diet, because anything from land suuuuuucks. It sounds like I’m making this all up, but no, I’m not, and there are even more absurdities that I’m forgetting about. Please read it. It will save your year. It saved mine. I’m not going to spoil the ending (you might know it), but to me, it’s suitably open. Like a deranged fanfic author, I like to imagine that Captain Nemo and his professor still sail the seas, maybe ramming an imperialist ship or two, but majorly laying off the sperm whale homicide.

And that’s all.

Cruel Beauty

Well, I didn’t end up reviewing Deathless, mainly because it was so beautifully flawed that it defied description (I feel like people wouldn’t have had much time for BDSM and two-timing during the Siege of St. Petersburg. Too cold. Too hungry. But I wasn’t there, so what do I know?). Also, college fried my brain, so yeah. There never was a promise I could keep.

However, post-finals, I was looking for subpar brain candy to destress, and I found it in Cruel Beauty, courtesy of Rosamund Hodge–except it wasn’t subpar! Who says brain candy can’t also be art?

WHAT THIS BOOK DID TO ME

First of all, the setting is gorgeous. I adore gorgeous settings, probably because I can’t write them at all. Nyx Triskelion (cool name) lives in Arcadia, which is…a dome? made of parchment? I was never really clear on how to picture it (notoriously bad at following descriptive details, sorry), but it sounded cool.

The wavy, golden rays of the sun looked like a gilt illumination in one of Father’s old manuscripts; they glinted, but their light was less painful than a candle. Once the main body of the sun was risen over the hillside, it would be uncomfortable to look upon, but no more so than the frosted glass of a Hermetic lamp. For most of the light came from the sky itself, a dome of cream veined with darker cream, like parchment, through which light shone as if from a distant fire. Dawn was no more than the brighter zone of the sky rising above the hills, the light colder than at noon but otherwise the same.

Arcadia (land Nyx lives in) has been closed off from the world, seemingly forever, with only a Gentle Lord in a ruined castle to rule it. Many have theories as to why. Unfortunately, the Gentle Lord is excellent at making bargains, but they don’t always work out so well for the bargainers. There’s always a misinterpreted clause, like the one Nyx’s father falls prey to. Wife will give birth to two healthy daughters? Excellent. Wife will die in the process? Oh.

So Arcadians hate the Gentle Lord because he’s a ruthless haggler who tells tons of lies by omission. Also Nyx’s dad promised him one of his daughters. OH. Instead of beating himself up over not totally owning his Dad of the Year award, like maybe he should, he spends Nyx’s entire childhood training her as a magical weapon so that she can take her future husband down. No, really. DAD OF THE YEEEEEAAARRR.

Me whenever Nyx’s daddy was remotely mentioned in any way.

To make matters worse, the Gentle Lord’s hotness is in dispute.

I knew that the Gentle Lord was different enough from other demons that people could look on him and not go mad. But some said he had the mouth of a snake, the eyes of a goat, and the tusks of a boar, so that even the bravest could not refuse his bargains. Others said he was inhumanly beautiful, so that even the wisest were beguiled by him. Either way, I couldn’t imagine letting him touch me.

*checks genre* Yeah, let’s go with inhumanly beautiful. I know that it can be hard to marry an evil demon Prince, but I think I’ve read so much of this genre that I’ve gotten a bit jaded. Honestly, I was just waiting for Nyx to fall in love with him so that we could all go home already. However. Elements kept surprising me.

For one thing, Ignifex, the demon prince in question, was more of an asshole than I expected. Also, almost zero angst over what a douchecanoe he was being, which I personally found refreshing. Maybe I’m tired of cheap angst, which is something I never thought I’d say. I don’t like cheap assholery either, but Ignifex’s reasons for acting out, if not exactly laudable, are at least understandable…ish? No spoilers, though. Also, he gets better. 🙂

Maybe what surprised me most, though, was Nyx herself. I’m sad to say that in YA, I sometimes end up reading for the hot dude of the week because heroines can be a little subpar, and I hate doing it. On the other hand, I also hate reading solely for the heroine because the hero’s terrible. Not the case here! I was able to read for both. Nyx is a QUEEN, and I cannot emphasize this enough. She doesn’t take the fate handed to her lying down, but she also doesn’t waste time on pointless rebellion or wilting sacrifice. Instead, she is quietly and murderously furious, clever enough to realize that something is horribly wrong with her family, but socially conditioned too well to reject the future planned for her. She is her people’s only hope of breaking the curse, so she meets her fate gracefully.

Fortunately, her new husband is way more interested in building card towers and eating bon-bons than being, you know, absolutely terrible. In fact, he offers something that no one else in Arcadia can give her: unconditional acceptance and love. Awww. See, not that much of an asshole. More and more, Nyx starts to doubt her mission and whether her father really knows what he’s doing (obviously not). Before this book, I never wondered what would happen if the protagonist got sick of the hero gig and kicked back with the villain for some nice bonding time and snacks, but now I guess I know.

Actual footage of Nyx and Ignifex.

Actually, if I have one criticism of this book, it’s that it briefly flirted with the abandonment of the heroic role, only to veer back in a more traditional direction. Not that the ending I got wasn’t satisfying–honestly, I probably cried a little (POST FINALS-EMOTIONS, THAT’S ALL), but I would have loved to see a world where curses aren’t broken, villains aren’t defeated, and heroines aren’t sacrificed. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll have to write one.

I wanted to like it, but I COULDN’T, or, a review of A Great and Terrible Beauty

It’s not that I object to reading about schoolgirl bitchery, though it’s not exactly my preferred genre. Dumb schoolgirl bitchery, on the other hand…

I wanted to like this book. And, when I started, it had every promise of being likable. The setting of India was interesting, and the author took a risk in making her character a bit more historically accurate than most (at first). You see, Gemma Doyle is a bratty sixteen-year-old who hates living in India and makes no bones about it. I actually liked that detail because in historical fiction about Britain, India is usually presented as this far off exotic land tasting of spice and freedom–not an ordinary place with ordinary people. A sixteen-year-old British girl wanting to party in London seems pretty natural to me, regardless of how low she descends in reaching her objective.

At last, a good Dystopia, or, a review of Perfect Ruin

The mark of a perfect Dystopia is a world that the reader falls in love with despite its horror. Perfect Ruin is one of those rare, delightfully lovely books in which the setting is its own character–perhaps the main one. The darkness of Internment unfolds slowly, like an exquisite origami, but I never fell out of love with it. Maybe because there’s something wrong with me (but you already knew that, right?).

Ahem. Internment is a floating island in the sky. How it stays afloat, no one knows for sure, but most believe it’s due to the benevolence of the sky god. Although I’m notoriously bad at paying attention to things like location, chronology, and technology within story (preferring instead to focus on cuteness and fluff), I feel like I could describe Internment with some accuracy. Lauren DeStefano, I love you. For finally getting me to pay attention. So, I may get a few things wrong, but hopefully I’ll be mostly right. Internment is the perfect toy city surrounded by a railroad that hosts a forever punctual train. Just don’t cross the railroad and gaze into the edge, for that way lies madness and death…

Into this world is born Morgan Stockhour, a boring girl in love with Basil, her boring fiance selected by Internment’s government for her. At least, that’s what I thought the first three times I started this book. I mean, a girl in YA who’s actually in love with someone she starts out engaged to?

Me: “Is it, like, opposite day? What the hell is going on, I thought she was going to fall in love with the mysterious guy in the summary?” *skips ahead* “Seriously, she’s still in love with this dude? The guy the state chose for her? WHAT THE HEEEEEELLL.”

You know…as much as I love to make fun of love triangles, dark and mysterious love interests, etc, I-sort-of-maybe-love-them. I’m sorry. I’m a hypocrite.

But! Everyone on Goodreads said it was excellent, so I kept trying to get through it, and I did! And it was amazing. And there is way more to Basil and Morgan than I thought, and I learned to appreciate every single word Lauren wrote. Absolutely lovely.

Somedaaaaay, my alpha will cooooome, or, a review of The Sheik

This is it, you guys. I’ve found the One True Alpha. All the rest of you posers can go home. Nothing like vintage alpha for a bit of nostalgia, and at 1919, The Sheik is considered by some the first romance novel ever. Sometimes, the original actually is the best  worst. NOTHING will ever be as terrible or as hilarious as this book. Hence the reason I read the entire thing with a gigantic smile on my face. IT WAS SO AWESOME. Except for…well, we’ll get to that.

Siamese Mayhem finally finishes a series, or, a review of the Chemical Garden Trilogy

One of the great tragedies of reviewing is that bad books always give me more to say. When I have an actual good book, I just can’t find the snark. Hopefully, it is possible for me to be interesting without making fun of something. However, I promise nothing. The Chemical Garden Trilogy is one of these happy few; they are the sort of books I have only good things to say about.

How to dethaw an ice queen, or, a review of The Iron King

This book is about a girl and her boys. Meghan, our heroine, thinks she’s an ordinary high school student. Her friend, Robbie (also known as Puck), doesn’t quite agree. Their arch-nemesis, Ash, just wants to kill them both. Ordinarily, this is how I feel about love triangles:

But this particular story worked for me, and I think it may be because the romance was fairly light, none of the parties spent a large time waffling, and–while I wouldn’t say they had camaraderie–they all developed mutual, grudging respect for each other by the end. I think. Love triangles in which all the principles are likable go a long way towards assuaging my wrath. Take notes, aspiring writers, because this is how you make love triangles non-fury inducing.

“He only beats me because of his tragic past,” or, a review of Fifty Shades of Grey

You know, if I never hear the word Adonis again, it will be too soo–

Apart from the paintings, the rest of the office is cold, clean, and clinical.  I wonder if it reflects the personality of the Adonis who sinks gracefully into one of the white leather chairs opposite me.

Well. Here we go again.