Mayday (Reynolds/Branagh)
A Canadian plays an American and an Englishman plays a Russian in what is basically propaganda for “can’t we just all get along?”
… does that make it Canadian propaganda? I don’t know enough about Canadian jokes to see it.
Anyway, I enjoyed this ridiculous movie.
The opening scene is riffing directly off The Martian.
The first ten minutes or so is riffing so directly off Top Gun that I would not have been surprised if shirtless men playing volleyball had suddenly appeared. I was expecting a pick-up line/ singing moment in the bar Reynolds and his buddies are heading to.
And then they made loving Top Gun an entire throughline. So self-aware, much hilarity.
It can’t entirely decide what movie it wants to be: is this an homage to Hot Shots and its ilk, with a plot hidden in a spoof? Is it a lighthearted action film wearing its antecedents on its sleeve? I’m not quite sure. And I’m not sure it matters. It is certainly more successful than the first Expendables movie (which is so much worse than Expendables 2 I remain amazed it ever got made; that movie made Expendables 3 possible, though, so I am forever grateful. We do not mention the fourth movie).
Reynolds is basically playing himself, which is fine – it’s what I went in expecting. Branagh… I dunno, folks, this seems like such an odd choice for him. Has he got to the point where he’s just picking films that will amuse him? Maybe! And I’m happy for him if that’s the case! Do I wish that they had cast a Russian in the role? Of course I do. Would Apple have got as much mileage out of the stardom of both leads if they had? No they would not (and that’s leaving aside current political issues.) Reynolds’ character isn’t quite 2D, but pretty close. I don’t even remember his name (no wait, it’s Troy. I guess they thought Chad would be too much). No backstory! Just flyin’! At least they didn’t shove a tragic childhood in there. Or mess up 30 minutes of cool flying with a boring romance (looking at you, Top Gun). Branagh’s character, Nick, has slightly more depth – commentary on it being illegal to be queer in the USSR was, uh, not subtle.
Is it fun? Heck yes! Is it memorable? Not especially! Is it subtle about promoting the idea that the world should be better? Not in the slightest. But what’s fascinating is that it doesn’t come off entirely as American propaganda. Troy confronts at least some of the (Cold War era) failings of the USA… and many of the things he sees as being good about the US are questionable right now, to say the least. So is it actually propaganda? I mean, kind of. If the agenda is “be nicer to each other.”
… maybe it really is Canadian propaganda.
Merryll of the Stones
Apparently I last read, and reviewed, this in 2012. Most of the reason for that is that my sister had my copy for some reason, and she’s just returned it to me.
This was published in 1989, and there are aspects where that definitely shows: Lots of Capitalisation to indicate Importance, plus some pretty weak naming – the Power, the Gift, the Families. There’s also the very… old-fashioned reference to Aboriginal people – it’s definitely not intended to be derogatory, and if anything there’s a nod to including the Dreaming within the big idea that Caswell is setting up here. Still, it’s there. Poor Kylie and her being on the ‘wrong side’ of eleven stone… but also there’s Tieu, the refugee from Vietnam, who has made friends with Megan and Kylie: this aspect of 1980s Australia I approve of.
Merryll is sent into the stream of time for her own protection when her father, the king (obvs) is killed. She is born as Megan – born in Wales, moves to Australia with her family at 2 years old, moves back to Wales when her parents are killed in a car crash, in the aftermath of which she starts have distressing dreams. Meanwhile Emlyn, living in the same Welsh village, Megan goes to, is also having weird dreams and is obsessed with Welsh mythology and history. There’s a bitchy cousin and difficult school transition, as well as the mystical elements of time travel and the existence and use of magic.
Would this book appeal to a 15 year old today? Absolutely no idea. I do know that I devoured it whenever I got it, presumably in the early 90s. Is it a classic example of far-too-smart-for-15-year-old characters? Absolutely, but I would argue that this sort of too-smart is part of the reason that kids like I was (read a lot, often feel uncomfortable with their peers, can’t fully explain their ambitions, etc) read books like this.
Also it’s 250 pages long and only took me a few hours to read. Caswell’s writing style is straightforward, while still carrying the beauty of the Welsh landscape and some of the terror Megan/Merryll confronts. (Although I do think one of the things lacking is appropriate acknowledgement of the grief Megan would be feeling for her dead parents.) I have no regrets for having read it again.
LOTR: Book 3
Finally I am back to this! Here’s a link to Book 2 (and thence to Book 1).
And now we get the split: the Fellowship has broken: Frodo and Sam have gone East; Merry and Pippin have been nicked by Orcs; Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas choose to follow along after. Boromir is dead. And for this entire book we have only those second two sets; for a while, we have no knowledge of Frodo and Sam and the Ring, just like their friends. Which is really quite a remarkable choice, when you think about it: in theory this story is meant to be all about the Ring, isn’t it? But we go 170-odd pages with no knowledge of its whereabouts!
Other thoughts:
- I still really enjoy following Aragorn et al as they track the Orcs and hobbits. There’s something delightful to me in the description of the land, and of the chase.
- My attitude is now very coloured by the film-version of the Rohirrim – and especially their theme – but I do find them a magnificent, romantic, people. Dreadfully violent and arrogant, of course, but nonetheless. Tolkien captures their bravery and their pride, as well as the sense that the time for those attitudes might be coming to an end.
- Everything about Fangorn Forest, and Fangorn himself, delights me. The way Tom Bombadil’s forest is a foreshadowing of this one delights me; that much of the forest is untouched by other people delights me; Fangorn’s stoicism that can also be kindled to action delights me.
- I cannot imagine how it must have been for the first readers to have Gandalf back; I do not recall my own reaction. The metaphors-made-real of purifying by fire and ordeal are resonant and powerful, and I still find it awe-some.
- I’m sure readers who come to this from having seen the films must be very surprised by the swiftness of the Helm’s Deep battle. I do love that section in the film, don’t get me wrong; but I also like that it’s actually just another part of the action, and then the key folks go off to Isengard.
- At some point in high school, I won a book prize (okay, I won a lot of book prizes; but this is the only specific one I remember). The librarian knew me fairly well (unsurprisingly), and she chose the prizes, so I was given David Day’s Tolkien’s Ring – a beautiful hardcover version. It might have been the first time I read anything vaguely academic (it’s not academic) about Anglo-Saxon people, and about the Norse. Most importantly, that book introduced me to the idea that there are two moments in LOTR where Tolkien is chastising Macbeth, and the first one occurs at Helm’s Deep when the Huorns arrive and deal with the Orcs. That is how one should have Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, Mr Shakespeare.
The last couple of times I’ve watched these films, I’ve often skipped through the Frodo and Sam sections. They’ve become the least interesting parts for me. Partly it’s the lack of action, and also the lack of colour; partly it’s that I find them so earnest and (genuinely) pathetic – I find them too hard to watch. But now there’s 150 or so pages of nothing but Frodo and Sam and Sméagol/ Gollum.
Beyond the Graves Waits Mist and Sea
Read courtesy of NetGalley. It’s out in September.
The short version is I liked the ideas behind this quite a lot, but I found the execution lacking.
The positives:
Sometimes I like a chosen one story. There’s something a bit cosy, a bit comforting, about reading a book where the main character is really special. I know it’s not for everyone, and that’s ok! So, here, Harper is a marine biologist and she’s looking for some evidence that will help show her PhD idea is real and viable rather than just a crackpot theory. So she ends up on the remote and mysterious Bell Island to do the research. She’s been a loner all of her life; her parents died when she was 13 and she’s been emotionally closed since then. Her mother was a Bell Island native, but Harper’s never been there. She’s also had weird dreams for her whole life. So yes, it’s pretty obvious there is Something Special about Harper.
Some of Kaufman’s description is pretty great. It’s a windlashed island – there’s a lot of scope for it.
The less positive:
I have some big complaints, and some smaller one.
First, it’s too long. Harper’s dreams – especially early on – and her internal agonies get repetitive.
Second, some bits are simply unbelievable. I’m not talking the existence of huldafolk or an octopus who communicates with humans; I mean someone with both a 17-century diary (which she can read with ease) AND a historical account in front of her, and she CHOOSES to go back and forth between them rather than reading one in entirety. With no explanation like ‘she’s looking for context’.
Third… I just got bored. It was very obvious very early on what some of the twists would be – which isn’t necessarily a problem, but when the book treats the reveal as a surprise, it is a problem. Harper is meant to be looking for evidence of a mysterious octopus, but there is a remarkable LACK of octopus. Also a lack of science, but that’s because of the epic storms the island faces, and that’s fine in the context of the geography.
And a small issue in the context of the story, but rather large theologically: pretty sure no one prays to “Christ the Father.” Because, uh, that’s kinda the point of Christ – that’s he’s not the Father…
Overall, I was disappointed.
Moon Over Brendle
Read c/ the publisher, Angry Robot, and NetGalley. It’s out now.
This is one of the most remarkable books I’ve read in a long time.
It’s 1968, and Joe is 11. It’s the summer holidays, which means hanging out with best friend Denny, and generally exploring his small town. One day, the pair stumble across the dying body of the local drunk, Tom Halfpenny. Then Eileen starts turning up to hang around with Denny; then Joe sneaks into a weird, semi-neglected house, getting caught by the elderly inhabitant. The old man is a science fiction writer, and for a period of 1968 he and Joe form a strange, important relationship.
Those three things sound like they should be given very different values. But when you’re eleven, they might have fairly similar weight. Indeed, Eileen maybe stealing your best friend may have the greatest import.
In terms of the book, there’s one significant point I haven’t noted yet. This is not our world. Joe is a witness: he can see the Greot, the colourful dust that flows over everything in the world, in varying hues and in different densities according to its own rules. Only witnesses can see Greot all the time – except at 3.06am, when everyone can – and an even fewer number of people can see what Greot sees; and there’s even fewer who can manipulate Greot.
The novel is written as a memoir: a man looking back over his life, the paths he followed from 1968, how the events of that year had an impact on him. It could very easily have been written in a realist style: young boy influenced by slightly mysterious older mentor. It could have been magical realism, too – did the young boy really experience something magical? Instead, Noon commits fully to the novel as fantasy. and it’s richer for it. Joe’s experiences with the Greot, understanding what it is (and is not), what it can (and can’t) do, how it impacts on other people; all of these are significant factors in his growing up. The fact that the Greot is never explained, and that otherwise this is recognisably our world, add to the beauty and delight and captivating-ness of the novel.
This novel is just stunning. I hope many people find it.
Olympus Inc novels
Kate Healey says that the Olympus Inc books are finished (for now??) so I felt I should write a brief note about them.
Take Greek mythology. Bring it into the modern world. Remove the supernatural. And remove all of the coercion and ick-ness from the love stories, while keeping (and often revealing) the ick-ness of many of the other relationships. This gives you the basic premise of the Olympus Inc stories.
The first set revolve around Olympus Inc, a publishing powerhouse, and the people who work there. The very first novel makes the Hades/Persephone story an actual delight, and you may be able to imagine just how very weird that is. It also shows up Demeter as basically a monster, and as far as I’m concerned this is now canon. We then get Aphrodite and Hephaestus, and Hera and… well. Spoilers. Around them are Odysseus and Penelope (who actually appear in an adorable prequel novella), Hermes, Hestia, and a bunch of other hilarious nods that you will get if you’re deep into the mythology and otherwise work perfectly well as side characters. You can read these novels as pure (adorable) romance novels, of course, but being able to shriek “I see what you did there, Healey!!” was a large part of the joy for me.
The second set of stories are, I think, a taller order: Healey takes three of the Trojan women and gives them happily ever afters. Which is honestly a big call, and it works incredibly well. Cassie, Xena, and Laodice all famously came to bad ends in the myths, but Healey takes their stories and writes wonderful romances.
All of these books are very, very readable. The characters are a delight and the romances make sense. They do all include some distressing things – mention of abuse, for instance, and disability-shaming, and so on. Healey deals with all of these with compassion and makes it very clear that they are Not OK.
You can find information about the books over at Kate Healey’s website.
To Ride a Rising Storm
I read this courtesy NetGalley and the publisher, Del Rey. I’m really sorry: it’s not out until January 2026.
There’s a social media joke that does the rounds occasionally, where an author is asked to explain their work in the most boring way possible. So: small fellow goes on long journey, loses family heirloom (LotR). If Moniquill Blackgoose played this game, she’d say something like “young woman goes to boarding house, makes some friends and enemies.”
It’s silly because of course there’s more to it than that. Superficially, that’s what this book – and the first in the series, To Shape A Dragon’s Breath – is about: a girl bonds with a dragon and must therefore go to a dragoneer boarding school to learn what it means to be a dragoneer. So far, so somewhat recognisable. But the world is an alternate one where Vikings took over in what we would call Britain; the story is set in what we would call North America, but it’s very different in a lot of ways. Like, for instance, the presence of dragons, and the fact that amongst other things their breath can be “shaped” in order to do some intriguing (al)chemical things. So Anequs has to go learn about all of that. But she’s not Anglish, or from another European background; she’s a “nackie” – one of the Indigenous folk of the area – and, in one of the very familiar turns Blackgoose employs, she and her people have in no way been embraced by the colonisers.
All of this is what happens in the first book. As with many boarding school books, this second one is in the second year of school – Anequs is 16, her dragon Kasaqua is big enough to ride but not fly, and society is starting to come to turns with two nackie dragoneers. The book is concerned with both personal and political issues – although Anequs, as with many in a position like hers, would recognise “the personal is political” as being a lived reality. So Anequs must navigate friendships that don’t always make sense and people who don’t rate her abilities and Anglish expectations of how she will comport herself, and what is respectable. At the same time, there is a growing group of people in wider society who are unhappy with how their state is being governed (ie too leniently for their tastes), and Anequs becomes something of a symbol they can oppose.
As with the first book, this one is easy to read: the pacing is perfect, the conversations are believable, the characters are engaging. There are parts where I was very angry about what was being said and done, and I’m not going to lie: it feels like a particularly apropos moment for this novel to be coming out. Highly recommended.
City of Dancing Gargoyles
I read this because Ian Mond told me to. I mean, not personally or directly, but he definitely recommended it within my hearing, and I took that to heart. I am very, very glad that I did.
This is not a linear narrative. As I was reading, I was trying to figure out what it reminded me of, and I finally realised: it’s Christopher Priest’s The Islanders. It’s not identical, but there’s a similarity in the way it tells a story through vignettes and moments. It’s got a bit more traditional story-telling thrown in there than the Priest, I’ll admit, but the comparison is still valid. Especially since I loved both.
The book is set at some point in the future – not too far future, there are no galactic empires; but also not quite tomorrow (sometime early in the 2100s-ish). Something… odd… has happened in the USA (insert joke here and then move on); something alchemical, perhaps. Previously inert things have been affected – built things, and natural things. The title gives you a suggestion of one way things have been changed. There are also towns where trees shoot guns, and a city where chocolates glare at you, where books fret, where blankets cringe and candles sob. Why? Absolutely no idea. Part of the story is told in communications between Meena Gupta and Joseph Evans to their boss, Manfred Himmelblau, as they go exploring and reporting on these places. Part of it is the experience of M and E – two gargoyles searching for their place in this new world. And part of it is about Dolores and her mother Rose, who are likewise looking for safety and community.
It’s a beautiful book. It’s about identity, and dealing with change and opposition and the weird, and finding community. It’s somehow also about the things that are already remarkable in our world by imagining how things might go really (really weird). An utter delight.
You can get it from the publisher.
The Green Man series
I’ve been aware of this series for a few years, but never got around to reading them. Then I found out that Cheryl, of Wizard’s Tower Press, was going to have a table at WorldCon in Glasgow – where I would also be present – and I knew it was finally time to give it a go. I picked up the first book – Actual Paper! – and read it in early September. In a day. And then I bought the next two ebooks… and I read them pretty quickly… and then I caved to the inevitable and bought books 4, 5 and 6 in ebooks, knowing that this was a series I would be consuming in entirety.
All of which is pretty convincing evidence that I am loving this series. Another indication: I am very glad there’s a 7th book coming out this year.
The series follows Dan Mackmain, son of a dryad mother and human father; a carpenter by trade, who moves around following jobs (until he gets ongoing work a couple books in). Having greenwood blood, he can see things ordinary humans can’t – like boggarts and hobs, and dryads and nereids in their natural form, black shucks and wood woses: basically the things out of British folklore. He also seems to have been singled out by the Green Man as the go-to human for when bad things are happening either to, or because of, those folk: murder, mayhem, and other inconveniences. Over the course of the six books he has developed connections across Britain both with actual mythical creatures (dryads, mermaids, nereids, swan maids) and with humans who are either like him (offspring of human/not human couples) or who, somehow, have knowledge of that other world. Together, they basically act to make the world safer whenever issues arise.
The series is set in the here and now, which was clear from the technology, but I don’t think McKenna ever actually specified a year in the early books. Which means she could just have kept writing as if it were 2019 forever. Or she could have chosen to make this a completely alternate world. Instead, the fourth book – which came out in 2021 – talks explicitly about Covid, lockdowns, social distancing… it’s all there. I think it might be only the second book I’ve read (after John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society) which includes the plague. And that’s largely on me, and the sort of books I read (I do not regret this fact); but it still made it quite remarkable to read, and something I really valued. The other thing I continue to find intriguing across the books is the amount of mundanity that McKenna includes – and I mean this in a good way. Characters are in a cafe; they read the menu, they order, they eat, they pay. There’s a great deal of observed everyday-ness that makes the whole story feel real.
I have no idea whether the stories across these books are building to some grand finale – there have been some hints that maybe some of the otherworldly types are becoming restless, because of something stirring – or whether this is going to be an ongoing crime series as Dan needs to deal with yet another unexpectedly real creature (I don’t know my British folklore well enough to know what hasn’t been included yet, but I’m sure the Celtic fringes in particular will have a lot to offer). I think I would like to see some grand denouement… but who am I kidding, I can totally imagine reading several more of these books even if there isn’t.
The Green Man series is immensely fun: a fast-paced mystery/crime element with a delightful dose of folklore, characters who are generally charming and enjoyable to be around, and engaging writing that means I’ve read pretty much every book in a day. Highly recommended.
History in Flames: the Destruction and Survival of Medieval Manuscripts
Read via NetGalley. It’s out in August 2024.
This book is highly engaging, thoughtful, sometimes depressing, and overall wonderful.
It’s also occasionally snarky. To whit: “On 19 July 1870 France declared war on Prussia (this was a time when states still officially declared war).”
One of the things that people who have never studied history don’t really think about is just how much we don’t know about the past. And that that lack is not for want of trying, but because the sources simply aren’t available. And that sometimes, that lack isn’t because people in the past didn’t bother to record it, but because the sources have been “lost”. Sometimes “lost” means the sources succumbed to time and the environment; sometimes folks re-used the medium for other purposes (binding other books, or for bullet casings – which makes me weep). And sometimes, as in the focus of this book, they are destroyed when humans destroy archives and libraries during military campaigns. The examples are from France, Ireland, Italy and Germany – he is frank, in the introduction, about the focus being narrowly European and medieval; that’s his area, after all.
The book starts with an overview of how we know what we know – a good reminder for the expert, an easy intro for the novice. It then uses one of the most famous European examples of how narrowly some of our information has avoided being lost: the manuscript of Beowulf, whose story gives me nightmares every time I read it (one manuscript, nearly lost several times… we were THIS CLOSE to not having Grendel and Grendel’s mother and MY GOODNESS imagine how different European literature would be).
The meat of the book is in four chapters that focus on four specific case studies – four instances of the military destroying archives or libraries. In two cases, Bartlett focuses on one significant object that was lost in the destruction, as a specific example of what we used to have; in the other two, he focuses on the entire oeuvre that was destroyed, and what that means for our knowledge of an era. So each chapter has an explanation of why folks were fighting, and why the specific place (Dublin, Chartres) was affected; then discusses what was in the library/archive – how and when it was made, why it was important, how it got to be in that place. And then the process of destruction (being blown up from the inside; bombs dropping from above).
All of that is what I expected from the title, and the overview. What I had overlooked is that the subtitle also says “and Survival”. So each chapter also includes how scholars tried to save the information otherwise lost: finding examples of transcripts, lithographs, and photographs of the now-destroyed work; finding copies of letters and so on in other archives; and so on. Within the horror, therefore, at losing an enormous swathe of Irish medieval history or the largest Mappa Mundi, there is a small amount of joy and gratitude at how people tried to mitigate the loss. And that makes me very thankful.
This is an excellent book for the reader who has a keen interest in medieval history; for those interested in the construction of knowledge; and for those with a broad general interest in history. I loved it.
