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imgonnabeyourbubblegumwitch · 6 years ago

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Caraval - A Review

Popsugar Reading Challenge 2019: A book revolving around a puzzle or game

This book was recommended by a colleague at work. It could fill the "A book revolving around a puzzle or game" prompt for the Popsugar reading challenge (also mentioned by a colleague at work and I thought why not) and it was £0.99 on kindle. All round this seemed like a no-brainer.

Now I've finished this book I have absolutely no idea how I feel about it. I spent a really long time trying to figure out what rating I'd give it. In the end I've gone for a four and if you're wondering why I've gone for a four when beyond the spoiler break I'm going to offer a lot of negatives or at the very least neutrals, then yeah I'm wondering that too. I guess it's because I enjoyed reading it well enough and that it was just after I'd closed it that it deflated and fell flat like a bouncy castle at the end of a party.

Anyway spoilers ahead. Let's look at Caraval.

In looking at the reviews post-read a lot of people either a) had similar issues to me or b) compared it to the Night Circus (which I haven't read) and said this wasn't as good. I can see what this book was trying to go for, and from that can predict what the Night circus might be like. This book tried hard to be magical and whimsical and sometimes it succeeded but often it fell flat too. I think part of the reason it didn't always work were the descriptions which were often a little odd and sometimes odd enough to take me out of the story and wonder how on earth that was supposed to work.

An example from early on when Scarlett is describing her father's perfume: "It smelled like the colour of his gloves: anise and lavender and something akin to rotted plums." This description of his perfume comes up a lot later on. It's not the mix of scents I have a problem with: I can visualise (smell-ise?) that. But what colour are his gloves? They are originally described as "plum-coloured" which I can get behind. But anise I picture as those little brown stars and googling this I can confirm I was right on that (it's good to check) though the plant can have white or purple flowers. The purple is a mid-purple and I guess I'd describe it as a warm lavender. Meanwhile you have lavender (cool, blue toned) and plum (warm, reddish). Now I have googled all these colours I have seen some cooler toned plums (I don't know if this is a country difference thing but I'd literally entirely forgotten cool toned plums existed). This could more closely match the lavender colour, but this is irrelevant to the point I'm about to make. Bear with me.

Why am I making such a big deal about all of this? In the beginning it was only a tiny nit-pick to me, a moment of my brain trying to match up brown stars with cool, blue lavender and warm, reddish plum. But as I read on, I found this book makes a big deal out of colour. The main character, Scarlett, attaches colours to emotions. For example "Scarlett had an emerald-green premonition" and (when she's feeling a lot of emotions) "Bold colours swirled inside her". Furthermore, she spends a large portion of the book in a magic dress that changes colour (and style) depending on her emotions. Later on she can see colours which match up to her love interest's emotions.

So when the gloves are described in a way that doesn't make sense to me until I got onto google, this did begin to bother me. Colour is so important to this world and I wasn't sure how I was supposed to be envisioning her father's gloves. Her father is a key character, abusive and controlling. Not only that but the gloves seemed to have importance too: he takes off his gloves to hit her sister, and Scarlett even comments "But at least he still had the gloves on." when he first enters on the scene, further drawing attention to them. They cover his abusive side - others do seem to see him as a respectable citizen - and so really do serve as an important bit of symbolism. I took the description of rotting plums and, as I always envision plum as a rich, reddish purple, I latched onto this and thought of them in the end as an almost bloody purple, but a rusty blood (tying in those brown stars). I'm now thinking I was supposed to picture a cooler colour, possibly even lighter too.

(Though to make things more confusing we later get "Her cheek was now almost the colour of her father's wretched gloves." which would bring me back around to the reddish, blood like colour as she's blushing at this point so I don't know any more to be honest. I'll stop taking about these gloves and move on to the actual point now…)

I am someone who unconsciously attaches colour to many things: days, months, years, subjects at school, characters I read, characters I write. I also have very clear emotions attached to certain colours and vice versa. Scarlett's colour emotions didn't always match with mine and that was kind of distracting. I guess on the whole this incredibly long point is still a minor nit-pick because, if you don't attach colours to things in the same way, it presumably wouldn't bother you. But it bothered me and this is my review so I thought I'd put it out there.

Picking back up on the magical, colour changing, style shifting dress, clothing is my second nit-pick: the clothes. Seriously the clothes. They are described in such detail. It's mainly something that we get for Scarlett, and maybe this is because the dress was mirroring her emotions. But even other dresses Scarlett wears are described in detail which I didn't much care about and forgot almost instantly.

At one point the dress description sets up something that never really comes completely into fruition and this only serves as a reminder that the plot could have been cleverer. A dress near the end is described as unexpectedly like a wedding dress. So the whole premise of this book is that Scarlett is playing the game and searching for the clues (something else I'm going to talk about because my goodness those clues). Anyway the fifth clue is "a leap of faith"(I think anyway because this book is not set up to be an eBook and so the letters the clues are in are tiny and almost impossible to read). Now for the entire book Scarlett has been thinking about and talking about her arranged marriage to someone she has never met. She was for this at the beginning as a way of escaping her abusive father, but as the book went on she began to fall for Love Interest Julian.

So I thought this leap of faith my involve stepping away from her future of an arranged marriage decided by her father and choosing what she wants. Maybe it wouldn't be an actual marriage to Julian but perhaps she'd pledge herself to him in some meaningful way, similar to the wedding ceremony. This thought was strengthened when they decided they needed to go to a hat shop (imagery of men getting married in top hats) and I thought we may get a payoff for the Julian is Scarlett's fiancé ruse that had been running since the two got to Caraval. Perhaps they'd need in some way to act out or dress for their "upcoming wedding" and this would illicit a confession from Scarlett as she took "a leap of faith" and allowed herself to choose her own destiny. This echoed a point made earlier in the book by a fortune teller who said the future was hard to change because people were predictable.

Then they get to the hat shop and her real fiancé was there. And I began to wonder if perhaps she would break off the engagement with him and so the wedding dress was ironic. And I guess it sort of happened that way? Sort of? Scarlett's father shows up and Scarlett and Julian briefly escape but this is completely pointless because Scarlett's father and fiancé show up anyway. Scarlett's father injuries Julian, and to save him Scarlett agrees to go with her fiancé to consummate their non-existent marriage. But then Scarlett breaks away from him using some plot device she got earlier which meant he couldn't hurt her for two hours. It felt a little flat compared to what I'd imagined with needless scenes of escaping when they are caught up to anyway and stakes I didn't believe or wasn't invested in. This is symbolic of the rest of the game and the rest of the book.

I'll admit part of the problem here might be that, searching amazon for books, I came across the sequel but not realising it was the sequel read the blurb thus learning Scarlett's sister, Donatella is found. Therefore Scarlett's entire motivation, to find her sister and save her, became an inevitability. Even so I think the stakes would have felt low. There's a part in the book where Julian and Scarlett are racing to get into their hotel room because they have to be in before dawn. We don't know why. There is reasonable tension build up with lights going out as they run. Scarlett makes in in because Julian pushes her in, which prompts Scarlett to bargain with the proprietor to get Julian in as well. It's a moment of triumph for the rule-abiding Scarlett and they can now both play the game.

But I wasn't clear on why they couldn't be out during the day. (We later find out the magic isn't there or is weaker in the day and presumably that's why everyone has to be inside. But what about the people watching? Does the same go for them?) And okay there was the issue of maybe Julian not being able to play the game, but we don't know why he wants to play the game so even that didn't feel really dramatic. Julian has bent the rules and been charmingly persuasive to get what he wants, even Scarlett has just bent the rules to get Julian in. I'd have liked some more stakes, something outside in the day that makes it even more imperative they get inside. Maybe there is clean up during the day, but the clean-up is done by monstrous creatures or robots who don't know the difference between rubbish and human beings. Okay that was a semi-stupid example but you get the idea. Something.

This was the same for the whole game. Scarlett follows the clues, but aside from when the other players take everything from Donatella's room at the very beginning of the game, we don't really get a sense of any competition. The clues seemed to be only for Scarlett (and maybe this was deliberate given the ending reveal Donatella was behind everything) but since she wasn't really going against any real competitors who could offer a real threat that Scarlett may not make it, this lessened the tension. Time was frequently mentioned to be different, quicker, slipping away, Scarlett often said they must hurry but I didn't feel any urgency. She had an arbitrary time limit in which to find her sister in but she was bumbling along nicely, we had no clue why she shouldn’t be out in the day and no one else was a threat so it didn't seem to matter that she was always in a hurry. It would have been nice to have other players trying to interfere a little more with what Scarlett was doing, have them getting to clues first or anything at all to make it feel more like a competition.

The clues themselves made little sense, even given that were probably designed so only Scarlett would get to Donatella. Scarlett would suddenly say she'd solved another clue, or found the next one and I was confused because how could that be the answer? Everything seemed to happen by happenstance: Scarlett (sometimes accompanied by Julian or other people she met) would wander around, bump into something or someone, occasionally run away from (or after) something or someone, and then somehow get a clue. Maybe this is just me being a mystery lover but I'd have liked it if the clues were a more logical progression and could be solved by the reader. Instead you have no chance because everything was a series of random curveballs being thrown at you.

Sometimes things went somewhere. Sometimes they didn't. I'm still not clear if the buttons were important or not for example. It was frequently said that people wouldn't be who they said they were, that you shouldn't get caught up in the game. I would have liked more to be made of this, perhaps people could change during the game, becoming distant and different and Scarlett could wonder if the game was changing them, or was it changing her? Were they even the same people or had they gone to be replaced by actors? What was real? What wasn't? I love the idea of someone questioning what is going on around them, who is a player, who is a pawn. The book didn’t make enough of this for me.

Related to above, I'd predicted Julian was Legend from his first appearance in the book and, if the reveal he wasn't had come later on, I would have been thrilled to be tricked and have my expectations subverted. As it was I was just a bit like oh, and after Julian swore he wasn't Legend I just amended this to well he's probably a family member or something. He was. The book wanted to trick me into thinking he was Legend but was too heavy handed and didn't trust that I'd pick up on the subtleties that said he might be. Or maybe it didn't even mean to hint this and the reveal he was Legend was supposed to be a huge shock. Either way I feel like this heavy handedness, like the point above, detracted from what could have been a nice slow, creepy mystery and a series of hints that maybe Julian wasn't all he seemed. Was he Legend? Wasn't he Legend?

To sum up, this book reminded me of Steven Moffat's run of Doctor Who (or at least the parts of it I watched before I got totally fed up). There was lots of attempts at a certain style, lots of loud flashy things and an attempt at mystery but because you couldn't solve anything yourself since the mystery relied on random things or events you couldn't possibly predict and it started all just feel like nothing. But, unlike Moffat's run of Doctor Who, for the most part the book pulled me through and I did enjoy the experience which is why, contrary to all my complaints and issues, I give this book such a lenient rating. I do think I'll read it again, purely because I liked that Donatella was behind everything, and I'm interested to see if this makes things make more sense. I feel like it will and it won't and the book won't be any more satisfying and after that I won't read it again. I'm certainly not tempted to pick up the sequel.

Nonetheless Caraval: 4/5

#i complain about some things #popsugar reading challenge #caraval #book reviews #spoilers

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mdwatchestv · 7 years ago

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Game of Thrones 7x06: Run Joe, Run

Woo boy that was A LOT. Like a lot, a lot. In so many different ways. I would even go so far as to describe some elements as 'extra'. Yes there was excitement, action, and feels. I even admit to screaming bloody murder when the zombie bear came from a direction I didn't expect. But when all was said and done I couldn't help but feel a bit...used. This season, although boasting some great moments, has felt undeniably different than previous years. Instead of focussing on building out a world and the characters that inhabit it, the show is now rocketing towards a foregone conclusion. If the world of Game of Thrones is a chess board and we have spent the past several years watching knights and queens slowly slide around the squares jockeying for position, this season is the equivalent of knocking it all to the ground and letting the pieces literally fall where they may. Alternatively, if the world of Game of Thrones was a high-end Barbie collector's basement, this is the season his eight-year-old niece broke in, ripped 1993 Holiday Barbie out of her box and made her make out with 1960 1st edition Ken. And neither of those things are inherently bad, playing with dolls and knocking a boring game on the floor are both entertaining in and of themselves, but they are also a departure from what we have come to expect.

Before this season I never thought about things like "Wait- how many long miles IS Westeros? What is the land speed of a laden Raven? What's the MPH on a dragon? How long by air? How long by sea?" I wasn't worried about the logistics, the tech specs. We had other things to worry about, like battle strategies, familial strain, and tyrannical kings. But now it feels as if the curtain is starting to be pulled aside and we are for the first time seeing the mechanics at work behind the scenes. While there were thrills to be had in this super-sized penultimate outing of season seven, they came at a price. In the after-episode special Benioff and Weiss openly admitted to essentially reverse-engineering the entire episode in order to get the final shock of zombie dragon, rather than letting it be the consequence of an organic series of events. One of the reasons Game of Thrones works so well is that consequences, even the upsetting ones, feel earned. The Red Wedding, for example, tragic as it was, was ultimately palatable because it made sense in the larger story. It was the tangible result of a series of connectable actions, not a gambit for ratings. Often the killing of beloved characters leads fan to become disillusioned with a show because it's done in the service of shock value, rather than organic storytelling. But as major characters drop on Game of Thrones, it only acts to draw the audience in further because it’s done in a way that rewards previous storytelling. The idea that characters are existing in a real world with real stakes and consequences is compelling and rare. Up until this season Game of Thrones never had characters rendered immortal by their series regular contracts, or even clear-cut heroes and villains. Yes, we root for different characters and houses, but at this point no one has a clean moral conscious. Those qualities are exactly what made Game of Thrones so good, and what it is seemingly starting to lose. It's worth pointing out that up until recently the show has had source material to rely on for guidance, and is now having to pick it's own path to the end. Viewer’s theories about the show’s endgame have become increasingly out there, perhaps in response to a world where outcome is not necessarily determined by prior events. For better or worse, anything is possible.

This episode was some moments of interest strung together with moments of "what?!?!?". Let's begin. ZARTF (Zombie Acquisition and Retrieval Task Force), as well as a few randos clearly marked for death, sally forth into the north. This whole episode gave me greatest hits of Lord of the Rings vibes, including "walking in a straight line across a mountain", "being rescued by a giant winged beast at the last second", and "rolling up half dead on a horse". I really gotta carve out 10 hours to rewatch those. To pass the time tromping through the snow our seven "heroes" try and work through their daddy issues (a little late imo), and Jon makes a half-assed attempt to give Longclaw back to Jorah (conveniently failing to mention it's like the only thing that kills White Walkers). The first sign of trouble comes when the group is set upon by a zombie bear! You hate to see that. Some of the red shirts are killed, Top Knot McGillicutty is wounded, and Jorah saves the day with his dragon glass dagger. Which I guess they all have? Or just Jorah? Unclear. This scene is what we like to call in the biz a foreshadowing.

Meanwhile in Dragonstone Dany is mooning over Jon Snow, even though he is a short stack (he IS super little) and ignores Tyrion who is attempting to invent democracy. In their exchange it's reiterated that Dany can never have babies (beyond her dragon babies), making a potential hold on the Iron Throne tenuous at best (Jon is still the *true* heir, but doesn't seem like Bran is going to tell anyone that anytime soon). Dany would rather not talk about any of that though, and would rather crush/not crush on the King of the Short. Speaking of women on the edge, the Sisters Stark are also failing to see eye to eye. After discovering Arya's BAG OF FACES (I have so many questions about the logistics of face wearing, but I am simply too tired to get into it), Sansa is understandably concerned. These concerns are heightened when creepy-ass Arya pops in to play a decidedly threatening game of questions. Arya seems to think Sansa is out to usurp Jon because she is a Cersei-in-training. Sansa thinks Arya is a terrifying demon child. This is a relationship that has also become frustrating centering around a conflict that doesn't ring true. While it's true that Arya and Sansa have become very different young women, there is more that unites than divides them at this point and Arya's extreme aggression towards her sister feels unwarranted. The core characteristic of the Stark family is that they ARE the Stark family. Arya put aside her dreams of Cersei killing in order to reclaim her heritage, and with the pack dwindling the remaining wolves have to stick together now more than ever. Both of these women have been through extreme trauma, both of them have had to make unthinkable choices in order to survive, and both of them have been continually underestimated by their male cohorts. I'm not saying this is a relationship that should not be without conflict, but their animosity lacks nuance. Granted this show doesn't have a lot of experience with complicated female relationships, but Sansa and Arya attempting to reconnect as complex young women in a time of crisis feels like a real missed opportunity.

And I have seen the Twitter theories that say that the two girls are gaming Littlefinger together, that Sansa sending Brienne away (to an I think prematurely scheduled zombie viewing) right after Littlefinger advised her to use Brienne against Arya is concrete proof. As much as I hope this is all true, it just doesn't seem likely at this point. But maybe Sansa's bizarrely abrupt send off of her last loyal subject really was a clue to a larger plot, or maybe it's just an excuse to put Brienne back in Jaime's path to give him a last second shot of moral obligation. I would love nothing more for my pessimistic theories surrounding two of my long time favs to be proven wrong. These two characters, no matter their ultimate fate, deserve the chance at a final team up.

Back up north, our band of brothers conveniently stumble upon a manageable squadron of zombies led by a White Walker. After dispatching the Walker all the zombies but *one* turn into dust. The plan is going smoothly! However the last zombie calls the rest of the hoard and they are well and truly fucked. The group sends good old Gendry to run back to the Wall (an unknown distance) to raven Dany for help, while the rest of the pack becomes stranded on a rock in the middle of an ice lake surrounded by the entire undead army. Here's where I have questions. Question 1: If Ole One Eye and Top Knot McGee can make fire whenever they want, why cant they have a fire on the island? Or at least gather around one of the swords? Question 2: Can the zombies not use bows? It seems like our group would be pretty easy to take down with a couple dozen arrows. Question 3: How long are they waiting/expecting to wait? How long does it take for the raven to get to Dany? More questions to come later. Anyway Top Knot succumbs to his wounds, meaning that One Eye is now on his final life. The Hound, who was pretty useless most of this episode, continues to be useless by alerting the zombie hoard that the ice is safe to walk on. Our party engages in a seemingly hopeless battle against an untold number of assailants, hoping against hope for a dragony miracle to happen.

And it does! Dany swoops in with her brood in the last second, blasting the zombies with fire, and rocking a seriously fabulous white fur coat, to save the day! Not only is her winter wardrobe literally to die for, it also looks like she may have skinned Ghost to make it, symbolizing her new allegiance (romance?) with Jon. I also have to ask at this point why this wasn't the original plan. Dany made pretty good time getting up there, didn't have to tromp through the snow, and likely could have had Drogon pick up a zombie in his talons- all in seemingly less than a day! But I guess that would have been much less macho than grimly marching through the snow. It looks like the tables have turned in favor of our hereos when suddenly....the Night King picks up an ice spear and takes out Viserion! Nooooo.

This was a genuinely heart-wrenching moment, as an audience we have watched Dany's dragons grow from hatchlings to giant death machines, and seeing one of them ripped out of the sky was just as painful as losing any beloved human character. Again this was a moment that delivered an emotional punch, but the journey to that payoff was not as satisfyingly authentic as it could have been. Jon, realizing the White Walkers are somehow ready for dragon combat, sacrifices himself so Drogon can take off with his payload safely. But it's an empty sacrifice, because Jon is last minute rescued by BENJEN STARK, who is part ice monster, part North of the Wall lifeguard, all Stark all the time. If you recall Benjen, or Cold Hands I guess is his nickname, previously came in for the save with his swinging lantern when he rescued Meera and Bran. But Benjen's last minute saving days are over as he is eaten by zombies in order to allow Jon to escape. Sad.

Back at the wall Dany ignores Daddy Jorah in favor of wistfully staring out over the tundra, hoping for Jon to appear. And appear he does! Jon is more than fine, especially shirtless and wrapped in furs on Dany's pleasure yacht. The two have some weird flirting where Dany reveals she can never have children, and Jon actually refers to her as 'Dany'. Good thing they are both so hot, because that banter wouldn't cut it anywhere else. Also she's his aunt. I simply cannot stress that enough.

As a final coda to this decades long episode, we see the Night Army dragging the corpse of Viserion out of the lake only to reanimate him into an ice zombie dragon! Gah! Shit is most definitely getting real, as the Night King adds some real power to his arsenal. Will zombie dragon still breathe fire? Ice? Freezing rain? Excited to find out. Next week (the season finale???) looks like it will be the zombie summit down in King's Landing. I have zero predictions for this. My only hope is that Euron will be there, I miss him. In a world of uncertainty, Euron brings the party.

Stuff I didn't get to:

Stop shipping Dany/Jon, START shipping Brienne/Beardy

They almost took Beardy from me after I SPECIFICALLY asked them not too.

Beardy learned the word dick <3

Beardy rode a dragon!!!

MVP: Beardy. I don't have to defend myself.

XO MD

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