A Practical Guide to Evil – Book 1 (2015)

I basically gorged myself on the first book of the web serial A Practical Guide to Evil in one long session. This accounts for roughly 350+ pages or so of a total of 7800 pages sorted into 7 books, which by basic calculation of length means the later books will get increasingly longer.

It’s sort of an inversion of high fantasy (the title may have been a hint) where the main protagonist gains the name of a role, basically enshrined archetypes for both heroes and villains fighting a proxy fight for the gods over whether good or evil should win. As expected, our protagonist doesn’t become a hero but takes up a villain role. Her long-term plan is to make sure that local petty tyrants of the empire that has broken and conquered her native kingdom 20+ years ago won’t go unpunished and that most of the people will make a decent living under the rule of the Dread Empire that lords over them.

If you think this will be a “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” kind of story, you’re half-right. There’s nothing subtle about where this is going, neither when it comes to the character nor the overall narrative. Our main protagonist, an orphan (or to be precise, a foundling) kills her first two people pretty fast and more blood and life are shed along the way as the story develops. The big issue in book 1 of the series is aligning Catherine Foundling’s (the name given to her) abstract notions of doing evil for good’s sake and the reality of it, which is far more intense than she could have expected, though she grows into it.

This is a captivating read, often making you forget that the main character isn’t good or anything despite her intentions. But the old rule of storytelling holds true, whoever is the viewpoint character, we want to see succeed. And since there are levels of evil at play, multiple villains vying for control of Catherine’s villain role, for the powers her mentor represents (he’s basically the main general and butcher for the empress of the Dread Empire), and even heroes who don’t seem as good as they make you believe, it’s all kind of gray.

It’s a massive power struggle on multiple levels and our protagonist often survives only by the teeth of her skin, her improvisation skills, her dogged will, and the occasional power infusion from her named role. Truly exciting stuff to be honest and I have to hold myself back not to gorge the rest of the series too fast.

The closest this comes to in style is as if Glen Cook had written a young adult novel (and not just because he had written a fantasy series called the Dread Empire). The author of “A Practical Guide to Evil” has the same effortless seeming skill in naming characters and regions that evoke real-world geography to create a unique and richly populated fantasy world.

Even when you can’t remember every name of one small region fighting another city-state two pages later it still leaves the impression of a “real” world full of Realpolitik where good and evil are very malleable concepts and have no meaning despite the real, living and breathing fantasy archetypes of heroes and villains. It’s a dog-eat-dog world where the good guys are only marginally better than the bad and survival is the only thing that matters. Where the villainy of the protagonist doesn’t seem as bad compared to the insanity and callousness some of the other factions showcase.

Hellboy II – The Golden Army (2008)

Rewatching Hellboy 2 after rewatching the first part recently, I wanted to come out of it at least being able to say it improved upon its predecessor. And it does to some degree. There’s more variety to the monsters, the special effects (which looked fine in the first part already) have improved further and the overall visual style is great. This is a movie that really looks neat if you are into fantasy but set in a contemporary world.

Alas, it’s all style over substance just as the predecessor and it goes mostly downhill from the start. The mundane viewpoint character shoved into the first movie has completely vanished without explanation but you won’t even notice as the rest is mostly the same. Hellboy remains the same man-child he was in the first movie, his love interest is whiny and doesn’t tell him the stuff she should talk about. Their romance is as petulant and annoying as any teenage romance is. Not that most of the other characters fare better, Abe falls in love with a faery woman and showcases the emotional maturity of a teenager just as Hellboy did.

Their nominal boss, Jeffrey Tambor as Tom Manning remains as petulant as he was in the first movie but his intellect seems to have decreased further, making it seem even more ridiculous that he has become head of the BPRD. When they get a new boss on top, Johann Krauss, a German ectoplasmic ghost in a suit that plays into most German stereotypes, Manning can’t help himself but suck up to him in the most cringe ways.

At least the main story is rather enjoyable. An exiled prince of the elves comes back to get his father’s crown to start a doomsday weapon to rid the Earth of humanity. Meanwhile, the BPRD gets exposed to the public, and where the first movie tried to ape MIB with its secrecy this time the narrative pivots toward X-Men and the public hating Hellboy and the other freaks from the BPRD (after they have accidentally been exposed to the public at large), despite them trying to save humanity from the things that go bump in the night.

I’m not really sure where all the cringe and terrible elements of both Hellboy 2 and its predecessor came from, whether terrible scripts, executive meddling, or maybe Guillermo del Toro himself. Some of the stuff he has done in the past I thoroughly enjoyed though I haven’t seen enough of his work to really get who was responsible for those extremely cringeworthy moments in both Hellboy movies that make them rather painful to endure.

Scorpianne (1994)

Talking about the first two novels by Emily Devenport I remarked how I wasn’t sure I liked them though I found them very compelling to read. This isn’t very different for her third novel Scorpianne though what has changed is how the story is now much closer to home, not some faraway alien planet. Instead, it is Earth and Mars and the asteroid belts, a grimy, dystopian future where new technologies have only widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

What makes Emily Devenport not an easy sell is that her early novels tell stories on the margin of big stories with a focus on side characters who are entangled with these big stories but aren’t central to them. The big story remains in the background, fragmentary and often with no clear outcome which can be frustrating if that’s what you are interested in. They also have a naturalism about them that can be very in-your-face and easily misinterpreted.

For example, sex was present in the first two novels but not a strong focus, just something that happened and informed the character but nothing more. Since the main character of Scorpianne is a 50-ish-year-old telepresence prostitute (basically a sci-fi version of a cam girl) and has lots of body issues with real human contact and then gets rejuvenated with a much younger body, sex remains very central to the character and thus the narrative. It’s almost pornographic in detail and presentation but it lacks the titillating factor, at least to me, and as much as I can infer from the author that wasn’t her intention either. There’s nothing arousing about the sex, it just is, not judgemental in any way except what the reader brings into it.

Halfway into the novel, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it but as usual, the compelling writing kept me moving forward. Though once I reached the end my opinion had turned around quite a bit. I felt like I had read one of those diamonds in the rough, a mostly forgotten sci-fi novel with great setting detail about the start of a transhuman future where the questions of longevity, body mods and fully remodeling humanity would lead us. And what it would mean when the super-rich can easily create the kind of people they want to serve them and how their relationship with the rest of humanity would change.

There are some very creepy moments, lots of thoughtful stuff, and a bit of action. Its main flaw is that it doesn’t really follow the usual trajectory of many stories in that a threat is slowly increasing over time until a big climactic moment. One of the main villains is dispatched rather haphazardly and suddenly and at the end you don’t even have the satisfaction of knowing whether the death had really taken, given the technology around. The ending also is rather ambiguous with the protagonist having survived her ordeals but the political landscape remains dangerous and most issues unresolved.

For a book that sports a generic sword fantasy lady on the cover, I didn’t quite expect such excellent world-building interwoven with a compelling story. Due to some of the stuff that is front and center here, this won’t be a book for everyone but for me, definitely a great find.

The Beekeeper (2024)

The Beekeeper is the kind of modern action movie that feels like an attempt to make a 90s-style action movie and only succeeds on the surface level. It’s not a terrible movie, just an aggressively mediocre one that hits all the genre cliches but avoids any points of interest or really standing out in any way.

You can’t fault Jason Statham, he does his best and he owns most of the scenes and most of the movie. But there’s no credible opposition, the big villain is a spoiled man-child running to his mother, who is the president but doesn’t feel like one. Jeremy Irons also does his best, this time trying to play a sort of villainous support character that is rather pathetic, and still comes off as better than this boss.

The movie is about a neighbor of the Statham character who kills herself after online scammers have cleared out all her accounts and those she was responsible for. Instead like in reality, this isn’t a call center from somewhere in India, but rather a couple of call centers operated like tuned-up stock exchange trade rooms merged with discos full of mostly Western people. Everything about the villains here feels incredibly fake that it crosses over into the unintentionally comedic.

The Statham character is a retired Beekeeper, part of an organization that works outside of the organizational structure of the US government but by the power of assassination tries to keep the country on course. Retired he may be, but he still vows revenge for his neighbor and goes after the guy owning all the scam call centers.

It’s moderately entertaining but otherwise just boring. Statham murders his way through countless enemies or just opposition trying to do their job like he was John Wick, but it just isn’t the same. The movie lacks a unique identity and feels like a copycat generated by an AI that at one point ran out of input. I do feel like they wanted to make a series, maybe focus on the Beekeeper organization, but that was such a non-entity in the movie that I don’t really care or look forward to a sequel. This one reminds me of many of the Netflix movies that ape classic action movies but feel like expensive copies instead of doing something original.

Hellboy (2004)

When I saw Hellboy the first time I utterly hated how the movie had adapted both Hellboy and his world. Gone was the grown-up investigator who looked like a demon, replaced by a spoiled teenager and a romantic love triangle that was hilariously bad. Throw in the mundane point of view character for the audience who was an utter wet blanket and Hellboy suddenly had to be a secret from the public at large, and the mix was ready for me to hate on.

Since then some time has gone by and I thought maybe it was time to revisit the movie, to see if I didn’t utterly hate it and could appreciate it as an alternate take on Hellboy. Not much luck, I still hate the movie. I can’t stand how Hellboy feels like a complete disgrace to the comics character, and how most of the problems stem from the main characters acting like morons.

It has great special effects and the visual style of the movie is really good, the villains and Hellboy look, at least style-wise, like their comic counterparts. The story is based on the first Hellboy comic Seed of Destruction and makes a good attempt to fit it into a movie runtime. But oh god the rest is just awful. Whenever any character opens his mouth, out comes the worst kind of Hollywood writing, where characters are written like morons, written by people who clearly hate comics or don’t get them.

This just isn’t a fun movie for me. Even as objectively as I can be, and I honestly can’t be very objective here, this one just isn’t very good.

The Light Fantastic (1986)

Despite being not just the sequel to The Colour of Magic (TCoM), the first Discworld book, but really the second half of one continuous story, this has a somewhat different feel than TCoM. It’s as if Terry Pratchett sat down right after writing the first one, feeling already bored from doing funny pastiches of famous fantasy adventures, and thought about doing his own thing. The first book left the reader hanging with the two main characters having fallen off the edge of the Discworld.

You won’t get a satisfying conclusion to this, instead, Pratchett opens with a deux ex machina involving the 8 powerful spells in the Octavo doing their best to help their champion survive. From thereon the book gives us a closer look at the Unseen University and its colorful cast of high-level wizards. It also introduces the first major villain of the series that is such a deviation from cliches though his character became an archetype for certain things Pratchett likes to make fun of.

All the high-level wizards of the Unseen University would make for good villains as they are a backstabbing, murderous lot, but Ymper Trymon is different. Organized, not interested in flashy magic, preferring a logical, easily understood system, avoiding any vices, and rather preferring sending out memos. He’s the fantasy world equivalent of a middle manager with delusions of grandiosity. He’s dangerous because his mind isn’t open to the world and more interested in making the world follow his ideas of how it should be. For that, he’s willing to do everything, starting with murder and eventually ending with threatening the destruction of the entire Discworld.

Meanwhile, Rincewind tries his best just to survive and eventually get home as he’s gotten tired of all the tourism escapades he had to suffer through with Twoflower. Eventually, they get back to Ankh-Morpork and due to the Octavo spell in Rincewind’s head get into direct conflict with Trymon. At the same time, the Discworld is closing in on a massive red star that makes everyone think the world is doomed with various reactions to this ranging from the funny to the terrible.

Like the first book, this is a fun if unassuming read. It lays further groundwork for the Discworld series, especially in giving us a proper glimpse at the workings of the Unseen University and presenting the head librarian and his backstory for the first time.

I felt like the beginning of the book was a bit of a cheat and I would have liked at least some sort of space adventure below the Discworld to happen and the eventual daring rescue of Rincewind. Alas, the rest of the book still makes up for this. This is the only time in the series that a previous book ended on a cliffhanger, even later books that are part of a series are usually self-contained. Overall a fun time, though not the most memorable one. It does have a couple of good scenes, e.g. when half the people abandon Ankh-Morpork and the other half descend into insane cult-ish behavior, or the magic book shop, or basically everything involving the Unseen University wizards.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Every time I watch this movie I like it more and I liked it quite a bit already the first time I watched it. On the surface it’s a spy thriller about a retired (forced retirement more like) member of MI6 asked to find out if there really is a Russian mole at the highest echelon of MI6. Besides being a good, though very subdued thriller it’s also a great period piece that feels like the embodiment of an era gone by, the Cold War and its world of spies.

What it really is deep down is a character study, of George Smiley the man called back into action, the people who support him, the people he is investigating, and finally the fox inside of their henhouse. It’s an exploration of how the paranoia of the spy agencies drives everyone to isolate themselves from their loved ones, from those they are working for until there are few things that remain to make life, well, not worth living maybe, but worth going on.

Once stripped of all the usual human support networks, once all the spy world paranoia has seeped in, Smiley and all the other agents become people who can only work because they have nothing left to do. It’s a case study of loneliness, of lonely people, how they crack or don’t crack too much.

Gary Oldman gives the perfect performance as Smiley, saying only the necessary things but implying so much with his facial expressions and the things he isn’t saying. He’s the perfect spy, always watching others, observing, and analyzing how the pieces fit together (though at times also hurting inside and not trying to show it). It would be easy to denounce his character as cold since he isn’t emoting much, but he’s supporting those who rely on him just with the right gestures, when he can, tries to help, not with big, flashy actions or words but doing the right thing at the right time.

The rest of the cast is great as well, with many actors getting their roles perfectly, some of whom you enjoy to hate or at least dislike, or pity. This is such a great movie in terms of dramatic acting and despite having so little action feels incredibly tense at times.

The Boy and the Heron (2023)

I really wanted this movie to be good, as it is likely Hayao Miyazaki’s last movie given his age. And given the overall reaction of the critical press and even normal viewers, this seemed like a sure win. Sadly, it’s a disjointed mess that has nice visuals but otherwise just doesn’t measure up.

It feels like you’re watching a Frankenstein monster made up of parts and ideas from previous Ghibli movies with unlikable and cold characters who make choices that don’t make sense. Plot-wise stuff happens that doesn’t make much sense either. The fantasy world our protagonist is whisked away to feels like a hodgepodge of elements that individually look intriguing but don’t cohere into a world that feels lived in or real.

This is more of a fever dream ala Alice in Wonderland than the lovely portal fantasy that Spirited Away was. The movie three times raises various bird-based creatures as possible villains, first the heron himself, then pelicans, then parakeet, as if the movie couldn’t decide who the real opposition was supposed to be. The heron turned out to be somewhat of an ally, the pelicans just another group of victims, and the parakeet merely deluded.

The ending was nonsensical, the reason for the main character’s stepmother being there never explained (neither why she went there nor why she was kept there). The final reason why the creator of this world wants our protagonist to remain there makes only insomuch sense as you forget the whole world-building here is wonky as hell and falls apart the closer you look. The movie gives the viewer a very big canvas to project his own theories and ideas onto it as it doesn’t really have much of its own to say.

And then everybody is saved in the end and the movie ends so abruptly you may wonder whether it’s a joke. There’s no satisfying denouement and it will leave you scratching your head WTF you just saw. This isn’t the masterwork critics reviewed or some fans wrote about, this isn’t even just a slightly subpar movie not up to the level of the rest of Ghibli’s oeuvre, this is a full-on Earthsea-level misfire that makes it clear the time of Studio Ghibli is over.

Larissa (1993)

Larissa is a spin-off or sidequel from her first novel Shade, it takes a minor side-character and tells her story that runs partly parallel to Shade but is so self-contained that even if you haven’t read or heard of Shade you wouldn’t notice how much it takes from that novel.

What’s so odd about the book is that the overall arc and where the character ultimately ends up parallels a lot of what went on in Shade, at least in the broadest strokes. Larissa is drawn into the conflict between the Q’rin, the humans, the Aesopians, and the Lyrri, though all this is filtered through her own perspective, that of a knife fighter who does it for a living and unlike Shade is more prone to stand her ground and fight instead of running away.

Given all this, what applied to Shade applies here as well. The writing draws in you and makes the whole book an easy and fun read despite all its shortcomings. And I’m not even saying that mirroring the broad strokes of Shade’s narrative is a flaw, as the devil is in the detail and Larissa really is her own character in many ways. But the writing is really what makes you want to go on, it’s just a joy how Emily Devenport is putting words on the page.

Just one example is the very first sentence in the book “This may sound deranged, but I think I owe my interest in knives to the serial killer who murdered my mother when I was nine”. This gives you an idea of how unpredictable the book can be even when you know the broad strokes of where the story is going. Eventually, Larissa runs away from Earth, ends up on Z’taruh (the world where most of the action of Larissa and Shade take place), becomes a fighter, becomes part of Oshrii’s stable of fighters, and eventually escapes the planet in opposition to Oshrii, who is the dominant Q’rin lord on the planet and who has allied himself with the Lyrri.

The same politics that dominated the second half of Shade to a large degree come into play here as well with whole scenes lifted from Shade, only from Larissa’s point of view.

Like with Shade, I have a hard time saying whether this is a good or a bad book, as it reads so easily but I’m not entirely sure about the rest. It has an interesting setting and towards the end throws in some more info we didn’t even learn in Shade that recontextualizes the entire conflict between Q’rin and Aesopians and humans and Lyrri. We learn that the Aesopians long ago took Neanderthals from Earth and made them into the Q’rin, though the revelations don’t end there. We also find out what the Aesopians were before they remade themself to look like Earth animals. It turns out, that before they were Aesopians they were Lyrri, which puts a really interesting spin on it.

On the other hand, I sometimes felt like I was reading Shade all over again despite the different protagonist and her unique viewpoint. And I enjoyed Larissa’s viewpoint, sure. She’s more direct than Shade, has a better idea of who she is and what she wants, and despite the demons that haunt her (especially the serial killer that killed her mother and almost her and how that relates to her affinity for knives) has a better way of dealing with things.

I do want to know why Emily Devenport opted to write a second novel that was so similar to her first, was it her publisher or her own wish? And I still don’t know how I feel about whether it’s good or bad that this book eerily mirrors the first one.

Blue Beetle (2023)

For all their flaws at least when Zack Snyder was heading the DCEU the movies looked like something that belonged in the cinema. Blue Beetle is a $100 million movie that looks like it belongs on the TV screen, and not on a modern TV with its high-quality shows that rival or surpass theatrical movies but the 90ies with its cheesy and simplistic made-for-children TV movies that make you groan just switching them on.

It’s not that the movie is outright terrible, just that the entire cast is incredibly bland and forgettable except Susan Sarandon as Victoria Kord who may have hammed her role up but still managed to be the only one on the cast who managed to make her character feel alive and well-realized in the over-the-top comic book villain style.

What’s less forgivable is how uncompelling Xolo Maridueña plays Jaime Reyes as the main protagonist. Though some of that comes from the source material, Blue Beetle never was more than a C-Lister in any incarnation, for all his tech toys or the alien abilities given from the blue scarab, there never was a good narrative hook for his character. He works as a supporting character, but as the main protagonist there’s little going on and Xolo plays the character with a painfully boring naivety and self-defeating unwillingness to defend himself that makes him look completely moronic.

The only moderately good parts of the movie are the action scenes, at least you can see where the money went, but all parts related to when the actors start speaking and the incredible fake Mexican family harmony the movie is trying to ram down our collective throats, are just awful.

This is a comic book movie in the style they were doing before Marvel did its thing when comic book movies meant cheaply-made movies with incredibly simplistic plots for little kids by movie producers with no skills or understanding of how good superhero comics could be.

It’s funny then that James Gunn said he wants to carry over the actor and his character into the newly rebooted DC movie universe, given how his movie is one of the lowest points in the DCEU so far. Doesn’t bode well for the future.