#even before we get into the ‘armand murdered my daughter’ of it all

[mmelolabelle]

I don’t know why people are so panicky about Louis’ “burdened out of spite” comment? It’s just Louis interpretation of what happened – we have no idea what he actually knows, much less how he used that information to come to that conclusion.

My brothers and sisters have we not just watched two seasons of a TV show where one of the main drivers of the entire plot is the fact that Louis is Wrong™️? Relax.

[knightotoc]

Just finished IWTV book, so now I can say the differences between the book, movie, and show. The movie is quite accurate to the book, while the show is more original. I love them all quite a lot, but I think the show is my favorite since it's the most romantic. Long post with spoilers below the cut.

book:

The depth of Louis' interiority, especially his thoughts about religion, can only be found in the book. I am also ex-Catholic so this is high-key my shit. Especially knowing Anne Rice went back and forth later in life. I can relate. Louis wants to talk about his feelings with other vampires, but Lestat and Claudia aren't interested, which is the main reason Louis is attracted to Armand. Where is the Brideshead Revisited crossover?? Louis get in a bisexual love triangle with the Flytes for me🙏

I learned in the Matt Baume video on Anne Rice that she wrote IWTV while grieving her daughter, who died of leukemia just before her sixth birthday. This feeling of grief, reflected so clearly in Claudia, is the most moving and unique aspect of the book, far more than anything between the adult characters.

One reason this feeling is watered-down in both adaptations is that in the book, Claudia is only 5/6, the age of Anne's real daughter. In the movie she is 10 and in the show 14. Of course it would be impossible to find a 6 year old actress who could act with the maturity of an 80-year-old woman. But the character is even more pitiful and bizarre as a little child than as one nearing puberty.

In the book, Lestat is shown to have survived the murder attempt pretty early on, and he keeps jump-scaring Louis and Claudia on their adventures. I prefer the movie's version where they hold off on this reveal. Though of course I always love to see him, lol

In the book, I got the impression that Lestat and Louis are both bi, but Lestat prefers men and Louis prefers women. Still, their motivations aren't driven by sexuality in a straightforward way. For example, Lestat's ideal prey is a young man, because he loves to destroy their potential. Louis feels something like love for a few women characters, because he feels empathy for their misfortunes.

The adaptations soften/change Louis' status as a slave-owner; in the movie, he frees his slaves, and in the book he just flees. As much as Louis is a soft-hearted quasi-feminist, defined by his guilt and regret, he is still racist and close-minded in most ways. This seems realistic to me.

I did think it was interesting and cool that the enslaved people can tell Louis and Lestat aren't human, while the other plantation owners and even Lestat's dad have no idea. But we don't get their perspective, just Louis' racist assumptions.

Yeah in the book Lestat has a dad! It is rather confusing since Lestat explains nothing, but it creates some great melodrama. I guess I have to read the next one and hope for a backstory reveal.

Fun spooky detour into Eastern Europe! I hope the show goes there in season 2.

Louis and Armand's discussions are really cool. I especially loved Louis' monologues after Claudia's death. There wasn't room for these discussions in the movie, but I feel like it'll be a main focus in season 2 of the show.

movie:

Like I said, the movie is impressively accurate, and a beautiful work of art on its own. The best innovation is holding off on the Lestat reveal until almost the very end. This makes it look like their murder attempt really did a number on him, and it took decades and decades of rat-eating to even drag himself out of the swamp. I like that.

The movie also has a more exciting and ridiculous ending, in which Lestat attacks the reporter in his car and drives away to Guns N' Roses. The book ends with the reporter hurrying off to find Lestat himself. It's funnier and more awesome if Lestat is the one driving the plot and the car. Pleased to meet you :D

"How avant-garde." Best line in the movie, and it's not from the book!

Since the movie cut out most of the minor characters, there isn't as much evidence for Louis' bisexuality. Louis seems more like, gay but closeted. And Lestat seems more like, gay but misogynist, so he'll prey on women just for sport lol.

I'm a Fight Club guy so I love that this is, like, a reverse companion movie (this time, Brad Pitt is the pushover in a dangerous gay duo)

show:

This is the only version that is clearly gay. But this dynamic is the same: Louis wants to talk about things, and Lestat does not. In this case, the focus of these discussions is not vampirism or religion but their relationship. Louis points out that he is gay and Lestat is bi. Perhaps it's just because I saw this version first, but this is my favorite version of their sexualities. The show simply spends more time with this dynamic, and how it affects everything, including their interracial relationship and openness in society.

In the book, Lestat is a talented but soulless musician. He can play anything, but without heart. In the show, music is Lestat's one genuine connection to humanity (even if this connection just leads him to kill musicians who don't impress him). I believe later books go more into Lestat as a musician, so I'll have more thoughts on this later.

Since the reporter is cynical, old, and dying, this creates a much more compelling conversation within the framing device. He holds Louis to task with a forcefulness that rivals Lestat. It is a clever way of modernizing the story, since Daniel references their last interview in the 70s (when the book was published), and you are meant to wonder which version is more truthful.

Since Claudia is 14, she can pass as an adult, and she is able to go on her own rather disastrous adventure. It is exciting, terrifying, and sad, and a welcome addition for this character, though it is much different than the book's helpless, heartless Claudia.

The Catholicism in the show is flashier, but not as interesting as the book. For example, in the book, Louis is haunted not just by Paul's death, but Louis' failure to meet Paul's faith-driven monetary demands. In the show, Paul's ideas seem like more of an annoyance. Maybe there will be more religious doubt in season 2, but I don't really expect it.

In the book, it seems like Louis and Claudia throw Lestat in the swamp since it's faster and more thorough than fire. In the show, the oven they use is a major plot point, and Louis can't bear to put Lestat's body in it because he still loves him. Instead they throw Lestat in the trash, which is one of my favorite tropes (see: Maul in The Clone Wars, Soldier 1998). This is just one of the many ways the show complicates and deepens Louis and Lestat's bond.

I feel like the show is more believable and has more deepness in general, since it's a smart retrospective on an old franchise and a response to decades of vampire fun in pop culture. For example, in the show Louis has volunteer humans to feast upon, and it's very "safe, sane, and consensual," versus the universally predatory relationships in the book and movie. Because we all know now that if vampires were real, and they were hot and rich, they could get all the blood they want without hurting anyone. An ethical vampire like Louis isn't impossible anymore. Compared to other billionaires, he's a pretty decent guy.

So, I'd say the book has the most profound perspective on grief, the movie has better structure, and the show has the most complex romance.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hellooo the new clip has me screaming!

Okay so what do we think is going on with Nicky? If that is him his turning appears quite differently with how it is described in the books! It looks like armand will be telling a very different story on how Nicky was turned and how things developed after. 😬

Also! What is going on with Madeleine? The shot with the child's legs and the blood is highly indicative- is that her past??

Lastly Louis keeps getting attacked by things 😅 let him live

Heyyy!!

Oh god yes, it's so gritty? Dark? Harrowing? ALREADY???

Re Nicki: Oh I BET Armand will tell the story with Nicolas (and his hands and subsequent death) a bit differently. I mean... Lestat wasn't there when Armand restrained Nicolas and chopped off his hands... an event already foreshadowed in season 1.

So if the "nails" observation holds, then that could be that scene. Nicolas mad, restrained, and then... (otherwise it could be the kidnapping, as theorized before).

I do not think they will change the turning (of Nicolas). I think they will omit Gabrielle (in s2) - but Nicki's and Lestat's relationship (and especially the fallout after turning) is too important in the grand scheme of things to change it. However, of course it will be interesting to see how Armand perceived it! (And since we know they play with the POV's...)

And yes, the dangling child's legs ... ugh.

THAT hit me hardest, to be honest. I mean, I know they're fearless, but... it's going to be harsh.

My first thought was that it might be Claudia post surgery, but the skin seems too light (even with given lighting), so... maybe Madeleine's daughter? Sister? Given her and Claudia's relationship (whatever they'll make of it) it seems too fitting to be unrelated.

Now the shot with Madeleine could be connected - the expression would certainly fit - but... I think it's a bit too early to say. There is a lot to fear for Madeleine after all, unfortunately.

And re Louis....

:/ Louis is not going to have a good time next season.

Remember when Jacob said the "Murder Mansion" was one of the happy moments for Louis next season? Yeah....

What did he say in the EW article?

"fresh out of the frying pan into the fire."

There is the infatuation phase for Loumand coming up.

And... then.... :/ (EDIT: that shot of Louis seems to be "revenant era" though, so likely first ep, in Eastern Europe, we'll see.)

[lou-iz-stat]

So……. 2 MORE WEEKS!… and it still does not feel real to me that we are going to get season 2 so soon. I am sure it will destroy me and create an everlasting wound deep in my soul.

Anyway episode 6! I won’t lie this the episode that I have watched the most out of the rest. I have probably watched it over 15 times and that is not an exaggeration. It’s my fav episode because there are just so many iconic moments in this one.

Let’s not waste another moment. Get into this!

IWTV S1 E6: Like Angels Put in Hell by God

This ep starts with Louis looking real bad as he tries to recover from the drop inflicted on him by Lestat.

He definitely has PTSD from the fall 😔

At least we get the ‘cloud gift’ name drop.

We also have Dr. Fareed which is a character that is most prominent in the Prince Lestat trilogy I believe. I do not know if this is true I have not read that far yet.

We then go back to the story and Claudia is making Louis chase a goat for his recovery.

And here comes Lestat being where he is not wanted. The throwing of his coffin out the balcony is everything 🤣

When Lestat comes to give the car to Louis I must admit he looks so so good 😩 But I still don’t want Louis to let him back in! Because I know he has not changed even though he says so.

But I do believe that if Louis did tell him to leave and to never see him again Lestat would listen! But he doesn’t tell him that because he still can’t let Lestat go even after everything he has done. It’s too much!

Lestat is crazy for what he does with ‘Come to Me’ but I love when Sam sings it ❤️

And this what. I am talking about when I say that so much of this episode is so iconic! Swimming a dirty ass river to break into your exe’s place and telling Antoinette to leave HER HOUSE so that you can have violent hate sex while she is just outside listening to it all. It’s just so messy and insane! Gotta love it

Sam Reid is just so so good in the scene where they are questioning Lestat! His acting is just *chef’s kiss*

And everything he tells them of how he became a vampire is true 😭

“…I loved Lestat with a wounded one.” 😭😭😭

Yes Claudia you should baaaaaa at him!

Nooooo Claudia what he said about Magnus was true!

More Nicky name dropping this episode. And knowing the backstory with that I just wince at the whole conversation they are having. But what can I say she really is her father’s daughter

And of course he didn’t kill Antoinette being a brat so much so that he did not like being told what to do. And yes Louis he is ‘all kinds of fucked up’ and this why I love this show. Everybody is fucked up just some more than others.

Ugh the scene where Claudia tries to get Louis to leave with her breaks my heart.

Then we go back to modern day and this is where in the original interview Daniel wanted to be turned. And ohhhhh Armand is not happy that Louis offers to turn Daniel now hehe

The utter shock I had when Claudia is just sitting in the townhouse instead of on a train. 😱

But oh, oh! The train scene is everything. It is just so fucked up and scary! This show is in the horror genre after all. And that doesn’t stop this scene from being iconic.

From “Tickets, please!” To “Claudia, you left without saying goodbye…. Again” it just lives rent free in my head.

God he such an asshole to her!

And she defeats him at chess at the same time that she is plotting his murder! That’s some queen shit honestly.

When Lestat is shouting in French, if you ever look up what he is saying it is actually so unsettling

Awwww our boy (Daniel) is eeppy

I don’t care what anyone says I love the 70s flashback.

And boom! As we all know Rashid is actually someone Daniel has met before! Shocker! Yeah yeah it’s Armand we know this.

Yay! I got through another one! We only have one more rewatch then s2! I cannot believe it and again it does not feel real at all! I am sure by next week I’ll be able to write more since I won’t have as much school work left to do.

Thanks for reading

14 days!!!!! Life is worth living!

[pynkhues]

I do think there are extreme lies in Armand's fanfic. The whole thing was narrated to depict Lestat as a user, liar and manipulator who is incapable of love. Specifically for Louis's sake. So that Louis thinks "Lestat is, was and always will be for Lestat".

To me the implication that Lestat manipulated Armand to gain power and that he taunted Nicki by publicly fucking Armand in front of him is huge. And then that he abandoned both of them. That's pretty big departure from the truth in my opinion. I think Lestat would take big umbrage with that story too. Especially from Armand who sexually assaulted him, psychologically finished off Nicki and then murdered his daughter.

Also I don't get why they wouldn't go with Armand's established characterisation of being an opportunistic liar and master gaslighter in season 3? This is directed at anon who said that it would be weird if they "repeate" it in season 3. I think making Armand's fanfic be somehow true would be retcon of epic proportions.

(x)

I agree with a lot of your points here in that Armand had the intention of making Lestat look manipulative and self-interested, and that they'll keep the thread of Armand being an opportunistic liar and a gaslighter in s3 given it's so integral to his character in the early books. That said, I think the show's very invested in the fact that truth is subjective, and Armand's lies might feel extreme to Lestat (and he's right to take umbrage given everything, as you said) and perhaps the audience once we get Lestat's perspective, but I also think there's probably an emotional truth to them for Armand that feels real to him?

Armand does feel abandoned by Lestat in the books, he does think his connection to Lestat is greater than Lestat's to Nicki's, which he diminishes frequently and often, and Lestat does leave Nicki with Armand. Does he just disappear as Armand describes it? No, of course not, and there's a lot of baggage rolled up in that decision even before it happens, but I think for Armand, he wouldn't necessarily see himself as telling extreme lies, rather extrapolating on his own personal sense of the truth.

I do wonder if the fact that Armand paints Lestat as using him for power will be informed by the fact that Lestat comes to Paris specifically to be healed by Armand's power as he does in the book? While Armand's reflecting on a specific time period with Daniel, he's of course experienced a lot more since then and it could be a really interesting beat of foreshadowing that again echoes for Armand a personal truth even if it wasn't one at the time he was talking about. Lestat does want his power to heal himself when he returns to Paris after all, and Armand does once again feel rejected and abandoned by Lestat not wanting him, to y'know. Disastrous effects, haha.

But yeah, I mean, Armand is very much one of the antagonists at this point in the story too, and while that changes in future installations, it's very much a part of his character in both IWTV and TVL and I think the show will play around with that, but I don't think they'll change it.

[madly-empirical]

Surprises from reading IWTV for the first time I knew the TV show was a reinvention/reinterpretation from the books, but just coming off of re-watching the movie there were some things that I was surprised to find out: - Louis helps Lestat kill someone before he's turned him into a vampire (???) - Louis kills Lestat's father but makes him forgive him first without knowing the full story (it's like a mercy killing because the old man is dying so that "merciful death" nickname is a whole thing isn't it) - Louis kills a priest for being understandably annoyed when someone confesses to have been killing for a hundred years (did you think he wouldn't be offended be serious louis) - Louis says killing people was not a moral, but an aesthetic choice (very surprised, I thought the killing people was the main point of conflict but no?)

- There's a subplot with another wealthy slave-owning family where Louis tries to stop Lestat from killing a young man and is involved with his sister named Babette when he fails (it doesn't go well for her...) - Louis knows that Lestat wanted to be priest but was taken out of school by his father - Lestat calls books "mortal nonsense" (lol) - Louis' late brother who had religious visions also had yellow hair so parallels - Louis is weird about money (he's spending all my money, but he never has trouble getting his own, I have to manage everything, I keep him dependent on me, etc., etc.) - Lestat massacres the slaves on his way out, and Louis appears to join him (Very hard to tell for sure) - Louis drags nearly everything about Lestat except for his physical appearance - Lestat falls asleep at the opera (they're long Louis!) - Lestat loves Macbeth and will shout lines from the play at passersby on the way home (unfortunately that's the love of your life) - Claudia is colder and creepier in the book (it's interesting that she never plays music after Lestat is gone...) - Lestat threatens to kill Claudia all the time behind her back and at least once to her face - Louis notices that Lestat is afraid when Claudia asks questions about vampires stuff - Lestat, in a clear fib, tells them there's no other vampires besides them - Claudia tells Louis that she's going to kill Lestat and he's in the room where it all goes down - Claudia gots the hubris ("Do you think I will have my power and his when I take him?") - She is also super convinced that Lestat is dead the second time, but girl why? - Claudia and Louis have troubles before Armand shows up stemming from the murder of Lestat (she did tell you what she was going to do!) - Louis pretends to a vampire hunter to explain some weird stuff in Eastern Europe where they find mindless vampires (like some else said, why would you bring your 5 year old daughter to the vampire hunt??) - When they can't find any other vampires like them, Louis is like I might have believed that we were the only ones if Lestat was the kind of person to have been some kind of serious sorcerer — but he clearly ain't (lol) - Louis is totally head-over-heels ignoring all red flags and ready to go as soon as Armand shows up (even after Armand is like killing vampires is exciting that's why it's forbidden and btw I used my powers to influence you to make Madeline a vampire...) - Madeline is a dollmaker and makes elegant miniature furniture for Claudia so she lives like a fairy queen - Armand keeps going on and on about a tower and how a healthy vampire would survive falling off it (-_-) - Armand is like yes, mindless vampire are called revenants and it's like how do you know that but no one asks - Lestat is in Paris when Claudia is killed, clearly tricked and confused he thinks he can take Louis home with him (He is also afraid of Armand. Insane that there's like ten years between the publication of IWTV and TVL, it's so clear that something went down between the two of them but there's zero hints in IWTV on what it was) - Lestat is frantic and weepy when Louis sees him in his grey gardens area. Louis thinks he is dying the way vampires die according to Armand, he can no longer endure immortal life (maybe it was the being murdered more than once that got to him Louis? Just maybe that might have had some effect...) Overall, I found book!Louis infuriating, hypocritical, complicit (NOT passive) and kind of self-involved. Impossible to tell what it felt like to read it for the first time without having knowledge from later books. Reading TVL makes me more sympathetic towards book!Louis because there's just so much he doesn't and couldn't know — especially about Armand and his hypno-powers. Obviously, it's very likely that he was doing a similar thing to Louis to what he tried to do to Lestat. Also, Lestat's version of himself sounds exhausting. He wants to go out every night!!

[subiysu]

The curious situation of the Sanson Fourth generation

There is a lot of strange behavior in this tangled family tree. I’ll go sibling by sibling, eldest to youngest

Madeleine-Claude-Gabrielle Sanson, 

Eldest child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and his first wife Madeleine Transon. We know very little of her, but the few details we have are...Interesting. She was born in circa 1738 and married Pierre Hérisson in 1754, at the young age of fifteen. Now, here is the interesting part. This probably was not a love marriage, since he was at least 10 years older than her and lived in another city (which ment they had even less opportunity to let them know each other). 10 years isn’t a huge age gap for an adult, but she was only sixteen. Also, it is important to note that the average age of marriage at the time was not so different from today. But, for an arranged marriage, it didn’t really benefit her family that much. He was poorer than the Sanson family, and he took none of her brothers as apprentices. They had one daughter: Marie-Madeleine Geneviève Hérisson, born in 1762, when her mother was 24 years old. She herself married in 1779 to her own uncle Louis-Cyr-Charlemagne Sanson. Now, why Madeleine was married to this Pierre Hérisson, the most likely explanation to me was that her family wanted to put her out of the reach of her father’s rivals (who was handicapped at the time), who may or may not be the most scrupulous in the means to achieve their end. They were a case were the rival of an executioner beat his rival’s children in an attempt to provoque them into doing something illegal. She died in 1779, age 41.

The second child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and his first wife Madeleine Transon was Charles-Henri Sanson, born in Febuary 1739. He and he sister lost their mother the following year. At around age of 10, he was sent to a boarding school in Rouen. The boy seemed to enjoy himself there (I do have my doubts on the subject) until in 1753, his identity was recognized. He was expelled. His father tried to sent him to another school, but it didn’t last long (maximum a few months). Then, he studied at home under an certain abbé Grisel as a tutor. He also began to assist his father full time as oposed to seasonally and very occasionally. He quickly gained the reputation for being extremely clumsy on the scaffold. In winter 1754/1755 , his father was hit by a stroke, leaving his clumsy 15 year old son as his replacement. To be fair, the techniques taught by Jean-Baptiste required a lot of cordination, which his eldest son lacked.  It went...not this well. In 1757, he proceeded to the quartering of Damien. He was still kind of clumsy on the job until his fourties. In the mean-time, in 1766, he married Marie-Anne Jugier after a history of scandalous affairs with loose women and men, for that matter. There was also rumors about him continuing to have affairs with aristocrates even after his marriage. He officially became executioner in 1778, a few weeks before the death of his father. (Mind you, at the time, Jean-Baptiste was severely handicapped and couldn’t harm a fly.) His wife gave him two sons (Henri, born in 1767 and Gabriel born in 1769) (the existance of the second is debated by historians), and potencially a daughter (who may or may not have existed, simply was not his daughter). When the Revolution hit, Charles-Henri was an advocate of the guillotine, for practical and humanitarian reasons. In 1792, a tragedy hit the family: the accidental death of Gabriel by a particularly clumsy incident. The Revolution had slowly eaten away at M. Sanson’s sanity, due to the sheer number of executions (the Royal family, the Terreur and many victims of political intrigue, including one of his ex-lovers, Madame Dubarry). The execution of a certain Cécile Renault, along with fiftie other people (chosen specifically for their innocence), for attempted murder of Robespierre, in an attempt to descridit him, really drived Sanson over the edge. Cécile Renault was very child-like, both in terms of looks, intellect and personality, which could have struck his more parental cord. He eventually quitted his job in 1795, due to a nephretic colic. He died in 1806, after seeing his two grand-children and spending the last decade of his life in physical and mental . 

The third child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and the first child of his second wife Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Louis-Charles-Martin Sanson, born in 1744. He is in my eyes, the least sympathetic of this brotherhood. Little is known about his youth exept that he served as an assistant to his half-brother  until 1768, were he became executioner of Tour, and later Auxerre. He married his second wife in 1787, who was quite an agressive woman and the brother of an volunteering executioner. Unlike his brothers, Louis-Martin led a politically active career were he joined an extremist revolutionary tribunal in Tour, at the expense of his primary duties, causing a lot of butched executions. When he was (finally) arrested for his professional faillings and his sympathy for Hébert, his wife defended him quite wildly, and ended up reclaiming the head of a high placed man named Chalmel. He also got a post somewere in the South of France. It didn’t turn too well for him, since the prejudice against his profession was much stronger in the Midi. Instead of telling like an intelligent problem that he had trouble getting in and out of his house, he invented some story about being alergic to the Meditteranian climate. Naturally, it wasn’t believed. He died in 1817, leaving behind his wife and his adult son. 

The fourth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and the second child of his second wife Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson II (he had an uncle of the same name), born in 1745. He became an assistant to his brother until 1765, were he became executioner of Versailles as a replacement of his uncle of the same name. He gave this office to his older brother Charles-Henri in 1778, to take the post of questionnaire of Paris, in succession to a mysterious, not quite alive Jean-Baptiste Barré. He remained in this place until the abolition of judicial torture by Louis XVI in 1780. He kept assisting his older brother until he obtained the post of Blois in 1795, then Montpellier. He married during this year a certain Anne Françoise, devoid of surname, widow of François Fromentut. Nicolas-Charles was unable to keep any post long due to his love of the bottle. He died in 1800, of one too many alcohol poisonings.  

The fifth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and third child of his second wife, Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Louis-Cyr-Charlemagne Sanson, born in 1748. He was famous in his life for two things, one being the husband of his own niece and two, his diplomatic activities during the French Revolution. He began assisting his older brother Charles-Henri in 1760 at the age of 12. Although, how and why he was kept around his incompetent's older brother who routinely faced the risk of being lynched is frankly beyond me, especially given the fact he had a competant and adult brother-in-law. He became executioner of Provins in 1768, age of 20. In 1779, he married his own niece, who was 17 at the time, maybe during his sister’s funeral, at age 37. He became a widower in 1784, and eventually remarried a certain Marie Fare Gendron in 1792. It is more towards the Revolution that his life became...interesting. And by interesting, I mean dangerous. He became executioner of Versailles in 1790, after his post was abolished. Fearing for the future of his profession, he along with his half-brother, became the representatives of their social class, constantly doing a moutain of paper work to insure the future of themselves and their colleagues, and preferably, prevent the nomination of sadistic individuals. In the 10th of August 1792, he was imprisonned as a suspected royalist, along with two of his brothers. They were all released but he was imprisonned again at the prison of Abbaye, only to get out two days before the Septembre Massacres. After his release, he was buzier than ever before. He died in 1794, leaving behind his adult son and grand-children in abject poverty, without saving their reputation. 

The sixth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and fourth child of his second wife Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Marie-Josephe Sanson, born in 1751. In 1773, she married her first cousin Jean-Louis Sanson at the age of 22, who was competant on the scaffold but bad at paper work. She became a widow in 1794 and became a washer woman until her death in 1813. She would be one of the rare members of the family to eventually get out of infamy on her own merits. 

The seventh child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and fifth child of his second wife Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Pierre-Charles, born in 1753. We don’t know when he died. He assisted his older brother Charles-Henri, then went to live in Eastern France as a riffleur, leading a discreet, lonely and honest life until his death. 

The eighth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and sixth his second wife Jeanne-Gabriel Berger was Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Sanson, born in 1754 and who died young. 

The nineth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and seventh his second wife was Joseph-Claude Sanson, born in 1757 and who died at the young age of 22 in 1779, age 22, no spouse, no children, no charge. 

Gabrielle Sanson, youngest of the bunch, was born probably a year later. She probably died as an infant. 

Sources: 

DESMOREST, Michel et Danielle, “Dictionnaire historique et philosophique des bourreaux”

DELARUE, Jacques, “Le métier de bourreau, du Moyen Âge à aujourd’hui”

ARMAND, Frédéric, “Les bourreaux de France, du Moyen Âge à l’abolition de la peine de mort.”

MARCHAL, Gilles, “Bourreaux de Travail”

http://racineshistoire.free.fr/DOC/PDF/Dynasties-de-Bourreaux.pdf 

My history of the Renaissance course

The channel “Revue du monde”, a historical vulgarisation channel.

Also, this family tree website: https://gw.geneanet.org/geneavendeemili?lang=en&n=sanson&oc=0&p=madeleine+claude+gabrielle

https://gw.geneanet.org/antistar?lang=en&n=herisson&oc=0&p=marie+madeleine+genevieve

https://books.google.ca/books?id=6wdYK4KpO04C&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=charles-henri+sanson+n%C3%A9phr%C3%A9tique&source=bl&ots=bT6lYyNh1Z&sig=ACfU3U0WSOnLIzxAmaggCtG1J7ZNHtnDcg&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjGz7-RjezvAhUIQ80KHdG4AsMQ6AEwD3oECAUQAw#v=onepage&q=charles-henri%20sanson%20n%C3%A9phr%C3%A9tique&f=false 

[littlesmartart]

I'm not sure where to start with these vampires? Is watching Interview With The Vampire first okay? Where do I find the books? What order to I read them?

@shipsailor-pastelchild-blog

I personally watched the movie first, then read the books, and I found that works as a very good intro to the universe (though I do feel watching the movie first leaves you rather biased against poor louis, as brad manages to lose all of louis’ charm and wittiness and just makes him… whiny, compared to cruise who is an incredible lestat and utterly steals the fucking show. my first readthrough of iwtv was me just going “uughhhhh when are we getting to lestat!!” and I totally missed that louis is, in fact, a hilarious and ridiculous gay mess)

in terms of books… I’m gonna be honest, unless you’re really invested, don’t start reading these books. don’t do it. they’re gonna hurt you, and most of them aren’t even that good. if you are determined to read them, then they go:

interview with the vampire (louis’ POV: chronically depressed vampire spends whole night bitching to local sweaty twink about his ex-husband/sugar baby and their demon daughter. very Gothic, very philosophical, an intense exploration of dealing with mental illness and catholic guilt when you have an eternity to brood)

the vampire lestat (lestat’s POV: loud bratty sugar baby sets the record straight by releasing an autobiography that’s half “fuck you, I’m not the bad guy!” and half “look louis I CAN be vulnerable, oh god please take me back”. a lot more fun to read than iwtv because lestat is just… a very charming moron, though it has plenty of veeery Gothic shit, and exploration of lestat’s own mental illnesses. it also really capitalises on the meta nature of this series existing as a book series in its own universe, which is pretty cool!)

queen of the damned (lesat’s POV, but he writes sections as other characters too: lestat has kickstarted the vampire apocalypse, been kidnapped and sort of mind-whammied into some awful shit, and meanwhile we jump between a bunch of other characters as they try and deal with the madness and figure out how to bring down the Big Bad. we also get the story of armand and louis’ sweaty twinky journalist friend who wrote iwtv, daniel, which is arguably the best part of the book.)

and then… the others. you can find a list of them in order on wikipedia I believe. there are a lot. I’ve only read “tale of the body thief” (which I REGRET) and “the vampire armand” (also regret. pass the brain bleach!)

I would PERSONALLY recommend stopping with qotd, because if you leave the series there (specifically on the penultimate scene before they go to london) then everyone gets a sort of bittersweet happy ending, all the loose ends are tied up, and louis and lestat have a very satisfying and surprisingly healthy end to their relationship arc where they’re able to let go of the past and walk together into the future :,) if you really want to keep reading, then brace yourself, because quotd was the last book AR had an editor for, and in the opinion of a lot of people, the series writing and characterisation goes waaaaaay downhill from there.

warnings: do NOT read this series if you’re not comfortable with body horror, violence, murder, pretty dark philosophy, and explorations of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. AR also has big issues with casual racism, misogyny, and sexualisation of minors so um… you have been warned. these books are a MESS.

what AR does well in all of that is create very interesting cool characters (though god forbid she develop them…….) who have the sort of petty relationship drama that you really want in a group of immortals who have all fucked everyone else in their little group like two centuries ago and now have nothing better to do than make more fledglings and write scathing exposé novels about each other. she’s also good at creating atmosphere, and setting up some very cool scenarios that you can scream DEATH OF THE AUTHOR at and steal for your own to do better. 

[starshine-shimmyshufflesmile]

I'm glad you responded too, you've given me a truly enjoyable afternoon of recreational cogitation with the vampires :)

Ah, I've worked my way back to Denis, Denis :) Denis is interesting to me bc of the way Rice managed to retroactively pack him with ever more subtext with each passing book. He's like the perfect mini-cosom of her skillful backweaving that makes a loose anthology of books into such a tight series, and a perfect lesson for learning to pick apart the layers of Anne's artfully painted subtext by extracting how the the other characters must be experiencing each situation we only see through the window of our narrator: you can teach a new reader to 'read between the lines' by just advising they take the time to write down what Louis is thinking abt Denis, and Claudia, and then after TQOTD Daniel in each different phase of the relationship is thinking abt Denis, and after TVA, what Marius when he read IWTV is thinking abt Denis; remember in the 1985 San Francisco Dracula's Daughter scene he only picked up TVL: he totally must have read IWTV some time before!

It's really neat, the way we see Denis differently as we learn more abt Armand, too. The reader's gage on what is going on with him & Armand has changed so much by the time you come out the other end of BAG and know all the details abt Riccardo and the palazzo boys. It's kinda awe inspiring how Anne shapes Denis, a character with a significant but small role in that first book, like she's carving additional refraction angles into a prism: shedding light on Armand from all those different angles.  

We come to understand Armand/Denis totally is re-enactment when we get the first iteration of Venice in TVL, and there is a metric fuckton that is a total pleasure to unpack there. But the angle I really, really dig comes from considering TDM & TVA together: after we see Armand telepathically savoring Daniel's sensual pleasures in passionate sex with men and women the same way he telepathically savored Denis enjoying the delicious silver plates of meats and fishes (and LOL yes! that there's actually a dirty joke the reader is clearly meant to decipher in comparing the two scenes is one of the absolute classic mind blowing reader rewards & "Queen!!" moments from Anne's style of elevating purposeful polysemy into exquisitely crafted subtext sculptures) because once you've worked your way through that aspect with Daniel, it's natural to think about what Armand is telepathically getting from Daniel & Denis when he's *drinking blood* from them: reading their minds he can totally re-enact Marius drinking from him: experience again, second hand, all the sensations and emotional responses that he had back then. 

And IMO reading that out of Denis's mind, specifically, in 1870 Armand is totally reveling in the memory of Marius drinking from him. It's so important in analyzing these characters to keep in sharp focus who knew what, when. And until 1985 Armand 100% believes Marius is dead, he doesn't consider himself abandoned at all, he thinks abt it as having tragically had his maker/mate murdered during a home invasion in their newlywed years. IMO the re-enactment is profoundly comforting to him- possibly it's a compulsive, addictive comfort to him.

The other thing about Denis as re-enactment of M&A, IMO it has as much to do with the torture & brainwashing from Santino and servitude to Alexandra as with Marius. Lestat causing Alessandra to suicide and bringing Armand out from under les innocents in 1780 ushered in the first era he could make any choices in his own life, ever. By the time Louis finds him with the theater coven it's apparent that he's spent decades trying to reclaim the things Marius taught him. All those frescoes in the older catacombs under the theater? What other *!conceivable* answer to how they got there than -Armand-painted them in the early theater years decades before? He never would have been allowed to even think of the sensual act of lifting a paintbrush in the cult days, so he did when he could as leader of the theater, and he had those centuries of Santino & Alessandra's satanist brainwash & control to distance himself from: that's why all the paintings are themes of hell & damnation & fallen angels, it's art therapy to purge himself of that child-of-darkness nightmare, make it all just paintings on the wall that dont include him (!as he says to Louis 'that? That is a painting') That subtext becomes retroactvley really striking after Marius describes in BAG using painting to do basically the exact opposite: painting himself into 15th century Venice until he feels he belongs there. IMO Armand see reclaiming the sensual pleasure of little drinks from a mortal lover the same way, and 1870 still being pre-modern era I don't think he sees at that time that Denis is any worst victimization than with an adult.

The other thing that always strikes me is how rewarding it is to compare and contrast the ways Anne went about getting her extremely effective results in the two scenes from those first two books: the ominous exchanges between Armand, and Louis, and Claudia and Denis in the catacomb room under the theater, and that ominous portion of his story recounted to Lestat via spell-vision in TVL that you've picked out here...

But the pleasure of delving into the literary techniques will have to wait for another day as today's dinner won't make itself!

You should reblog your 'quote as creepy pasta instagram' post free of this incredibly lengthy derail I caused. Let the original version swim free, It's insightful & very effective in its brevity.

Throw back to when I was reading The Vampire Armand, read this paragraph, which is 13-14 yr old newly Amadeo-Armand describing Marius:

And thought that it came off as super vague and ominous, like one of those poor quality creepy-pasta few sentence horror stories you find edited against a spooky stock photo background on Instagram. So I did just that, lmao:

[likethecatiam]

I Just Watched Interview with the Vampire and Here Are the Thoughts I Had

This is starting differently than I expected

Okay now I get it

Plantation owner huh

Oh this happening quickly

Oh we’re really moving

LESTAT

Where is the exposition???? I’d like at least a little

I STILL DON’T KNOW YOUR NAME SIR

Why don’t you want to kill? Why haven’t we established an explanation?? Where is your character???

Man Lestat you are such a drama queen

Girl you better run

Girl he don’t care for you he’s your OWNER

Louis don’t kill her

LOUIS

GIRL I TOLD YOU TO RUN

Someone’s having a mental breakdown~

Yeah I’m with you Lestat, STOP BURNING EVERYTHING LOUIS

TITS

“What’s that my love?” “It’s a coffin!” “Oh. Oh, so it is! Maybe you’re dead!” Lestat please

Sir you are the king of throwing bitch fits

The plague??? In the 1700s???

“Hey Google, when was the plague???”

You spent. SO long. Bitching about not killing people. But you gon kill this child?

Aight

Lestat please don’t dance with the corpse

I take it back, I adore your chaotic evil energy, dance and sing with that corpse it’s funny

Louis you little bitch

Sewer boy

Don’t turn the child

DON’T TURN THE CHILD

Oh you’ve turned the child

Lestat you are that toxic boyfriend

M A N I P U L A T I O N

Claudia you’re the cutest little monster

I love domestic dads Lestat and Louis

A family can be one chaotic evil vampire, his depressed vampire husband and their innocently murderous vampire daughter

If anything happens to Claudia I will kill all of you

NOT IN THE HOUSE CLAUDIA

Aw she’s growing up

Oh no she’s growing up

TATAS

Accept it Lestat, she’s outgrown the dolls. She’s not your little girl anymore

Temper tantrum or teenage outburst?

CLAUDIA! NOT IN THE HOUSE!!!

How did neither of you smell that???

She must’ve been there for days!!

Aw Claudia honey, the truth is hard

Gasp

No! No hate! No no no!

Lestat no!

NO!

I miss the domesticity ( •̥́ ﹏ •̀ू )

MY LOVE?!

Oh, okay, thank god

LESTAT STOP PUSHING PEOPLE AWAY

NO STOP BEING MEAN

God, you insufferable prick I fucking adore you let me punch you in the face and hold you

CLAUDIA DID YOU TURN THEM

OH okay

She don’t forgive your bitchass

CLAUDIA WHAT THE HELL

“Louis! LOUIS!” Oh my god don’t sound so broken no I should hate you oh my heart LOUIS WHERE ARE YOU

Oooo I like that CGI

CLAUDIAAAAAA

Louis baby no don’t look so sad

I know your daughter killed your husband but please I’m hurting too

Goodbye Lestat

Your happiness means NOTHING

Why am I always drawn to the asshole characters??? Lestat come back

NO NOT LIKE THAT

LESTAT NO

SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY

Wealthy single dad and his only daughter enjoying life

Er, unlife rather

So no one speaks French in Paris huh

There’s Antonio Banderas

Armand

A the-ate-er you say?

Oh this is fun

Oh she’s not an actress

BOOBS

So y’all just gon watch?

OH THAT’S FULL NUDITY OKAY

Welp she’s dead

So y’all just gon watch and then quietly shuffle away

Was there a “Not for the weak of heart” warning?

Hello cast and crew!

Y’all broke. The ONLY rule

Even Lestat didn’t do that

Damn Claudia

So you’re an empath. Why am I just now learning this?

Louis no just take Claudia and leave don’t talk to Armand again

Sighhhhhhhhh

Claudia don’t take random women off the street and present them to Louis he’s not Lestat

Oh so it’s not like that it’s like THAT

Oh but you seem like an alright lady

Claudia you know he’d never leave you

Oh so we doing this

What’s this conversation

CLAUDIA DON’T KISS HIM YOU ARE A C H I L D

Oop y’all took too long monologuing the vampire police are here

Oh she’s protecting Claudia, you would’ve been perfect for her Ms. whatsyourname

NO DON’T KILL THE NICE LADY

NOOO

Armand don’t give a fuck about you stop calling for him

Is this how Lestat felt? Lestat I miss you, you douche

Will they be saved?

Oh there you are Armand

Whoops I guess not

Louis no don’t look

Ohhhhh the nice lady wanted to protect Claudia

I really liked that nice lady

What’re you gonna do Louis

OHHH SHIT LOUIS YOU ARE SUCH AN ARSONIST

Oh that got bloody real quick

Goodbye Theatre des Vampires or whatever the fuck

Fuck you Armand

“Did he just…”

Back to America

Movies!!!

That suit is horrid Louis

Lestat?

Lestat?

LESTAT!!!

Whoo boy you look like shit lmao

Louis is a changed man/vampire/thing, are you too Lestat

It’s a helicopter my dude. How long have you been there

But why is there a helicopter with a searchlight looking in to your little hovel? What have you been up to sir?

“I could become the Lestat of before” NOPE YOU AIN’T CHANGED

Were you trying to drive him away with that??? I don’t understand???

Goodbye Lestat, your extra drama queen chaotic evilness will always be felt in my heart

The End~

Dude, don’t try to argue with a depressed vampire

YOU’RE AN IDIOT

DUMBASS

Louis where you gonna go now

Aw what I wanna know where you’re going what you’re gonna do

What’re you gonna do with this information dude

Where you goin

Why are you listening to it again

LESTAT

Lestat you bitch I love you

NOW The End

In Conclusion: Movie was much different than what I thought it would be, but I still enjoyed it. There were some parts where I was worried this would be a terrible watch, but that was mostly in the beginning. Things got better after Claudia was introduced, though there were some good moments before that point. I’m glad I finally got around to watching it! And I will not be watching the second one! Because, no :D

[almostarchaeology]

Hogwarts Needs Archaeologists, Part 1: Fantastic Antiquities and Where to Find Them

By Adrián Maldonado

The Harry Potterverse is crawling with ancient artefacts and old magic. That doesn’t make it a story about archaeology as such – there is very little effort from the protagonists to do more than treasure-hunt (and in at least one case, tomb-raid) to collect and then destroy these artefacts. In one sense, the Harry Potter cycle is a parable of Fantastic Antiquities and How to Break Them.

Tom Riddle, Tomb Raider (source)

Which is why I haven’t felt the need to do an ‘archaeology of Harry Potter’ post on this blog. But then I went back to the books again. Well, sort of. I am lucky enough to share a timeline with the Binge Mode podcast by the superheroic duo Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion. Their breakdown of the books and films, chapter by chapter and scene by scene, with added detail culled from the wider (so wide) Potter canon, has reawakened my appreciation for the depth of JK’s creation. And, this should surprise absolutely no one by now, it makes me think there’s lessons for archaeologists in the Potterverse.

This will take more than one blog post to tease out. To begin with, we can start by looking at the vast array of antiquities which feature in the books’ own timeline. From there, we can explore how archaeology might work in the wizarding world, and then bring it back to reflections on Rowling’s uses of the past more generally. Speaking of the past, if you don’t want books from 20 years ago spoiled, well, tough look, my guy.

Medieval archaeology

Getting medieval in Diagon Alley (source)

To begin in the most obvious place, there is a lot in the wizarding world which owes its origins to the Middle Ages. According to Rowling’s Pottermore website, Diagon Alley and its major landmarks such as the Leaky Cauldron and Gringotts go back to c. 1500, retaining a ramshackle medieval aesthetic. The prison of Azkaban originated as the fortress of the fifteenth-century sorcerer Ezkidris. Even things which don’t appear obviously medieval are revealed to be medieval on Pottermore: the Quidditch World Cup has been played since 1473, and Floo powder, the magical form of transport, was invented in the thirteenth century by Ignatia Wildsmith (which, if I have another daughter, I will definitely adopt as a name).

The structural medievalism of the Potterverse includes Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry itself, a ponderous castle-university suffused with old magic. Oddly for Britain’s premier (only?) centre of magical learning, we do not seem to know exactly how old it is, but its founders all seem to have lived in the tenth century according to Pottermore. This would make it earlier than the first Muggle universities, themselves a product of the twelfth century and later. It is interesting to think that the robe-wearing denizens of Oxbridge and St Andrews are merely replicating earlier Hogwarts traditions.

Echoes of Hogwarts (source)

What is less immediately obvious is that Hogwarts’ medieval origins are communicated largely through material culture. The Sorting Hat belonged to founder Godric Gryffindor, and so is at least a thousand years old. The Mirror of Erised is also said to be ancient, though we are vague on dates. Does age confer magical properties, or have these objects survived due to the power of their magic? It can’t be the latter, as we are continually reminded of the precarious state of antiquities in the Potterverse. The Hogwarts houses retain stories about early medieval artefacts associated with the lives of their founders, including Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost diadem, Helga Hufflepuff’s cup, and Gryffindor’s Sword; Slytherin House has no equivalent relic-mascot although it does boast its own Chamber of Secrets (not a euphemism). Each of these objects is lost, stolen, or defiled in the course of these stories.

Ravenclaw’s diadem was lost almost as soon as it was made, and Slytherin’s Locket was never kept in Hogwarts, showing the somewhat less than reverential treatment of these artefacts, even among those who should best appreciate their value. More on Slytherin’s personal effects later, but it may be worth noting here that his Chamber was until lately populated with a living balrog, I mean Basilisk, which was at least as ancient as Slytherin before its murder by a student dangerously swinging another medieval artefact in 1998. Guys. Lock down your antiquities.

Days without an accident on site: 0 (source)

Of these artefacts, only the Sword of Gryffindor was curated to any extent, even if only as a wall-hanging which, let me repeat, students were allowed to handle. Hufflepuff’s cup was kept in the common room of its founder’s house, allowing it to be stolen and inhabited with cursed fragments of soul which almost led to the demise of the rules-based wizarding world order. In the end, Helga’s cup was found in a damn bank vault instead of a climate-controlled museum store. Listen, a secure, alarmed case may not have stopped Voldemort, but we could have at least saved these precious witnesses of wizarding origins from being callously destroyed in the war. Who will be the wizarding Mortimer Wheeler next time?

Excavating Hogwarts

Reading through Pottermore, it transpires that paying no heed to the medieval material world our protagonists live in is actively causing them harm. Two of Voldemort’s horcruxes, Slytherin’s Locket and Marvolo Gaunt’s Ring, date back to the early medieval period, but were kept as personal possessions passed down the Gaunt family line, allowing them to be easily stolen or sold, and, again, be haunted by evil curses. Guys. Where do I send my CV to develop a course in Material Culture Studies at Hogwarts? Better yet, let’s make it a MOOC, train members of the public, and then maybe next time someone tries to pawn an ancient relic our world isn’t threatened by cursed archaeology.

Please don’t drink from the archaeology (source)

My favourite revelation is that the Hogwarts pensieve, the expositional device in Dumbledore’s office which allows Harry to experience flashback sequences along with the reader, is a noted antiquity itself. It is said to be a stone basin inscribed with Saxon runes, and to have been found buried on the spot where Hogwarts would be built.

I can’t just pass this by. Why would a pensieve be buried? We know that wizards are buried with their wands, as recounted to plot-driving effect in Dumbledore’s case. It also transpires that, like wands, pensieves are very personal items, and are customarily buried with their owners along with any memories they have stored. What an incredible boon this would be for a wizarding archaeologist! And how well would this explain all the now-empty vessels we have found used as grave goods since prehistory, usually explained by us dull-minded archaeologists as ‘food-offerings’. Along with the spell priori incantatem, which allows one to see the last few spells a wand was used for, an archaeowitch encountering a burial furnished with wand and pensieve would have an unparalleled insight into the lives and deaths of the wizarding dead.

Back to the Hogwarts pensieve, then, we have a massive stone basin inscribed in Saxon runes, which would be rather out of place in the early medieval Scottish highlands, where Hogwarts is based. Is this a disturbed wizard’s tomb or a ritualised offering in a wetland setting? Once upon a time, this find would be taken as evidence for Anglo-Saxon invasion, but now we recognize that objects could be transported for a variety of reasons, and indeed are themselves more likely to be used in votive deposits due to the value they have accrued in the journey. It would certainly merit further investigation whether the Hogwarts loch was chosen by its founders not for its now-isolated and depopulated landscape, itself a product of fairly recent historical processes, but because it had an existing heritage as a site of ritual deposition. We can only hope, for the sake of its students, that the founders undertook some due-diligence magical remote sensing to detect any complicating factors from buried magic, dark or light, before undertaking a major construction project. But beyond health and safety concerns, I feel that we have lost something else by not recording what has presumably been a cult place.

A medieval inheritance

Pottermore also traces the origins of several major wizarding families to the Middle Ages, most notably the Malfoys. Their lineage can be traced back to Armand Malfoy,  who helped William the Bastard become Conqueror of England in the real-world timeline: “Having rendered unknown, shady (and almost certainly magical) services to King William I, Malfoy was given a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, seized from local landowners, upon which his descendants have lived for ten consecutive centuries.” In gratitude for their help with the Norman Conquest, he was granted a manor, which has passed down the family for 1000 years to Draco Malfoy. The mansion itself is said to be filled with ancient magical and muggle artefacts and priceless artwork, as so many stately homes were by the nineteenth century. Many of Britain’s museums were founded through bequests of such private collections, and these would make an interesting, if dangerous, Dark Magic wing of a Wizarding Museum. Given the spectacular fall from grace of the Malfoy family in the second wizarding war, I do worry about the status of the Malfoy collection, and whether it is at risk of being hived off in auction. The Draco Malfoy essay does reveal that he still lives in the manor with its artefacts after the war, so we still live in hope that this heritage resource has not been lost.

Even dark artefacts need curators (source)

In light of their family history, it would be easy to laugh off the Malfoys’ malevolence as the entitlement that comes from old money, but it should be noted that Harry Potter is a noted trust-fund baby himself. For all his remarkable magical prowess, Harry Potter’s destiny is also down to some serious inherited privilege. His medieval progenitor Linfred of Stinchcombe, who also lived in the Norman era, built up the family’s wealth through his famous inventions, including potions like Skele-gro. Their marriage into a wealthy family in Godric’s Hollow is also auspicious – as home to the Peverils and the Dumbledores, whose stories are so indelibly entwined in the history of wizarding Britain, this little village in England’s west country seems to have been the epicentre of magical achievement for a millennium. Something in the water, perhaps? Or a self-segregating community of elite families? It is through these connections that the Potter family came into possession of one of the Deathly Hallows, the invisibility cloak, in another form of inheritance which increasingly looks like the secret of Harry’s success.

Godric’s Hollow - in dire need of graveyard survey (source)

The Hallows themselves are the key to Dumbledore and Harry’s success, and Voldemort’s undoing, Unbeknownst to many, the Resurrection Stone, invisibility cloak and Elder Wand all seem to be inventions of the Peveril brothers in the thirteenth century. We know this partly because Harry and Hermione stumble on Ignotus Peveril’s medieval gravestone in the churchyard of Godric’s Hollow, clearly marked with the sign of the Deathly Hallows, at which point things begin to come together. Basically, Voldemort is able to be defeated because he only trafficked in antiquities, without researching their archaeological context – but in fairness, neither did Dumbledore and Harry until very late in the game. A simple bit of churchyard recording may have brought this to the attention of local history buffs much sooner, and we may all have been safer for it. Basically, folks, local heritage is all of our heritage, and is not just for tourists obsessively chasing only their own family history.

Potter’s pedigree

And so we come to genealogy, which is the secret engine of this cycle of stories, just as it seems to be in so many of our favourite fantasy worlds. The objects, people and places profiled here all seem to be the remnants of stories which seem to begin no earlier than the tenth century or so. But it is clear that the wizarding world existed before then, and the limits of our vision can be explained by the fact that the first university was established at that time, and presumably the recording of historical events as well.  In short, the narrow focus on a small pool of influential families and their feuds are the unresolved business of the formation of medieval kingdoms of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as indeed is so much of our own contemporary politics. What if our consciousness extended to the messier early medieval kingdoms, or (whisper it) prehistory? Just how problematic would a wizarding archaeology be? And could it free us from the Great Men and Their Battles vision of the human journey? Let’s pick up our trowel-wands and find out.

***

Forward to Part 2: Excavating Magic

Follow us on @AlmostArch

[moviegroovies]

just realized i never wrote that interview with the vampire post i promised y’all, so here we go

first of all! i love it. just want to get that out there. like, 10/10 stars, would watch again, have watched again, almost twice, kind of planned to watch for a sort of fourth time tonight, might not. idk. it’s great!! it’s great both as a movie (i watched the movie first like a blasphemer) and as an adaptation of the book. actually, it’s a GREAT movie adaptation of that book, probably one of the best jobs i’ve ever seen of adapting a book into a screenplay and then getting it on film. as i said, i read the book after i watched the movie, and pretty much everything was adapted directly, even significant amounts of dialogue, to the point that it felt sort of like a novelization, if novelizations were perfect.

this is what i WISH novelizations were, actually. like, using it as an example isn’t fair because it was written before the movie, but as the kind of loser who has read novelizations (i payed. like 40 dollars for a ghostbusters one. and then like 2 bucks for a Different ghostbusters one which i haven’t read yet but don’t have high hopes for), this was what i always want them to be like. same plot, lots of the same dialogue (i HATE novelizations that try to make it their own by changing the dialogue slightly. i was reading that ghostbusters one and i don’t even think i had watched ghostbusters recently but i know the lines well enough that it threw me the fuck off when the author changed them. like if someone came into your house and moved all your furniture slightly to the left? that was what it felt like), but a few things that didn’t happen in the movie, too. deeper characterization, the kind of worldbuilding/character building you can’t really do in a limited time frame on screen. getting into the charater’s thoughts. using nuance. novelizations could totally be this! or at least i wish they were! basically what i’m saying is stay tuned for my unlicensed nuclear accelerator novelization of ghostbusters going up on this blog coming soon. 

anyway, a thing i liked about it as an adaptation of the book was that it was always true to what anne wrote (and i think she did at least part of the script, although i heard the director did heavy edits on it), but there were some lines that weren’t in the book that improved the scenes imo! like the little exchange in the theater of vampires where louis is commenting on the vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires, and claudia responds “how avant garde.” it serves both to clear up what’s going on (since we don’t have the benefit of louis’ narration at this point in the movie) and to humanize them a little. most of the added dialogue did that, and that’s something i really like--especially that line as louis watches new orleans burn and thinks that lestat deserves his revenge. Loved that. and him getting to see the sunrise again through film? oof!!!! honestly i liked the ending of the movie more than i did the book, which makes me feel blasphemous. it seems like louis is just doing... better in the movie. i don’t want to give too many spoilers or anything, but in the book he ends up completely detached, and never gets that gay power moment of telling armand he’s not going to give up his pain and then leaving him, so What’s The Point. on a more positive note, another thing i liked was the “you used to eat rats?” exchange. that was a much needed cute family moment.

oh! and they put some stuff from the vampire lestat into this movie, too, which, again, i liked, or at least, i like now that i know that’s what was happening. lestat being able to read minds and louis not being able to. lestat only wanting to drink the blood of evil doers. a lot of the added stuff helped make lestat more sympathetic, which was a definite necessity. actually, tom cruise acted the hell out of that role, which was surprising. not really that he could act (i’ve seen things i liked him in) but that he could be lestat, a flamboyant vampire prettyboy. wasn’t tom cruise the one who punched someone for implying he was gay? idk. 

actually, i was really surprised how gay this movie was for a movie starring tom cruise and brad fucking pitt. like, tell me before i watched it that those two were the stars and i would have been expecting (i was kind of expecting) the most no-homo rendition of the movie possible. and yeah, they toned it down a little from the book... but not that much. louis’ narration is a lot less overtly homo than lestat’s anyway, and brad pitt really fucking Nailed being louis. 

(which i find hilarious, because while tom cruise apparently got really into the vampire chronicles while they were filming this and had all these opinions in like movie promoting interviews about how lestat was actually a good dude, and loved louis (smthn along those lines i skimmed the shit about this), which really came through in his characterization of lestat, brad read like, one chapter of the book and lost interest. i loved the book, myself, but what a fucking icon.) 

that almost-kiss with armand at the end? also iconic. 

really, the only sexual stuff they actually tuned down was the louis/claudia shit, which i’m all fucking for. like, claudia is a grown woman, but it’s still so awk in the book whenever she’s coming onto louis, especially considering how often he reaffirms that she’s his daughter. even worse when he comments on her sensuality, or when she kisses him.... ick. plus, kirsten WASN’T a grown woman, so that would have been really nasty if they kept it.

oh and christian slater!!! i didn’t know he was in this until i started watching it, and i was very excited to see him. that’s my heathers love talking. i was talking to my dad after i saw it and apparently river phoenix was supposed to play daniel before he died, and my dad thought he would have been a lot better for the role i guess, but personally i think slater really picked up the part. he also didn’t shy away from being a little homoerotic, especially toward the end. he got the part right. plus, heathers. 

and i can’t gush about the actors without talking about kirsten dunst. she was 11 when she was in this (apparently her parents wouldn’t let her actually watch the movie when it came out, which, ha), but she absolutely conquered the part of the 60 year old woman in a child’s body. there were times when i actually forgot that she was just an eleven year old, because she was that good. the scene with the body in her bed isn’t in the book (not quite, although something else happens with claudia and leaving bodies around), and it’s one of the best in the movie imo. you can see lestat doting on her but not understanding her, you can tell why she would resent him, you can see her resentment and before she even snaps at him you can see that she’s an adult woman stuck inside a child (like that villain from batman the animated series--did anyone else think of that?), pissed off that she wants to be treated like the grown person she is but continues to be given dolls. also, there was some peak murder family moments in that scene, with louis standing there lowkey horrified. we never got the exchange with claudia telling louis that she’s going to kill lestat and him telling her Do Not Do This Thing, unfortunately, which was something i liked more from the book, but his concern and confusion in this scene kind of speak to that. you can especially tell that he still hasn’t realized that she’s grown--he’s seeing her the same way lestat is. aww.

so, i read the book and watched the movie in pretty quick succession, and i’m writing this a day after finishing the book and a few hours after my kind-of rewatch and about a week after the last time i saw it all the way through. my memory of both being pretty strong rn, there are only a very few things that i can think of which changed from book to movie outside of things necessary to take it to the screen and keep the movie from being like twelve hours. claudia is necessarily aged up from 5 to 11--it’s just practical, a 5 year old would not nearly have had the range that kirsten did for this. armand is changed from looking like a 17 year old redhead to antonio banderas (is it bad that i’m so uncultured that before this i only knew him as the dad from spy kids?), age 34, in a Really Bad black wig. (in general i’m all for banderas in the role, and he definitely acted it well, but what the FUCK was that costuming. why does his hair look like that. i digress but they did him dirty, especially considering how much Better everyone else looks as a vampire.) the subplot with lestat’s blind father living with him and louis at first is cut, which is kind of a shame imo. i really liked how on edge lestat was when begging louis to kill him (not as bad in context), how it kind of breaks the mask lestat tries to wear and shows that he’s confused and vulnerable and he really just doesn’t know much about being a vampire--that “and why should i know!” outbreak they put in did a good job of being the movie’s counterpart to that scene, however. the ending is changed a bit, altho i’ll leave the spoilers of how exactly up to your imagination. some things should stay sacred, right?

one thing i’m REALLY glad they added was louis freeing the slaves on his plantation.  i think it was a nasty choice on behalf of anne rice to write her sympathetic, thoughtful protagonist as a slave owner in the first place, especially one who by his own admission didn’t see slaves as people for a long time, and it’s unfortunate to me that it had to be adapted in that way (although i don’t think ignoring that aspect entirely would have been a better movie solution), but the slaves were at least made free men before louis moved to new orleans. in the book, louis still burns the house, but he doesn’t free the people enslaved there, and he never reflects on that. fucked up if true, i guess. i blame mostly anne for that whole thing.

ooo, that scene with lestat killing the two prostitutes was good. it’s pretty much adapted word for word from the book, but the book doesn’t have the visual of tom cruise leaping over the coffin to sit on it while she’s in it, and that was one of the sexiest scenes i can remember. so.

just remembered at the last moment that i liked the “i’m going to give you the choice i never had” thing, both because it gives a little hint of lestat background (and makes him more sympathetic/adds to the whole breaking the mask thing that i like) and because they did a Very fucking good callback with it at the end.

there’s probably more about that movie that i have Opinions on, but when i remember them i’ll just have to make another post, ig. i will say tho? that last scene they added is so FUCKING good. cue up sympathy for the devil on my way out, will you?

[mysteryshelf]

BLOG TOUR - Strong to the Bone

  Welcome to

THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

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Strong to the Bone

by Jon Land

on Tour December 4, 2017 – January 31, 2018

Synopsis:

1944: Texas Ranger Jim Strong investigates a triple murder inside a Nazi POW camp in Texas.

The Present: His daughter, fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, finds herself pursuing the killer her father never caught in the most personal case of her career a conspiracy stretching from that Nazi POW camp to a modern-day neo-Nazi gang.

A sinister movement has emerged from the shadows of history, determined to undermine the American way of life. Its leader, Armand Fisker, has an army at his disposal, a deadly bio-weapon, and a reputation for being unbeatable. But he s never taken on the likes of Caitlin Strong and her outlaw lover, Cort Wesley Masters.

To prevent an unspeakable cataclysm, Caitlin and Cort Wesley must win a war the world thought was over.

“Strong to the Bone is another fine effort by Jon Land, who manages to mix character development with gripping, page-turning plots. This is his best novel yet.” — StrandMagazine

Book Details:

Genre: Thriller Published by: Forge Books Publication Date: December 5, 2017 Number of Pages: 368 ISBN: 0765384647 (ISBN13: 9780765384645) Series: Caitlin Strong Novels (Volume 9) Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗| Macmillan 🔗

Read an excerpt:

CHAPTER 1

Austin, Texas

“What the hell?”

Caitlin Strong and Cort Wesley Masters had just emerged from Esther’s Follie’s on East 6th Steet, when they saw the stream of people hurrying down the road, gazes universally cocked back behind them. Sirens blared off in the distance and a steady chorus of honking horns seemed to be coming from an adjoining block just past the street affectionately known as “Dirty Sixth,” Austin’s version of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

“Couldn’t tell you,” Cort Wesley said, even as he sized up the scene. “But I got a feeling we’re gonna know before much longer.”

* * *

Caitlin was in town to speak at a national law enforcement conference focusing on homegrown terrorism, and both her sessions at the Convention Center had been jam-packed. She felt kind of guilty her presentations had lacked the audio-visual touches many of the others had featured. But the audiences hadn’t seem to mind, filling a sectioned-off ballroom to the gills to hear of her direct experiences, in contrast to theoretical dissertations by experts. Audiences comprised of cops a lot like her, looking to bring something back home they could actually use. She’d focused to a great extent on her most recent battle with ISIS right here in Texas, and an al-Qaeda cell a few years before that, stressing how much things had changed in the interim and how much more they were likely to.

Cort Wesley had driven up from San Antonio to meet her for a rare night out that had begun with dinner at Ancho’s inside the Omni Hotel and then a stop at Antone’s nightclub to see the Rats, a band headed by a Texas Ranger tech expert known as Young Roger. From there, they’d walked to Esther’s Follies to take in the famed Texas-centric improve show there, a first for both of them that was every bit as funny and entertaining as advertised, even with a gun-toting woman both Caitlin and Cort Wesley realized was based on her.

Fortunately, no one else in the audience made that connection and they managed to slip out ahead of the rest of the crowd. Once outside, though, they were greeted by a flood of pedestrians pouring up the street from an area of congestion a few blocks down, just past 8th Street.

“What you figure, Ranger?”

“That maybe we better go have ourselves a look.”

CHAPTER 2

Austin, Texas

Caitlin practically collided with a young man holding a wad of napkins against his bleeding nose at the intersection with East 7th Street.

“What’s going on?” she asked him, pulling back her blazer to show her Texas Ranger badge.

The young man looked from it back to her, swallowing some blood and hacking it up onto the street. “University of Texas graduation party took over all of Stubb’s Barbecue,” he said, pointing in the restaurant’s direction. “Guess you could say it got out of hand. Bunch of fraternities going at it.” He looked at the badge pinned to her chest again. “Are you really a Texas Ranger?”

“You need to get to an emergency room,” Caitlin told him, and pressed on with Cort Wesley by her side.

“Kid was no older than Dylan,” he noted, mentioning his oldest son who was still on a yearlong leave from Brown University.

“How many fraternities does the University of Texas at Austin have anyway, Cort Wesley?”

“A whole bunch.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, continuing on toward the swell of bodies and flashing lights, “it sure looks that way.”

Stubb’s was well known for its barbecue offerings and, just as much, its status as a concert venue. The interior was modest in size, as Caitlin recalled, two floors with the bottom level normally reserved for private parties and the upstairs generally packed with patrons both old and new. The rear of the main building, and several adjoining ones, featured a flattened dirt lot fronted by several performance stages where upwards of two thousand people could enjoy live music in the company of three sprawling outdoor bars.

That meant this graduation party gone bad may have featured at least a comparable number of students and probably even more, many of whom remained in the street, milling about as altercations continued to flare, while first responders struggled futilely to disperse the crowd. Young men and women still swigging bottles of beer, while pushing and shoving each other. The sound of glass breaking rose over the loudening din of the approaching sirens, the whole scene glowing amid the colors splashed from the revolving lights of the Austin police cars already on the scene.

A fire engine leading a rescue wagon screeched to a halt just ahead of Cort Wesley and Caitlin, at the intersection with 7th Street, beyond which had become impassable.

“Dylan could even be here, for all I know,” Cort Wesley said, picking up his earlier train of thought.

“He doesn’t go to UT.”

“But there’s girls and trouble, two things he excels at the most.”

This as fights continued breaking out one after another, splinters of violence on the verge of erupting into an all-out brawl going on under the spill of the LED streetlights rising over Stubb’s.

Caitlin pictured swirling lines of already drunk patrons being refused admittance due to capacity issues. Standing in line full of alcohol on a steamy night, expectations of a celebratory evening dashed, was a recipe for just what she was viewing now. In her mind, she saw fights breaking out between rival UT fraternities mostly in the outdoor performance area, before spilling out into the street, fueled by simmering tempers now on high heat.

“You see any good we can be here?” Cort Wesley asked her.

Caitlin was about to say no, when she spotted an anxious Austin patrol cop doing his best to break up fights that had spread as far as 7th Street. She and Cort Wesley sifted through the crowd and made their way toward him, Caitlin advancing alone when they drew close.

“Anything I can do to help,” she said, reading the Austin policeman’s nametag, “Officer Hilton?���

Hilton leaned up against an ornate light pole that looked like gnarled wrought iron for support. He was breathing hard, his face scraped and bruised. He noted the Texas Ranger badge and seemed to match her face to whatever media reports he’d remembered her from.

“Not unless you got enough Moses in you to part the Red Sea out there, Ranger.”

“What brought you boys out here? Detail work?” Caitlin asked, trying to account for his presence on scene so quickly, ahead of the sirens screaming through the night.

Hilton shook his head. “An anonymous nine-one-one call about a sexual assault taking place inside the club, the downstairs lounge.”

“And you didn’t go inside?”

Hilton turned his gaze on the street, his breathing picking up again. “Through that? My partner tried and ended up getting his skull cracked open by a bottle. I damn near got killed fighting to reach him. Managed to get him in the back of our squad car and called for a rescue,” he said, casting his gaze toward the fire engine and ambulance that were going nowhere. “Think maybe I better carry him to the hospital myself.”

“What about the girl?”

“What girl?”

“Sexual assault victim inside the club.”

Hilton frowned. “Most of them turn out to be false alarms anyway.”

“Do they now?”

Caitlin’s tone left him sneering at her. “Look, Ranger, you want to shoot up the street to get inside that shithole, be my guest. I’m not leaving my partner.”

“Thanks for giving me permission,” she said, and steered back for Cort Wesley.

“That looked like it went well,” he noted, pushing a frat boy who’d ventured too close out of the way, after stripping the empty beer bottle he was holding by the neck from his grasp.

“Sexual assault victim might still be inside, Cort Wesley.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Got any ideas, Ranger?”

Caitlin eyed the fire engine stranded where East 7th Street met Red River Avenue. “Just one.”

CHAPTER 3

Austin, Texas

Four firemen were gathered behind the truck in a tight cluster, speaking with the two paramedics from the rescue wagon.

“I’m a Texas Ranger,” Caitlin announced, approaching them with jacket peeled back to reveal her badge, “and I’m commandeering your truck.”

“You’re what?” one of the fireman managed. “No, absolutely not!”

The siren began blaring and lights started flashing, courtesy of Cort Wesley who’d climbed up behind the wheel.

“Sorry,” Caitlin said, raising her voice above the din, “can’t hear you!”

* * *

The crowd that filled the street in front of Stubb’s Barbecue saw and heard the fire truck coming and began pelting it with bottles, as it edged forward through the congested street that smelled of sweat and beer. What looked like steam hung in the stagnant air overhead, either an illusion or the actual product of so many superheated bodies congealed in such tight quarters. The sound of glass braking crackled through Caitlin’s ears, as bottle after bottle smashed against the truck’s frame.

The crowd clustered tighter around the fire engine, cutting off Cort Wesley’s way backward or on toward Stubb’s. The students, their fervor and aggression bred by alcohol, never noticed Caitlin’s presence atop the truck until she finally figured out the workings of the truck’s deck gun and squeezed the nozzle.

The force of the water bursting out of the barrel nearly knocked her backward off the truck. But she managed to right and then repositioned herself, as she doused the tight cluster of students between the truck and the restaurant entrance with the gun’s powerful stream.

A wave of people tried to fight the flow and ended up getting blown off their feet, thrown into other students who then scrambled to avoid the fire engine’s surge forward ahead of its deafening horn. Caitlin continued to clear a path for Cort Wesley, sweeping the deck gun in light motions from side to side, the five hundred gallon tank still plenty full when the club entrance drew within clear view.

She felt the fire engine’s front wheels mount the sidewalk and twist heavily to the right. The front fender grazed the building and took out a plate glass window the rioting had somehow spared. Caitlin saw a gap in the crowd open all the way to the entrance and leaped down from the truck to take advantage of it, before it closed up again.

She purposely didn’t draw her gun and entered Stubb’s to the sight of bloodied bouncers and staff herding the last of the patrons out of the restaurant. Outside, the steady blare of sirens told her the Austin police had arrived in force. Little they could do to disperse a crowd this large and unruly in rapid fashion, though, much less reach the entrance to lend their efforts to Caitlin’s in locating the sexual assault victim.

She threaded her way through the ground floor of Stubb’s to the stairs leading down to the private lounge area. The air felt like it was being blasted out of a steam oven, roiled with coagulated body heat untouched by the restaurant’s air conditioning that left Caitlin with the sense she was descending to hell.

Reaching the windowless sub-level floor, she swept her eyes about and thought she heard a whimpering come from a nest of couches, where a male figure hovered over the frame of a woman, lying half on and half off a sectional couch.

“Sir, put your hands in the air and turn around slowly!” Caitlin ordered, drawing her SIG-Sauer nine-millimeter pistol. “Don’t make me tell you twice!”

He started to turn, without raising his hands, and Caitlin fired when she glimpsed something shiny in his grasp. Impact to the shoulder twisted the man around and spilled him over the sectional couch, Caitlin holding her SIG at the ready as she approached his victim.

She heard the whimpering again, making her think more of the sound a dog makes, and followed it toward a tight cluster of connected couch sections, their cushions all stained wet and smelling thickly of beer. Drawing closer while still keeping a sharp eye on the man she’d shot, Caitlin spotted a big smart phone lying just out of his grasp, recognizing it as the object she’d wrongly taken for a gun. Then Caitlin spied a young woman of college age pinned between a pair of couch sections, covering her exposed breasts with her arms, her torn blouse hanging off her and jeans unbuttoned and unzipped just short of her hips.

Drawing closer, Caitlin saw the young woman’s assailant, the man she’d just shot in all likelihood, must’ve yanked them down so violently that he’d split the zipper and torn off the snap or button.

“Ma’am?” she called softly.

The young woman tightened herself into a ball and retreated deeper into the darkness between the couch sections, not seeming to hear her.

“Ma’am,” Caitlin said louder, hovering over the coed while continuing to check on the man she’d shot, his eyes drifting in and out of consciousness, his shirt wet with blood in the shoulder area from the gunshot wound.

Caitlin only wished it was her own attacker lying there, from all those years before when she’d been a coed herself at the Lone Star College campus in West Houston. Some memories suppressed easily, others were like a toothache that came and went. That one was more like a cavity that had been filled, forgotten until the filling broke off and raw nerve pain flared.

Caitlin pushed the couch sections aside and knelt by the young woman, pistol tucked low by her hip so as not to frighten her further.

“I’m a Texas Ranger, ma’am,” she said, in as soothing a voice as she could manage. “I need to get you out of here, and I need you to help me. I need to know if you can walk.”

The young woman finally looked at her, nodded. Her left cheek was swollen badly and one of her arms hung limply from its socket. Caitlin looked back at the downed form of the man she’d already shot once, half hoping he gave her a reason to shoot him again.

“What’s your name? Mine’s Caitlin.”

“Kelly Ann,” the young woman said, her voice dry and cracking.

Caitlin helped her to her feet. “Well, Kelly Ann, I know things feel real bad right now, but trust me when I tell you this is bad as they’re going to get.”

Kelly Ann’s features perked up slightly, her eyes flashing back to life. She tried to take a deep breath, but stopped halfway though.

Caitlin held her around the shoulders in one arm, SIG clutched in her free hand while her eyes stayed peeled on the downed man’s stirring form. “I’m going to stay with you the whole way until we get you some help,” she promised.

The building suddenly felt like a Fun House Hall of Mirrors. Everything distorted, perspective and sense of place lost. Even the stairs climbing back to the ground floor felt different, only the musty smell of sweat mixed with stale perfume and body spray telling her they were the same.

Caitlin wanted to tell Kelly Ann it would be all right, that it would get better, that it would all go away in time. But that would be a lie, so she said nothing at all. Almost to the door, she gazed toward a loose assemblages of frat boys wearing hoodies displaying their letters as they chugged from liquor bottles stripped from the shelves behind the main bar on the first floor. How different were they from the one who’d hurt her, hurt Kelly Ann?

Caitlin wanted to shoot the bottles out of their hands, but kept leading Kelly Ann on instead, out into the night and the vapor spray from the deck gun now being wielded by Cort Wesley to keep their route clear.

“’Bout time!” he shouted down, scampering across the truck’s top to retake his place behind the wheel.

Caitlin was already inside the cab, Kelly Ann clinging tight to her.

“Where to, Ranger?”

“Seton Medical Center, Cort Wesley.”

Before he got going, Caitlin noticed Officer Hilton and several other Austin cops pushing their way through the crowd toward the entrance to Stubb’s.

“Don’t worry, Officer, I got the victim out safe and sound,” she yelled down to him, only half-sarcastically. “But I left a man with a bullet in his shoulder down there for you to take care of.”

“Come again?”

“I’d hurry, if I were you. He’s losing blood.”

***

Excerpt from Strong to the Bone by Jon Land. Copyright © 2017 by Jon Land. Reproduced with permission from Jon Land. All rights reserved.

Author Bio:

Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling author of 43 books, including eight titles in the critically acclaimed Caitlin Strong series: Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, Strong at the Break, Strong Vengeance, Strong Rain Falling (winner of the 2014 International Book Award and 2013 USA Best Book Award for Mystery-Suspense), Strong Darkness (winner of the 2014 USA Books Best Book Award and the 2015 International Book Award for Thriller, and Strong Light of Day which won the 2016 International Book Award for Best Thriller-Adventure, the 2015 Books and Author Award for Best Mystery Thriller, and the 2016 Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Mystery. Strong Cold Dead became the fourth title in the series in a row to win the International Book Award in 2017 and about which Booklist said, “Thrillers don’t get any better than this,” in a starred review. Land has also teamed with multiple New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham on a new sci-fi series, the first of which, The Rising, was published by Forge in January of 2017. He is a 1979 graduate of Brown University and lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

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BLOG TOUR – Strong to the Bone was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir

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Best Books of 2017

What a fucking year. I am trying to climb out of a hole of depression (at times, I feel like I fell in the hole on election night 2016, and at times, I feel like I’ve been in the hole - whether I realized it or not - for 30 years), and books help. In case they help you, too, here are some of my best reads of the year.

The Best Books I Read in 2017

Standard Deviation - I’ve been recommending this book to everyone, and I can’t quite get the recommendation right. It’s about marriage, living in a city, autism, origami. See, you don’t want to read it, right? Yet it was my favorite read of the year, so maybe this will convince you: it made me laugh out loud multiple times (which books rarely do). In twenty-fucking-seventeen. I was grateful for a witty escape, and maybe you need one, too.

(And if that doesn’t convince you: sometimes when I love a book so much, I become slightly obsessed with the author and try to learn as much as I can about them. The author of this book is Katherine Heiny, and she lives in Bethesda [!!!], and I have hopes that I will run into her someday and then we’ll be good friends and she’ll ask me to read drafts of her work. Twenty-five years ago she sent a story to the New Yorker on a Thursday, and they called her on Friday and said they were running it. That kind of makes you hate her, but gives her some writing chops. Then she spent some decades writing YA books for a different author, and now I’m behind on this list because I started reading all about her all over again.)

(PS I thought I would hate Audra, and I ended up really loving her, and now I find myself wondering what she would have to say about things. I made Grant read this book, and he does the same thing, which is really fun.)

Autumn - I would have sworn I read this in 2016 since it seems like forever ago, but the yellow construction paper list doesn’t lie. This is a book the wonderful Ali Smith wrote after Brexit, so it felt fitting (and a little depressing) to read after Trump. She’s planning a book for all of the seasons, and I can’t wait. Winter comes out on January 9, 2018.

A Gentleman in Moscow - I’ve avoided Amor Towles books because they didn’t sound that interesting to me, which was my loss. I read this and Rules of Civility (see honorable mention list below) and loved them both but recommend this one if you’re only reading one. You can google the book to find out what it’s about (a count is under house arrest in a wonderful hotel in Moscow in the 1920s), but to me it was about survival, and it’s some of what I needed to read this past year.

Rich People Problems - A few years ago, my best book of the year would have been Crazy Rich Asians (the title is problematic, but I still recommend it to people, and hope everyone will read it before they watch the movie that’s coming out). The second in the series, China Rich Girlfriend, was good but not amazing, so I had lower expectations for RCP. I’m not sure if it’s because my expectations were lower, and it sailed over them, but I loved this book. If you need an escape, especially one with laughs, and I haven’t convinced you about Standard Deviation, start this series.

Hunger: A Memoir of My Body - Mostly, I read to escape because it’s my stress reliever and one of my coping mechanisms, which is evident in many of these reviews. I say that so that you know that this book is NOT an escape; rather, it’s one that broke me open and left me raw, and one of the few nonfiction books to make my list. I am forever thankful for Roxane (one N!) for her courage and hope so many people will read this and seek to understand and be empathetic. At the same time, if you are a #metoo, especially for sexual assault, maybe don’t read this if you’re in a depression spiral. The book will wait until you are ready.

Plainsong - I found Kent Haruf when I read Our Souls at Night (also recommend) when I think it was on the Tournament of Books. I did the whole I’m-obsessed-about-an-author thing and was saddened to realize he’d died right after publication of that book. If you want to know what it’s like to live in a small town, please read him. You can start with Plainsong and then you have two more books in the series (Eventide, Benediction) to look forward to reading. Basically, read this if you want the escape equivalent of a quiet weekend on a farm with no internet.

Goodbye, Vitamin - A delicious read for anyone who has felt lost at a crossroads (who hasn’t???).

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir - Sherman Alexie is an incredible author (proof: once someone who worked for me said he didn’t know if he’d ever read a book, so [#badmanagementalert] I delegated reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian as part of his job, and he read it and loved it), and this is a memoir about the tortured relationship he had with his mom. He writes family dysfunction so well I felt like some of the sentences were coming from my own brain onto the page.

Little Fires Everywhere - I also love Celeste Ng (read Everything I Never Told You, too), and worried a little bit that there would be no way I could love her second novel as much as her first. And then I read Little Fires Everywhere and loved it more! It made me remember what it was like to be in high school, about what happens to secrets in families, and I appreciated the nuanced view of culture and adoption. This was Amazon’s (well-deserved!) best pick of the year for 2017.

The Misfortune of Marion Palm - Read this and find yourself rooting for a flawed woman who runs away from her life and might get away with it.

This Is How It Always Is - This was one of my last reads of the year, and I wish I could have savored reading it more, but I couldn’t put it down. It’s about parenting and love and cisgender and transgender children. I loved it so much that I kept reading it through the author acknowledgments where she writes that it’s inspired by her real life (she’s the mother of a transgender daughter) and so she knows that it will be a controversial book but she can’t for the life of her remember why. Read it and then I think that sentence will resonate with you, too.

Christmas Days - Maybe save this for Christmas 2018, but definitely read it. It’s a collection of short stories (a medium I’m usually not down with, tbh) that the author Jeanette Winterson wrote for her friends and family, and then her publisher convinced her to publish them. That doesn’t sound good at all, but it is! I only read it because I’m a Jeanette Winterson fan, and then they were delightful in a hygge sort of way (and not in a Lifetime Christmas movie sort of way). I felt odd that I liked this so much, and then felt super validated when this title showed up on the NYT best 100 books. So if you don’t believe me, believe them!

Mysteries

The Dry - I love a good mystery, but to me that means that it needs to be a page-turner, I can’t guess who did it (but afterward I can go back and the clues were there the whole time), and it has good writing. That last criterion is what usually trips up my quest, but not in The Dry! If anyone asks me for mystery, and they’ve already read Before The Fall, this is what I’m recommending.

Magpie Murders - A mystery within a mystery! I didn’t know if I’d be down for this concept, but it met the criteria above, and I ended up loving it. I haven’t recommended it to Grant (and I usually force my recommendations on him, especially for mysteries), and I think because it’s more of a puzzle than a thriller, so keep that in mind. (I just put together a puzzle and didn’t even ask him to help because I think he’d rather someone stab him in the eye with toothpicks, so recommending a puzzle book to him wouldn’t end well.)

Honorable Mentions in 2017 (ie I really enjoyed these books, too, but not enough to write a blurb about each of them)

Small Admissions

The American War

The Mothers

Rules of Civility

Anything is Possible

Killers of the Flower Moon

The Impossible Fortress

The Heirs

Dark Matter

The Force

Exit West

Refuge

Future Home of the Living God

The Power

Sing, Unburied Sing

The Essex Serpent

Mysteries

Celine

Since We Fell

Skinny Dip

Not A Sound

Charm City

Baltimore Blues

Participation Award Glass Houses - this is the 13th book in the Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny. I usually love them, but I didn’t love this one. I’m mentioning it because I did love going to the Eastern Townships outside of Montreal this year to see the village inspiration for her books, and if you’re looking for reliably good mysteries, you can start with Still Life. You can also pick up Maisie Dobbs, and you’ll thank me later.