The Guardians (Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King, E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth’s Core, Toothiana: Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies, The Sandman and the War of Dreams, Jack Frost: The End Becomes the Beginning) by William Joyce. I read these because I absolutely LOVED the Dreamworks adaptation, Rise of the Guardians. If I'm to be perfectly honest, this is a rare instance where I feel like the movie was better than the books. This could be because I've lost a lot of the childish innocence you might need to properly revel in this sort of writing. But, as I only have my perspective, I will give it here.
I struggled through the first two books. It felt like there weren't enough rules for this world that was presented to the reader, and there wasn't enough weakness on the side of the heroes. Like, there was peril presented, but all it took was that one extra wave of belief or remembering the magic words at the right time, and all was suddenly well. It made it feel like the heroes were all powerful and the evil really had never been a threat to begin with, and that the only threat was forgetting the power they already had.
Now, that feeling shifted heavily in the third book about Toothania. It was the first time I felt like the stakes became real, and that mostly stayed for the rest of the series. Around that time, we also started to deal with the theme of growing up and the complex emotions and moral processing of people who grow up--and that made me re-think a little bit, that maybe that was the point of the earlier books being more simplistic. Maybe the series itself was modeling child-to-adult reasoning expansion. It doesn't change that I struggled to finish the first two, but it does throw the whole series into a different light.
In any case, it is an intensely imaginative view of the origins of Santa Claus, Father Time, Mother Goose, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter bunny, Jack Frost, the Man in the Moon, and the Boogeyman. But if you don't have the patience, Rise of the Guardians was pretty dang good for an adaptation (even if they did have to radically rewrite Jack Frost's backstory to make it fit a single movie).
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler - A Partial Review (56%).
I've been tackling this read since December 1, 2024 and I’m only halfway through. At this point I have other priorities that require the time and energy it takes to read this, so I will review what I have read so far and update this review if I ever complete the book.
My backstory: In my childhood, any time I entered a Barnes & Noble, I would self-righteously (and fearfully) find this book and turn it spine-side inward. Its black cover frightened me. I was terrified of the words of the man who would have killed me and my family and called it good. I thought words were magic, and consuming his words might somehow do me harm or change who I was.
In some respects, words are extremely powerful. However, they cannot override your will or better reasoning. If you accept a concept, it’s because you chose to or thought it was the best argument or because it offered you something you wanted more than the truth.
As I am older and more well-read, I braced to read Mein Kampf in my adulthood. However, on my first read-through I found myself stopped by the third chapter. For the first time I encountered a reading comprehension issue I still call the “local politics” problem. For example, imagine you live in Egypt 100 years from now, and you start reading a book—translated to your local language—about how in 2020, Harris County in Houston, Texas was the first county in the area to institute a mask mandate. Judge Lina Hidalgo ordered the local police to enforce it with fines, but the local police chief responded with an open letter refusing to do so. Follow that up with intricate discussions about which parties backed which positions in the local political system, which was nested in the larger American political system—an evolution the American author would take for granted and not explain to you—and you might be just as confused by those “local politics” as I was reading Mein Kampf.
Baffled, I set the book aside for a few years. I’ve just come back to it, determined to read it through and skim “local politics” segments, dismissing what I can’t hope to understand without deep research and annotations.
Readability of the text: The editor warns of grandiose language and he's not wrong. You can definitely tell the author wears the Chosen One vibe like a flowing cloak just by the way he paints many scenes like he's the exalted impartial observer who knows best how to judge what he's seeing.
He is at his most readable when he is describing concrete events in his life or meetings he remembers attending. He is still fairly readable when he goes into detail about concrete interactions between people in factions—for example, when he details how a Marxist party member behaves, it is clear he's seen this happen a dozen times.
However, reading becomes difficult when he charges into the territory of abstract political theory. A small portion of the time, what he's saying is quite clear. By and large, though, it's difficult to parse what he's talking about. I believe this is due both to his writing style and the aforementioned "local politics" issue. It has taken me a few months to slog through a few pages at a time. I tried reading it on the subway to and from school and found myself falling asleep half the time, unable to keep my mind on what he was saying. Usually not a sign of clear and gripping literature.
Content: I wish he was an idiot. I wish he was just a polemical writer with no substance whatsoever. I wish his observations were so detached from reality that nobody in their right mind would listen without laughing. But, to understate it a bit, he clearly had (and has) a following. And I think part of the reason is because he was observing things in the world, and much of what he observes isn’t wrong.
He details observation of his surroundings and of history (for example, his experiences interacting with Socialist Democrats, or observing the effects of poverty on children). The conclusions he draws from his observations are sometimes common sensical (I don't think anyone would disagree with his take on how to usefully read history) and sometimes way off-base (he links all Jews with Marxism).
Some of his observations are so spot on that the resulting prescription leaves me bewildered by the the whiplash. Specifically, toward the end of the third chapter he sets up the idea (paraphrased) that no one can read history without seeing that destiny has giftwrapped the world as an inheritance for the Jews. After reading scripture and watching the history of Israel, I don’t find this to be a bizarre statement. I, too, see divine fingerprints all over their timeline. But Hitler’s conclusion veers into insanity. He claims that because the Jews are destroying this birthright (I can only assume he is referring to Marxism) that it is now his duty to destroy the Jews… to preserve their inheritance? This, in the name of God.
The dissonance leaves me shaken. Hitler would set himself against God to destroy what he perceives as God’s chosen to preserve what he thinks will be given to them… it’s like watching a man about to give his son a beautiful gift, then murdering the son in front of the father while shouting, ‘Your Father sent me!’ And fully expecting to receive the gift instead. I can’t fathom.
Takeaways so far: As I read it again, I am more than a little chagrined to find myself occasionally highlighting things I agree with, or nodding and saying, “Yeah, that bit of human nature hasn’t changed.” I am reading the words of one of the most reviled men in history and he isn’t wrong about every single thing he says, like I wish he was. I think sitting with that discomfort is important, because we make him out to be so monstrously other—so frightening that his book can’t even be talked about or worked through—we forget that the potential to become that is part of what it is to be human. Keeping yourself unaware of that potential is like putting on a blindfold in the middle of a field full of pits and holes.
Hitler made both correct and incorrect observations—but we all do that. It's the wildly out of turn prescriptions he had for those observations and the unshakable belief that he was correct that was so damaging. I am learning from this book that I need to be extremely careful what I try to bring about in the world. I need to examine my heart for whatever darkness lies there—the darkness I wish wasn’t there—and wrestle with it so that it is on a firm leash. If Adolf Hitler was one of us, any of us can be Adolf Hitler. Any of us.
And if you don’t want that, you need to wrestle with the deepest, darkest part of your soul, not to suppress it, but to bring it in line with who you want to be and how you want to interact with the world. And if you DO want to be him, well… probably the same applies, actually.
The same prescription may sometimes be used with different results, depending on the intent of the patient.
Clearly, it was always safe for me to read this book, which is why I think that more people should read this book without fear—even if it is painful to them.
The Luminaries (The Luminaries, The Hunting Moon, and The Whispering Night) by Susan Dennard. Rough outline of the plot is that there are massively powerful spirits that are permanently asleep in various forests around the world. These spirits spawn nightmarish creatures from their dreams every night, and these are kept in check by a society called the Luminaries. The opposing society of Dianas would like to wake the spirits up, and between hunting Dianas and hunting nightmares, the Luminaries are very busy. But they have enough time to outcast out a whole Luminary family whose father was discovered to be a Diana spy. Our protagonist, Winnie Wednesday, is the daughter of said outcast family and she is determined to win back everything their family lost. She won't rest until she's proved she can hunt nightmares with the best of them.
I cannot explain thoroughly why this story is a mixed bag for me. The writer is definitely competent. I really like Winnie. Winnie is a good protagonist, intensely likable and relatable. I feel like the plot suffers from a lack of worldbuilding and a lack of enough people-acting-like-real-people-instead-of-acting-as-the-writer-needs-them-to-for-the-sake-of-plot. There's also a reasonable amount of tokenism that feels really obvious to me, and super obvious tokenism sets my teeth on edge.
All that aside, none of the factors were so bad that I had to stop. Don't think I would recommend it, but it does kill time and it's not bad. If the author upped her craft some, she probably is capable of writing a world that could suck me in and make me forget reality at some point in the future, but not yet.
Bird of a Thousand Stories by Kiyash Monsef. Sequel to Once There Was... it holds up just as well as the first. I love, love, LOVE... frankly, am incredibly grateful for books whose story is so clearly in the driver's seat. Characters are who they are and want what they want but never at the expense of the story. Here and there is a mildly preachy moment, but always within what that character already thinks and feels, and I can't say it enough, never at the expense of the story. And never in a way that distracts from the immersion of the story. Works of fiction where I get deeply immersed are few and far between these days. This was a wonderful fantasy tale to experience.
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo. Oh this was a lovely romp. Chinese fantasy is a new frontier, and mixing it with a murder mystery? Delicious. In olden times, when foxes could slip between beast and human, a fox woman stalks her child's murderer. A detective seeks the name of a dead prostitute found frozen in the streets. A firstborn son--in a family where every firstborn son dies when the second son is born--lives in terror of his impending death. Choo weaves these threads together well and enjoyably, and I will be tracking down her other books.
Anime
The Ancient Magus’ Bride. This is one of those animes where I watched one season ages ago, then I found out that another season released in the last year or two. Anime is weird like that, sometimes it will go on hiatus for many years and come back when you least expect it. Some of that has to do with the nature of the Manga (original comic book form) that it’s tied to and when ITS story is updated. In any case, this is definitely a weird story.
In the first season, a suicidal young girl named Chise sells herself to a slave market because she feels she has to either find a radically new life or kill herself. It isn’t an ordinary market, either. It’s a market for (and attended by) magical beings. She herself is what is called a Sleigh Beggy (what that is is never 100% clear, only that she produces more magic than her body can handle and therefore is highly desirable even though her body will not last very long). She is purchased by an ancient Mage named Elias who is not quite human and not quite fairy, but some terrifying thing in between. Terrifying visually, but he is little more than a child mimicking adults in terms of personality. This isn’t fully explored in the first season, but even Elias’ claiming of Chise to be his bride is not what it seems to the Western (or even human) ear. On Chise’s side of things, she herself hasn’t really developed into mature behavior and understanding either, so watching the two of them interact is often like watching two children try to figure out what this whole human adult thing means—oh yeah and there’s dark magic and a psychotic sorcerer on the loose too. Now, on the one hand, the first season was really enjoyable. Not everything made sense or got a perfect explanation, but it was good and sold the emotions of the story.
In the second season I was far more annoyed because poorly explained things accumulated very quickly. There’s also a larger cast and peoples’ emotional turns don’t always make sense. There's a LOT of unnecessary and uninteresting filler and the timing/pacing of the dialogue and animation feels really off. It also feels like the plot tries to emotionally manipulate us a few times and I don’t like that. The final boss/climax scenario was enjoyable and compelling, but it was immediately ruined by the obvious setup for the next season. What I mean by obvious setup is: "Oh no, look, the world-ending magical book we just fought tooth and nail to get has been snatched away by a LITERAL CHILD and the MULTIPLE HIGHLY ACCOMPLISHED MAGIC USERS IN THE ROOM can't seem to catch said child before it runs off so let's all shrug and say 'What can we do?'"
It is intensely irritating to watch characters suffer from intermittent incompetence at the writer's convenience. In addition, Elias is almost completely sidelined in this story which is supposed to be mainly about him and Chise. He's little more than a magical tool at Chise's beck and call this round, and that sits badly with me given how central their relationship is and has been to the story. This second season was really terrible, there's no way around it, and unless they have a different director or writer next time, I don't think I want to keep up with it anymore.
Games
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I have to talk about why I dropped this game. I was so psyched when this came out. This was the follow up to the first Switch game I played; Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That was the game that convinced me I was capable of playing games that required controllers. Breath of the Wild was so well designed that it taught me–an adult with zero console experience–how to play with a controller from scratch. That story was brilliant, the puzzles were engaging, there were hidden gems all over the landscape, there were multiple ways to interact with the landscape, and it was intensely therapeutic to play. I played this game all the way through twice. Did I mention I was looking forward to the sequel like crazy?
Sergey has explained to me that game sequels frequently suffer one major problem. Since nobody knows if the first game is going to be a success, the first game's concepts and mechanics are trimmed and honed and polished like mad. Any idea that is cool but not quite good enough goes into a bin and is shelved. What you have in the end is an absolutely gleaming game that is beautiful and wildly popular with no extra fat, and everyone wants a sequel. With such a smash hit, there's a lot more leeway and now the game designers take down that box full of ideas that got cut and... throw them all into the sequel.
Now. Some of the new ideas in this game were incredible. There's a new mechanic where you can shoot a special flower (attached to an arrow) into a group of enemies, and the flower's pollen causes them to attack each other. This is INTENSELY USEFUL and an example of a mechanic I enjoyed a lot, even if the flower is a grind to gather. Also, the new enemy types are pretty cool and it's interesting to figure out how to beat them. ALSO there's a mechanic that allows you to basically swim through any flat surface that's directly overhead (within a reasonable distance) to get on top of mountains/out of caves/through overhead platforms quickly. GENIUS. And what was formerly a "time freeze" is now a "time reverse" function. That is some of the best stuff, the really good new ideas.
Some of the ideas were a mixed bag. The biggest example of this is the size of the map. In the first game, there was a huge map, but it was just one level. In this sequel, you have ground level, you have an EQUALLY SIZED underground abyss that is further complicated by varying levels of underground mountains/valleys, and you have sky islands. That is three layers of map. On the one hand, amazing! The visuals are great and it's interesting trying to get around... and then you realize this game will take literally forever to play and it becomes not as great as you originally thought, because it doesn't have enough story to sustain all that exploration.
Some of the ideas were terrible. In this game, you get a "party" mechanic, which means you essentially have a team of up to 5 with limited autonomy (managed by the computer) to attack enemies with you. Sounds great, right? Well, let's compare. In the first game, what you had was extra abilities granted to you that had simple or even passive triggers that were easy to use and never misfired. In this game, you have to walk up to your party member and command them to do their special move and AIM THEM... in the middle of battle while you're being attacked. I sometimes spent half the battle CHASING MY PARTY MEMBERS so I could tell them what to do, while they kept running around attacking on my behalf. Also one of these minions is a mech and that really does not feel useful at all. It is much harder to ride and control the mech than it is to sneak around and snipe enemies myself. Yet this party system is supposed to be a major mechanic of the game. All it did was get in my way.
Another major mechanic of the game is build-your-own-whatever. This sandbox element is cool at first and an absolute pain as the game goes on. You have the ability to stick parts together to form bridges, boats, cars, carts, hot air balloons, you name it. But I find this assembly to be a real pain after a while, especially when some situations call for precision building.
Long story short: Great first game. Second game was too clogged up with ideas that should have stayed on the shelf. I sank many hours into this game and I can't bring myself to keep playing. The magic isn't there.