An April wrap-up (in… June? Sure.), part 2: graphic novel and.. wait, that’s it??

Well. It’s been a while.

How are you? Everyone in good health? Job going well? That’s nice, it’s a shitshow here.

SO, while I haven’t been posting for personal reasons (family visiting, travelling, soul-sucking job, and general familial chaos), I have managed to find some time to read. This, however, is not reflected in this blog post. The only book I read in full was a graphic novel. The other two books I cracked (or clicked) open, I couldn’t finish before the end of the month. But since it is my blog and no one is reading these lines apart from my girlfriend anyway (Hi, A!), I’ll talk about them a bit. I do what I want, goddamn it.

Squire (2022)

While I was a huge manga and fan when I was a teenager, I have never been that into graphic novels. The closest I came to liking them was being really into Tintin and Gaston Lagaffe when I was ten. I only read the whole of Persepolis by Marjane Sarpati because it had been gifted to me and I was already depressed that day due to my cat’s death so what the heck, might as well read a depressing story as well and spend the shittiest day ever.

All that to say that graphic novels are not my jam, and it’s a miracle I even picked up Squire by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas. Two reasons made it happen: it was available immediately on Libby, and I liked the cover art. Then, I read the synopsis and I was intrigued.

I did not hate the story, but I did feel that it had a juvenile tone which did a disservice to the very serious themes it dealt with. I know propaganda is a thing and that it works best on those who think that they are immune to it. Sure. But Aiza is a target of the propaganda! Her whole nation is! How can she not know that the Big-Bad-Empire™  that treats her parents and herself as second-clacitizens is Big-Bad? Why does it take her seeing actual deaths to realise it? I realise that she is a child but that seemed so unrealistic to me that it never allowed me to immerge in the story. I understand why her classmates believe the propaganda: it benefits them. Even though most of them are also from the Empire’s colonies, the Empire gave the a common target to scorn and onto which blame all of their issues. It felt as if the story had been bent in an awkward shape to fit what the authors wanted it to look like.

If Aiza’s desire to become a knight was strong enough to erase any kinship she had with her people and their struggles, it should have been shown better. Maybe there could have been a scene where she agrees with the Empire’s propaganda that her people are treacherous, thieves, and undeserving of rights; one where it is shown that she thinks it does not concern her because « she is not like the others » of her nation, she is loyal to the Empire and keen to serve it. Then she could have been confronted with the fact that her behaviour or morality have no effect on the way she is treated, that it is only her ethnicity that others see. That, plus the violence, would have been better reasons to have a change of heart. That type of people exist, however I think the authors wanted to tell the story of someone who was only a little grey, not an outright anti-hero for most of the book. The result is that her development feels easy and undeserved. This probably could have been resolved by being a longer volume and spending more time on her evolving state of mind.

However, these issues probably will not be present in the next installment, so I will probably pick it up to know what becomes of her and her friends.

Leviathan Wakes (2011)

This novel blew my mind from the very first chapter.

Why? Because I was expecting a SF novel and I got a horror SF! This was my very first time reading a novel that ventured in both genres and it worked unbelievably well. The first occurence of horror happened so suddenly it felt like a gut punch, I literally gasped and had to drop the book to talk about it with my girlfriend. I was shooketh.

Then the novel kept going and it was just as good as its prologue, with strong characters, great dialogues, a compelling story, and fascinating concepts. The blurb on the cover did not lie, this truly was « [a]s close as you’ll get to a Hollywood blockbuster in book form », and in the best way possible. I could not believe that this was a read for my thesis! Academia has never been this fun.

An interesting tidbit is that James S. A. Corey does not exist, he is in fact the collaborative effort of two writers, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. I find the whole idea of writing a novel (even a saga!) with four hands fascinating. It’s hard enough writing a book by oneself, I can’t imagine what difficulties are added by having to work along someone else, who is responsible for half of the creative input./I wonder if the whole process is made simpler or harder by having to work with someone else. Could go both ways, I guess, but since Daniel Abraham’s and Ty Franck’s collaboration started in 2011 and is still ongoing (therefore lasting longer than a good amount of marriages), I have to assume that it is a positive experience.

Since I did eventually finish it in May, I can’t wait to talk about it more in details next time!

The Carpathian Castle (1892)

Not all Verne novels are made equal.

This book was Mate‘s replacement in the role of « book to help me doze off ». Well it worked a bit too well. Though it is on the shorter side, especially compared to Leviathan Wakes, I did not manage get further than halfway through. Wanna know how bad it is? I looked up the synopsis on Goodreads because it was a bit fuzy in my memory, and here what it says: « The heroes of the story, Count Franz de Telek and his man Rotzko learn of the mystery while… ». Yeah. I don’t know how those dudes are. I haven’t come across them yet.

So far, I like it well enough, but I was really disturbed by the sudden antisemitism. Verne’s novels are not the most progressive – though they are sadly far from the worst among his contemporaries – but I was frankly taken aback by what was said about the two jewish characters. If that is something you are sensitive to, I would advise you to turn to another Verne novel because that one is a lot more heavy-handed than his others.

See you next time!

Hopefully, not in two months.