The Purloined Poodle (Iron Druid Series Novella) by Kevin Hearne

I admit that when I picked up this book I had mixed feelings and expectations.

On the one hand, it’s Kevin Hearne (who we love in unreserved fanpoodling glee). And it was a book about Oberon, who we definitely love. So what’s not to like…

…well, animal companions can be fun and cute and Oberon definitely adds something awesome to the Iron Druid Series… but a whole book around the cute interlude? Yeah that can get… annoying. Also, when it comes to short stories, I do wonder what the point is of many of them. Sometimes it’s for fun, sometimes it’s to explore different elements of the world that haven’t otherwise been touched. And sometimes it’s a way to hold fans upside down and shake them until the loose change in their pockets falls free (also known as The Charlaine Harris method).

Yet this book worked.

It worked because it was balanced. Yes Oberon is a dog, but for the most part he thinks like a human. His narrative is not annoying or impenetrable – because he has spent several decades with Atticus learning how to communicate with humans and among humans. His mind set isn’t frustrating and impossible to follow or awkward or clunky.

At the same time we still have several cute moments that really do convey Oberon’s doggishness – yes Oberon is focused on his mission. But he’s a dog – and he has a low attention span. And a loathing of squirrels. He’s food orientated and he still has absolutely zero concept of time. He has next to no colour vision (or awareness of ethnicity making racial inclusion somewhat fuzzy though there’s at least a Latina police detective) I like this combination of not making Oberon so doggy that he comes off as a gimmick, but also making sure he doesn’t just feel like a human in a fuzzy suit. It’s an excellent balance of making him accessible without making him bland and generally keeping it excellently balanced.

Outcast, Season 1, Episode 5: The Road Before Us

So, last episode it was pretty much confirmed that Rev Anderson’s exorcisms were pretty much a theatre that achieved next to nothing.

Anderson is all about his pride, determined to drag Kyle around all his previous “successes” not to check up on them – but to prove to Kyle that his godly powers work. Surprise – they don’t.

I think it’s really interesting to see this portrayed – and it’s not just Anderson’s arrogance (which he clearly has in spades), it’s not even the fact he doesn’t seem overly concerned about the victims he’s supposed to be saving (though it has to be said their wellbeing doesn’t seem to be his priority). We know from past snippets that Anderson has given up a lot, perhaps even his family, for his path. To face the fact he’s failing time and again, that he apparently has zero success rate is going to be hard if not impossible for anyone to swallow. But in light of what success means to him, there is a definite hint that the victims are less people to be saved so much as a score to keep. This crusade as much to prove himself right as not – when he chews out Kyle for insensitivity it’s not the father of the missing girl he demands an apology for – he demands it for himself. For his wounded pride. For suggesting he has failed – despite all the evidence that he IS a failure.

We see more of this when he drags Kyle to find one of his previous exorcisms – a teenager now living on the streets. She’s clearly still possessed, hurt by Kyle’s touch (and ominously calling him “the key” and needing “his light”). Kyle is hesitant to hurt her - but Anderson yells at him to hit her. And when she’s exorcised and the demon gone, the girl is left comatose

Anderson calls it a win – again showing a complete disregard for the actual victims. Kyle calls him out and it excellently builds on what I’ve been saying all season. What evidence do we have that Anderson’s narrative is correct? That the possessions are demons? That there are souls being saved? All we see – all Kyle sees – is terrible violence often dished out (to his wife, to a child) and, in the end, both his mother and this girl being left in comas. Who is saved by this? It’s only Anderson and a faith he refuses to challenge despite mounting evidence of his own errors, that insists they’re actually doing a good thing. Sure none of the people they come across are doing WELL in possession – but how many of them are doing well when exorcised as well? I think we have one child and then we have no idea of long term effects

Killjoys, Season 2, Episode 2: Wild, Wild, Westerley

So the team is reunited and we’re heading to Old Town in Westerley. Firstly we establish with a brief hallucination and flashback that Dutch is firmly backing away from her relationship with D’avin so we can have another season of awkward sexual tension.

We also check back to D’avin’s memory hallucinations back on Arkhan in which he remembered lots of presumably scary Level 6 people slaughtering Scarbacks, which, as we remember from the last season are freaky masochistic sort-of-pacifist-but-also-armed-resistance monks.

Next step is make sure D’avin is reinstated as a RAC agent in which they speak to Turin – the first of many characters this episode who we were pretty certain died last season but apparently didn’t. After lots of checking out the others are not Level 6, they both basically come to the idea that Level 6 is terribad awful and needs to get the fuck away from the RAC which needs to go back to its happy, reputation essential – neutrality.

Which isn’t happening yet as, at the end of the episode, Turin, Dutch et al form a reluctant alliance to figure out exactly what Khylen is up to and why.

But before we get to that, the gang is heading back to Westerley to get Pree home and generally try and sort out what is left of the mess of Oldtown after the Company bombed it then walled it off with a very very shiny laser fence: said laser fence is a) awesome and causes lots of hilarious geeky glee from John – and he’s so very cute with that. It also scans them all revealing that Pree was technically a Warlord

Y’know I really appreciate these little snippets that point to Pree having had an exciting and adventurous life before this, but little snippets don’t replace the need for actual storyline. Just saying.

Naturally to get through this fence they need a Killjoy warrant and they have one to help a Company man called Jelcho

He is The Worst.

Basically he’s fencing in Oldtown, not giving them any supplies, no food, no medicine and generally ruining the whole place as an object lesson to every other Company town about what happens if you rebel. He’s quite happy to pretty much annihilate the town to make that point. Oh and his resume includes “torturer”. He is officially, The Worst. I look forward to the time when Dutch murders him most brutally, which will be great fun.

He wants them to hunt down and bring in some escaped prisoners before they do anything unfortunate.

Outcast, Vol. 2: A Vast And Unending Ruin (Outcast #2) by Robert Kirkman, Paul Azaceta (Illustrator), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colorist)

Kyle's entire life has been plagued by demons.  It has cost him his family and almost his sanity. When he finally meet the reverend, Kyle learns for the first time that he may be able to fight back.  The reverend has been at this work for years, counting on his faith in God to see him true. Even as Kyle and the reverend attempt to come up with a plan of action, the devil clearly has ideas of his own.

If I had only one word to describe this volume it would be SLOW. Oh my goodness, does Kirkman ever know how to drag out a plot.  It begins with Megan, Kyle's sister taking a trip into town to meet Kyle's ex wife Allison. Megan and Allison meet in a coffee shop and after some small talk get to the heart of the matter, despite what Allison has been through, a part of her still misses Kyle.  Allison knows that Megan is the one who keeps giving Kyle cell phones which he uses to call her but she finds these silent calls comforting.  Megan believes that Kyle not only beat her but their child and yet she is comforted that she is being stalked?

Women recovering from being in an abusive relationship have very conflicted feelings.  It makes sense to me that Allison would miss the good times that she shared with Kyle; however, having her find comfort in being stalked is beyond problematic.  This is a man she believes put her in the hospital and nearly killed their child.  It's one thing to reminisce about good times and another to find comfort in what should be understood as predatory stalking.

Allison later finds an upset Kyle hiding in her bushes.  She doesn't call the police, she doesn't scream, and instead, she invites him to wait while she puts their daughter to bed. They talk about the fact that Allison believes that not only did Kyle ruin their marriage but that he gave her no warning that he had this kind of dark side.  For his part, a crying Kyle protests that he is trying to get to the bottom of what happened.  The two then kiss before Allison excuses herself to call Megan to take Kyle away.  It takes Amber (Kyle and Allison's daughter) sneaking onto the porch to see her father for Allison to finally flip out.  Funny how Allison wasn't concerned with Kyle creepily staring at Amber from the bushes but Amber actually seeing her father is enough to set Allison off.  A small tug of war ensues over the child and Amber reveals that it was Allison who attacked and not in fact her father.

Zoo, Season 1, Episode 3: Collision Point

Ok, looking again at the opening spiel – when did the narrative become “we have to save the animals!” rather than “animals be killing us all?!”

Anyway, the gang is all moody after Dariela killed their little monster man and Mitch continues to be an utter arsehole (best moment of the episode, Abe finally calls Mitch out in epic terms. Abe remains awesome. By far and away the most awesome character on the show.) Dariela snarls at everyone but Chloe quickly steps in to prove who is Officially In Charge, damn it. And I’d cheer her if it weren’t for the fact every decision Chloe has ever made has been wrong wrong wrong. Most recent example being her utter insistence that they don’t tell anyone that Jackson is infected with the evil death animal plague.

Abe and Deriela also have a fling. And I’m both glad isn’t the glaring man out while at the same time more than a little tired by everyone having to couple off at all times.

The evil animals this time are… ants. Nasty electric ants. Yes, electric ants. Electric ants that crawl inside people and electrocute them. Electric ants that want to reach the particle accelerator in Switzerland and cause massive explosions

As I said last episode, I’m more engaged by the animals that are a little warped, rather than those that barely even resemble the creatures they were before. Electric ants? Where one ant can electrocute someone to death? Really?

The team naturally rallies and kills lots of ants and saving the day before the particle accelerator does scary things. Perhaps more important to the characters rather than the random animal weirdness of the week is some level of co-operation between the group – with Mitch seeming to bury the hatchet sufficiently with both Abe and Dariela to not snarl like a bad tempered child every 5 seconds. Please let this continue because it’s beyond tiresome!

The Awful Racism of the House of Night Series

It’s time to look again into the abyss that is the House of Night series, grab your gun and set your sights on those barrels and shoot those fish.

Like… well… everything, the House of Night Series doesn’t exactly do well when it comes to race, despite having several POC. Or perhaps because it has several POC as the way these characters are treated is, well, typical for the House of Night series

Firstly there’s Shaunee and perhaps the most annoying element of this “character” is how little character there is there. She’s a member of the Nerdherd and like the rest of the that little gang, she exists to serve Zoey, love Zoey, and be Zoey’s minion. She is a member of Zoey’s circle. She is a sycophant, she isn’t really a character. In fact, most of the time she’s only half of a character since the authors got tired of this writing stuff and decided to just share a personality with two characters.

Let’s be clear here, Shaunee appeared in the very first book and was present in all 12 of the main books to some degree. And in all that time the closest thing she had to an actual storyline is to not keep finishing Erin’s sentences. That’s the closest Shaunee ever comes to actually being a human being. 12 books. 12. She’s supposed to be a major character and she has no real storylines or presence

What she does have is sassy quips, because that’s what her role is - to be the sassy Black friend with the witty dialogue. This is exacerbated by Erin - Shaunee’s white “twin” who basically has identical mannerisms to Shaunee. And no, this is not ok. A stereotypical sassy Black woman is a problem, a White woman who ACTS like a stereotypical sassy Black woman just adds an extra level of cringeworthiness to the whole proceedings.

It doesn’t help that the author also loves to put severely problematic speech in the voice of her minority characters. So Shaunee will outright praise some really gross fetishistic description (honestly, every single time Shaunee is described it sounds like someone quoting a Starbucks menu with the “cappucino mocha chocolate”), even commenting on one nasty fetihistic line with “thank you for appreciating my Blackness”.

Just because a white author puts her awful racial descriptions in the mouth of a Black character doesn’t make it ok. Especially since if you’re also going to make comments about “good” (straight) hair or “obvious weave” when deciding to degrade designated evil Black women. Your straw Black characters don’t make your racist fetishism acceptable.

This also brings us to Kramisha, the other prominent Black character (and, beyond Zoey and her grandmother, which I will get to, the only other really prominent POC, certainly prominent ones who live. We have some vague background POC red fledglings - who just basically appear to have some dubious descriptions but then fade into obscurity) who is introduced in Hunted. Kramisha is an oracle - which basically means she exists as one of the many many many sources of terrible cryptic prophecy for precious Zoey.

And that’s it. She has no storyline. She has no real character. She also speaks in African American Vernacular English. Or what the author thinks is African-American Vernacular English which is very very different and pretty cringeworthy to read:

My mama told me don't trust no white boy, even a pretty one. I'm thinkin' a pretty white boy with wings explodin' up from the ground in a mess of blood and ugly-ass bird things is double trouble.

There are several things wrong with this quote.  First off, the author of this series is White and she is invoking what is clearly a family conversation to which she would have little to no access to in the first damn place.  It’s never as simple as just don’t trust white people.  There’s no context to this commentary and there’s no nuance whatsoever.  Secondly, the attempt to use a pattern of speech that Cast is clearly not familiar tokenizes and reduces said speech. It reads wrong because it is wrong.  The sentences feel half finished and unformed without any sort of depth.  Juxtaposing Cast’s work to authors like Alice Walker, Sapphire, and Zora Neal Hurston who legitimately utilized African-American Vernacular only serves to show how badly Cast failed to capture the spirit of the communication she was attempting to co-opt for the purposes of characterisation. There are just some things you have to live and breathe to be able to give life to them on the page.  Cast was clearly out of her depth when she decided to turn African-American Vernacular into her tourist destination.

Look not every character has to or even should speak the Queen’s English (though if your characters are saying “bullpoopie” then yes yes they should) and definitely marginalised communities have their own accents and dialects that shouldn’t be erased. But this is all this character is - the oracle who also throws in sassy, neck rolling, snapping caricature who speaks and acts like this because the author has decided to just throw a “sassy Black woman template” over her oracle without having any actual personality or character (or any respect or research for the actual speech pattern). A minority character behaving in a stereotypical manner can be problematic (often it is a problem because of the very narrow ways that minorities are portrayed than the character itself being inherently bad) - but they can still be a character besides that. But when all they are is a stereotype? Then that’s just a tool, a shell, a racist caricature taking up space that you can’t be bothered to fill with a real character

Wayward Pines, Season Two, Episode Seven: Time Will Tell

For the longest time I have wondered when they would get around to giving C.J. more to do and in Time Will Tell, Wayward Pines finally got around to showing us a bit of C.J.'s backstory.  Pilcher charged CJ with waking up every 20 years to make sure the equipment was still functioning and to witness the end of the world as we know it.  We watch as C.J. awakens, opens some windows, exercises, watches news feeds and then tosses a coin in a bowl to mark the passage of time. The first time he awakens, we learn that humanity is concerned about something called the H1R3 virus.  The feed shows that the U.S. has closed its borders to North Korean refugees and that a war has broken out.

When C.J awakens again, there are far less news feeds available.  What he sees are nuclear bombs going off, destroying all of civilization.  It's clear that humanity is in the midst of its death throes. Once again, he cleans off the containers holding what's left of humanity, exercises, plays some chess and opens the windows. It's clear that the vigil that C.J. is keeping leaves him feeling lonely and he actually pretends to have conversations with people in stasis.  C.J. then heads outside to take some soil and water samples and he meets a mutated man named Griffin.  Together they fish and C.J is astonished when Griffin just grabs a fish right out of the lake. Griffin isn't completely human anymore and hands look more like an abbie's than a man. Later, C.J builds a fire and watches as Griffin falls asleep.  When C.J is certain that Griffin is in a deep sleep, he tries to slip away but he doesn't get far because Griffin confronts him.  Griffin demands to go with C.J and asks why he doesn't have the right to be safe.  Left with no options, C.J breaks Griffin's neck and it's clear that he is broken up by it. As C.J holds Griffin's dead body he weeps and says that he saved him from what is coming next.

It's now 3234, and CJ begins the process of working out, checking on those in storage and dusting. CJ sits to play a game of chess and imagines he is talking to his now long dead wife. It's clear that CJ is overcome by everything that he has seen.  He tells his wife that he misses the time that they used to spend together in the garden and even the way the earth used to smell. C.J aches because of his loneliness but knows he has to keep going in order to keep Pilcher's dream alive.

Finally, it's 4014, and it's time to wake everyone up. When they head outside, they see an Abbie and a little settlement.  The Abbie watches them but doesn't approach. Pilcher determines that while he didn't intend for humans and abbies to exist at the same time, he's not waiting any longer since the soil, water and air are now survivable.  C.J tries to suggest that this is not a good idea and that perhaps they should even sleep for a while longer but Pilcher wants none of it. Pilcher has Wayward Pines built right over top the Abbie settlement and as we saw in the last episode, he killed all of the abbies in order to clear the land.

Wayward Pines is now built and is ready for its first inhabitants.  C.J stands away from the group who are getting ready to celebrate. Having watched the decline of humanity, C.J has a much different perspective from those who simply slept through it all.  Megan approaches him filled with excitement at the prospect of awakening group A and C.J suggests that these people will not be happy when they realise the full scope of exactly what they lost.  In fact, the loss is only settling in on him now and he's had time to deal with it and adjust, unlike the innocent people they are now awakening from sleep. As it turns out, C.J was right because group A destroys the town.

In the present, Theo arrives in the lab to work with Margaret.  Megan of course tries to distract him by talking about his marital problems with Rebecca, promising that Jason will find him a mate. Proving that he can play the game Theo gives Megan a pointed look and says that maybe he's already found his own mate and Megan gives him a shy look.  Theo grabs some cards intent on finding a way to communicate for Margaret.  He holds up a green card and tells Margaret that it means yes, the red card means no, a card with a crown means leader and the hands means friend.  Theo demonstrates what these symbols mean and then offers food to cement the lesson; however, Margaret points to the three male abbies in captivity thus suggesting that they be fed.  While this whole process is occurring Megan is of course grumbling and carrying on.

They decide to call in Jason, since Theo is trying to communicate with Margaret in the hopes of getting the abbies who are surrounding the fence to back off.  Before Jason can arrive with Kerry, Hassler bursts in demanding that Margaret be released immediately.  Theo explains that Margaret was found on the merry ground and clearly wanted to interact with them.  Jason bursts in with Kerry in tow and he is not impressed by the situation at all.  Jason sees himself as the glorious leader of the last of humanity.  The humans end up arguing with Megan pointing out that Kerry hasn't exactly pulled her weight because she hasn't gotten pregnant.  Theo cannot believe that this is what they are arguing about given the threat that is amassing outside of the gate. Theo points out that while they have been busy arguing, Margaret has been observing them. Margaret points to the card for leader and points to Theo, which of course puts snot nose Jason into a snit.

Dead Rising (Templar #1) Debra Dunbar

Aria is a Templar, she was born a Templar to a Templar family. She was trained to be a Templar – but when the time came, she didn’t not take the Oath. Despite her mother’s nagging. Despite living in poverty and no work skills, she refuses to take that Oath and accept the comfortable life that comes with it

But as a Templar she is still consulted by the local vampires who want expertise in deciphering a magical symbol – an exposing a deadly and complicated feud in the process.

One of the storyline elements I most loved was the central question “what have the Templars become?”

The concept has a lot of really nice nuance on it – and a really interesting moral quandary and debate with no simple answers and lots of different facets.

On the one hand, we have the utter passivity of the Templars, their lack of interference, how they’ve become rather irrelevant in the modern world (even if they are still a deeply feared power) and how they general live lives of extreme wealth and comfort while giving nothing back. This is wonderfully part of Aria‘s own refusal to take the Oath, while still claiming identity with the Templars themselves. She believes in them, but isn’t comfortable with what they’ve become.

The flip side is, we have the Templar’s own genocidal history. We have a history that shows the Templars judging, picking sides, declaring various beings evil and generally not being proud of that. The debate is whether they don’t act because few things are that simplistic (especially in a multi-faith world, exactly who are the “pilgrims” on WHAT “path” that need protecting) or whether that’s an excuse for the passivity?