#the murdstone trilogy

[majicmarker]

get to know me

tagged by: @thecryptkeeperskeeper 👻💕

favorite color(s): depends on the Thing. clothes? black. blankets? navy or mocha. phone cases? whatever complements my phone’s pale pink. flowers? yellow. her energy? amber. (bah-dum-tss)

last song: “i’ll still feel for you,” by pretty bleak

currently reading: christ i’ve not been much for reading lately. my last one was over the summer, the murdstone trilogy by mal peet (and *highly* recommend), but haven’t been in the bookish mood. it’ll come back around, tho, and then i’ll hit the library for another funky little book i’ve never heard of before <3

currently watching: rewatching criminal minds, rewatching the boondock saints + the sequel every few days bc Nothing Else quite scratches that particular itch, catching up with st. denis medical whenever i need a break from all the murder, new eps of the sex lives of college girls on thursdays, stephen colbert when i feel out of touch with the world’s goings-on, and friends or daria while i’m falling asleep

(it’s been a tv mood lately, hence my reading not-happenin’-at-the-moment)

currently craving: the healing power of true love, and i wish that was a joke.

also and more attainably, tacos and like 60oz of margarita from the local chain

coffee or tea: i’m a prepared can of iced coffee kinda caffeine gremlin—starbucks, international delight, whatever, i just wanna get my white chocolate mocha and/or various candy flavors on

hobby to try: i’ve been meaning to kinda junk journal my way through my new book of shadows, which means what i really need to do is haul all of my supplies out of their cupboard so i stop forgetting they exist.

i’ve also gotten into collecting and listening to vinyl, but a girl’s only got so much spare cash ヽ(⌐■_■)ノ♪♬

current au: the big ongoing project rn is the bethyl boondock saints-inspired au, buuuuuut i’m also playing with a one-shot inspired by luke bryan’s “crash my party” (among my most romantic songs of all time)—

summary: “Daryl keeps doing nice things for Beth and gettin’ the hell outta there before she can thank him.” it’s very slice-of-life feel-good butterflies romance and not that i’ve been yearning lately or anything—

tagging: whoever wants to and also @carry-the-sky @redbelles @sluttyhenley @hangon-silvergirl @littlelindentree @maybedeadbutstillpretty @sail-not-drift @woodswit @winterrose527

[yourlocaldisneyvillain]

AO3 fic stats meme!

tagged by @allaganexarch!

rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

Most Hits: push me gently (into love) | Wednesday (TV 2022) | Larissa Weems/original female character | rated M | 12,988 words

i'm not surprised to see this one here! def not my best work writing wise, but it has sentimental value to me! it's very silly and rom-comy. like an early 2000s hugh grant movie but a lesbian fic (which is kinda my vibe tbh)

Second Most Kudos: when the last restraint is gone | The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) | Jane Murdstone/original female character | rated M | 25,031 words | ongoing

oh okay i actually like this one. i need to go back and edit it THOROUGHLY though, bc stylistically i don't like certain Choices(TM) that much anymore, but i am generally really fond of this one. a victorian lesbian romance with filthy smut and Longing(TM), what more can you wish for. i need to write the final chapter to wrap it up but i keep postponing it bc i wanna edit the entire thing before that and it is Long(TM) lol.

Third Most Comments: it's push me gently (into love)

again lol. idk why this one is so popular (that was rhetorical, i do know). alas, it's never the ones that pushed me as a writer and the ones that made me improve greatly. it's always the rom-coms with a lot of porn in them :')

Fourth Most Bookmarks: danger level - one | Star Wars (sequel trilogy) | Captain Phasma/original female character | rated E | 4,784 words

okay, this one is straight up porn lol. it's silly. if you wanna read something filthy and fun, go for it, i guess! not my best work, but it's okay.

Fifth Most Words: on wednesdays we wear black | Wednesday (TV 2022) | Larissa Weems/Morticia Addams | rated T | 7,741 words

IS THIS THE "HOW TO BEST MISREPRESENT AN AUTHOR" OR HOW TO PICK THE FICS I'M LEAST PROUD OF ADSJKHFHFSDAHFSAD GAME like i don't dislike this one, it's just my oldest fic and it's currently on hiatus bc i wanna rewrite it entirely and ughhhhh jdshffsddsa. i love the idea of it, i just. you know. aaaaaagh.

Fewest Words: the secret | The Sandman (TV 2022) | Lucifer Morningstar/Mazikeen | rated E (probably more of an M though)| 1,053 words

lolll okay this is the last fic in my kink!week series. so the premise was that i basically picked a really nasty/unusual/underrepresented/extreme kink for each of the days in the week with different gwendoline christie characters and went to town lol. and this one is the crown of the whole series. the one in which i rickrolled everybody :)))))))) (not as a kink, just to be a lil shit lol)

tagging: @zephyr-is-tired @alexusonfire @dianneking @notinmyvocab @criseydethetraitor honestly idk who else i can tag that didn't cancel me lol. if i forgot about someone (sorry!) and you wanna do it, consider yourself tagged!

[eyebright-iris]

Review: The Murdstone Trilogy by Mal Peet

Content warning: this review will discuss misogyny, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia and ableism.

It appears I am having terrible luck with reading this year. I should have known when the gap between by last book I finished and this one (not counting the two graphic novels I blazed through in like two hours in between) has been six months. I started reading The Murdstone Trilogy in January/February time, after the disappointment of Empress of Flames. I hoped that the things I heard - a Pratchett-esque satirical take on fantasy literature, full of good humour and entertaining challenges of the clichés we all know - would make this a fun and easy read, lighthearted and quick.

Oh God, I was so wrong.

Not wanting to pick up another book and brand my 2022 reading a two-for-two of DNFs has meant I haven’t really read in six months. I did not want to finish this book. It sat on my bedside table like a piece of set dressing, collecting dust, seven chapters in and I was loath to pick it up again. But what is it that’s so bad about this book?

Well, let me tell you. It is utterly devoid of heart. It is a book so concerned with cynicism, with belittling others, with being removed and aloof and bitter, that it removes any fun it might have had. I wondered if, perhaps, the use of an ableist slur twelve pages in meant that this book wasn’t for me. Maybe, I thought, trying to be generous, it was from the early 2000s, some time where the R slur got thrown around casually without thought for its actual cruel ramifications. Where the hatred of disabled people was challenged only really by disabled people themselves, where the publicity surrounding not being a fucking monster to minorities was nowhere near what it is today, where the “woke mob” is decried every time someone famous and beloved is revealed to be a fucking monster.

Unfortunately, this book was published in 2014.

And it only got worse from there. Aside from the frankly disgusting way the protagonist talks about women - any women, as often as possible - there’s also the use of transphobic slurs and casual discussion about if a gay man with social power sexually assault the male protagonist, he should just smile and not make a fuss. It’s funny! Queer people existing - trans people, gay people - are actually a way to show off how weird and not like good old Blighty the USA is. Queerness is a side-effect of modern-day image-obsessed celebrity culture, and considering how bitterly and viciously this book rails against the progression of the world through technology and social media, it is distinctly not a positive thing.

Now, I know. Books do not have to be moral. Protagonists can be horrible people, I know. I’ve read books with horrible protagonists, and loved them. This book felt like a gut punch, over and over. How far did I make it into it? Seven and a half chapters. I reached a point where I realised I wasn't enjoying myself, and I did not need to martyr myself to this bitter and dull piece of shit book for the sake of proving that no, I do understand that flawed protagonists exist and can be good to read. I have a Masters degree in literature. I am required to prove nothing to no one, thank you.

BELOW ARE JUST A FEW OF MY “”FAVOURITE”” PASSAGES. THESE WILL BE MISOGYNIST, ABLEIST, RACIST TRANSPHOBIC AND HOMOPHOBIC, AS WELL AS CONTAINING A MENTION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO READ THEM, PLEASE SKIP TO “FIN”.

“It made Asperger’s cool” (page 11)

“You’ve made that whole area, you know, boys who are inadequate, your own.” (page 11)

“No one wants to publish another book about sensitive retarded boys” (page 12)

“It’s about a sensitive adopted boy of mixed race with learning difficulties who’s good at football and believes his real father might be a Premiership footballer” (page 12)

“He picked at the wrongly hinged boy in the wheelchair whom Minerva had pointed out” (page 71)

“Viscid filaments stretched between his lips” (page 72)

“The boy’s eyes swivelled and his buckled fingers clawed the air” (page 72)

“His teenage son is a tranny” (page 76)

“He’s as gay as bunting, and if he cops a feel of your bum I want you to promise me you won’t make a fuss, OK? It won’t come to anything.” (page 77)

FIN

It was at this point, having slogged through ableism and transphobia and more misogyny than would be practical to list in the above section, but trust me, this protagonist is an incel through and through, than I threw the book down. I had only picked the damn thing up again after months of not touching it because I was waiting for my phone to update and couldn’t be asked to get out of bed on a Sunday morning to go to my laptop. What a vile, sad, disgusting little book. What a waste of ink, what a waste of my time and money.

There is one, final thing I’d like to touch on, before I hurl this mistake of a book to the winds. It’s less…skin crawling, shall we say, than the rest of the above bullshit. But it hurt me very personally, in ways different to how the ableism and homophobia and transphobia hurt me.

I do LARPing. For those who don’t know, that’s Live Action Role Play, like a renfaire or cosplaying your own OC, but with plot and worldbuilding. I run LARPs and I play them. They are tremendous fun, and require a level of unabashed love for what you’re doing, authentic and honest and joyful. I love fantasy in the same way, the way it is so often unabashed that yes, the evil in the text can be defeated and we will come home, the world saved but we irrevocably changed, but we won, we won, we won. Fantasy is a genre of pretending and refusing to allow that to be strangled out of you by common sense or grown up nonsense. Mal Peet does everything he can in this novel to strangle it out of me. He is cruel and dismissive. Murdstone calls Tolkien “pretentious escapist nonsense”, as if The Lord of the Rings was invented out of nowhere so Tolkien could feel clever about himself, as if there isn’t a rich history of fantasy being written in reference and reverence to texts that have come before that goes all the way back to Beowulf and beyond - a history I have personally studied at university. Books, and fantasy, is all capitalistic nightmare foolishness, according to this book. The publishing industry churns out only what sells, and writers write only what sells, and there is no joy or authenticity in it, only cynicism and money.

It’s no wonder I quite literally tossed it aside 77 pages in.

Mal Peet, I’m sorry your protagonist is so much smarter than the rest of the world. I’m sorry that this book was marketed as a fun romp through fantasy tropes, something that I picked up hoping for just that. And I am so, so sorry that it led to me not reading anything for six fucking months because I thought I should at least have the decency to try and finish it.

To the bin with it. I move on to better things.

Verdict:

A cynical and bitter, boring book that has the additional gall to be cruel to minorities. A lot. A waste of my time and money that I could never recommend to anyone. 0/5, 0/10, whatever rating you choose, I hated it.

[thebooksanctum]

The Murdstone Trilogy By Mal Peet - Review

The Murdstone Trilogy By Mal Peet – Review

What does every writer want, more than anything? More than a book deal, along with a movie adaption deal? Someone to write the book for them, that’s what. And don’t try to tell me you don’t, every writer has, at least once in their writing life, wished the book would either write itself, or for someone to do it for them. That’s exactly what Philip Murdstone gets. Murdstone starts this book as an…

[merrisephine]

tagged by the ever-so-amazing @waricka !! thank u bud <3

Relationship status: single as fuck lmao

Favorite color: green, brown, and purple!! <33

Pets: the two best and most adorkable doggies in the world :3c

Last song I listened to: R U Mine? by Arctic Monkeys <3

Favorite TV show: i dont watch that many tv shows these days?? since “twitch.tv” has tv in it im gonna just assume that counts tho and say uhm anyone i follow on there, since i basically live on the website these days :’D (tv show i will always watch tho: last airbender and legend of korra omfg)

First Fandom: if its like the first thing i was a huge fan of; teen titans! first fandom on this hell website that i was active in: danosaurs (??? uh danisnotonfire fandom lmao. cant believe we were called that but ya)

Hobbies: D&D, art, writing, video games, board games, coding, and baking!! <3

Books I’m currently reading: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, The Murdstone Trilogy by Mal Peet, and How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran

i tag hMMM @ace-out, @thestarsarewaitingforyou, uh and anyone else who sees this and wants to do it lets just say i tagged you friend <3 (and the ones i actually tagged, only if you wanna buddies!)

[abmgw]

ABMGW 102 Der Herr der Ringe vs Die Murdstone Trilogie (J.R.R. Tolkien und Mal Peet)

ABMGW 102 Der Herr der Ringe vs Die Murdstone Trilogie (J.R.R. Tolkien und Mal Peet)

Thema der woche: Fantasy Trilogien! Oder: alles was schlecht an ihnen ist. Die Mutter des Übels ist zweifellos “Der Herr der Ringe” von J.R.R. Tolkien, ein Buch das so bekannt ist das ich kaum mehr auf näher darauf eingehen muss. Mit einer Fantasytrilogie muss auch der Protagonist in “Die Murdstone Trilogie” kämpfen: Aus Geldgründen muss der Autor Fantasy schreiben – dabei hasst er doch die…

[tadershekelmp]

The view from here was lovely, constant, and never the same. Somehow, it was always sympathetic to his mood.

Mal Peet, The Murdstone Trilogy

[e-volt]

Watch Mal Peet discuss The Murdstone Trilogy.

[thebooksanctum]

August Wrap Up And September TBR