Where Wednesday Faces Darkness and Light

Wednesday: A Novelization of Season One by Tehlor Kay Mejia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was very fun.

I'm not naturally a fan of dark-themed shows or the macabre, and I didn't really watch the show back in the day. (A little. The Munsters, too, a little. Wasn't a big thing for me.) But I felt like the TV did a good job of threading the needle between humor, macabre, camp, and mystery, creating a solid, entertaining show that honored its roots. I enjoyed the whole first season. And I think the novelization is, in some ways, even better.

Tehlor Kay Mejia does an excellent job of turning the shows and scripts into punchy prose with great pacing, and some of that can be attributed to the source material, for sure. But he also gives us Wednesday's interior monologue as the narrator, and her voice is perfectly captured, IMO. She's dark and funny and sardonic and brutal and just just barely caring. We get a perfect dead black rose with just a sprig of green, and I thought it was [chef's kiss]. The only thing I miss much is the cello and the dancing, which are hard to do in prose, but I think it was well-balanced by the revelations in Wednesday's own voice, page by page.

If you haven't seen the show, it's about Wednesday getting sent to Nevermore Academy, home to outcasts of all kinds, the school her parents attended. She doesn't care about fitting in, and makes friends and enemies without really trying--or allies and enemies, probably. There is a monster in the woods, randomly killing people in the area, and Wednesday gets involved, trying to solve the murders. She has to do this while navigating school, gossiping classmates, strange people in town, teachers and administrators who are split between helping her and controlling her, and Nevermore's own strange secrets. It's still a bit like a 60's sitcom, but it's a little more like modern dark academia.

The writer (adapter?) is primarily a YA author, and I would say that the book is aimed at a YA audience the most, but I'm an old, and I really enjoyed it. Highly recommended for fun people.

View all my reviews

Where Hellboy Faces Angels and Demons

Hellboy: On Earth as it is in Hell by Brian Hodge
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hellboy is usually very entertaining, in almost any incarnation. (Perfect word for him, actually.) The movies. The graphic novels. The books. Hellboy is such a good character, and he somehow makes creepy and scary stuff less so. When the bad guy from hell is on our side, things are gonna work out, right? I'm not a horror fan, but I am a Hellboy fan. And this is a good one.

The author is a writer. He has his own stuff he does. But he got hired to write this, and in situations like that, writing in someone else's universe, the prose and the pacing and the tone can be kinda... average. No shade to any writer who's done that work. Good on them for being published ever in any way. But this is much better than that. I stopped several times to look up once more who wrote this and what else he had out there, because I just liked the sound of it. Things meant to be descriptive were nicely descriptive. Things meant to be emotional actually were emotional. Things meant to be witty were actually witty. Not just suggested, not just in the ballpark, but well done.

It's not that the story is that much better. It's basically pulp fiction, and that's fine, because that's why you pick it up. But there's a lot that's done with the characters--again, in every incarnation--that is interesting and touching and worthwhile, which is cool. And the writing is surprisingly excellent.

I'll give a typical example.

There's a scene where Hellboy goes to talk to a Father Simon about the implications of the events in the story, trying to sort them out, maybe get some advice, and it's a very nice, quiet, helpful scene, useful for both pacing and tone, but it's also a nice buddy kind of moment. And it's smart. In a way, it's simultaneously subversive of religion while also making a case for it.

Hellboy was quite certain that the whole creed, Anglican and Roman and Protestant alike, could collapse tomorrow and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to Father Simon. He would go on as though nothing had changed. He'd put on his collar when appropriate, he'd say Mass for whoever straggled into the pews, he'd sit for hours at a deathbed. He'd sing--rarely on key--and he would pray. Like always. It was who and what he was. My religion is kindness, the Dalai Lama had said, and Father Simon probably could've said it too.

I think that's pretty great. And that's just how the whole book sounds. Solid.

So I don't often give a book in a universe like this a 5 star rating, since even a four means it's a good book, but I feel like a 5 is called for. And lots of other readers agree.

Okay, I don't mean to oversell. The scope is still just the normal Hellboy tale. It's not life-changing. But in terms of quality, it's as good as you could want in the genre. If you like this series or genre, and if you want to show other people that you can find high quality in this type of book, you won't go wrong holding this one up and showing it to them.

Lots of scary demons and angels in this. We go to Rome and the Mediterranean and places not quite in any world. Scary stuff and secret stuff from history and modern mystery with guns. You know the drill. It's good.

Recommended.

View all my reviews

Where Hellboy Sees Something Nasty

Hellboy: The All-Seeing Eye by Mark Morris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This series is great fun if you're already a fan of Hellboy comics or movies, and this is a decent representation of the books. It has some specific flaws that I've decided not to point out because it was generally a pleasure to pick up and read each time I looked at my stack of books, and that's what matters here.

Books like this, IMO, are supposed to extend the fun for the reader, giving them more time with the characters they met in other media, and the regular standards for standalone novels don't really apply. Hellboy and Liz and Abe Sapien are tracking down some dangerous supernatural killers, and they get to fight and chase some real baddies. Hellboy gets hit and gets to hit back; they find secret spaces; they encounter terrifying villains; the citizens are in danger and need their help.

There ya go. That's all a Hellboy novel needs.

Good pulp action. Recommended for readers who appreciate that sort of thing.

View all my reviews

Where It's Really Dark. Really.

Threads of Malice by Tamara Siler Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not my cuppa.

Much of this is entertaining, and it is well written, but it's just too dark. It's like a particularly chilling "Criminal Minds" episode, except in a fantasy setting. I kept going to see the bad guys captured, but the evil and the horror and the bad things happening to good people all continue up to the very last page. And I was fricking done by that time.

Honestly, I almost stopped 20 pages from the end. It was excruciating. Murder. Rape. Torture. Children in distress.

I should have DNFed early on, but I kinda liked the first book in the series, and I wanted to know what happened. However, nah... this is just too dark for me.

One thing I don't get--the main character sees the ghosts of the murderer's victims, but their presence adds almost nothing to the plot. He only sees them; there's no communication of any kind. No significant clues, beyond the mere fact of their existence. They might as well be invisible balloons trailing him around. Seems like a missed opportunity.

Anyway, it's probably a better book to other readers. If you like horror or bloody stories of sadistic murderers being tracked down and brought to justice, you'll be fine. Go for it.

View all my reviews

Where I Give Faint Praise to a Beloved Author

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked some of these stories. A few are rather creepy--better, IMO, than similar H.P. Lovecraft-type stories--and some are more like fairy tales. All of them are entertaining reads and better, I thought, than the Dr. Jekyll novel it's packaged with.

I discovered that I liked Stevenson's adventure novels, finally reading them in my fifties, when I was surprised to find that they're such fun. Dr. Jekyll was interesting and worth reading, but it was not as much fun. The short stories were better, but not quite as entertaining for me as, say, Treasure Island.

"The Bottle Imp" was probably my favorite, the only 5-star in the bunch for me. "Olalla" was engaging, with some great atmospherics and a cool setting, but ultimately unsatisfying. "Will 'o the Wisp" and "Markheim" were interesting for the characters and their decision-making, and probably useful in a classroom, but not too exciting. Again, IMO.

Others will certainly see it differently.

I wanted to be familiar with Dr. Jekyll, and I'm glad to get a feel for his short stories. Worth looking at, I think. However, I'll probably look for another of his novels next time. Just now learning there's a sequel to Kidnapped. Did not know that. :)

View all my reviews

Your Assigned Reading for Next Class--Dr. Jekyll

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really like Robert Louis Stevenson (I read and loved Treasure Island and Kidnapped--and was almost surprised to discover how much I enjoyed them). I'm also interested in the original story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and found a nice version at the bookstore.

But it wasn't that great to read.

Yes, it's worth it. Especially because it's not that long--a novella at best. Interesting to see the original. But there is virtually no suspense, no action or plot.

The story is told kinda like H.P. Lovecraft stories, where the whole point of the story is to relate some element of strangeness, some amazing truth, and the way it comes to the reader is as someone's recollection after the fact. (Dr. Jekyll includes several forms of this, including the main character's long letter at the end retelling everything we already kind of knew.) It removes all narrative tension, IMO, making it blasé reading.

I repeat--I genuinely like the author. I was surprised when I found myself enjoying his adventure novels exactly as if I were his target audience, never mind how many years or generations separated me from them. But Dr. Jekyll is a different sort of read.

Still worth it, IMO. You could read it all at once, probably, or read it like I did--fifteen minutes or so at a time, in 4 or 5 bites. (Less time, probably, for many readers.) I still find it a pleasure to experience firsthand stories like this that have long since penetrated popular culture and left their mark.

For that purpose, I recommend it. For pleasure reading, for genuine fun, I point you toward his adventure novels.

I mean, if you like fun things. :)

View all my reviews