Reading roundup, including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
51. Rainbow Rowell, Landline -- after finishing Carry On and Eleanor and Park, I was reminded by ms_geekette that Rowell had also written some adult titles. Attachments, which I also want to read, actually sounded more interesting, but Landline was on sale for like two bucks, so I went with that one. Apparently it was 2014 Goodreads Choice best fiction winner or something, but reviews on Goodreads and Amazon were mixed, so I didn't know what to expect. Probably it doesn't matter what the book was actually about -- I seem to have clicked with Rowell's writing in a way where it works for me even when the plot, characters, and themes don't necessarily -- I had my quibbles with Fangirl, found Eleanor and Park too dark, and found Carry On hampered by its origins and trying to do too many things at once -- and I still had something like 2x the number of highlights in it as I normall do in a book this length. We just click. I get sucked in and read quickly, the funny lines work for me, the poignant scenes work for me -- it's very satisfying. Like, you know, sometimes there's an author but you have to sort of meet them halfway, be in the right mindset or get there, and reading, even while enjoyable, takes some work? With Rowell, we're just on the same wavelength apparently, and reading her is just easy. SPOILERS from here
But here's something I didn't expect: I knew from the blurb that Landline was about a woman who ends up staying home for work while her family goes to visit her husband's mother across the country. What I did not realize was that it is a book about a thirty-something woman with two kids who married young and has been married for 14 years and whose husband does a disproportionate amount of the housework and childcare and lives in California even though he hates it because that's where his wife wants to be. That was... unexpectedly on point. I mean, I'm not Georgie (I don't have a vocation, and if I did, it would not be comedy writing; I have a healthy relationship with my parents, and I'm not nearly so clueless or absent in day-to-day stuff), and B is not Neal (not much like Neal at all, except for hating a lot of things, LOL), and our marriage is not much like Georgie and Neal's marriage, and our kids are a lot older and have a different dynamic because of relative ages and genders, but combined with the same-wavelength thing above, it was really kind of weird to read. We're the same generation, too, Georgie and I -- she is two years older than me, and we got married around the same time, though Georgie and Neal waited much longer to have kids. It was WEIRD.
But the unexpected overidentification aside, I still liked it. I liked the present-day storyline where you get to see Georgie interact with her mother and baby sister (only 18) and her stepfather (only a couple of years older than Georgie herself); like in all the previous Rainbow Rowell books, the families are messy and the parents are imperfect people but they all love each other in their own flawed and occasionally awkward ways, and want the best for each other even if they don't always agree on what that would be. I liked Georgie consciously trying to be more affectionate with her mother, after having kids herself. I liked the way Heather's crush is introduced (though the pregnant pug thing just kind of bored me), and the way everyone reacts to it -- Georgie telling Heather to go after the girl, the mother accepting Heather's sexuality more easily than Heather had expected. The only real quibble I have is with Georgie and Neal's kids, Noomi and Alice. I thought Noomi acted like a much younger kid (it's been a while since mine were 4, but I've spent time around R's four-year-old), and Alice just doesn't register as a character at all. I suppose it could be proof of Georgie not spending much time with her kids, but I think it was a problem with the writing, not a POV character thing. Well, kid characters are hard, and the book wasn't about that, except as a part of Georgie's marraige.
I liked Georgie's relationship with Seth, her best friend and work partner. Some reviews complained that Seth randomly telling her that maybe they should be together towards the end felt superfluous, but I thought that was basically the point -- he blurts it out, and Georgie doesn't give it even half a thought, because it's irrelevant and has been for years, and they just move on, with Seth reminding her not to forget to bring him back his favorite dressing from Omaha.
I liked watching the flashbacks of Georgie and Neal's relationship. Having skimmed the Goodreads reviews, there are people swooning over Neal and people baffled by what Georgie could've possibly seen in him, and I find that funny, because both sides have fair points. Anyway, I was definitely rooting for Georgie and Neal to stay together not because they are soulmates or perfect for each other, but because they had invested a lot into their relationship, and it didn't feel necessarily broken to me, just... in need of some attention. There is no magical cure or renewal of vows or any other grand gesture in the end, but I didn't think there needed to be. There's the symmetry of Georgie coming to Omaha after a week of silence, the same way Neal drove to California fifteen years earlier to propose to her, and that was hopeful and optimistic enough for me. And I thought the magic phone had been used to good effect, including the gradual ways it's confirmed that this IS the existing timeline, not some parallel universe.
All that said, what worked best and hit hardest for me were Georgie's thoughts on a variety of things I could identify with, occasionally all too well.
I was amused by all the little references to how much phone technology has changed in the past 15 years -- Neal's mother being uncertain whether she's answering a cell phone or an iPod, Georgie having forgotten about long distance charges but remembering the satisfying click a landline makes when plugged into the wall, teenageer Heather not knowing how langline extensions work. And I liked the random Harry Potter references, and Seth referring the Neal as a hobbit. I also LOL'd at the Zima reference, from Georgie's college years, because I associate Zima with the commercials that used to run during Babylon 5, in the same timeframe. Oh, and there was a Cath and Levi cameo towards the end, that I don't think I would have caught if I hadn't read about it in Rowell's FAQs, but I was pleased to see that those two are engaged now.
Quotes:
"Back in college, Neal had thought about joining the military; he would have been really good at the part where you have to dleiver terrible news or execute a heartbreaking order without betraying how much it was costing you. Neal's face could fly the Enola Gay."
"She actually really liked being the one who wrote things down. it was like being the decision maker." (Yep.)
Gerogie's mother (who breeds pugs): "Kids are perceptive, Georgie. They're like dogs [...] they know when their people are unhappy."
Georgie: "I think you may just have reverse-anthropomorphized your own grandchildren."
"Neal didn't take Georgie's breath away. Maybe the opposite. But that was okay -- that was really good, actually, to be near someone who filled your lungs with air."
"'Seth, it's seven o'clock.' Nine in Omaha. Or maybe 1998 in Omaha."
"For a hallucination, this conversation was progressing very rationally. (Which made sense; Gerogie had always been good at writing dialogue.)"
"I'm not worried about you," Seth said. "Someday your prince will come."
"And you'll do your best to scare him off."
"Seth always had to force Georgie to o to parties. Once she was there, she was fine. Once she was there, she was usually great -- if not the life of the party, certainly one of its most valuable players. People (new people, strangers) made Georgie nervous. And nervous Georgie was much more extroverted than regular Georgie. Nervous Georgie was practically manic. [...] Georgie still got nervous at parties and pitches and big meetings. Seth said their careers would be over if Georgie ever realized she was awesome and stopped freaking out about it."
After Neal tells Georgie he has a girlfriend: "Georgie jerked away from him. Like he was on fire. (Like he was on fire, and it wasn't her job to put him out.)"
Seth: "We're not adding a gay Indian character. That's final."
Scotty: "But Georgie said she wanted to add some diversity."
"She didn't say she wanted to add you."
"Rahul isn't me. He's tall, and he doesn't wear glasses."
"He's worse than you. He's fantasy-you."
"Well, all these white guys are just fantasy-yous."
"Fantasy-me would never show up on this show. Fantasy-me was already on Gossip Girl."
"Neal was home. He was base. Neal was where Georgie plugged in, and synced up, and started fresh every day. He was the only one who knew her exactly as she was."
"Georgie hadn't known back then how much she was going to come to need Neal, how he was going to become like air to her. Was that codependence? Or was it just marriage."
"And she'd never gotten her waist back -- or gotten around to buying new clothes for this new (not so new anymore, really) reality." (Yep...)
Seth: Jesus, Georgie, do you think I care about the scripts?
Georgie: Yes.
Seth: You're right. I do. I care a lot about the scripts. But finally getting our dream show won't be that rewarding if you move back in with your mom and start sleeping eighteen hours a day.
[...]
Seth: I know it's Neal. I'm not blind.
Georgie: I never thought you were blind. Just self-absorbed.
[...]
Seth: Can't you just tell him this is all my fault? Throw me under the bus.
Georgie: That doesn't actually work. Making you seem like an asshole just makes me seem like a person with asshole loyalties.
"She could hear Neal's defenses coming up -- and falling down, like Iron Man's armor snicking into place."
Georgie to Heather: "How long have you been ordering pizzas for sport, non sustenance?" (Heather's crush is the pizza delivery girl.)
"When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems."
Georgie reflecting on her wedding: "It just felt like the biggest day of her life so far, not the biggest day of her life from now on. Not the day that would change everything. That would change her, at a cellular level."
"It's more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you hope that the person is the one -- and then at some point, you have to put down your chips. [...] It's like... you're tossing a ball between you, and you're just hoping you can keep it in the air. And it has nothing to do with whether you love each other or not. If you didn't love each other, you wouldn't be playing this stupide game with the ball. You love each other -- and you just hope you can keep the ball in play."
Past!Georgie seeing Neal: "It was probably safe to grab him -- Neal probably hadn't come to her house on Christmas morning just to break up with her extra hard, right?"
"Kids took a fathomless amount of time and energy... And they took it first. They had right of first refusal on everything you had to offer."
Georgie, when Neal tells her he's quitting his job to stay home with the baby: "And feeling some sort of evolutionary satisfaction. Like she'd made the right decision picking this man; he was going to find all the best sticks for their nest and chase off all the predators."
"Then [Petunia and the puppies] all got tucked back into the dryer with clean towels. 'It's her little nest,' Heather said, patting the dryer like it had helped."
Georgie reflecting on the proposal: "At some point, her brain must have taken the whole scene for granted. She and Neal were so fundamentally married now, it didn't seem important how they got there."
Georgie, seeing a family with two small girls at the airport: "She wanted to talk to them. 'I have this, too,' she'd say to the woman. 'This exactly.' [...] The little girl across from her knocked over her milk -- Georgie leaned in and caught it. The mother smiled at her, and Georgie smiled back. I have this, too, Georgie's smile said." (This is so, so familiar. I used to feel this every time I traveled without the kids...)
"The plane was only about fifteen rows long, with just two seats across. She'd never been on a plane this small; she'd only heard about planes this small when they crashed."
52. Patricia Briggs, Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson #9) -- For a good chunk of the book I was thinking that I may be done with this series. I did like it more by the end, but I still feel like this series is starting to buckle under the weight of too many characters and too many plots -- so much catch-up is required in the book, so much recapping and reminders of who is who, and I found it difficult to care about more than just a fraction of the characters. Part of it, I think, is the whole Pack thing -- I just found Mercy more interesting before she became Adam's mate, or at least when she was functioning more on her own. And I don't know if the tedious feel to how everything is recapped is due to there being two separate series (I'm not reading the Alpha & Omega books, and I checked out the book of short stories and returned it unread), or just how Briggs is as a writer -- I don't feel this with Butcher, for instance... but I guess Butcher still has a smaller cast, or maybe his characters are just more vivid, or maybe he spaces them out without feeling the need to namecheck everyone in every book... I missed Mercy having A JOB, and her own life in this one; as a result, she was pretty boring to me in this. SPOILERS from here I think the girl talk with Margaret the fey was supposed to remedy that, but it was just so SILLY. I perked up when Zee reappeared, because I like Zee, and I liked Beauclaire and Baba Yaga, so the scenes they were in worked for me (I especially liked the bit where Zee shows his intentions of coming alon to the meeting with Margaret and then the Grey Lords by sitting in Adam and Mercy's car, refusing to be moved, and none of the other cars starting, because that's very Zee, and the trick with the "unborn life" and hardboiled eggs, courtesy of Baba Yaga's hint and Mercy's acting). The other ones I was tempted to skim. I did enjoy seeing Thomas Hao again (and the heavy hint that, thanks to Margaret, he can walk in sunlight), and Aiden has some potential, I guess, but the whole thing was pretty dull. I'm hoping the end state of affairs signals more interaction with the fey, which is at least usually interesting. But I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep reading...
A few specifics:
I wonder what the deal is with Sherwood Post. He's clearly somebody, and he seems to speak Russian, and I'm guessing that Baba Yaga will recognize him or adopt him or something eventually. But it's not like this series needed MORE characters, or at least more pack members. I already barely remember Zach, the other recent addition, or Joel.
I did like that way the Pack is suddenly much happier when Adam forbids them to say anything against Mercy, even though that's not the way she would prefer to handle things -- and the way this weirds out Mercy. And Adam's note to mercy was cute, especially the crossed out "sorry". And I do like how Adam and Mercy communicate like actual adults and partners for the most part, like when she calls him in the middle of a meeting with the Feds and he goes from "Not a good time." to "Headed home." in the space of one paragraph of calm and specific explanation from her. I think it's the trust in each other's competence that I find so nice here.
Interesting take on Underhill and her relationship with the humans abaondoned there; the parallels to an emotionally abusive relationship are not subtle, but it was neatly done, and the fact that she's a PLACE makes it interesting. Also, apparently fae can lie. But suffer for it "a curse of rare power levied [...] by those who went before." (And how does Adam know that?) Also neat: the intimation that Tolkien's elves sailed West because he'd known some real fae and they told him about the majority of their relatives leaving for the New World.
Some quotes:
"Some people need to shut their mouths in order to use their brains," said George. [...] "And I'm beginning to think that I'm one of them."
Adam: "We thought we'd use this opportunity to express our sadness at the death of the troll yesterday. Please do no send fae who put the citizens of our home at risk. We do not enjoy killing for the sake of killing." and "How often are we going to be discussing how many of your people have been killed by their own stupidity before you stop them instead of making me do it?"
Mercy describing the sprite lord: "Mr. I-Am-Really-a-Hive-of-Female-Fae-Bugs"
53. Andrzej Sapkowski, Mech Prednaznazheniya (Miecz Przeznaczenia / The Sword of Destiny) -- Witcher novellas, prequelly to the book I read, though (I gathered, and Wikipedia confirmed) set later in the Geralt timeline than the first book of short stories/novellas. These being individual stories allowed me to draw the following important conclusion: my enjoyment of the Witcher stories is inversely proportional to the amount of screentime spent in them on women who are romantically linked to/interested in Geralt. And if the woman in question is Yennifer, then we're talking some kind of exponential decay, because oh my god, my enjoyment just plummets as soon as she appears or is mentioned. Fortunately, the Ciri stories do not suffer from this curse (which definitely proves that ikel89 was right in her choice to start me off with the novel and not the short stories, even if this book makes both the setting and setup of the first novel clearer).
Individual stories with SPOILERS!:
"Predel vozmozhnogo" [Limit of Possibility, which is apparently called "The Bounds of Reason" in English] -- this was cute! (except for Yennefer and her eternal motivation being wanting to have a baby she can't have, UGH, must we?) I have always, ever since LeGuin's "Rule of Names", been a sucker for dragon-in-human-form stories, and this one was fun. I enjoyed Borh Tri Galki, and the local color from the various merceneries, including the dwarf and the paladin type. I enjoyed the way everybody had their own opinion on the ethics of the situation, and all the supposed allies were at odds. And I liked the resolution, with the baby dragon being safe, aww. Cute story, with blemishes of totally superfluous Geralt/Yen drama, but one can't have everything.
"Oskolok L'da" [Shard of Ice] -- dude, "The Snow Queen" is one of my favorite fairy tales, so it takes some doing to ruin a reference to it for me, but this managed. All Yen, all the time, and I enjoyed it accordingly. The only thing I *did* like in this mess was Val'/Istredd's lecture about why sorcerous ingredients are always difficult-to-get, disgusting crap -- to stop dilletantes from dabbling. The dick-waving was ridiculous, and Yennefer's actions were just... ugh. Is there anyone who actually finds this, IDK, romantic or worthwhile?
"Vechnyj Ogon'" [Eternal Flame] -- thank god, a Yen-free story! This one I really liked. It had the elements of a heist, with the double-crosses and false identities and Dudu's clever acquisitions paying off in the end, and I liked the thematic aspects of this, too, the dopplers getting to assimilate, and a win-win situation with the halfling (and Dainty Bibervelt is a great halfling name) and the grey cardinal. Fluffy and low stakes, very refreshing, and Geralt even gets a new jacket to replace the one destroyed over the course of the story. So, my favorite in the collection till this point, and my favorite of the "non-arc" stories.
"Nemnogo zhertvenosti" [A Little Sacrifice] -- *sigh* It just couldn't last, we had to have another doomed romance. The framing point of the story, self-sacrifice, was fairly interesting, especially when played light, with the Little Mermaid retelling, and there was good swashbuckling, but the whole thing with Essie the poet hopelessly in love with Geralt at first sight is just so TEDIOUS. WHY. At least the dynamic between Geralt and Lyutik/Dandellion was very fun throughout; Lyutik is always entertaining when he shows up, but this was my favorite interaction for the two of them, probably because he got to be a bit more human and a bit less caricaturish because of Essie's presence. If only we could've kept it to that!
"Mech prednaznacheniya" [Sword of Destiny] -- OK, this was FUN at the beginning, and then rather painful at the end, knowing what's coming, since I've read "Krov' El'fov". I really like this pre-trauma Ciri, being simultaneously high-handed princess and a lost little kid, and I love Geralt's interaction with her, the combination of protectiveness (both from physical harm, and emotional harm, like when he tries to shield her from the view of the aftermath of the ambush) and making fun. Of course, from the conversation at the end, it seems that the druid is right and Ciri, at least, would've been much better off if Geralt had taken her with him right then, rather than finding her after the destruction of Cintra. I didn't understand the set-up well enough to pay attention to it in the first novel, but that must be some heavy-duty guilt associated with that... In non-Ciri stuff, Sapkowski apparently really likes including fractured fairy tales in his stories, here represented by the random "Wild Swans" subversion (which I couldn't tell if it was a reference to an earlier story or not), which was not super-necessary but cute. And I liked the way Broklion, the forest of the dryads was portrayed -- the actions of the dryad queen are understandable, if both ruthless/quite terrible (based on what we see of Braenn/Mona) and likely doomed.
"Nechto bol'shee" [Something Greater/Something More] -- This one is a bit weird to talk about because of the flashbacks and the way it happens non-linearly in, like, four different timeframes or more. So, Geralt is the child of a sorceress, even though that isn't possible, supposedly. Is that why Yennifer is fixated on trying to make it happen for her? Also, is there something I'm missing from the earlier short stories that made it reasonable that he could recognize Vessena the healer/sorceress as his mother? Or is it just that he has some early childhood memories of her? Surprisingly enough, the flashback with Geralt and Yennifer didn't bother me in this one, and I actually quite liked the way the scene between them was written -- this is another place where action-through-dialogue works for me, apparently, not just training montages. The scene with Kalante the Cintran queen was also interesting (though it was a bit odd reading it after reading the previous story, where Geralt actually got to interact with slightly older Ciri). And speaking of Ciri, I was surprised by how she and Geralt met at the end of this one; from the novel, I was under the impression that Geralt was the one who found her in the aftermath of Cintra's destruction and rescued her from that, rather than just coming across her when she was already safe, having been rescued by (presumably) druids. That... is an interesting twist, I guess, that he wasn't even there to help her. Speaking of him being too far to help, the interlude on the hill of the sorcerers' stand was interesting, too, though I wonder if the (somewhat Gaiman-esque) personification of death he saw was real or a hallucination. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would actually exist in this world...
54. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K.Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne -- It is getting so confusing with this canon, because there's the actual canonical books, and the various Word of God/Pottermore extra-canonical stuff authored by JKR, and of course veritable mountains of fanfic, including next-gen fanfic, and now this play, which is co-authored? blessed? endorsed? something? by JKR, and while I was reading it, I had a really, really hard time not thinking of it as fanfic. FUN fanfic, including some scenes that I didn't know I wanted to see (and still kind of want to see... done better, or written in prose rather than script form, or maybe as-is and as part of the actual play, with the acting and everything), and some cute new canon, but still very fanficcy. And not just the *spoiler for the twist* WTF-ness which had been prompting snarky badfic comparisons, but, like, the whole thing, even the parts I liked. Maybe especially the parts I liked. I know I'm not alone in this, but possibly this was made worse by having just recently finished Carry On, because this was some seriously H/D-feeling fic canon. Anyway, I read it, I'm glad I read it. I don't think it's a great work of literature, but I do think it adds to the canon even in script form (although, could it have been done better? Yeah. Has it been done better in actual fic? Prooobably.), and I would have really, really liked to see this as an actual play, with all the magical transformations and spells and Flooing about.
Semicoherent SPOILERY bullets:
- Scorpius was my favorite thing about this play, because he is ADORKABLE. He reminded me of sarahtales/Maya's Ravenclaw!Draco in "If You've a Ready Mind" (who is almost certainly my favorite Draco), only, hilariously, less ambitious (why was this kid in Slytherin, really? except to a) be Albus's only friend, and b) reinforce the shiny new message that Slytherins are not all bad people about time, canon, really). His awkward babbling, love for books, and combination of actual intelligence, dorkiness, and self-deprecation was just a lot of fun, his friendship with Albus was super-cute, his determined crush on Rose was adorable, and his relationship with Draco, awkward hugs and all, was unexpectedly very sweet. (I do buy Draco as a dad who would try hard, especially in the wake of Astoria's death, because, as Harry remarks in general, he had examples from his parents in both doing it right and doing it wrong.)
- Albus was... OK. I didn't really buy his Deep Angst about being Harry Potter's son, but, well, as Harry also points out, Albus is a teenager and they are not supposed to make sense. His friendship with Scorpius was really sweet, and imperfect, and I liked the way Scorpius called him out on that.
- I wish we'd gotten to see more of the other kids... The James-and-Albus dynamic was fun in the beginning, before Albus's sorting (the "listen to your teachers, DON'T listen to James" admonition felt very familiar, as I find myself saying this a lot to O...), but then James kinda... disappeared. I mean, he was at Hogwarts and in a different house while most of the action was taking place, but, seriously, Craig the Redshirt got more screentime than James did. Rose... we didn't get much of a feel for Rose, so it's not like she can really be OOC, but I found it strange that she would just drop Albus like that over a house divide/making friends with a Malfoy. Like, the judgmentalness I actually totally believe, as it tends to be both a Weasley and a Hermione trait, but the butting out and ignoring Albus? Not so much... And Lily and Hugo? They were barely even namechecked. I realize this is different than a novel, and needs to be more focused, but this is why I wish it was an actual book sequel instead, stuff like that.
- The "butterfly effect" stuff was enjoyable, if somewhat taxing of the suspension of disbelief. Like... Ron and Hermione don't get married (because Hermione doesn't go with Krum to the Yule Ball and Ron doesn't get jealous... *eyeroll*), but nothing changes for Harry and Ginny and their kids? Except that Albus asks to be sorted in Gryffindor, but that seems unrelated to the earlier fork-in-the-road. Both Ron and Hermione are fairly unlikeable in this version, which, I was afraid that given JKR's interview revelations that she didn't think Ron and Hermione were a good long-term match was the opposite of what I'd been expecting to see -- so this actually made me kind of happy, as a fan of R/Hr. But, like, why did Hermione not become Minister for Magic in this reality? Was it Ron's ~love~ that spurred her to greater ambition? Was she too consumed by jealousy of Padma to focus on work? That just doesn't make much sense...
- I did like the "mirror universe" where Voldemort won, but some of the trappings (Blood Ball, Voldemort Day, "For Voldemort and valor") really were sort of badfic-level of ridiculous, and I have a really, REALLY hard time believing that golden Hufflepuff Cedric would have become a Death Eater over some schooltime humiliation (as neat as it is to learn that it was Neville who stood between success and failure at the Battle of Hogwarts) -- I just do not see the logic that led someone to build a whole plot chain on that foundation. DOES NOT COMPUTE. But some of my favorite scenes/revelations happened in this reality. I liked seeing Umbridge as headmistress again, because she is very much the kind of person who *would* embrace this new regime (Voldemort Day and the rest of the crap were probably her idea, come to think of it...). Badass wanted woman!Hermione was pretty fun, too, and the scene with her and Ron trying to delay the Dementors was one of the most affecting scenes for me, even though it wasn't "real". And Snape... Snape gets his own bullet, OK:
- I loved seeing Snape, still in the resistance and dryly guessing and facing the fact of his death in the "good" timeline he is working to bring about. Snape with his doe patronus and "So now I give my allegiance to the cause she believed in. And it's possible -- that along the way I started believing in it myself", protecting another young Malfoy, getting to know that there is a reality where Harry lived after all, and named his son after him. And "How?" "Bravely." "Who?" "Voldemort." (Probably for the best that Scorpius either did not know or chose not to mention it was actually death by snakebite, so that Snape can think that "Still, there's glory in being taken down by the Dark Lord himself, I suppose"). This, Snape -- some Snape -- getting to hear that his sacrifice did not send Lily's son to his death after all -- was one of those scenes I'd apparently wanted to see without realizing it. This part really worked for me.
- Another scene I'd apparently really wanted to see, but which worked for me less well as executed, was the Harry and Dumbledore conversation(s) about love and fatherhood. It felt very... one-sided. I could absolutely believe that Harry, frustrated by what he sees as his failures as a father, struggling with the lack of role models, would throw at Dumbledore the accusations he does (which are FAIR, besides -- "You were absent every time it really counted" is mostly true, if intentional on Dumbledore's part). I'm actually glad to see that grown-up Harry resents Dumbledore for abandoning him to grow up with the Dursleys, for putting him on the front lines. And -- "My son is fighting battles for us just as I had to for you. And I have proved as bad a father to him as you were to me." -- ouch. But Dumbledore... I was not a fan of "I knew that it would happen all over again... that where I loved, I would cause irreparable damange. I am no fit person to love... I have never loved without causing harm" -- I understand the authorial choice, but I don't agree with it. I could see Dumbledore being afraid to love again after the way things with Grindelwald had turned out, but not in a 'my love destroys everything I touch' way -- I think his is a different kind of delusion, and atonement. And Dumbledore referring to himself as "this closed-up, tricky, dangerous old man" -- all of those things are true, but it feels very weird coming out of the mouth of his own portrait. I mean, you can't even call this stuff OOC, because it is not actually Dumbledore, but a portrait, which is in-text explained to be not at all the same thing ("paint and memories"), but getting the portrait conversation was therefore just tantallizing, and not in a good way -- it made me yearn for the same scene with a full-fledged Dumbledore, which was not and will not be forthcoming... (Maybe they could've had this conversation with a real Dumbledore in some sacrificial reality, as with Snape (except that I probably don't trust other people than JKR to actually write real Dumbledore...))
- Which brings us to Harry's behaviour. I actually liked it for the most part -- his failures of temper were pretty believable to me, except when he tries to set McGonagall to use the Marauders Map to spying on Albus and Scorpius to keep them separate. And when he objects, starts saying, "With the greatest respect, Minerva -- you don't have children" -- Harry, to Minerva, when in DH he was able to cast a Crucio! at Death Eaters insulting her... I was pretty convinced this was due to some alt-universe!Harry-ness (since this is the reality in which Ron and Hermione aren't married), but it seems that the play intends otherwise (Scorpius basically says so), so... Anyway, that seemed way over the top, even considering Harry being frightened by the return of Voldemort dreams and upset from the argument with Albus. But I liked his scenes with Ginny, jumping to mutual accusations and then working it out, and I really enjoyed his bickering and dueling with Draco (so H/D!). Also, the flashbacks to pre-PS Harry were interesting, the implications that he remembered something of his parents' deaths, and the graveside visit with Petunia.
- Speaking of Draco, I liked him a lot in this. I'm still boggled by the ponytail (WHY. He so doesn't strike me as the ponytail type.), but he seems to have grown up nicely. I appreciated the crack about Harry's Head of MLE office becoming his in the mirror universe, and Harry's "Come in -- I'll give you the tour", everything with Scorpius was well done ("We can hug too if you like..."), and I wish we'd actually gotten to see Astoria, rather than her becoming just another dead mother in the series -- she seems to have been an impressive person in her own right (and I liked that even in the mirror universe, Scorpius can get through to Draco with her name, and even there Draco does not want to hurt Scorpius, for all that he's a much harsher man -- and that even in the mirror universe Draco is not out there killing and torturing himself, just helping cover it up -- that does seem more his speed, even at his darkest). And Draco resisting using the Time-Turner in his possession to go back in time to spend more time with Astoria is actually quite impressive, considering even Dumbledore was not able to resists a similar sort of temptation, with the Resurrection Stone ring. I hadn't expected the bit about Draco envying Harry his friendship with the Trio (and so poetically, too), although it makes sense for him to have been a lonely child.(though it did feel very, very fanficcy), and (via Scorpius) learning that Hogwarts wasn't much fun for him. Also, I guess both Lucius and Narcissa are dead at this point? Draco says Scorpius is his only family. But I did like the remark that Lucius "Secretly I think he preffered a world without Voldemort", quite consistent with the end of DH.
- Ginny... Ginny is such a black box in the books, it was hard for me to tell whether she felt OOC in this or not. I think she did, a bit, but that's likely more the fault of the original books. As a fanfic sort of premise, I did like her here, the way she surprises Harry (but not Draco) by understanding Draco's loneliness, the way she is very, VERY firm on not wanting to even consider Transfiguring into Voldemort and thinking it's a bad idea for everyone else, too.
- OK, who's left? I think just Ron and Hermione. I feel like Hermione got the least actual character moments in this, although I did enjoy the humour of her newfound toffee adiction (rebelling against dentist parents at 40, heh), as opposed to Ginny's apparent War on Sugar, and random bursting in places (and McGonagall being unimpressed -- more on that below). Ron... I was glad he got some actual moments of feeling, but even they were mostly couched in comic relief, which seems to be Ron's constant fate in everything besides original canon -- movies, fic, etc. I thought the renewal of vows proposal, after learning that there are universes in which Ron and Hermione are not married, was sweet, and it's not that I don't believe Ron would get drunk on his wedding, but, just, must we? And WTF was the joke gift of a love potion for Albus? ESPECIALLY considering Ron's own canonical experiences with love potion... That was a weird, weird choice. I do, though, completely buy Ron as a cool uncle/embarrassing dad, so that part rang true to me.
- Speaking of McGonagall, as I was above, her laying the smackdown on everyone and regretting that she could not give Minister!Hermione detention was pretty great. Also her trying not to root too hard for Gryffindor, heh. "And I'm pleased to announce Gryffindor's newest member of the Quidditch team - our -- your superb new Chaser -- Rose Granger-Weasley."
- OK, I've gotten this far down without talking about Delphi or the whole Voldemort's daughter thing. So it's not AS bad as the snarky "My Immortal" comparisons would have suggested, but... really? That was the best plot they could come up with? I realize it ties in with the theme of parents and children which is central to the play, from the conflict between Harry and Albus to Harry being there at Godric's Hollow and having to choose not to interfere (echoing Albus and Scorpius letting Cedric go to his death after Cedric rescues them from Delphi) to Draco doing better with Scorpius than his parents did with him... but it's just SUCH a silly, melodramatic premise. It's a good thing I was spoiled for it, back when the spoilers first appeared on Tumblr and it wasn't clear if they were real or not, because at least I could get over the WTFing beforehand.
- And let's not examine too deeply Albus having a crush on her. Actually, let's not examine too deeply anything having to do with Albus's love life, including kissing Hermione "about five hundred times" while polyjuiced as Ron (that was a hilarious scene, but... O.o). Besides, it's pretty clear this whole play is, like, half a step away from an AS/S fic (complete with "what are you wearing", but anyway XD). Also, mirror!Snape ships it, I guess, what with telling Scorpius to think of Albus as they're facing the Dementors.
- In a final minor, but memorable, instance of WTF... the Trolley Witch. (Though, honestly, I have a hard time believing Albus and Scorpius managed something Fred and George did not, or Sirius and company.)
I guess overall I didn't expect the play to be so closely related to the preceding canon. The first part takes off right from the epilogue, replaying and expanding it. We get flashbacks to so many canonical scenes, via Harry's dreams and the time-travel. As touchofgr3y pointed out in her write-up, the magic and the baddies and everyone are replayed again from what has gone before -- Time-Turners and Polyjuice, and Voldemort as a threat again. I do understand it's different seeing the magic of it unfold live on stage, THAT hasn't been done before, and is probably / reportedly very, very cool. But as a story... it's not very exciting. Although I do like that the theme seems to be that one doesn't necessarily turn out just like one's parents, which was kinda a flaw in the original series. Not universally, I mean, but on the whole...
But in general, I agree with this generally positive review on Tor.com.
Quotes:
Ginny: You can be honest with him, Harry... That's all he needs.
Harry: I just wish he was more like James or Lily.
Ginny: Yeah, maybe don't be that honest.
Scorpius, polyjuiced into Harry: "Go to your room. Go straight to your room. You've been an incredibly awful and bad son."
Draco: Sorry about your kitchen, Ginny.
Ginny: Oh, it's not my kitchen. Harry does most of the cooking.
Scorpius: "Albus, as apologies go this is wonderfully fulsome, but you're starting to talk more about you than me again, so probably better to quit while you're ahead."
Mirror!universe Snape and Hermione:
Snape: Safe. He's safe. [meaning Scorpius] You know you never could listen. You were a terrible bore of a student and you're a terrible bore of -- whatever you are.
Hermione: I was an excellent student.
Snape: You were moderate to average.
In the mirror!universe, upon lerning that Snape dies in the world where Harry wins:
Hermione: I'm sorry, Severus.
Snape: Well, at least I'm not married to him. [i.e. Ron]
Harry: Professor, if I may--
McGonagall: You may not. What you choose to do as parents is your matter but this is my school, and these are my students, and I will choose what punishment they will face. [...] I should expel you but [with a look to Harry] all things considered -- I think it might be safer ro you to remain in my care."
"Suddenly Hermione bursts in."
Hermione: What did I miss?
McGonagall: It is considered polite to knock when entering a room, Hermione Granger, maybe you missed that.
[...]
McGonagall: If I could also give a detention to you, Minister, I would. Keeping hold of a Time-Turner, of all stupid things.
Albus (to Harry, re: Slytherin common room): "Green is a soothing color, isn't it? I mean Gryffindor rooms are all well and good but the trouble with red is -- it is said to send you a little mad -- not that I'm casting aspersions..."
After Hermione, Harry, Ginny, and Draco all get up and claim responsibility:
Ron: Just to say -- I didn't know about much of it so can't take responsibility -- and I'm pretty sure my kids had nothing to do with it -- but if this lot are standing up here then so am I.
Scorpius's idea for calling to Harry for help through time: "I mean, it's unlikely, but... Stand over the baby [Harry] -- and just repeatedly shout HELP. HELP. HELP. I mean, it might traumatize the baby slightly."
Harry: I'd do anything for him. [Albus]
Ginny: Harry, you'd do anything for anybody. You were pretty happy to sacrifice yourself for the world. He needs to feel specific love.
Draco: Hermione Granger. I'm being bossed around by Hermione Granger. And I'm mildly enjoying it.
(between this and Scorpius's crush on Rose, I get the sense someone here is a D/Hr shipper...)
Albus: "Oh, I'm not going to be a wizard, I'm going into pigeon racing. I'm quite excited about it."
(The writing, the actual words in the dialogue, are pretty rough, and stage directions are not an actual substitute for prose, but I liked at least the idea of those, and the way they sounded in my head.)
*
Two other book-related things:
SKZB is done with the major Vallista revisions, yay!, and it should come out in about a year, by his estimate. That's about as good as I was hoping for based on his most recent tweets. He also has a blog post about the revision.
Ben Aaronovitch posted a "moment" (ficlet) from Nightingale's 1966 POV.
Spoilers:
So, this is the first Nightingale POV we got, I'm pretty sure? (unless there were some short stories from it, that weren't generally available?) -- it's certainly the first canonical Nightingale POV I've read.
Nice to see Hugh through his eyes, having seen him through Hugh's glowing account, and to see the beginnings of the whole bees and Melissa thing. Poignant to see how much David Mellenby is still in his thoughts, almost as present as Hugh in this snippet. And this, ouch: "I, of course, could not abandon the Folly without first abandoning Molly and that was not something I was prepared to do. This duty had proved a strong enough thread upon which to hang my sanity, that and the stubborn streak I had no doubt inherited from my mother." (So, that's a canonical answer to that, or at least Nightingale's thoughts on that.)
Also, Nightingale not feeling the miniskirts... XD (I mean, I know he's probably still too traumatized to feel the "youth and energy" Hugh is talking about, but I just found that amusing). Also, so that's what prompted Nightingale to get the Jag, and apparently nothing since has driven (heh) him to upgrade. I bet Peter would try to talk him into, like, a Tesla, if he thought he could protect the electronics from magic...
But here's something I didn't expect: I knew from the blurb that Landline was about a woman who ends up staying home for work while her family goes to visit her husband's mother across the country. What I did not realize was that it is a book about a thirty-something woman with two kids who married young and has been married for 14 years and whose husband does a disproportionate amount of the housework and childcare and lives in California even though he hates it because that's where his wife wants to be. That was... unexpectedly on point. I mean, I'm not Georgie (I don't have a vocation, and if I did, it would not be comedy writing; I have a healthy relationship with my parents, and I'm not nearly so clueless or absent in day-to-day stuff), and B is not Neal (not much like Neal at all, except for hating a lot of things, LOL), and our marriage is not much like Georgie and Neal's marriage, and our kids are a lot older and have a different dynamic because of relative ages and genders, but combined with the same-wavelength thing above, it was really kind of weird to read. We're the same generation, too, Georgie and I -- she is two years older than me, and we got married around the same time, though Georgie and Neal waited much longer to have kids. It was WEIRD.
But the unexpected overidentification aside, I still liked it. I liked the present-day storyline where you get to see Georgie interact with her mother and baby sister (only 18) and her stepfather (only a couple of years older than Georgie herself); like in all the previous Rainbow Rowell books, the families are messy and the parents are imperfect people but they all love each other in their own flawed and occasionally awkward ways, and want the best for each other even if they don't always agree on what that would be. I liked Georgie consciously trying to be more affectionate with her mother, after having kids herself. I liked the way Heather's crush is introduced (though the pregnant pug thing just kind of bored me), and the way everyone reacts to it -- Georgie telling Heather to go after the girl, the mother accepting Heather's sexuality more easily than Heather had expected. The only real quibble I have is with Georgie and Neal's kids, Noomi and Alice. I thought Noomi acted like a much younger kid (it's been a while since mine were 4, but I've spent time around R's four-year-old), and Alice just doesn't register as a character at all. I suppose it could be proof of Georgie not spending much time with her kids, but I think it was a problem with the writing, not a POV character thing. Well, kid characters are hard, and the book wasn't about that, except as a part of Georgie's marraige.
I liked Georgie's relationship with Seth, her best friend and work partner. Some reviews complained that Seth randomly telling her that maybe they should be together towards the end felt superfluous, but I thought that was basically the point -- he blurts it out, and Georgie doesn't give it even half a thought, because it's irrelevant and has been for years, and they just move on, with Seth reminding her not to forget to bring him back his favorite dressing from Omaha.
I liked watching the flashbacks of Georgie and Neal's relationship. Having skimmed the Goodreads reviews, there are people swooning over Neal and people baffled by what Georgie could've possibly seen in him, and I find that funny, because both sides have fair points. Anyway, I was definitely rooting for Georgie and Neal to stay together not because they are soulmates or perfect for each other, but because they had invested a lot into their relationship, and it didn't feel necessarily broken to me, just... in need of some attention. There is no magical cure or renewal of vows or any other grand gesture in the end, but I didn't think there needed to be. There's the symmetry of Georgie coming to Omaha after a week of silence, the same way Neal drove to California fifteen years earlier to propose to her, and that was hopeful and optimistic enough for me. And I thought the magic phone had been used to good effect, including the gradual ways it's confirmed that this IS the existing timeline, not some parallel universe.
All that said, what worked best and hit hardest for me were Georgie's thoughts on a variety of things I could identify with, occasionally all too well.
I was amused by all the little references to how much phone technology has changed in the past 15 years -- Neal's mother being uncertain whether she's answering a cell phone or an iPod, Georgie having forgotten about long distance charges but remembering the satisfying click a landline makes when plugged into the wall, teenageer Heather not knowing how langline extensions work. And I liked the random Harry Potter references, and Seth referring the Neal as a hobbit. I also LOL'd at the Zima reference, from Georgie's college years, because I associate Zima with the commercials that used to run during Babylon 5, in the same timeframe. Oh, and there was a Cath and Levi cameo towards the end, that I don't think I would have caught if I hadn't read about it in Rowell's FAQs, but I was pleased to see that those two are engaged now.
Quotes:
"Back in college, Neal had thought about joining the military; he would have been really good at the part where you have to dleiver terrible news or execute a heartbreaking order without betraying how much it was costing you. Neal's face could fly the Enola Gay."
"She actually really liked being the one who wrote things down. it was like being the decision maker." (Yep.)
Gerogie's mother (who breeds pugs): "Kids are perceptive, Georgie. They're like dogs [...] they know when their people are unhappy."
Georgie: "I think you may just have reverse-anthropomorphized your own grandchildren."
"Neal didn't take Georgie's breath away. Maybe the opposite. But that was okay -- that was really good, actually, to be near someone who filled your lungs with air."
"'Seth, it's seven o'clock.' Nine in Omaha. Or maybe 1998 in Omaha."
"For a hallucination, this conversation was progressing very rationally. (Which made sense; Gerogie had always been good at writing dialogue.)"
"I'm not worried about you," Seth said. "Someday your prince will come."
"And you'll do your best to scare him off."
"Seth always had to force Georgie to o to parties. Once she was there, she was fine. Once she was there, she was usually great -- if not the life of the party, certainly one of its most valuable players. People (new people, strangers) made Georgie nervous. And nervous Georgie was much more extroverted than regular Georgie. Nervous Georgie was practically manic. [...] Georgie still got nervous at parties and pitches and big meetings. Seth said their careers would be over if Georgie ever realized she was awesome and stopped freaking out about it."
After Neal tells Georgie he has a girlfriend: "Georgie jerked away from him. Like he was on fire. (Like he was on fire, and it wasn't her job to put him out.)"
Seth: "We're not adding a gay Indian character. That's final."
Scotty: "But Georgie said she wanted to add some diversity."
"She didn't say she wanted to add you."
"Rahul isn't me. He's tall, and he doesn't wear glasses."
"He's worse than you. He's fantasy-you."
"Well, all these white guys are just fantasy-yous."
"Fantasy-me would never show up on this show. Fantasy-me was already on Gossip Girl."
"Neal was home. He was base. Neal was where Georgie plugged in, and synced up, and started fresh every day. He was the only one who knew her exactly as she was."
"Georgie hadn't known back then how much she was going to come to need Neal, how he was going to become like air to her. Was that codependence? Or was it just marriage."
"And she'd never gotten her waist back -- or gotten around to buying new clothes for this new (not so new anymore, really) reality." (Yep...)
Seth: Jesus, Georgie, do you think I care about the scripts?
Georgie: Yes.
Seth: You're right. I do. I care a lot about the scripts. But finally getting our dream show won't be that rewarding if you move back in with your mom and start sleeping eighteen hours a day.
[...]
Seth: I know it's Neal. I'm not blind.
Georgie: I never thought you were blind. Just self-absorbed.
[...]
Seth: Can't you just tell him this is all my fault? Throw me under the bus.
Georgie: That doesn't actually work. Making you seem like an asshole just makes me seem like a person with asshole loyalties.
"She could hear Neal's defenses coming up -- and falling down, like Iron Man's armor snicking into place."
Georgie to Heather: "How long have you been ordering pizzas for sport, non sustenance?" (Heather's crush is the pizza delivery girl.)
"When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems."
Georgie reflecting on her wedding: "It just felt like the biggest day of her life so far, not the biggest day of her life from now on. Not the day that would change everything. That would change her, at a cellular level."
"It's more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you hope that the person is the one -- and then at some point, you have to put down your chips. [...] It's like... you're tossing a ball between you, and you're just hoping you can keep it in the air. And it has nothing to do with whether you love each other or not. If you didn't love each other, you wouldn't be playing this stupide game with the ball. You love each other -- and you just hope you can keep the ball in play."
Past!Georgie seeing Neal: "It was probably safe to grab him -- Neal probably hadn't come to her house on Christmas morning just to break up with her extra hard, right?"
"Kids took a fathomless amount of time and energy... And they took it first. They had right of first refusal on everything you had to offer."
Georgie, when Neal tells her he's quitting his job to stay home with the baby: "And feeling some sort of evolutionary satisfaction. Like she'd made the right decision picking this man; he was going to find all the best sticks for their nest and chase off all the predators."
"Then [Petunia and the puppies] all got tucked back into the dryer with clean towels. 'It's her little nest,' Heather said, patting the dryer like it had helped."
Georgie reflecting on the proposal: "At some point, her brain must have taken the whole scene for granted. She and Neal were so fundamentally married now, it didn't seem important how they got there."
Georgie, seeing a family with two small girls at the airport: "She wanted to talk to them. 'I have this, too,' she'd say to the woman. 'This exactly.' [...] The little girl across from her knocked over her milk -- Georgie leaned in and caught it. The mother smiled at her, and Georgie smiled back. I have this, too, Georgie's smile said." (This is so, so familiar. I used to feel this every time I traveled without the kids...)
"The plane was only about fifteen rows long, with just two seats across. She'd never been on a plane this small; she'd only heard about planes this small when they crashed."
52. Patricia Briggs, Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson #9) -- For a good chunk of the book I was thinking that I may be done with this series. I did like it more by the end, but I still feel like this series is starting to buckle under the weight of too many characters and too many plots -- so much catch-up is required in the book, so much recapping and reminders of who is who, and I found it difficult to care about more than just a fraction of the characters. Part of it, I think, is the whole Pack thing -- I just found Mercy more interesting before she became Adam's mate, or at least when she was functioning more on her own. And I don't know if the tedious feel to how everything is recapped is due to there being two separate series (I'm not reading the Alpha & Omega books, and I checked out the book of short stories and returned it unread), or just how Briggs is as a writer -- I don't feel this with Butcher, for instance... but I guess Butcher still has a smaller cast, or maybe his characters are just more vivid, or maybe he spaces them out without feeling the need to namecheck everyone in every book... I missed Mercy having A JOB, and her own life in this one; as a result, she was pretty boring to me in this. SPOILERS from here I think the girl talk with Margaret the fey was supposed to remedy that, but it was just so SILLY. I perked up when Zee reappeared, because I like Zee, and I liked Beauclaire and Baba Yaga, so the scenes they were in worked for me (I especially liked the bit where Zee shows his intentions of coming alon to the meeting with Margaret and then the Grey Lords by sitting in Adam and Mercy's car, refusing to be moved, and none of the other cars starting, because that's very Zee, and the trick with the "unborn life" and hardboiled eggs, courtesy of Baba Yaga's hint and Mercy's acting). The other ones I was tempted to skim. I did enjoy seeing Thomas Hao again (and the heavy hint that, thanks to Margaret, he can walk in sunlight), and Aiden has some potential, I guess, but the whole thing was pretty dull. I'm hoping the end state of affairs signals more interaction with the fey, which is at least usually interesting. But I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep reading...
A few specifics:
I wonder what the deal is with Sherwood Post. He's clearly somebody, and he seems to speak Russian, and I'm guessing that Baba Yaga will recognize him or adopt him or something eventually. But it's not like this series needed MORE characters, or at least more pack members. I already barely remember Zach, the other recent addition, or Joel.
I did like that way the Pack is suddenly much happier when Adam forbids them to say anything against Mercy, even though that's not the way she would prefer to handle things -- and the way this weirds out Mercy. And Adam's note to mercy was cute, especially the crossed out "sorry". And I do like how Adam and Mercy communicate like actual adults and partners for the most part, like when she calls him in the middle of a meeting with the Feds and he goes from "Not a good time." to "Headed home." in the space of one paragraph of calm and specific explanation from her. I think it's the trust in each other's competence that I find so nice here.
Interesting take on Underhill and her relationship with the humans abaondoned there; the parallels to an emotionally abusive relationship are not subtle, but it was neatly done, and the fact that she's a PLACE makes it interesting. Also, apparently fae can lie. But suffer for it "a curse of rare power levied [...] by those who went before." (And how does Adam know that?) Also neat: the intimation that Tolkien's elves sailed West because he'd known some real fae and they told him about the majority of their relatives leaving for the New World.
Some quotes:
"Some people need to shut their mouths in order to use their brains," said George. [...] "And I'm beginning to think that I'm one of them."
Adam: "We thought we'd use this opportunity to express our sadness at the death of the troll yesterday. Please do no send fae who put the citizens of our home at risk. We do not enjoy killing for the sake of killing." and "How often are we going to be discussing how many of your people have been killed by their own stupidity before you stop them instead of making me do it?"
Mercy describing the sprite lord: "Mr. I-Am-Really-a-Hive-of-Female-Fae-Bugs"
53. Andrzej Sapkowski, Mech Prednaznazheniya (Miecz Przeznaczenia / The Sword of Destiny) -- Witcher novellas, prequelly to the book I read, though (I gathered, and Wikipedia confirmed) set later in the Geralt timeline than the first book of short stories/novellas. These being individual stories allowed me to draw the following important conclusion: my enjoyment of the Witcher stories is inversely proportional to the amount of screentime spent in them on women who are romantically linked to/interested in Geralt. And if the woman in question is Yennifer, then we're talking some kind of exponential decay, because oh my god, my enjoyment just plummets as soon as she appears or is mentioned. Fortunately, the Ciri stories do not suffer from this curse (which definitely proves that ikel89 was right in her choice to start me off with the novel and not the short stories, even if this book makes both the setting and setup of the first novel clearer).
Individual stories with SPOILERS!:
"Predel vozmozhnogo" [Limit of Possibility, which is apparently called "The Bounds of Reason" in English] -- this was cute! (except for Yennefer and her eternal motivation being wanting to have a baby she can't have, UGH, must we?) I have always, ever since LeGuin's "Rule of Names", been a sucker for dragon-in-human-form stories, and this one was fun. I enjoyed Borh Tri Galki, and the local color from the various merceneries, including the dwarf and the paladin type. I enjoyed the way everybody had their own opinion on the ethics of the situation, and all the supposed allies were at odds. And I liked the resolution, with the baby dragon being safe, aww. Cute story, with blemishes of totally superfluous Geralt/Yen drama, but one can't have everything.
"Oskolok L'da" [Shard of Ice] -- dude, "The Snow Queen" is one of my favorite fairy tales, so it takes some doing to ruin a reference to it for me, but this managed. All Yen, all the time, and I enjoyed it accordingly. The only thing I *did* like in this mess was Val'/Istredd's lecture about why sorcerous ingredients are always difficult-to-get, disgusting crap -- to stop dilletantes from dabbling. The dick-waving was ridiculous, and Yennefer's actions were just... ugh. Is there anyone who actually finds this, IDK, romantic or worthwhile?
"Vechnyj Ogon'" [Eternal Flame] -- thank god, a Yen-free story! This one I really liked. It had the elements of a heist, with the double-crosses and false identities and Dudu's clever acquisitions paying off in the end, and I liked the thematic aspects of this, too, the dopplers getting to assimilate, and a win-win situation with the halfling (and Dainty Bibervelt is a great halfling name) and the grey cardinal. Fluffy and low stakes, very refreshing, and Geralt even gets a new jacket to replace the one destroyed over the course of the story. So, my favorite in the collection till this point, and my favorite of the "non-arc" stories.
"Nemnogo zhertvenosti" [A Little Sacrifice] -- *sigh* It just couldn't last, we had to have another doomed romance. The framing point of the story, self-sacrifice, was fairly interesting, especially when played light, with the Little Mermaid retelling, and there was good swashbuckling, but the whole thing with Essie the poet hopelessly in love with Geralt at first sight is just so TEDIOUS. WHY. At least the dynamic between Geralt and Lyutik/Dandellion was very fun throughout; Lyutik is always entertaining when he shows up, but this was my favorite interaction for the two of them, probably because he got to be a bit more human and a bit less caricaturish because of Essie's presence. If only we could've kept it to that!
"Mech prednaznacheniya" [Sword of Destiny] -- OK, this was FUN at the beginning, and then rather painful at the end, knowing what's coming, since I've read "Krov' El'fov". I really like this pre-trauma Ciri, being simultaneously high-handed princess and a lost little kid, and I love Geralt's interaction with her, the combination of protectiveness (both from physical harm, and emotional harm, like when he tries to shield her from the view of the aftermath of the ambush) and making fun. Of course, from the conversation at the end, it seems that the druid is right and Ciri, at least, would've been much better off if Geralt had taken her with him right then, rather than finding her after the destruction of Cintra. I didn't understand the set-up well enough to pay attention to it in the first novel, but that must be some heavy-duty guilt associated with that... In non-Ciri stuff, Sapkowski apparently really likes including fractured fairy tales in his stories, here represented by the random "Wild Swans" subversion (which I couldn't tell if it was a reference to an earlier story or not), which was not super-necessary but cute. And I liked the way Broklion, the forest of the dryads was portrayed -- the actions of the dryad queen are understandable, if both ruthless/quite terrible (based on what we see of Braenn/Mona) and likely doomed.
"Nechto bol'shee" [Something Greater/Something More] -- This one is a bit weird to talk about because of the flashbacks and the way it happens non-linearly in, like, four different timeframes or more. So, Geralt is the child of a sorceress, even though that isn't possible, supposedly. Is that why Yennifer is fixated on trying to make it happen for her? Also, is there something I'm missing from the earlier short stories that made it reasonable that he could recognize Vessena the healer/sorceress as his mother? Or is it just that he has some early childhood memories of her? Surprisingly enough, the flashback with Geralt and Yennifer didn't bother me in this one, and I actually quite liked the way the scene between them was written -- this is another place where action-through-dialogue works for me, apparently, not just training montages. The scene with Kalante the Cintran queen was also interesting (though it was a bit odd reading it after reading the previous story, where Geralt actually got to interact with slightly older Ciri). And speaking of Ciri, I was surprised by how she and Geralt met at the end of this one; from the novel, I was under the impression that Geralt was the one who found her in the aftermath of Cintra's destruction and rescued her from that, rather than just coming across her when she was already safe, having been rescued by (presumably) druids. That... is an interesting twist, I guess, that he wasn't even there to help her. Speaking of him being too far to help, the interlude on the hill of the sorcerers' stand was interesting, too, though I wonder if the (somewhat Gaiman-esque) personification of death he saw was real or a hallucination. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would actually exist in this world...
54. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K.Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne -- It is getting so confusing with this canon, because there's the actual canonical books, and the various Word of God/Pottermore extra-canonical stuff authored by JKR, and of course veritable mountains of fanfic, including next-gen fanfic, and now this play, which is co-authored? blessed? endorsed? something? by JKR, and while I was reading it, I had a really, really hard time not thinking of it as fanfic. FUN fanfic, including some scenes that I didn't know I wanted to see (and still kind of want to see... done better, or written in prose rather than script form, or maybe as-is and as part of the actual play, with the acting and everything), and some cute new canon, but still very fanficcy. And not just the *spoiler for the twist* WTF-ness which had been prompting snarky badfic comparisons, but, like, the whole thing, even the parts I liked. Maybe especially the parts I liked. I know I'm not alone in this, but possibly this was made worse by having just recently finished Carry On, because this was some seriously H/D-feeling fic canon. Anyway, I read it, I'm glad I read it. I don't think it's a great work of literature, but I do think it adds to the canon even in script form (although, could it have been done better? Yeah. Has it been done better in actual fic? Prooobably.), and I would have really, really liked to see this as an actual play, with all the magical transformations and spells and Flooing about.
Semicoherent SPOILERY bullets:
- Scorpius was my favorite thing about this play, because he is ADORKABLE. He reminded me of sarahtales/Maya's Ravenclaw!Draco in "If You've a Ready Mind" (who is almost certainly my favorite Draco), only, hilariously, less ambitious (why was this kid in Slytherin, really? except to a) be Albus's only friend, and b) reinforce the shiny new message that Slytherins are not all bad people about time, canon, really). His awkward babbling, love for books, and combination of actual intelligence, dorkiness, and self-deprecation was just a lot of fun, his friendship with Albus was super-cute, his determined crush on Rose was adorable, and his relationship with Draco, awkward hugs and all, was unexpectedly very sweet. (I do buy Draco as a dad who would try hard, especially in the wake of Astoria's death, because, as Harry remarks in general, he had examples from his parents in both doing it right and doing it wrong.)
- Albus was... OK. I didn't really buy his Deep Angst about being Harry Potter's son, but, well, as Harry also points out, Albus is a teenager and they are not supposed to make sense. His friendship with Scorpius was really sweet, and imperfect, and I liked the way Scorpius called him out on that.
- I wish we'd gotten to see more of the other kids... The James-and-Albus dynamic was fun in the beginning, before Albus's sorting (the "listen to your teachers, DON'T listen to James" admonition felt very familiar, as I find myself saying this a lot to O...), but then James kinda... disappeared. I mean, he was at Hogwarts and in a different house while most of the action was taking place, but, seriously, Craig the Redshirt got more screentime than James did. Rose... we didn't get much of a feel for Rose, so it's not like she can really be OOC, but I found it strange that she would just drop Albus like that over a house divide/making friends with a Malfoy. Like, the judgmentalness I actually totally believe, as it tends to be both a Weasley and a Hermione trait, but the butting out and ignoring Albus? Not so much... And Lily and Hugo? They were barely even namechecked. I realize this is different than a novel, and needs to be more focused, but this is why I wish it was an actual book sequel instead, stuff like that.
- The "butterfly effect" stuff was enjoyable, if somewhat taxing of the suspension of disbelief. Like... Ron and Hermione don't get married (because Hermione doesn't go with Krum to the Yule Ball and Ron doesn't get jealous... *eyeroll*), but nothing changes for Harry and Ginny and their kids? Except that Albus asks to be sorted in Gryffindor, but that seems unrelated to the earlier fork-in-the-road. Both Ron and Hermione are fairly unlikeable in this version, which, I was afraid that given JKR's interview revelations that she didn't think Ron and Hermione were a good long-term match was the opposite of what I'd been expecting to see -- so this actually made me kind of happy, as a fan of R/Hr. But, like, why did Hermione not become Minister for Magic in this reality? Was it Ron's ~love~ that spurred her to greater ambition? Was she too consumed by jealousy of Padma to focus on work? That just doesn't make much sense...
- I did like the "mirror universe" where Voldemort won, but some of the trappings (Blood Ball, Voldemort Day, "For Voldemort and valor") really were sort of badfic-level of ridiculous, and I have a really, REALLY hard time believing that golden Hufflepuff Cedric would have become a Death Eater over some schooltime humiliation (as neat as it is to learn that it was Neville who stood between success and failure at the Battle of Hogwarts) -- I just do not see the logic that led someone to build a whole plot chain on that foundation. DOES NOT COMPUTE. But some of my favorite scenes/revelations happened in this reality. I liked seeing Umbridge as headmistress again, because she is very much the kind of person who *would* embrace this new regime (Voldemort Day and the rest of the crap were probably her idea, come to think of it...). Badass wanted woman!Hermione was pretty fun, too, and the scene with her and Ron trying to delay the Dementors was one of the most affecting scenes for me, even though it wasn't "real". And Snape... Snape gets his own bullet, OK:
- I loved seeing Snape, still in the resistance and dryly guessing and facing the fact of his death in the "good" timeline he is working to bring about. Snape with his doe patronus and "So now I give my allegiance to the cause she believed in. And it's possible -- that along the way I started believing in it myself", protecting another young Malfoy, getting to know that there is a reality where Harry lived after all, and named his son after him. And "How?" "Bravely." "Who?" "Voldemort." (Probably for the best that Scorpius either did not know or chose not to mention it was actually death by snakebite, so that Snape can think that "Still, there's glory in being taken down by the Dark Lord himself, I suppose"). This, Snape -- some Snape -- getting to hear that his sacrifice did not send Lily's son to his death after all -- was one of those scenes I'd apparently wanted to see without realizing it. This part really worked for me.
- Another scene I'd apparently really wanted to see, but which worked for me less well as executed, was the Harry and Dumbledore conversation(s) about love and fatherhood. It felt very... one-sided. I could absolutely believe that Harry, frustrated by what he sees as his failures as a father, struggling with the lack of role models, would throw at Dumbledore the accusations he does (which are FAIR, besides -- "You were absent every time it really counted" is mostly true, if intentional on Dumbledore's part). I'm actually glad to see that grown-up Harry resents Dumbledore for abandoning him to grow up with the Dursleys, for putting him on the front lines. And -- "My son is fighting battles for us just as I had to for you. And I have proved as bad a father to him as you were to me." -- ouch. But Dumbledore... I was not a fan of "I knew that it would happen all over again... that where I loved, I would cause irreparable damange. I am no fit person to love... I have never loved without causing harm" -- I understand the authorial choice, but I don't agree with it. I could see Dumbledore being afraid to love again after the way things with Grindelwald had turned out, but not in a 'my love destroys everything I touch' way -- I think his is a different kind of delusion, and atonement. And Dumbledore referring to himself as "this closed-up, tricky, dangerous old man" -- all of those things are true, but it feels very weird coming out of the mouth of his own portrait. I mean, you can't even call this stuff OOC, because it is not actually Dumbledore, but a portrait, which is in-text explained to be not at all the same thing ("paint and memories"), but getting the portrait conversation was therefore just tantallizing, and not in a good way -- it made me yearn for the same scene with a full-fledged Dumbledore, which was not and will not be forthcoming... (Maybe they could've had this conversation with a real Dumbledore in some sacrificial reality, as with Snape (except that I probably don't trust other people than JKR to actually write real Dumbledore...))
- Which brings us to Harry's behaviour. I actually liked it for the most part -- his failures of temper were pretty believable to me, except when he tries to set McGonagall to use the Marauders Map to spying on Albus and Scorpius to keep them separate. And when he objects, starts saying, "With the greatest respect, Minerva -- you don't have children" -- Harry, to Minerva, when in DH he was able to cast a Crucio! at Death Eaters insulting her... I was pretty convinced this was due to some alt-universe!Harry-ness (since this is the reality in which Ron and Hermione aren't married), but it seems that the play intends otherwise (Scorpius basically says so), so... Anyway, that seemed way over the top, even considering Harry being frightened by the return of Voldemort dreams and upset from the argument with Albus. But I liked his scenes with Ginny, jumping to mutual accusations and then working it out, and I really enjoyed his bickering and dueling with Draco (so H/D!). Also, the flashbacks to pre-PS Harry were interesting, the implications that he remembered something of his parents' deaths, and the graveside visit with Petunia.
- Speaking of Draco, I liked him a lot in this. I'm still boggled by the ponytail (WHY. He so doesn't strike me as the ponytail type.), but he seems to have grown up nicely. I appreciated the crack about Harry's Head of MLE office becoming his in the mirror universe, and Harry's "Come in -- I'll give you the tour", everything with Scorpius was well done ("We can hug too if you like..."), and I wish we'd actually gotten to see Astoria, rather than her becoming just another dead mother in the series -- she seems to have been an impressive person in her own right (and I liked that even in the mirror universe, Scorpius can get through to Draco with her name, and even there Draco does not want to hurt Scorpius, for all that he's a much harsher man -- and that even in the mirror universe Draco is not out there killing and torturing himself, just helping cover it up -- that does seem more his speed, even at his darkest). And Draco resisting using the Time-Turner in his possession to go back in time to spend more time with Astoria is actually quite impressive, considering even Dumbledore was not able to resists a similar sort of temptation, with the Resurrection Stone ring. I hadn't expected the bit about Draco envying Harry his friendship with the Trio (and so poetically, too), although it makes sense for him to have been a lonely child.(though it did feel very, very fanficcy), and (via Scorpius) learning that Hogwarts wasn't much fun for him. Also, I guess both Lucius and Narcissa are dead at this point? Draco says Scorpius is his only family. But I did like the remark that Lucius "Secretly I think he preffered a world without Voldemort", quite consistent with the end of DH.
- Ginny... Ginny is such a black box in the books, it was hard for me to tell whether she felt OOC in this or not. I think she did, a bit, but that's likely more the fault of the original books. As a fanfic sort of premise, I did like her here, the way she surprises Harry (but not Draco) by understanding Draco's loneliness, the way she is very, VERY firm on not wanting to even consider Transfiguring into Voldemort and thinking it's a bad idea for everyone else, too.
- OK, who's left? I think just Ron and Hermione. I feel like Hermione got the least actual character moments in this, although I did enjoy the humour of her newfound toffee adiction (rebelling against dentist parents at 40, heh), as opposed to Ginny's apparent War on Sugar, and random bursting in places (and McGonagall being unimpressed -- more on that below). Ron... I was glad he got some actual moments of feeling, but even they were mostly couched in comic relief, which seems to be Ron's constant fate in everything besides original canon -- movies, fic, etc. I thought the renewal of vows proposal, after learning that there are universes in which Ron and Hermione are not married, was sweet, and it's not that I don't believe Ron would get drunk on his wedding, but, just, must we? And WTF was the joke gift of a love potion for Albus? ESPECIALLY considering Ron's own canonical experiences with love potion... That was a weird, weird choice. I do, though, completely buy Ron as a cool uncle/embarrassing dad, so that part rang true to me.
- Speaking of McGonagall, as I was above, her laying the smackdown on everyone and regretting that she could not give Minister!Hermione detention was pretty great. Also her trying not to root too hard for Gryffindor, heh. "And I'm pleased to announce Gryffindor's newest member of the Quidditch team - our -- your superb new Chaser -- Rose Granger-Weasley."
- OK, I've gotten this far down without talking about Delphi or the whole Voldemort's daughter thing. So it's not AS bad as the snarky "My Immortal" comparisons would have suggested, but... really? That was the best plot they could come up with? I realize it ties in with the theme of parents and children which is central to the play, from the conflict between Harry and Albus to Harry being there at Godric's Hollow and having to choose not to interfere (echoing Albus and Scorpius letting Cedric go to his death after Cedric rescues them from Delphi) to Draco doing better with Scorpius than his parents did with him... but it's just SUCH a silly, melodramatic premise. It's a good thing I was spoiled for it, back when the spoilers first appeared on Tumblr and it wasn't clear if they were real or not, because at least I could get over the WTFing beforehand.
- And let's not examine too deeply Albus having a crush on her. Actually, let's not examine too deeply anything having to do with Albus's love life, including kissing Hermione "about five hundred times" while polyjuiced as Ron (that was a hilarious scene, but... O.o). Besides, it's pretty clear this whole play is, like, half a step away from an AS/S fic (complete with "what are you wearing", but anyway XD). Also, mirror!Snape ships it, I guess, what with telling Scorpius to think of Albus as they're facing the Dementors.
- In a final minor, but memorable, instance of WTF... the Trolley Witch. (Though, honestly, I have a hard time believing Albus and Scorpius managed something Fred and George did not, or Sirius and company.)
I guess overall I didn't expect the play to be so closely related to the preceding canon. The first part takes off right from the epilogue, replaying and expanding it. We get flashbacks to so many canonical scenes, via Harry's dreams and the time-travel. As touchofgr3y pointed out in her write-up, the magic and the baddies and everyone are replayed again from what has gone before -- Time-Turners and Polyjuice, and Voldemort as a threat again. I do understand it's different seeing the magic of it unfold live on stage, THAT hasn't been done before, and is probably / reportedly very, very cool. But as a story... it's not very exciting. Although I do like that the theme seems to be that one doesn't necessarily turn out just like one's parents, which was kinda a flaw in the original series. Not universally, I mean, but on the whole...
But in general, I agree with this generally positive review on Tor.com.
Quotes:
Ginny: You can be honest with him, Harry... That's all he needs.
Harry: I just wish he was more like James or Lily.
Ginny: Yeah, maybe don't be that honest.
Scorpius, polyjuiced into Harry: "Go to your room. Go straight to your room. You've been an incredibly awful and bad son."
Draco: Sorry about your kitchen, Ginny.
Ginny: Oh, it's not my kitchen. Harry does most of the cooking.
Scorpius: "Albus, as apologies go this is wonderfully fulsome, but you're starting to talk more about you than me again, so probably better to quit while you're ahead."
Mirror!universe Snape and Hermione:
Snape: Safe. He's safe. [meaning Scorpius] You know you never could listen. You were a terrible bore of a student and you're a terrible bore of -- whatever you are.
Hermione: I was an excellent student.
Snape: You were moderate to average.
In the mirror!universe, upon lerning that Snape dies in the world where Harry wins:
Hermione: I'm sorry, Severus.
Snape: Well, at least I'm not married to him. [i.e. Ron]
Harry: Professor, if I may--
McGonagall: You may not. What you choose to do as parents is your matter but this is my school, and these are my students, and I will choose what punishment they will face. [...] I should expel you but [with a look to Harry] all things considered -- I think it might be safer ro you to remain in my care."
"Suddenly Hermione bursts in."
Hermione: What did I miss?
McGonagall: It is considered polite to knock when entering a room, Hermione Granger, maybe you missed that.
[...]
McGonagall: If I could also give a detention to you, Minister, I would. Keeping hold of a Time-Turner, of all stupid things.
Albus (to Harry, re: Slytherin common room): "Green is a soothing color, isn't it? I mean Gryffindor rooms are all well and good but the trouble with red is -- it is said to send you a little mad -- not that I'm casting aspersions..."
After Hermione, Harry, Ginny, and Draco all get up and claim responsibility:
Ron: Just to say -- I didn't know about much of it so can't take responsibility -- and I'm pretty sure my kids had nothing to do with it -- but if this lot are standing up here then so am I.
Scorpius's idea for calling to Harry for help through time: "I mean, it's unlikely, but... Stand over the baby [Harry] -- and just repeatedly shout HELP. HELP. HELP. I mean, it might traumatize the baby slightly."
Harry: I'd do anything for him. [Albus]
Ginny: Harry, you'd do anything for anybody. You were pretty happy to sacrifice yourself for the world. He needs to feel specific love.
Draco: Hermione Granger. I'm being bossed around by Hermione Granger. And I'm mildly enjoying it.
(between this and Scorpius's crush on Rose, I get the sense someone here is a D/Hr shipper...)
Albus: "Oh, I'm not going to be a wizard, I'm going into pigeon racing. I'm quite excited about it."
(The writing, the actual words in the dialogue, are pretty rough, and stage directions are not an actual substitute for prose, but I liked at least the idea of those, and the way they sounded in my head.)
*
Two other book-related things:
SKZB is done with the major Vallista revisions, yay!, and it should come out in about a year, by his estimate. That's about as good as I was hoping for based on his most recent tweets. He also has a blog post about the revision.
Ben Aaronovitch posted a "moment" (ficlet) from Nightingale's 1966 POV.
Spoilers:
So, this is the first Nightingale POV we got, I'm pretty sure? (unless there were some short stories from it, that weren't generally available?) -- it's certainly the first canonical Nightingale POV I've read.
Nice to see Hugh through his eyes, having seen him through Hugh's glowing account, and to see the beginnings of the whole bees and Melissa thing. Poignant to see how much David Mellenby is still in his thoughts, almost as present as Hugh in this snippet. And this, ouch: "I, of course, could not abandon the Folly without first abandoning Molly and that was not something I was prepared to do. This duty had proved a strong enough thread upon which to hang my sanity, that and the stubborn streak I had no doubt inherited from my mother." (So, that's a canonical answer to that, or at least Nightingale's thoughts on that.)
Also, Nightingale not feeling the miniskirts... XD (I mean, I know he's probably still too traumatized to feel the "youth and energy" Hugh is talking about, but I just found that amusing). Also, so that's what prompted Nightingale to get the Jag, and apparently nothing since has driven (heh) him to upgrade. I bet Peter would try to talk him into, like, a Tesla, if he thought he could protect the electronics from magic...