MOVIES
Dune
I have never read Dune and have not seen David Lynch’s 1984 film, so I went into this movie with zero emotional attachment or expectations. I think that definitely influenced my opinion and I know that feelings will be different for people who love series. That being said, I quite liked this movie. I think I was in just the right mood for a grand sci-fi-chosen-one story full of beautiful people and imagery and all the cliches that come with the genre. And now I shall summarize Dune. A simple thing really. Ummm. Paul Atreides is the son of a galactic Duke, whose kingdom is given exclusive rights by the Space Emperor to mine “spice” from the planet Arakkis. But when the Atreides family (and their army) get to the desert planet, they are quickly betrayed and everything goes wrong. And Paul is also a magical psychic wizard messiah or something. This is a classic sci-fi series that you probably know way better than me, so trying to summarize the story feels a little silly. It’s a big magic space drama.
Dune is very clearly the first part of a larger story and suffers a bit from that, with an anticlimactic ending that directly leads into the currently non-existent part two. It also has a bit of a “white savior” problem because almost all of the characters surrounding Paul and his mother (played by white actors) are stellar actors of color. I’m glad that there was so much diversity in the cast but the tradeoff, in a story like this, is that you’re seeing so many POC killed off in the service of the white character’s story. A white character who is being set up to save the native inhabitants of a planet. So there is that. Enjoyment with some criticism.
The French Dispatch
If someone told you to envision the most Wes Anderson thing you could think of, you’d probably end up with The French Dispatch. It is EXTREMELY Wes Anderson. And, being a fan of Wes Anderson’s movies, this worked for me. The French Dispatch is an anthology that tells three small stories under the umbrella of a group of reporters putting together the final issue of a fictional news magazine, a la The New Yorker. The first story is about an incarcerated artist and his prison-guard muse, the second is about a youth revolt, and the third follows the kidnapping and rescue of a young boy. Each story is influenced by and pays tribute to the work of real journalists, with the third story, emulating the work of James Baldwin, being the most heartfelt and effective of the three (in large part due to Jeffrey Wright, who is excellent as always). Wes Anderson tells these stories through a mix of film styles using his signature meticulous staging, timing, and imagery. If you like his other films, you’ll probably like The French Dispatch.
BOOKS
Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch
Lee Welch first popped up on my radar with her excellent Salt Magic Skin Magic, a gothic romance with mythological magic. Seducing the Sorcerer, somehow only Welch’s second novel, is another great story full of smooching and sorcery. Fenn Todd is a homeless drifter, barely surviving by taking whatever work he can find along the roads of a drought-stricken kingdom. After doing some backbreaking daily labor at a strange farm, Fenn is cheated into accepting payment not in money or food, but in the form of a pile of sackcloth shaped like a horse. But after walking away with this pile of rags, the rags start behaving very much like a real horse. A real horse that can also fly. This magical sackcloth horse leads Fenn to the fabled black tower of Morgrim, the kingdom’s terrifying sorcerer who is dealing with some big problems of his own. Seducing the Sorcerer, as you can probably guess from the title, is a romance as much as it is a fantasy story, and Fenn falls hard for the prickly magician. This book instantly drew me in and I loved the strange, rich world of magical flying horses and ensorcelled towers covered in unending rain.
Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune
Wallace is an asshole. He’s a cold, uncaring lawyer uninterested in helping anyone other than himself. Alone in the office one evening, he has a heart attack and dies. The next thing Wallace knows, he’s viewing his own sparsely attended funeral and being whisked away to a strange tea house in the woods, which is a way-station for troubled ghosts. The residents of the tea house include the soft-spoken ferryman Hugo, the new reaper Mei, and Hugo’s ghostly grandfather and dog. As Wallace learns to accept his death and come to grips with a life poorly lived, he grows and changes in the best ways while bittersweetly falling in love with the still living Hugo, who he can’t touch.
In the acknowledgments for this book, Klune talks about how this was his way of trying to process his own experiences with death and grief and that definitely shines through the story. It explores all the varied, difficult emotions and unknowns that surround death and feels both melancholy and hopeful. And whoo boy, Under the Whispering Door made me cry A LOT. Like extended crying-while-reading situations where my dog got distressed and came over to comfort me. So, you know, look forward to that. My one complaint with UtWD is that it took me a while to get into the story because I have a hard time with smug characters and I found a majority of the cast to be frustratingly smug at the beginning, although I think they were meant to be charming. But as I got into the book and the characters grew and changed, I ended up absorbed in the story anyway.
Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher
So there I was, poking around my various to-read lists and all of a sudden I saw that the third book in T. Kingfisher’s Saints of Steel series, which at this point I didn’t know was even happening, was in fact coming out the next day. I clicked that buy button SO FAST. Easily one of my favorite book series in recent years (so much so that I’ll probably buy the hard-covers for my bookshelf even though I already own the e-books), Paladin’s Hope returns to Kingfisher’s world of lost paladins trying to rebuild their lives after the death of their patron god. This third book follows Galen, a wonderfully dashing red-headed rogue of a paladin who showed up frequently in the earlier stories. When dead bodies with baffling wounds start showing up on the banks of the river, the city watch is happy to brush them off as unfortunate accidents. But Galen and Earstripe, the only gnole* member of the city watch, are unconvinced and seek the help of Piper, a lich-doctor** with the secret gift of seeing the last moments of a dead body’s life. While searching for answers, the trio ends up trapped in an elaborate death maze, each room more dangerous and deadly than the last. A death maze isn’t the most romantic of locations, but Galen and Piper find themselves falling in love while trying to survive peril and cope with traumatic emotional pasts. Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher is so good.
*Basically an anthropomorphic badger
**Fantasy coroner
Lore Olympus: Volume One by Rachel Smythe
Retellings of the Hades/Persephone myth are all over the place right now and I have consumed a number of them this year, some more successful than others. Lore Olympus is yet another take on the story, but really stands out thanks to Rachel Smythe’s GORGEOUS artwork and thoughtful narrative. The story is set in a nebulous sci-fi-ish/ancient Greek-ish Olympus where Hades and his brothers are kings of their respective kingdoms. At a party thrown by Zeus, Hades sees Persephone and proclaims her more beautiful than Aphrodite. The goddess overhears this and arranges some mischief which inadvertently leads to an instant connection between the Hades and Persephone. While Lore Olympus is a romantic and mostly lighthearted modern retelling, it is definitely an adult story and interestingly weaves in dark elements of the Greek myths, depicting the selfishness of the gods and the lack of agency afforded to female characters. Originally a web comic, the Volume One print edition collects the first 25 chapters and makes for a gorgeous book. Content warning: Lore Olympus Volume One contains a depiction of sexual assault and gaslighting which is hard to read. It’s not graphic, but it’s so emotionally honest and grounded in reality that it really effected me.
Unseen by Jordan L Hawk
Unseen is the second book in Jordan Hawk’s Widdershins spinoff series Rath & Rune and, as is usually the case with Hawk’s work, I devoured it in like a day. This installment continues the adventures of librarian Sebastian and book binder/child of a chaotic tentacle god Vesper, as they attempt to find the second evil necromantic book wreaking havoc in their town.
PODCASTS
Ologies
My sister got me hooked on Ologies by recommending an episode about opossums. From there I went on to learn about turtles, squid, shipwrecks, veterinary medicine, dancing spiders, and crow funerals. Each episode of Ologies has host Alie Ward sitting down and charmingly chatting with scientists about their various fields of study. I love Alie’s sense of humor and constant fascination with the things she’s asking about. So check this one out if you want to laugh and also learn cool facts about gar fish.
ART
Here is some stuff I made in October and November!
