#even setting aside my dislike for ~antiheroes and the way so many people's characters and histories have gotten sabotaged for him

[chelsieheartstriker]

Since Infinite Crisis isn’t in continuity anymore...that means Jason never had to dig his way out of his own grave...meaning I don’t feel guilty about how he’s my least favourite member of the Batfam anymore.

[a-duck-with-a-book]

REVIEW // Seven Blades in Black (The Grave of Empires #1) by Sam Sykes

★☆☆☆☆

Disclaimer: while I was reading this book, I found out that Sam Sykes has been accused by numerous women of sexual harassment. You can find more information about it below: - a post listing several accusations of misconduct - twitter post responding to the situation - one of the accusations against Sam Sykes - his quickly-deleted apology Suffice to say, I have no intention of continuing this series or reading any more of his books.

I have a lot to say about this novel, so I’ll begin by making a quick bullet point list outlining what I liked and disliked:

Liked:

Cavric <3

Lisette deserved better

Some interesting concepts in the world building

Disliked:

Sal as a narrator

Sal as an antihero

Sal as a person in general

Writing style

Constant interruptions

Meandering narrative

The “narrator knows something but the writer avoids revealing it until the end for the drama” trope

This is a Big Tough World and Nobody Gets To Be Happy

Lesbians written by a man who harasses women

Unnecessarily long

// image: official cover art Jeremy Wilson //

Let’s begin with the full review by starting with the (few) positives, shall we?

First and foremost, I genuinely enjoyed Cavric and Lisette. It is unfortunate that they had to deal with Sal for the entirety of the novel, but we’ll get to her later. If this book had been a buddy adventure with these two, in which Cavric slowly shows Lisette that she is in a toxic relationships and deserves to move on and find someone better for herself, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. Secondly (and finally), Sykes introduced some genuinely interesting world building. The background of the Empire and the Scar was fascinating to read, but unfortunately did not save the rest of this mess.

Alright now let’s rant.

I have 35 notes and 52 highlights from this book, so this might get block quote heavy. (Go check out my notes if you want to see me slowly lose my sanity)

Sal is awful. I know she’s meant to be awful, but she’s not flawed in the way that I think Sykes was trying to write her. I believe she was intended to be a scruffy, lovable antihero who fought her way through a dangerous landscape with her sharp blade and even sharper tongue. A girl who had wrongs committed against her in the past, who did terrible things but is now on the road to an epic redemption arc. She shoots bad guys, she says f*ck and a*s a lot, and she is morally complex. That’s the character that Sykes was trying to make. The one he created, however, is a genuinely terrible person who I had no desire to see come out on top. I have a myriad of issues with her, but let’s outline a couple below: (1) She is incredibly toxic for Lisette. Am I getting a bit too heated about a fictional relationship? Sure. Was I happy to read a toxic lesbian romance written by a man who sexually harasses women? Nope. It kind of grossed me out, actually. Anyway, let me give you a run down of their relationship. Sal arrives. Sal and Lisette sleep together. Sal asks Lisette to give her weapons and or fix things for her. Sal sneaks away, telling herself no good will come of this relationship and they will only cause each other pain. Sal needs something. Sal comes back. Repeat over and over. She constantly says, throughout the book, that it would be better if they just left each other, but then again Sal is the one who goes back to Lisette over and over, causing her renewed heartbreak. I don’t know if Sykes thought that simply making Sal aware of how terrible this behavior was was enough, but it just made me incredibly frustrated. At one point Sal says:

”Intellect like hers is a curse. The more you understand of the world, the less of it you trust.”

Yes, Sal, that’s what’s giving her trust issues. Her intelligence. Nice. By the end of the book, it seems that they are on the mend-I’m getting end-game vibes from these two. But honestly, I spent the entire time thinking that Lisette deserved so much better than Sal. Like literally a chicken would have provided healthier companionship. I’ll end with this quote, in which Lisette outlines perfectly why Sal does not deserve her:

“What am I doing wrong that you’d choose this over me?”

(2) Sal is annoying. Really, really annoying. I kid you not, half of this book is made up of Sal’s snarky comments. She is badass. She has a gun. She is an outlaw. And she will never, EVER shut up about it. Imagine a quirky line after an otherwise dark or action-packed sequence. Funny, right? Might break the tension, make the narrator more endearing, etc. Now imagine one such line after every. Single. Paragraph. Picture a violent battle scene where the protagonist is fighting for their lives against a ruthless opponent. Now insert a snarky comment after every other paragraph and watch the entire flow of the scene fall apart with constant interruptions. That’s what this book is-which brings me to my next point.

The writing isn’t great. There are constant interruptions, meandering narratives, and the trope that haunts me in nearly every dark fantasy novel I read-This is a Big Tough World and Nobody Gets To Be Happy-is shoved repeatedly in your face. Let’s start with the interruptions, returning to my previous point (ie. Sal never shuts up), by looking at this sequence:

I  followed the shrieking wind. I had come here prepared for something bad. But I wasn’t prepared for just how bad it was. I rounded the corner of the hall, came out atop a battlement. The wind struck me with a screaming gale, forcing me to shield my face and cling to the stone for purchase. My eyes squinted against the harshness of the light, the kind of offensive pale you only see in your nightmares. And through them, I could see the bowed shapes of towers sagging, the flayed flesh of banners whipping in a wind that wouldn’t cease, the shadows of figures frozen in a death that had brought no peace. And I knew where I was. There was nothing that had ever made Fort Dogsjaw special. It had never been crucial for defense, never a hub for trade, it hadn’t even been named for anything special—the commander just liked the sound of it. It lived its whole life a regular, boring Imperial fort on the edge of the Husks. It only got important at the time of its death. Over three hundred mages and a few thousand regulars had assembled here in one day—some to receive assignments, some to man the garrison, some to head back to Cathama on leave. They had been laughing, cursing, drinking when the news came that the new Emperor of Cathama was a nul, born with no magic. And then there had been a moment of silence.

I’ve bolded for emphasis, but do you see what I’m talking about? The paragraph-line-paragraph-line format is so annoying to read, I had to put the book down at certain points because of how frustrated I got. It interrupted the forward movement of the story, making the novel drag on and on.

You know what else makes this feel like the nightmare version of the Never-ending Story? The page count. I don’t mind long books-The Priory of the Orange Tree is one of my favorite reads so far this year, and it’s longer than this one-but they have to have a reason for being so hefty. As I mentioned earlier, a considerable chunk of Seven Blades of Black is Sal making her awful, awful, AWFUL asides. I literally cannot express how much I despise those comments. Okay, let’s move on before I get hung up on THOSE STUPID COM-*cough*

This novel is marred by unnecessary lines and a meandering plot that drag out the story. One instance is the amount of times that Sal is a second away from killing someone and, for some reason (usually not a good one), fails in her goal. She places a gun at someone’s head and goes through a whole monologue in her head until the person miraculously escapes. This type of subversion of expectations is fine every once in a while, but if you are going to build up to a crucial moment and then take away the satisfaction of the defeat of some villain (or mini-boss, as many of the antagonists in this book feel like), then you need to have a good reason for doing it upwards of twenty times in ONE BOOK. Secondly, if you spend almost the entire novel setting up more and more villains and stressing how hard they are to kill and how dangerous their powers are (and presenting them separately and isolated), then when you have them all in one place at the end, at which point the protagonists starts going through them like a plate of french fries at a seagull convention, then you’re kind of taking away the satisfaction of the death. Somehow, this book manages to do both. We are constantly teased with almost-kills, then at the end Sal just blows through everyone in five seconds, easy-peasy.

I’m almost done, I swear-just two more gripes.

So much of the tension of this book rests on the fact that Sal, our narrator and our main viewpoint into the story, knows something that we don’t. I’ll be upfront with you-I hate this trope. If our POV character, the one whose mind we are in constantly, is entirely aware of something that happened before the beginning of the novel, and the author keeps from revealing that something for the entirety of the story solely to add drama, then I will not be a happy reader. Where is the logic. We are in this person’s mind. Just show us already and add tension ELSEWHERE.

And FINALLY (as painful as it was for you to read this, it was worse for me to write it), another issue I have with a lot of dark fantasy (see my review of Nevernight) is that the author really, really wants us to know that this is an incredibly dangerous and dark world by filling it to the brim with edge lord narrators, Big Guns, and, usually, women being harrased-because why not force all your female readers to constantly have to read about women getting assaulted? Apart from Sal’s 300,000 comments explaining to us that she is an asshole, that the Scar is Dangerous, and that she has Killed A Lot of People, we as readers must sit through hundreds of lines of dialogue and exposition that beat us over the head with the fact that this is DARK fantasy. This isn’t your nice little fairy adventure-no sir. Here we have Swear Words and Violence and Men writing Queer Women. To emphasize just how blatant Sykes is with the dark part of dark fantasy, let me tell you about an exchange Sal has with three old ladies who run a criminal empire. In the 2-3 pages that these women appear in, we are told, in some form or other, that they are grandmas who kill people, a grand total of, I kid you not, ELEVEN TIMES. Here are some excerpts from that whole situation:

”“Now, now.” Yoc, old and white haired and sweet as a grandmother—if that grandmother also had people killed on the regular—smiled at me. “I’m sure she has a good reason for being here.” She raised the hand that had signed the contracts that had killed a thousand men and women and took up her whiskey glass. “After all, I’m sure she knows how much we don’t like having our game interrupted.”” *I counted this as one since it’s in the same exchange but technically he mentions it TWICE

”…one didn’t waste the Three’s time if one didn’t want to end up with their teeth pried out.”

”How often do you meet the three old ladies who have people killed for money?”

”I said we should kill her on principle.”

”“But you know how many orphans I’ve made, don’t you, dear?””

”“He’s not so unlike us, is he? A murderer, yes. A monster to some. But, at his heart, a businessman.”

”Theirs were the hands that signed a thousand death contracts a year.”

”When they could be bothered to look up from their game, they decided who lived and died with a stroke of their pen.”

”At a word, they could have me stripped, tied, tortured, and cut up…”

”the Three don’t lie. Their assassins do. Their thieves do. But they don’t.”

”I had already wasted their time and I knew the Three were being generous just letting me fuck off instead of having me killed for the effort.”

TL;DR - Sal is annoying, Sykes is a bad writer, and Someone should have stopped me from reading this book

[musingsbetweenthepages]

Books I keep DNF-ing

I decided I’d make a post of the top 5 books I keep struggling to get through and keep setting down. There have been a lot of books, one of which is from a series so I’ll mention the series as several of the books made me put them down repeatedly before forcing myself to make it through them. I really hate dnf-ing books but sometimes it can’t be helped. I’ve learned to embrace when it happens and to roll with the punches.

1.) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Okay I know sooooo many people love this book, my mom and sister included. However, every single time I read it, I quit at the same point because it was moving too slow and plodding along with nothing interesting going on. I know it’s almost sacreligious to dislike this book so much. But after the 9th attempt over a spread of 5 years, I just had to hand it to myself that I don’t like Jane Austen’s writing, nor her most famous novel that everyone seems to love. Maybe some time in the future I can attempt again and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to finish it!

2.) The Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas

Yep. I can already hear your pitch forks being sharpened as the hoard starts running to gut me. But hey, I got to book five before calling it quits officially. The first book took me about two tries to make it through because some of the stupidest things kept going on for “tension,” the main character was completely unlikable and the focus kept shifting off of the tension of the competition to stupid shit (like Callie throwing a fit and tearing her room apart because she’s not perfect at playing billiards when there’s a killer on the loose). This series has potential as shown in book two. But book three and the introduction of the new love interest after so many switches that I got whiplash, I couldn’t careless. Book four got skimmed and the introduction of manon from book three had kept me going. Shit was getting good, I’ll admit. However, the complete obliteration of the characters we once were introduced with were completely changed and Callie was completely unbearable for me. I stopped frankly because of her. There was never any challenges for the characters, especially her that would break her or make her change her attitude even a little. And her arrogance grew ten fold that I called it quits once I opened book five and saw exactly how heartless and arrogant she was. I’ve debated retrying this series but I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge.

3.) Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

This was a series that I was curious about with people having x-men like superpowers and only the most powerful having them. However, right upon the introduction, I didn’t care for the main character and the wannabe Katniss Everdeen costume she was wearing. As soon as all of the women were made out to be evil and the MC was tearing them down and apart for their looks, forcing the reader to dislike them, I grew to dislike this book. I stopped around the 30% point when the plot became obvious. I don’t mind things being obvious if they’re well-written, and this was not. It was clunky and awful and I decided to skip it and instead read someone’s snark of it so at least I could see how bad it got and to confirm my suspicions.

4.) The Young Elites by Marie Lu

I’ve tried this book several times. And what killed it every time was the heavy handed writing with trying to claim the main character was an antihero and evil. I couldn’t buy it because it was never really shown. It was just told over and over and over again. Adding in the obvious ripping of the Assassins Creed game series, and I was annoyed as there was a lack of originality that actually made sense and stepped away from the source material it was derived from. Every time I tried to read it, all I kept thinking was how the book needed to be worked on more and that the finished product felt like a cheap imitation of what it could have eventually become. Either way, this was a book that kept getting set aside.

5.) Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Okay I’ll admit that I didn’t really like the first book when it came out, but I devoured it because it was entertaining fluff. I liked how the MC was learning to be strong, to be brave and trust herself. And then this book came out and I was ready to shove it down my garbage disposal regardless that it was a library book! The complete 360 of the MCs personality threw me completely and after about 50% of the book of her making reckless decisions that were getting people killed, I threw in the towel. I tried again a few months later and the same thing happened. This book infuriated me to no end that I gave up ever finishing this series.

If you like this kind of post, give me a thumbs up. I’m working on creating more posts tied to books, to get more into writing on this blog since I’m still new at this whole ordeal. I’m a little tired of Nanowrimo already as my story hit a block that I can’t get over, so instead I’ll be working on creating more posts and content on here! Might as well put the writing motivation to some good use besides all of my college papers lol 😄

[mermaidsirennikita]

Hi! Do you like Gone with the Wind and what do you think about Scarlett O'Hara?

So.  Gone with the Wind and I have a complicated relationship.

I.  I’m a young child.  Maybe seven or eight.  My mom’s playing Gone with the Wind, which she would because my mom loves it.  It’s pretty boring, though I distinctly remember bits like Scarlett getting drunk after her second husband’s death and Scarlett and Rhett dancing while she’s in her widow’s weeds.  But there’s a scene I find particularly disgusting--when some guy’s leg gets amputated.  It’s gross and gory (to little me) so I’m like fuck this shit.

II.  I’m thirteen, in the eighth grade.  Gone with the Wind is a classic, and I was on a classic kick at the time because I’d just read Wuthering Heights and decided that it was one of my favorite books ever (it still is).  I check GWTW out from the library, and UGH, a fire is lit.  I devour that long-ass book.  I read it again.  I go on various websites dissecting it, read articles and analyses of what it all meant.  I watch the movie, buy the DVD, buy an ancient copy of the book because it’s beautiful and a paperback because I need more than one copy.  I read my mom’s book about the making of the movie, watch other movies Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh did.  I make the book the centerpiece of my final project/paper for 11th grade high school English, basically about how Rhett symbolized reconstruction south and Ashley symbolized the antebellum.  (I get an A.)  

III.  Some time passes.  I read more about how Butterfly McQueen felt about her role as Prissy--and I’m increasingly made more uncomfortable with her scenes.  I read about the paradox roles like Prissy and Mammy present, because while they’re not good representation for black women, it’s not like we can dismiss the importance of Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar win or the quality of those performances.  I think about what it means, exactly, that the movie cut the KKK plot from the book (and how did Margaret Mitchell feel about that plot--does the fact that Rhett, a character who symbolizes inevitable and necessary progressive change, think it’s bullshit mean something?).  And what about that marital rape scene?

Basically, I think that a lot of what you’ll see old white male film critics (who never consider the book, which admittedly aside from a few changes like aforementioned KKK plot and Scarlett’s first two children) critique about GWTW is bullshit.  The story itself, from a story perspective, is epic and complex.  It’s both entertaining and deep--there is intentional symbolism, there are incredibly deep characters.  I think it’s so important that the book was written by a woman and is about a woman--and a woman who isn’t good at all, but is selfish and sexually voracious and not a good mother or friend.  But who does love people truly and deeply, and doesn’t do what she does solely for personal gain (though that’s often her motivation).  Scarlett’s a real human being.  So is Rhett.  Many of the other characters are plot device-y, but those two felt and still feel wholly real to me.  (And though Melanie isn’t super real I love her anyway.)  

The issues with Gone with the Wind have nothing to do with things like character and story and everything to do with the fact it’s dated and inherently problematic.  Though I should note that Margaret Mitchell apparently disliked that the movie turned the story into a romantic ode to the bygone era of the south, when Mitchell herself evidently saw it as a story about how the south of Scarlett’s childhood had to die.  It was weak and unsustainable, like Ashley.  Does this mean she was progressive?  No.  There’s something wrong with Mammy’s undying loyalty to Scarlett, despite her critiques of the woman.  The slaves are treated as simpletons, more in the movie than in the book.  In the book you see Scarlett think stupid shit like “well the slaves wouldn’t get on without us” but you’re also like mmmm Scarlett is a dumbass a lot of the time and couldn’t do a lot of what she does without Mammy, SOOOO what’s really going on here.  I don’t know if that was intentional on Mitchell’s part, so I can’t critique it.

It’s impossible for the material to not be dated and problematic and I think that it’s important to consume it with a critical eye.  But yes, I absolutely love Gone with the Wind.  It’s one of my favorite books and favorite movies and Scarlett O’Hara is one of my favorite characters.

(I didn’t address the marital rape scene because... it’s another thing I have very mixed feelings about.  And I basically have to measure the scene by the way that Scarlett feels about it--which is also mixed.  Do I think it’s problematic that her reaction to that scene is basically “best sex of my life”?  Yes.  Do I think it’s out of character that Scarlett, a malicious person who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on others, who has enjoyed fighting with Rhett most of their relationship even before they married, and loves getting a rise out of him to find that experience thrilling?  Not really.  Does that absolve Rhett?  Nope.  But there’s also an element of “they deserve each other” to Scarlett and Rhett’s relationship tbh because while he’s hideous to her at points, she’s also incredibly emotional manipulative and abusive to him at times.  I’ll also say that the scene is waaaay more interesting in the book, for obvious reasons because the movie at the time couldn’t show what happened AFTER they went into the bedroom.  And even in the book it’s vague, but it’s debated for a reason.)

I love Scarlett so much and I measure a good character by Scarlett sometimes.  She’s just such a hateful person, and yet so many of us love her?  She’s an antihero, a borderline villain to be honest.  When you really look at GWTW, it’s this 12-year saga of a woman-child who wraps people around her little finger romantically and platonically, is incredibly jealous and vindictive and basically sets out to ruin another woman’s life because of events entirely out of her control.  She’s a horrible wife, basically not giving a fuck about her first husband, only marrying the second because she needs cash (and ruining her own sister’s prospects in the process) and ignoring the fact that she loves Rhett and absolutely destroying him emotionally in part because... he genuinely loves her?  She genuinely loves him?  It’s complicated.  Also she’s like the worst mom and it’s kind of HILARIOUS in a dark way.  Scarlett being like “BE A LITTLE MAN WADE” to her sobbing toddler in wartorn Georgia as they struggle to escape Atlanta is... terrible but iconic.  It’s implied that her second child suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and Scarlett just dislikes her because she’s ugly.  Rhett is literally a better parent to his two stepchildren than their own mother, which isn’t saying shit because Rhett is a human disaster whose indulgence of his child indirectly leads to her death.

But the thing is that I admire so much Scarlett’s ability to survive.  Her sheer determination and resilience.  I think the book is kind of about the fact that in order to survive certain things, you have to let your inner rabid animal out.  You can’t necessarily be a good person and live through certain traumas, and that’s... okay.  Maybe you can recover your goodness, but if letting go of it means that you’ll keep your life and your sanity intact--that shit happens.  And it’s also about growing up and shedding the dreams of what you thought life would be, accepting the reality that the world has given you.  That’s what Scarlett as a character is about, really.  

And just as landmarks of fiction, the book and the movie are hugely impactful.  The book contributed heavily to the idea of the flawed female protagonist, sometimes the antagonist of her own story.  It’s an erotic read, and the movie for the day was an erotic movie--and that eroticism is targeted towards WOMEN, the female audience.  Scarlett is allowed to be a sexual being--in fact, it’s a big part of the Ashley vs. Rhett conflict.  Sure, Ashley is her romantic dream, but what if a woman doesn’t just want romance?  What about the sexual side of her that isn’t necessarily about love--it’s about getting fucked and well?  (Say what you will about That Scene, but the image of Vivien Leigh SINGING in bed after implied sex was a pretty big deal for the 1930s, esp. when it came to mainstream blockbusters.)  God, what about the fact that though Rhett leaves her at the end, Scarlett isn’t necessarily “punished” in one big sweeping way.  Her life is a nightmare, sure--she loses her parents, her favorite child, her unborn baby, the husband she loves ditches her after she finally realizes that she loves him.  But she’s alive.  She’s got her ancestral home.  She lives to fight another day and ends the story with hope.  After all she’s done, the story STILL lets her have another shot at life.  Hell, she’s still only in her late twenties.  Few male protagonists got away with that kind of shit, let alone females.  I love it.

Also, she definitely gets Rhett back after the book is done, I’m not saying it’s right or fair, I’m saying that Rhett Butler is her emotional bitch and there’s no way he didn’t take her back eventually, the end.