The main character of the film Whip It!, Bliss is 17 years old and lives in Bodeen, Texas (which she thinks is a pretty lousy place) and works at the Oink Joint. Is it any wonder she wants to escape?! I don’t know. My mom never pushed me to participate in beauty pageants, and that’s a significant difference.
But listen, everything changes when Bliss finds a flyer advertising a roller derby league for girls.
From here, we find out that “Whip It!” is a really CUTE movie, but not much more than that. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy, not dramatic enough to be a drama, and as a sports film, it’s pretty thin (though it works best in this category). It gets bonus points for avoiding the biggest clichés of sports movies. As a coming-of-age story, it doesn’t quite hold up either, because every conflict is ridiculously clichéd and we’ve seen them all a thousand times before. Plus, in this movie, it turns out every character, even the nastiest roller girl, has a heart of gold.
As for Bliss… well, her rebellion against her parents is pretty mild. Her best friend, for instance, is a NERD.
The weakest part of all is the romantic subplot. Bliss’s love interest is less appealing than Birdman, the loser from the Oink Joint. So what’s the deal?
The story of the Libyan terrorist and the Corey couple continues. And even if you missed the previous book by Nelson DeMille, like I did, you won’t feel lost because everything is well explained. The problem, however, is that the beginning of The Lion is mostly from the perspective of the scumbag Asad Khalil, who is an even more fanatical terrorist than the usual breed, and cares about nothing but killing. Seriously. Nothing else.
By about a third of the way through The Lion, you start getting fed up with Khalil indiscriminately slaughtering his remaining enemies from the previous book, as well as his own associates to prevent them from identifying him. This excessive caution is SOMEWHAT contradicted by the fact that the mischievous Khalil calls the police for fun to taunt them. Plus, the police already have a ton of files on him.
On top of that, Khalil even takes on a job from Al Qaeda, although he leaves it for last, after dealing with his personal matters. Sure. („Never mind, Khalil”, his comrades at Al Qaeda might say, „take care of your business, it’s no issue if they start a nationwide manhunt against you, 6-star wanted level. No problemo, we can always detonate our bomb later!” – And these poor Al Qaeda guys don’t even realize Khalil has this aversion to witnesses. Thanks a lot for that kind of help!)
Cairo. The late 18th century. Nahri, a young girl who makes a living by swindling people and using her healing abilities, is struggling to make ends meet despite this combination. She doesn’t even believe in magic. Then, by accident, she summons a djinn! Of course, the djinn is furious. To calm him down, Nahri must accompany him to the City of Brass. The City of Brass is hidden in the middle of the desert, completely camouflaged—good luck finding it, even with Google Maps.
Nahri and Dara (the djinn) head eastward, bickering along the way. They quarrel, make up, and repeatedly sabotage their own journey—Nahri is particularly adept at this. They also face numerous threats trying to devour them. This adventure is framed by Eastern mythology and folklore, offering an unusual flavor to readers accustomed to Western-style fantasy. However, some creatures from Arabic lore appear almost laughably fairy-tale-like, such as the twelve-eyed, gluttonous giant pigeon (imagine how much stew you could make from that!).
Fairy-tale elements are fine within their own context, like in the Arabian Nights, but it’s disappointing when a story that starts as a fantasy devolves into a children’s tale. This uncomfortable feeling is compounded when characters magically conjure food and drink out of thin air, like in Harry Potter, including quality alcohol that they then get drunk on. Such things can make a story feel increasingly cheesy. S. A. Chakraborty’s City of Brass is no exception.
A Scandinavian crime series that doesn’t release episodes endlessly? Finally, some peace! The protagonist of Samuel Bjørk’s The Boy in the Headlights is severely troubled but otherwise a brilliant detective. The abundance of personal issues is a mandatory foundation for every Scandinavian crime novel, although brilliant detectives are relatively rare among them; they’re more often just diligent and hardworking. Okay, granted, Nesbo’s Harry Hole is genuinely brilliant to some extent, but in return, he’s an alcoholic. Based on all this, it seems that in the case of Scandinavians, intellectual abilities are directly proportional to problems—well, you can imagine what the situation is with poor Mia Krüger.
At the beginning of each episode, the girl is either suspended or undergoing psychiatric treatment. Sometimes, if she feels like it, she wants to slash her wrists, while being a heavy alcoholic too. But she’s likable otherwise. And for some reason, dang it, they always want to fire her from her job. The devil knows why. (However, her boss, the chubby Holger, always defends her.)
The Boy in the Headlights is not your usual template crime novel, that’s for sure; because it would be good if it were! But in this book, you’re bombarded with information from five different threads simultaneously, barely able to keep up, and you feel like you could use some brilliance yourself—because without a razor-sharp mind, you are unable to keep so many characters in mind.
Moreover, these characters in The Boy in the Headlights appear so rarely that you wouldn’t even remember them if your mind, this delicate mechanism, didn’t work with above-average efficiency. But sometimes, damn it, a bunch of unknown figures still pop up! Dum them!
True story, everybody beware! Although Mowgli’s story has not been proven to be just a clever fabrication, the girl who hung out with wolves (Misha Defonseca: Surviving with Wolves) has admitted that she just made it all up. Now you might think I have preconceptions, but hello, I’m definitely writing this review after reading The Girl With No Name.
If you also read it, two things will be clear about Marina Chapman’s text: one, it’s an unbelievably naive narrative, and two, you must be very gullible to buy into it. Okay, sure, for someone raised by monkeys, a naive worldview is forgivable, it would be different, I guess, if she had been nursed by Nile crocodiles in her early years.
And the monkey part isn’t even that bad. The Girl With No Name feels like a somewhat simple, sentimental adventure novel, a sort of Tarzan-light, in a girly version, swinging minus the vines. (Those unfortunately break, supposedly even under a little girl… let alone the big lug Tarzan. Of course, he’s just a fabrication too, don’t believe otherwise!)
Perhaps only the kind, old monkey stands out from the text (and the other monkeys), saving our hero from poisoning. And the girl’s long hair, because you believe that anyone would run around waist-deep in a mane of hair through the undergrowth without getting tangled in every other bush? I don’t.
Marina Chapman’s troubles come from people. Damn people, again. And it’s not about the little girl with no name communicating like a monkey while people just stare, as if at the movies.
Living among monkeys is exotic. Period. Living among people in 1960s Colombia, in a run-down brothel, is not. Being among people, the protagonist ends up in worse and worse places, and through her eyes, pay attention now!, you get to know a lot of things you ALREADY KNOW. A bed, a table, TV. Not very interesting.
The narrator (and the ghostwriter) knows this too, so she joins the street kids instead. From here on out, it’s David Copperfield – Colombian edition. And no matter how hard the no-name protagonist tries, for example, to be taken in by normal people, she always ends up back on the street. EXCEPT when a thoroughly wicked gangster gang takes her in as a maid, who regularly beat her.
Well, here it becomes most obvious, as the protagonist inexplicably does not escape from here, that The Girl, who had no name, is just a foolish invention. As you witness increasingly ludicrous twists, you begin to feel like you’re watching some sort of pseudo-documentary film that throws bigger and bigger absurdities at you, waiting for you to finally slam your hand on the table and say “Enough already!”
There’s, for example, the unrealistic friend the monkey girl meets from atop a tree, and they (these two linguistic super-talents) DEVELOP THEIR OWN SILENT SIGN LANGUAGE during their spare hours, so that the gangsters won’t overhear them. And then there’s the BOMB!
A person from far away can say whatever they want. If you claim that mongooses raised you in Indochina from the age of five, and taught you snake hunting, who’s there to prove otherwise?
5/10
The Girl With No Name by Marina Chapman – Lynne Barrett-Lee – Book Review 256 pages, Hardcover Published in 2013 by Pegasus
In Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda’s Monstress comic series, a 17-year-old girl explores her own past after a devastating war waged by humans against the Arcanics, who are roughly similar to humans. Roughly. This usually leads to bloodshed. Especially since many Arcanics possess animal characteristics, such as fox tails and ears, wings, or goat heads on their necks. (So it might easily happen that you yourself would strike first and ask questions later if you encounter one in a rougher neighborhood.)
Fortunately, Maika Halfwolf belongs to the more striking Arcanics. And not only has she been sold into slavery, but an ancient entity resides within her, seeking to take control over her. So, Maika has plenty to do and problems to solve as she embarks on a Kill Bill-esque revenge spree against her enemies, while Monstress – Volume 1: Awakening touches on themes such as genocide, reckless lust for power, or humanity in an inhuman world.
But what can be said about a comic that appeals to both amputation fetishists and cat lovers? Perhaps that it’s beautiful? Yes. Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening is beautiful, occasionally hauntingly erotic, with some panels that resemble detailed, baroque paintings created seemingly just for the joy of drawing. And you haven’t seen characters exuding such ethereal beauty in a comic before. Compared to them, even the equally beautiful characters of Locke & Key look like simple gnomes.
The Saxon Stories, Cornwell’s historical novel series (and his most successful work), has now reached its eighth installment. The story continues with The Empty Throne, narrating the creation of unified England – a tale filled with the clang of weapons. The series, which began with the early years of King Alfred’s reign in the last quarter of the 9th century, has long followed the same recipe:
British kingdoms teetering on the brink of collapse under the pressure of Norwegian-Danish migrants, evolving into permanent no-go zones; the increasingly powerful Catholic Church; and Uthred, who, despite wanting nothing more than to reclaim his god-damn, stolen family inheritance, finds himself shouldering the weight of a nation’s survival. Again. And again. And again.
And this recipe works again and again – as it does in the case of The Empty Throne, thanks to meticulous preparation, an effortless yet pleasant writing style, and above all, Bernard Cornwell’s endearing, infinitely relaxed protagonist (who learned this attitude from the fine, cheerful, and also bloodthirsty Vikings who raised him.)
Yes, I know, don’t even say it, you’re among those discerning, cultured consumers of spy novels who could vomit at the mere mention of Le Carré’s oeuvre. Like the author of these lines, who intentionally avoided reading Le Carré for 15 years to spare himself… he had had enough of the baroque over-craftiness, the snobbish, pinkie-finger-raised delicacies, or simply the plain, dull boredom (The Tailor of Panama, uh?) that the author tried to cram into his books under the guise of literature. Brrr.
So, what now? The years just passed like minutes, and suddenly you stumble upon The Night Manager, which you can’t give a rating lower than 8.5. What’s this, did the guy learn to write in his old age? Yes. No, because you realize that The Night Manager was created in 1993, so you’re utterly lost.
Anyway, let’s leave that. So, The Little Drummer Girl. There’s this Arab dude in this book who blows up EVERYONE in Europe. I mean everyone, nobody’s safe, especially if they’re Jewish. So, the other Jews in Israel declare a fatwa on him, which means he’s done for. Yeah, but he’s not done for, not yet, because they can’t find him anywhere, he’s always hiding from them. He only shows up when he feels like blowing things up. What a scumbag! So what should they do? They decide to get him a girl!
There you go, you can describe the essence of The Little Drummer Girl this easily, without any unnecessary frills or embarrassing efforts. And what’s in this book? Well, unnecessary frills. It’s full of them! Overwriting, meandering, and insider know-it-all-ness.
“Of the kidnapping, little need he said.”
– this shameless author lies to your face, then there are seven (IN SMALL PRINT) pages about kidnapping. He’s deliberately messing with you, I tell ya!
Because of this, you squirm uncomfortably while reading, especially at the beginning… then slowly but surely, bugger it, you get used to this sarcastic, entertaining cynicism. And you start to like it in “The Little Drummer Girl.”
True, the story eerily resembles Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon novels (or rather that one resemble this, whoops, see: The Other Woman by Daniel Silva), with the difference that his books are not cursed with such verbosity. However, it’s now clear that they all came straight out of Le Carré’s cloak.
Perhaps this is the first spy novel I’ve read that is not unequivocally biased towards the Israelis. Silva would personally slap all the Palestinians if he could. A significant part of Le Carré’s book deals with the situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Then you look it up and realize, by Jehoshaphat!, this book is from 1983; nearly 40 years have passed, and the situation of the Palestinians is still more or less the same. And you also realize that maybe, Le Carré writes better books as you read them backwards in time. Because “The Little Drummer Girl,” for example, has aged incredibly well, it could easily deny thirty years from its current age. Perhaps even more.
Of course, you know who’s going to fall in love with whom, and you suspect what the poor response will be – if everyone survives. The Israeli intelligence chiefs are clueless idiots (this, perhaps, is the only not too believable moment in the book).
However, you watch with envy as Joseph meticulously (and patiently, like a spider) strings Charlie along (she’s the girl they intend for the Arab guy. But they really just want to screw him over. Yeah, only the Arab guy.)
Just the recruitment alone takes half a book. From then on, everything gets more exciting. And against Charlie, the author dares to depict her as a light-hearted, back-and-forth romping alley cat – while, listen!, he manages to make you genuinely like her. How on earth does he pull that off?!
If you’re looking for action, The Little Drummer Girl is not your book. But if you enjoy leisurely planning, intricate maneuvers, and a series of intrigues, then you’ll have a great time with this sparklingly intelligent, cheekily chattering classic spy novel.
8.5/10
The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carré 560 pages, Paperback Published in 2018 by Penguin Books Canada
Africa in an imagined future apocalypse. The why and how of the apocalypse is not explained, and Okorafor doesn’t delve into its impact on the present, just a few scattered half-sentences and done. But you feel like there’s no need for more; this gives just the right amount of mystery to the book titled Who Fears Death. However, the daily life of the black continent, from tribal hatred to superstitions and child soldiers to the ritual mutilation of women, is just like what you see in the media today.
This picture is complemented by magic, which fortunately is not the Harry Potter kind of spells (Curriculum Vitae, etc.) and the world of childish waving of wands, but rather a well-functioning nature magic within its own framework.
After a promising and magical start, a few chapters into Who Fears Death, the text slows down, everything becomes more insignificant, and it starts to stagnate. There’s a very thin main plot, and Nnedi Okorafor stretches it out with all sorts of childish conflicts, resentments, and sulks. Although the blurb says this is the author’s first novel for adults, it seems more like a slightly overthought young adult novel. Events trickle slowly, neither too interesting nor too boring, but they have little to do with the main storyline, often feeling unnecessary.
Black people shouldn’t feel like a curse is upon them, not now, not in an imagined future post-apocalyptic world, that’s the main message of Who Fears Death. Plus, transcendent femininity (ha-ha) can work wonders if it’s given enough sacrifice. Unfortunately, it won’t work without it. However, these lessons are wrapped in a lot of unnecessary text. (And why the “ha-ha”? Well, because you can put transcendent femininity on your hat while developed countries export weapons instead of knowledge to the black continent… oh, and while the residents there routinely pepper each other with Kalashnikovs and slice each other up with machetes.
And despite Okorafor’s text being imbued with a commendable level of concern for present-day Africa, you still feel like the author will accomplish much less than intended. And the long and drawn-out spiritual wanderings in Who Fears Death only manage to culminate in a feeble, philosophical conclusion.
7/10
Who Fears Death (Who Fears Death #1) by Nnedi Okorafor 386 pages, Hardcover Published in 2010 by DAW Hardcover
