Month: November 2023

Review: The Dark Is Rising Sequence

On By E. A. SolinasIn reviewsLeave a comment

The fantasy genre has always had a strong connection to Celtic mythology and British folklore, especially if you can somehow weave Arthurian lore into it. And nowhere are those bonds more evident than in Susan Cooper’s “The Dark Is Rising Sequence,” five timelessly lovely books about an ancient war between good and evil that centers on a small group of children. It sounds simplistic, but Cooper’s haunting writing and masterful command of atmosphere is unparalleled.

In “Over Sea, Under Stone,” the three Drew children come to stay with family friend Merriman Lyon. While messing around in his attic, they discover an ancient treasure map that leads to a hidden grail… if they can figure out what the map’s writing and symbols mean. However, they soon discover that they are not the only ones looking for the grail – three sinister people are also in pursuit, and they will do whatever it takes to claim the prize.

“The Dark Is Rising” shifts its focus to Will Stanton, whose wintry eleventh birthday brings about a terrible and beautiful change. He learns from Merriman that he is the last of the immortal Old Ones who are fighting the evil Dark, and as the power of the Dark grows, Will must gather the six Signs that can stop them. But he soon learns that he is not the only one in danger – the Dark is threatening his beloved family as well.

“Greenwitch” brings together the Drews and Will Stanton at a seaside town in Cornwall, where the grail from the first book has been stolen. Will and Merriman work on Old Ones stuff, Jane is haunted by nightmares about the Greenwitch, a symbolic weaving of branches and leaves cast into the sea, and a sinister artist captures Barney. But the Greenwitch is not just a tangle of sticks – it’s alive with wild magic that neither Old Ones nor the Dark can control.

Then there’s “The Grey King,” which won a Newbury Award. An amnesiac Will is sent to Wales to recover from a severe illness, where he meets the “raven boy” – an albino boy named Bran – and a dog with “eyes that see the wind.” Will must lead Bran into a closer connection with the Old Ones, and uncover a hidden treasure for the Old Ones. But when an accident befalls the dog, Bran is angry with the Old Ones – until the truth of his past comes to light.

Finally, the battle between good and evil climaxes with “Silver On The Tree,” in which Will receives visions and messages from Merriman, telling him that the final clash between the Dark and the Light is nigh. But while the Old Ones are almost ready, they don’t have the power of the Lady. For the sake of the world, he must join forces with the Drew children and Bran, and make their final stand against their mortal enemies.

Susan Cooper’s writing in “The Dark Is Rising Sequence” is the kind that comes around once in a generation – it’s lyrical, subtle, elegant and nuanced, able to switch effortlessly between family squabbles and hauntingly eerie glimpses of a whole other world. She’s at her weakest in “Over Sea, Under Stone,” but even then the book isn’t actually bad – just not as brilliant as the other books. It’s an enjoyable treasure-hunt/fantasy adventure.

She also weaves in a lot of Celtic mythology – primarily Welsh, such as the legend of the Grey King – and Arthurian legend, which add a depth and richness to the story beyond a simple good versus evil conflict. It really gives the story the feeling that it is the natural capstone to countless millennia of magical war, between the starkly evil Dark and the powerful but still very human Old Ones, who are able to make errors and feel sorrow despite their age.

The Drew children initially feel like E. Nesbit characters who somehow stumbled into a late twentieth-century book, but they grow more layered and complicated as the series winds on. Will Stanton is a seamless blend of a clever young boy and a timeless immortal that is both wise and ancient in mind. Overseeing them all is Merriman, an all-seeing guardian who can be alternately dignified and forbidding, or kind and grandfatherly.

With its majestic prose and entrancing, otherworldly characters, the “Dark is Rising Sequence” is a remarkable piece of work, and one that deserves many re-readings. Absolutely captivating, and deserving of its classic status.

Review: Solo Leveling Volume 1 (novel)

On By E. A. SolinasIn reviewsLeave a comment

In the world of “Solo Leveling,” inter-dimensional gates regularly open up to “dungeons” crawling with strange and dangerous creatures. The only ones who can kill the creatures are hunters, who have awakened powers that let them take down the big bosses.

And out of all those hunters… Jinwoo is the weakest.

Needless to say, there’s plenty of room for improvement for the protagonist of Chugong’s “Solo Leveling” – and even in the brief space of the first volume, he makes quite a bit of improvement. The story thus far is bloody, harrowing, but also somewhat wryly funny – especially when the System intervenes to make life more complicated for the hero.

As mentioned before, Jinwoo Sung is the weakest of the lowest-ranked hunters, able to tag along on only the least threatening missions – and even then, he gets badly hurt. But he has no choice, because he needs the money for his family. When the party he’s with finds a rare double dungeon, Jin-woo is determined to explore the vast, eerie stone chamber filled with statues – and ends up in a nightmare that leaves him alone and dying.

Which is when the System intervenes, healing his body and saving his life. While he recovers, the System gives Jinwoo daily quests (mostly exercise) and the opportunity to level up and acquire new items. Just like a video game. He’s achieving the impossible: becoming steadily stronger, with apparently no limits.

Unfortunately, he soon discovers that even his increased power won’t keep him safe from potential harm in a dog-eat-dog profession, especially when he and another young hunter, Jinho Yoo, sign up for a freelance job posting. The problem is, the guy who’s hiring them, Dongsuk Hwang, is not the genial figure he pretends to be, and the biggest danger may be the other hunters rather than anything inside the dungeon.

The world of “Solo Leveling” is a pretty standard urban fantasy setting. It’s the modern world as we know it, except some people have magical powers and inter-dimensional gates allow them to hunt goblins, giant spiders and snakes, statue-gods, and so on. The most interesting aspect of it is the System that effectively turns Jinwoo into the protagonist of his own personal video game, with all the problems and benefits of that status.

The writing is pretty standard for a light-novel/webnovel’s style, spare and lean with lots of onomatopeia. It feels like Chugong is still building up the plot threads in this volume, since the majority of the story is just devoted to Jinwoo ending up in a nightmarish and life-threatening situation, and then spending a lot of time grinding (which is a bit tedious) and building up his strength. But Chugong has some talent at depicting the raw, wild, desperate interiors of the dungeons, and the monsters in them.

Jinwoo is kind of a mixed hero – at the story’s beginning, he’s courageous, unselfish and quick-witted, but still petrified of dying and acutely aware of his almost comical weakness. However, he becomes a lot colder and less likable as the first volume winds on, after he comes to the conclusion that all people are cowardly backstabbers. Hopefully the presence of Jinho – a golden retriever of a rich boy who constantly addresses him as “boss” – will mellow him out in subsequent volumes.

“Solo Leveling Volume 1” has some growing pains, but it’s an entertaining foray into a series with plenty of promise, solid writing, and a hero who wobbles on the edge of antihero. At the very least, it inspires me to check out volume two.

Review: Solo Leveling Volume 1 (manhwa)

On By E. A. SolinasIn reviewsLeave a comment

In the world of “Solo Leveling,” inter-dimensional gates regularly open up to “dungeons” crawling with strange and dangerous creatures. The only ones who can kill the creatures are hunters, who have awakened powers that let them take down the big bosses.

And out of all those hunters… Jin-woo is the weakest.

Needless to say, there’s plenty of room for improvement for the protagonist of the manhwa adaptation of Chugong’s “Solo Leveling.” The first volume mostly devotes itself to introducing us to the world of hunters and the hideous events that lead to Jin-woo’s chances to improve himself, with a terrifying and bloody series of challenges at the center of the story. The artwork is half the reason to see this – dark, gloomy and beautifully detailed.

As mentioned before, Sung Jin-woo is the weakest of the lowest-ranked hunters, able to tag along on only the least threatening missions – and even then, he gets badly hurt. But he has no choice, because he needs the money for his family. When the party he’s with finds a rare double dungeon, Jin-woo is determined to explore the vast, eerie stone chamber filled with statues, in the hopes that he can scrounge up a little money.

But then the statues come to life and start killing the party members, including a vast “god” statue that has a very specific list of demands. Unfortunately, those commandments are difficult to decipher, and more and more hunters lose their nerve – leading to them being vaporized or squashed into red smears. To survive this nightmarish scenario, Jin-woo will need more than his wits. He’ll need a System, and he’ll start grinding like a pro if he ever wants to get stronger.

The first volume of “Solo Leveling” is dominated by the adventure in the double dungeon, and the entire eerie, bloody adventure is explored in great detail. It’s genuinely nerve-wracking to watch the hunters dwindle as the adventure goes on – especially as some of them turn on each other, lose limbs or panic and try to escape on foot. The fact that it’s overseen by a creepy, sadistic stone “god” with a toothy grin makes the whole thing even more eerie.

And the story is brought to life by the artwork of Jang Sung-rak (aka Dubu), who used color exceptionally, painting the god’s chamber in stark, ghostly, cold blues and the regular world in warm, sunlit tones. The artwork is also very detailed and expressive, lingering on the characters’ faces to show their terror, tension, eagerness and apprehension, and even brief bursts of action (like the murder centipedes in the desert) are wonderfully dynamic.

We also have a good introduction to Jin-woo, who seems like a vividly realistic character – he’s courageous, unselfish and quick-thinking (he unravels all three commandments without help), but still petrified of dying and acutely aware of his almost comical weakness. But after the System accepts him as a player, we see him starting to branch out into becoming stronger, whether it’s racing laps around the hospital or venturing alone into a new dungeon.

The first volume of “Solo Leveling”‘s manhwa adaptation is a nail-biting experience that flies by quickly, before introducing you to the central conceit of the series – and it promises to get more interesting as Jin-woo levels up.

Review: The Office: Complete Christmas Collection

On By E. A. SolinasIn reviewsLeave a comment

“The Office” is, in my opinion, one of the greatest comedy TV shows of all time. Especially since it didn’t have a laugh track, since I hate those.

And like any long-running comedy series, “The Office” had a fair number of Christmas episodes, each one with its signature mixture of cringe, wit, charm and hilarity. “The Office: Complete Christmas Collection” compiles all seven Christmas episodes together, bringing together everything from alcoholic interventions to special teapots, from romantic blowups to an attack by Christmas geese. Overall, it’s far more admirable than impish.

Each episode features a Christmas party in the titular office, usually with something that spins out of control that the manager makes dramatically worse. That might be a Secret Santa turned into a Yankee Swap (over a $400 iPod), an alcoholic fire that leads to an attempt at forced rehab, Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) as a female Santa Claus, a disastrous trip to Benihana’s, a “classy” Christmas for Michael Scott’s (Steve Carell) love interest, and a Schrute-style Christmas complete with the grimy gift-bringer Belsnickel.

And while all this is going on, there are other little side stories: Erin (Ellie Kemper) being attacked by Christmas birds, Dwight (Rainn Wilson) selling unicorn dolls, Phyllis blackmailing Angela (Angela Kinsey), dueling Christmas parties, Jim (John Krasinski) and Dwight dedicatedly fighting with both snowballs and pranks (including Henrietta the porcupine), the potential loss of everybody’s jobs, learning about “Die Hard,” and Darryl (Craig Robinson) getting into the Glühwein while in a bad mood. Cue the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and rock out for Christmas.

And for the most part, the stories are delightful to watch. I feel that the Benihana episode is rather weak (and contains a rather unpleasant gag about Asians), but the rest of the time, the antics of our favorite office workers are fun to watch, whether they’re festive or Grinchtastic. The antics are wonderfully and bizarrely memorable (Dwight bringing in a dead goose) and the dialogue is fun (according to Michael, Jesus Christ “can heal leopards”), but there is some real emotional resonance to them as well (Michael’s jealousy over Holly’s relationship, Jim wanting to give Pam a special teapot).

The biggest problem with this collection? Simply put, it’s that “The Office” has many overarching storylines, and sometimes those storylines are incorporated into the Christmas episodes, but not shown in total. So if you haven’t seen the preceding episodes, and you watch the Christmas episodes only, you might be a little confused why Erin is demanding murder, or Phyllis is blackmailing Angela, or where Michael went after the seventh season, or what Jim is going to Philadelphia for.

“The Office: Complete Christmas Collection” is a fun little collection of wild, weird and wonderful Christmas episodes, full of cringe comedy, oven mitts and unicorn dolls.

Review: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

On By E. A. SolinasIn reviewsLeave a comment

The year 2022 was a weird one. For some reason, there were three different Pinocchio movies released to the public: one so bad it was unintentionally funny (the Russian one), one so bad it was just painfully bad (the Disney one) and one that was… sublime.

The last one – the one that people actually wanted to see – was the Oscar-winning stop-motion adaptation by the magnificent Guillermo del Toro, which reimagines the tale during the rise of Italian fascism. Despite the grimness of that setting, it’s the “Pinocchio” that you would expect from del Toro – darkly exquisite, whimsical in an disarmingly alien way, and bittersweet in nature.

During World War I, talented woodcarver Geppetto loses his beloved son Carlo to a bomb. After many years of loneliness and grief, he drunkenly chops down the tree that grew over Carlo’s grave, and carves it into a wooden puppet that looks like a young boy. Then a blue, winged forest spirit decides to grant life to the puppet, and enlists Sebastian, the memoir-writing cricket living in his chest cavity, to guide and help the wooden boy.

But navigating life is difficult for Pinocchio, since Geppetto isn’t sure what to do with a spontaneous and overly-inquisitive child that causes trouble wherever he goes. The wooden boy becomes a circus performer to earn money for his father, and soon discovers that he is immortal – every time he dies, he comes back from the afterlife, albeit a little later each time. This attracts the attention of the Podestà, who wants him trained as a soldier for the ongoing war with the Allied Forces. But Pinocchio’s only goal is to protect his father.

Guillermo del Toro’s quest to make this film stretches over more than a decade, and unlike Disney’s crassly soulless remake of their own classic property, it overflows with heart, passion and bittersweet beauty. It’s also a story that rings deeply with Guillermo del Toro’s unique style and sensibilities, from the reframing of the narrative against the rise of Italian fascism (Pinocchio personally offends Benito Mussolini) to the mixture of darkness and whimsy (the eccentric designs of Death and the Sprite, who have extra eyes, horns, snake body parts and other such parts).

The darkness/whimsy is due to del Toro and Patrick McHale (responsible for the enchanting “Over The Garden Wall”), weaving together themes of paternal love, mortality, freedom, grief and self-sacrifice. But it also has lighthearted scenes like a newborn Pinocchio wheeling around causing chaos in Geppetto’s home. The entire story is rendered in absolutely beautiful stop-motion, which still manages to have a luminous quality that swings between the ethereal and the grounded.

Gregory Mann is absolutely charming as the titular character, capable of depicting Pinocchio throughout his entire journey. There’s also a superb cast including Ewan McGregor as the erudite insect; David Bradley as Geppetto, who learns to love his new (possibly reincarnated) son; Tilda Swinton as the ancient spirits of death and life; Ron Perlman as the cruel fascist official who wants Pinocchio to be a child soldier; and a number of other like Christoph Waltz, Cate Blanchett, Finn Wolfhard, and so on.

Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio” is not only a charming, timeless stop-motion tale, it is also a heartwarming example of when passion and art triumph. Bittersweet, whimsical and enchanting.