#The Vengeance Trilogy

[akina-va]

Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone

[u546i]

fan art for one of my favorite films.

[magneticros]

Lady Vengeance (2005) Dir. Park Chan-wook

[thundergrace]

BOY OH BOY DID I MISS A LOT OF NEWS!!!

First of all:

Second of all:

Book 3!!! June 25th!!

Third of all:

[geekhead79]

Evolution of the Batman on the big screen

[davyreads]

review of tomi adeyemi’s children of anguish and anarchy

zélie confronts her final enemy, the king of a foreign land who hunts her heart.

"i'm not ready for our story to end."

children of anguish and anarchy is the final entry in tomi adeyemi's legacy of orisha trilogy, and it was preceded by commercial and critical successes children of blood and bone and children of virtue and vengeance. this final book continues where the second book left off, and readers are reunited with zélie, tzain, amari and inan, as they fight to free their people and save the life of an unknown girl. the plight of the maji has always been reminiscent of the struggles of the black community, but this is made even clearer and more visceral in this final installment.

keep reading for my personal thoughts (there will be spoilers)

the story follows zélie as she frees the maji from the captivity of those known only as the skulls, for the masks that they wear over their faces. after freeing her people, during the process of which an artefact from the skulls is embedded into her chest, zélie searches for a mystery girl and aims to save her life and protect her from the skulls and their monstrous power. whilst she does this with tzain and amari, inan returns with the rest of the maji to orisha to warn the rest of their people of the threat posed by the skulls. upon returning, they find their people still at war with one another, and they very quickly understand that in order to stand a chance against their new foes, they need to stop their infighting and unite. meanwhile, zélie, tzain and amari come across an island of people with different and unique gifts, and they find the girl they have been looking for. there are many time jumps, and a sacrifice made by one of our protagonists, but by the end, the maji and zélie’s new friend, mae’e, defeat the skulls.

the aspect of the trilogy that i really enjoyed, and that i have always enjoyed, has been the worldbuilding, and this final book carries on that legacy, and expands it to different continents. we’re introduced to new worlds and new abilities and, briefly, new systems of magic, with references to different cultures and mythologies. this is something that has never been an issue for this series, and i appreciate that this is something we get to enjoy to the very end of it.

another thing is that, as i said in the small blurb i wrote, the references to struggles faced by the black community from outside the community and within it have always been part and parcel of the series, and these themes have driven the story in an authentic way that allows readers to relate to the characters. i truly appreciate these inclusions and it helps the series maintain a flavour of what initially drew readers in to begin with. unfortunately, this final entry was a major disappointment to me, and it let me down greatly. the issues that i will discuss are the pacing, the characters, the story itself and its place in the trilogy.

i knew almost immediately that something wasn’t right, because the pacing was quite fast, and it felt abnormal. around 100 pages into the book, our characters have already staged a successful revolt without powers (mostly; with the exception of tzain, curiously); in any of the other books in the trilogy, this might not have really been an issue but since this book is shorter than the other 2, this is ultimately less than a third of the way through, and with the way the rest of the story is written and paced, this speed feels unnecessary, and it doesn’t feel like there was any point to this, because there was no clear compromise on any other aspect that could possibly explain this. there are many time jumps and skips and whilst these are good, and should be used, this just left the book feeling a bit spotty. when i think of my experience reading the book, there aren’t any actual gaps in my memory, it’s just that the timing of the novel is really bad, as much as it pains me to say. we don’t see any actual training for the characters, with the exception of a singular scene for zélie and tzain, if they can really be called that, but this takes me to my next grievance: the characters.

there is no development, and certain characters just straight up disappear (roën is nowhere to be found…?). the characters don’t change whatsoever. zélie is still zélie, amari is still amari (except she’s explicitly queer now, which i will discuss), and inan is still inan. tzain doesn’t really change either, he just gets a weapon (made from his own rib, which is pretty cool, i have to say), and whilst i can appreciate that he has felt powerless throughout the series as he has had to wait on the sidelines whilst the main action happens, this almost comes out of nowhere, and it felt like there was no buildup. i might even go as far as saying that there might have been a few out-of-character moments for some characters (inan consistently making terrible decisions even though he’s the closest we have to a military tactician was annoying to witness). this doesn’t seem as big of an issue as other aspects that i will discuss further, but it’s aggravating that with all these new threats and discoveries, everyone stays the same. inan sacrificing himself at the end of the novel felt like a very cheap way to shock the reader rather than it feeling like a necessary part of the story; in the book, it’s explained (kind of terribly) that inan must exchange his breath of life for zélie’s, and it is for that reason that inan dies and zélie lives, however it felt incredibly cheap and weak because nothing has changed about inan over the course of the novel to truly make us feel emotional at his death. it felt a bit like the ending of netflix’s chilling adventures of sabrina when nick scratch kills himself because it felt less like a needed part of the book and more like an attempt at shocking the viewers. i also think the book suffers from having too many perspectives, and i truly feel that tzain’s perspective was insignificant, especially seeing as with his point of view, we still know close to nothing about his training and what his experience in new gaia is like. this was really disappointing to read and very very annoying.

as i mentioned earlier, amari is explicitly confirmed to be queer, and many have read her as such since the first book, a popular pairing being zélie x amari. however, as much as i love queer stories, specifically black and african queer stories, this felt very lacklustre. amari meets mae’e and they pretty much fall in love instantly, with a short and uninteresting throwaway line from tzain where he remarks that amari looks at mae’e the same way she used to look at him (pg. 270). personally, this wasn’t very satisfying, and i can’t tell if it’s because the romance itself wasn’t convincing or if, in the context of the rest of the novel, this was just disappointing. the villain of this book is also very uninteresting and it got to a point whilst i was reading that i was waiting for the book to end because i felt so unstimulated by it, which really upsets me.

my final grievance that i will discuss is how well this novel works as an end to the trilogy, and the story itself. in short, i think this book was an incredibly disappointing and dissatisfying end to a beloved trilogy, and it truly hurts to say that, because there aren’t many times where i will see my culture written with such love and written so beautifully. this trilogy, in my opinion, really should have been a duology, and it should’ve ended after children of virtue and vengeance, perhaps with an epilogue that explored how their world was changed by the return of magic and how they are working to rebuild their country. this final instalment was so inconsequential, and really did not change much about the world of the trilogy, and because we were being introduced to so many new things in the shortest book of the trilogy, everything felt a bit out of place and time. nothing felt earned or deserved, and the only death that really moved me was one that didn’t even appear in the book (i miss you, imani). the epilogue was also very weak, in my opinion, because whilst it promises the hope of rebuilding lives and homes and orisha as a country, i think it would have been better placed at the end of the second book as it would have allowed the series to end on a high note.

[epically-ace-attorney]

Give this a huge spoiler warning for the vengance saga but i need to know

Who is the poseidon equivalent who ends up swiss cheese because of phoenix? Who is getting his immortal ass kicked while miles looks out at the storm hoping its a sign

Okie dokie! Spoilers underneath!

Manfred von Karma is our Poseidon equivalent :))

Don't you think it's so fun to imagine him getting beaten down like that? To be stabbed over and over and over again at the hands of Phoenix for even remotely mentioning being a threat to Miles?

I think it's great personally :D

~ Wel

[jamie-is-out-of-ideas]

Spoilers for Epic: The Musical and the Hatchetfield Trilogy undercut

I was thinking that Epic is probably the musical with highest kill count and then I remembered what happened in TGWDLM and Black Friday

[new-44556678]

BatBale: I'm Batman!

Battinson: I'm Vengeance!

Batfleck: I'm Rich!

BatKeaton: I took down a Kryptonian giant without prep time just a few months ago when I was still 71 years and years after I retired!

[panchibust]

For every comrade!

Every one of my friends!

And Almost all of the jedi that were slaughtered by your hand!

SIX HUNDRED STRIKE!! 😡🎵🎼

Rey:

[hawkogurl]

Wip of a certain extremely normal man

[nemo-of-house-hamartia]

I already knew what I was getting into when I agreed to my brother's proposal to have a streaming session of the 2000s trilogy of Star Wars.

Now I feel a HUGE ARTISTIC ITCH that I need to scratch.

WITH TWO COUPLES IN PARTICULAR, FML.

[katharynmarie]

Oldboy 4K restoration screenings start tonight 🔨

[magneticros]

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) Dir. Park Chan-wook

[dykekingofhell]

lady vengeance (2005) // please please please let me get what i want

[regallibellbright]

So I spent the last, like, two and a half hours ranking Professor Layton schemes/reveals by some combination of their fundamental absurdity and also how distracting the devastation that logically unfolded from them is to keep me from enjoying said absurdity (so Everyone Was Robots takes first place for actually being an unreserved net positive in a world where robots can canonically have souls, and The Underground London-Destroying Vengeance Mecha is a very close second because objectively there's no way this DIDN'T kill a ton of people but it is also just an unending nesting doll of unhinged absurdities, I'm not even scratching the SURFACE of how thoroughly batshit it is and I'm not even giving it credit for facilitating the bit with the Laytonmobile, but video games peaked in that moment.)

And then Tumblr told me it was too long before I finished, so. :/

You are spared my opinions, for now.