thevampiremars's reviews
201 reviews

“Something’s screwy...”

Alec Robbins, as the author/artist, gets to decide what everyone else thinks, feels, and does. Existing as a character within the fiction means he can not only conjure and control the other characters, but he can also control the relationships they have with him.

I think fans often overstate the commentary on intellectual property – it’s gestured at, but I don’t think the blurb is quite accurate when it describes the comic as giving “a middle finger to corporate IP.” I mean, sure, it makes you think; how can a character be owned the same way a logo is owned without being reduced to a lifeless and unchanging image, an icon? But Mr Boop doesn’t really go down that philosophical route, at least not primarily. Alec being sued is more threatening to him than it is to Betty, because he realises he can’t control her any more and he starts to spiral. I suppose you could interpret this as some commentary on fan entitlement but I think that would be too literal, taking the pop culture imagery at face value. It’s not about copyright, it’s about controlling relationships. At least, that’s how I read it.

“You’re living in a fantasy world, Alec.”

When Alec meets the ostensibly real Liz, he turns her into what he wants.

I also want to note how his solution to almost every problem is sex. It’s comedic, yes, but it’s also quite revealing. If all you have is a hammer, everyone gets nailed – that’s the level Alec is operating on. It’s like he simply cannot imagine a different mode. All he cares about, all he wants, is sex with Betty Boop.

But is this all imaginary? To what extent do the non-Alec characters in this comic have agency (within the fiction)? To what extent are they people? Maybe this is just a comic about a guy writing a comic. Layers!

Surprisingly complex postmodern comedy/tragedy/horror depending on how you want to look at it.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

sexual content, abuse, obsessiveness, depression, suicidality, death threats, gun violence, dereality

So concludes the Timewyrm arc.

I don’t actually have much to say because so much of Timewyrm: Revelation is inconsequential, seemingly designed to be clever or interesting then discarded as soon as the point has been made, rendering it pointless.

Saul is an interesting idea: a disembodied consciousness appropriated by the Christians who couldn’t exorcise him. Cool. But once that backstory is explained, Saul’s kind of just there. He isn’t given much to do, and he isn’t given much characterisation. Cornell simply presents the reader with a sentient church then moves on to the next thing.

Like Apocalypse, Revelation is a big pile of ideas. Yes, the ideas here are more innovative, but in a way that makes the lack of development even more frustrating. Apocalypse’s tropes were well-worn and familiar. Contrast that with Revelation, whose concepts require more explaining, and are intriguing enough to make me wonder what happens next. But there’s nothing. It’s just stuff, bouncing between half a dozen POVs like a DVD logo.

How does this arc end? Specifically, what is the Timewyrm’s fate at the end of this story? Well,

after two hundred pages of surreal mindscape nonsense, the Doctor is able to implant the Timewyrm into a human baby, which he names Ishtar. Except it isn’t really the Timewyrm any more since he removed all memory and personality and left only “bare life.” Okay. I get that this rebirth, as it were, is symbolically the opposite of the death she fled from and the destruction she wrought. Is this supposed to be a second chance for Ishtar, parallel to Boyle’s chance at a normal life? That worked well in the Ninth Doctor episode “Boom Town,” where Blon/Margaret was shown to be capable of kindness and mercy, but couldn’t undo the harm she’d done or let go of her killer instincts – the Doctor gave her a fresh start and a chance to “live her life from scratch.” But in the Timewyrm’s case the return to infancy seems to be purely symbolic, not representing any real opportunity for redemption. If her entire self has been erased, is she not functionally dead? Why not just kill her off? That would follow on from Apocalypse’s message that death is inevitable and ought to be accepted.

At least the Timewyrm actually does something in this novel,

even if she mostly acts through Boyle. Though that blue dragon form with steel claws just makes me think of Dragoon from Beyblade lmao

I do want to shout out the queerness baked into Ace’s characterisation in this book. It resonated with me quite a bit. Her caginess when asked about crushes, the awkwardness of her stereotypically feminine persona as a teen, the emphasis on her chosen name representing her true self and the way she’d become “used to fighting for her name.” I liked these quotes: “She could suffer pain and rejection and guilt as Ace, or she could slip away into the crowd of words and become nothing, floating loved in nowhere.” and “There were words you couldn’t say. There were films you couldn’t see, there were people you couldn’t know, there were ideas you couldn’t think. Not if you wanted to fit in, not if you wanted to be part of the world.”

I really wanted to like this book because there are some great elements. Until now, the Timewyrm books have more or matched their reputations; Genesys was bad, Exodus was fairly good, and Apocalypse was forgettable. Timewyrm: Revelation is well liked in the fandom, but I don’t think it lives up to the hype at all.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

dereality/surreality, existentialism, death, murder, violence, lots of blood, some body horror, child abuse, racism

I wanted to like this one but it really does lack substance. There are a lot of tropes just thrown together. For example:

Soylent Green zavát is people! And it’s also a drug which keeps people placid. And it’s also able to wipe specific memories. Somehow. The Second Doctor appears as a force ghost to solve the mystery which he shouldn’t know the answer to or be aware of in the first place. There are too many characters now so uhhh here comes a sea serpent!

It very much feels as though the author was making it up as he went along.

Despite all this stuff, there’s actually very little to connect these ideas together, and not a lot of momentum to drive the story forwards. Things just kind of happen. The Doctor in particular doesn’t do much. The villains mostly stand around being sinister while monsters chase the protagonists until they’re killed or scared away. The Timewyrm is sidelined yet again,

concealed within the mind of another villain (the Grand Matriarch this time) until she’s released at the very end. Only this time she isn’t mentioned during the story and when she is eventually present she doesn’t even get a line.

I’m starting to feel bad for her.

While I’m talking about the Grand Matriarch, I have to ask... why is she evil?

Rather, is she Lilith or is she the Timewyrm? Lilith is described as a “reluctant host” but it’s unclear to what degree she was being influenced or controlled. Terrance Dicks made a point of telling us Hitler was a fascist before the Timewyrm entered his mind, and she only amplified his psychic powers (I love Doctor Who) but here? Robinson presents us with a sweet little girl and a Matriarch intent on creating and controlling God and I suppose ascending to godhood by proxy – are they the same person, or is the Timewyrm merely puppeteering that body?

The politics of this story are a bit naff.

The novel’s answer to propaganda-fueled authoritarian rule seems to be rugged individualism; after calling the Kirithons “wimps!” for being oppressed, the Doctor offers them “the chance to be dependent on no one but [themselves]” and later reiterates that they’ll “have to fend for themselves” from now on. Coupled with the message that acts of kindness create dictators, it suggests that thinking for yourself is good (I agree), but moreover you should trust no one and help no one. I don’t like that.

Am I expecting too much from a 200-page Doctor Who novel? Maybe. But if Robinson wants to get political enough to say wake up sheeple, he might as well go all the way and write something actually radical.

In the end, Timewyrm: Apocalypse is just weak. I really did want to like this book, but as the story went on and the clichés piled up I started to lose interest. I can only hope Revelation will give the Timewyrm arc a satisfying conclusion.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

human experiments, torture, body horror (with some ableism tangled up in there), racism, cannibalism, violence (including gun violence), death, dissociation

Much stronger than Genesys. It takes a while to get going, but it eventually settles into its medium. Part One especially feels more suited to a TV script; Dicks relies too heavily on imagery (like the swastika-decorated Festival of Britain, and the sadistic Nazi with a riding crop) which doesn’t quite come across or hit the same way when read vs when seen. But it still kind of works.

In many ways it’s exactly what you’d hope for from a Doctor who novel following on from series 26: recognisable characters and a similar vibe, yet its scope and style are not something that could have been produced for TV.

The central premise is that classic alternate history trope: what if the Nazis won WWII/successfully invaded Britain?

The War Lords

are present to facilitate this story. The Timewyrm is tacked on as a contractually obliged afterthought.

The Timewyrm is trapped in Hitler’s mind. She’s given some personality in the prologue, then she’s out of action for the entire story, existing only as a minor plot point. She is released at the very end, giving some generic “I shall be the supreme power in the universe!” rant, then she’s gone and that’s that.

This may be a decent story, but it’s not a good Timewyrm story. Then again, Genesys was neither.

The War Lords

are... fine? They’re kind of boring, actually. But like I say, they’re just there to make the alternate history thing possible.

Their leader, Kriegslieter, is revealed to be significantly deformed. This serves no purpose other than to be horrifying and, I guess, to underscore how evil and/or alien he is. In conjunction with other somewhat ableist attempts in this book to paint Nazi officials as weak and sickly, it’s a bit disappointing.

I liked that the book touched on Nazi mysticism

and I thought it was interesting how “corpse discipline” was realised as an SS zombie horde – again, an intertwining of fascism and the body.

I only wish there was more of it. It only comes up towards the end of the book so there isn’t enough time to truly delve into its implications.

There is one unfortunate implication that I’ve seen other reviewers comment on:

the matter of agency and culpability. This relates to the undead soldiers, yes, but also the wider story with aliens interfering in Nazi affairs, manipulating history and ensuring that Hitler rises to power. Does the presence of these actors not in some way excuse the Nazis and even Hitler himself? After all, someone else was pulling the strings. Well... to his credit, Dicks does address this. The War Lords and the Timewyrm only “boosted” Hitler’s oratory powers and capitalised upon the infrastructure the Nazis had already built. The Nazis were already doing their thing, but with the War Lords’ help they were able to – in a timeline that never came to be – conquer Britain and declare victory over Europe. Okay, sure. I’ll take that.

I want to talk a bit about Ace’s characterisation.

In some ways she was reduced to a generic damsel-in-distress companion – wandering into obvious traps, screaming, fainting, then waiting for the Doctor to save her. When she isn’t captured, she’s just following the Doctor around and occasionally asking a question. She’s not completely unrecognisable, but she’s noticeably softened. It’s strange. Sometimes she acts as you’d expect, chucking Nitro-9 or having to be physically restrained from punching a Nazi, but at other times she’s kicking back and enjoying a glass of champagne. I was intrigued by what seemed to be the setup for an arc where she gets too comfortable with violence – eager to enact violence, even, and looking for excuses to do so – but that’s nipped in the bud and goes nowhere. Actually, she does take a gun from the Doctor because she knows he’d never use it, and shoots a Nazi (presumably killing him) towards the end of the novel. This isn’t commented on. But the Doctor does have this to say when Ace is chastising herself for panicking when held at knifepoint: “You’ve got to stop clinging to this macho image.” I know he’s saying that to reassure her it’s okay to be afraid, but then again... it’s like the default for her (for her) is assumed to be screaming and fainting (all the cliché companion stuff) and anything she does that subverts that must be part of some performance – a performance of masculinity, no less. There’s some gender going on here. Still, any sexism baked into Ace’s characterisation in Exodus is nothing compared to whatever the fuck was going on in Genesys.

I don’t have much to say about the Doctor. I did tire of the his bluffing and bluster after a while because it was the same thing over and over, but I liked how it was linked to ersatz goods – I thought that was cute. I also appreciated the scene after the climax where the Doctor was wondering whether he did the right thing,

restoring history to how it supposedly ought to be and freeing the Timewyrm in the process.

Again, I wish there was more of that.

Timewyrm: Exodus is a definite step-up from the previous novel but it’s by no means perfect. As a story about fascism, it’s not particularly deep. As a story about history and fixed events, it works fairly well. It’s a bit cheesy, but it’s sound. I would have given it four stars if the ending had been more satisfying.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

fascism, antisemitism, racism, ableism, violence, war, occupation, death, undeath, references to slavery and concentration camps

 

“But he is a good king, and he makes Uruk strong. And if he is at times a little rough, well — that’s just his manner.”

Let’s get to the point, shall we? Timewyrm: Genesys is infamous for its depiction (and defence?) of child sexual abuse. I was aware of this going in, but I wrongly assumed the issue was a single iffy scene, not something that permeated the novel throughout from chapter one.

Gilgamesh is a sexual predator. In his eyes, women (and girls as young as thirteen) are sexual objects who that exist to be groped, fondled, and raped.

...Except it’s not just in his eyes; his attitude is implicitly backed up by the narrative. There is much more focus on how embarrassing it is for a man to be cuckolded than how traumatic it is for a woman to experience rape. There’s also the fact that Ace is introduced to the reader naked and she examines herself in the mirror, assessing how “feminine” and “useful” (?) her body looks. This is before she arrives in Uruk, so it can’t be chalked up to ancient Mesopotamian cultural norms. Sexual objectification isn’t just a part of that society, it’s a part of this entire text. If this book is to be believed, women and girls are not human beings with lived experiences; they exist only as they are perceived (and used) by others. That’s the male gaze, baby!

I think there’s also something to be said about orientalism and primitivism. This book got me thinking about fantasies – far off lands with strange customs, where our taboos are freely flouted; barbaric societies which give us permission to be barbaric too; the consequence-free refuge of fiction. Pornography, even. If I were writing an essay (which I could) I would expand on this. But this is supposed to be a review of the book, not deep analysis. Moving on.

So Ace is harassed by Gilgamesh chapter after chapter after chapter. Gilgamesh is not so much a character as a personification of violence; he is the looming threat of rape (even if this is presented as mildly annoying rather than horrifying). How does the Doctor respond to Ace’s legitimate fear? Well,

he mocks her for being overly concerned about her “virtue,” lectures her about being more open-minded and embracing cultural differences, reminds her that most girls would be grateful for the king’s “attentions,” and hey, “suffering builds character.” In essence, shut up and take it.

 

The Doctor is out of character throughout;

he has no affection for Ace, and he leaves her alone with Gilgamesh (multiple times!) despite her literally begging him not to. Even when Gilgamesh isn’t a factor, the Doctor is constantly irritated by Ace and wishing she would just be quiet.

The titular Timewyrm is introduced by (a hologram of) the Fourth Doctor, and the Third Doctor’s personality takes the wheel at the climax.

Peel clearly doesn’t like the Seventh Doctor. Which makes me wonder why he volunteered to write the first of the VNAs.

Gilgamesh is one-note. He talks like a Klingon and thinks only of fighting and fucking. Enkidu is similarly flat and isn’t given anything to do, but I do think it’s neat that he’s a Neanderthal. There is very little focus on the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu – in fact, they barely interact at all – even though their bromance is the crux of the original epic. 

The Timewyrm (usually referred to in this book as Ishtar) also does nothing for most of the story, then there are multiple pages of backstory exposition from another character, after which she’s a little more present in the narrative. But she feels kind of generically evil. Something something immortality something something brains something something nuke. She’s not a memorable character. And there are three more novels in this arc... Hopefully the other authors will pick up the slack and make her more interesting.

 

It’s a disappointing start to the VNA series and to the Timewyrm arc.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

sexism, orientalism, sexualisation/harassment/assault of women and teenage girls, emotional manipulation, drunkenness, violence, death

“This is not for you.”

House of Leaves is... a lot. I think its greatest weakness is that it’s just too damn long. I like the experimental stuff but it takes too long to get there and the characters we follow along the way aren’t particularly likeable. Johnny is the most fleshed-out character by far, but his tryhard irreverence tends to rub me up the wrong way, as does the way he talks about women. But there are glimmers of sincerity which make him a little endearing. And there are some really beautiful bits of prose. Some phrases I liked:

“that air was almost too bright to breathe”

“gut-wet docks”

“Possess. Can’t get that word out of my eye. All those S’s, sister here to these charred matches.”

But yeah. That experimental stuff I mentioned – playing with format and typography and whatnot – didn’t get under my skin the way it seems to have done with other readers. I can appreciate the way

the lines on pages 440-441 are arranged to resemble the rungs of a ladder, and force the reader’s eyes to scan upwards as though they were themself scaling this ladder like Navidson

– that’s good shit! But it’s not mind-blowing.

I’ve seen tons of poems where the stanzas are shaped like the subject – I’ve written poems like that. I’ve assembled collages. I’ve cut out sections in pages to leave empty gaps or to let other pages intrude. I love love love that stuff, but maybe I’m too familiar with it for it to shock me.

I remember reading one person’s account where

they realised that the word house had been blue the whole time (they hadn’t noticed initially and went back to check). The thing is, I’m reading the paperback edition where house is slightly greyed instead of bright blue, and still I picked up on it immediately.

So do you have to roll a nat 1 perception check for the mindfuckery to work? But also you need to have an impeccable memory to notice the contradictions and connections over the course of 700 pages?

I dunno. House of Leaves reminds me of both Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Both of those books, however, are around 250 pages long; House of Leaves is considerably longer than both of them combined, and it’s a slog. There are parts I really liked and aspects I can appreciate abstractly, but overall I didn’t like the book as much as I hoped I would.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

drugs and alcohol, dereality, hallucinations, body horror/dysmorphia, paranoid delusions, institutionalisation, guilt tripping, child abuse, violence, gunfire, injury, blood and gore, death (including animal death), suicide, grief, misogyny? (sexual objectification; incessant horniness, at least), sexual assault, cheating

First off, it’s worth noting this book was published in 2012. There have been several discoveries and new theories put forward in the decade or so since then that Martyniuk could not have known about. Hence no Caihong, no Serikornis, etc. He’s maybe a little too caught up in the romanticism of Archaeopteryx as the first bird, but, to his credit, he does acknowledge that “bird” is a concept based on extant species and the definitions get a little hazy and/or arbitrary when it comes to describing bird-like dinosaurs.

The guide itself is well-researched, with in-depth descriptions (including measurements where known) and notes on behaviour – speculative, of course, but always inferred from the anatomy of the animal and the environment in which it lived.

Martyniuk provides “common names” which are literal translations of the scientific names. Sometimes this works, but it’s often clunky and, quite frankly, it seems a little lazy. We end up with names like “Egg Seizer Fond of Ceratopsians,” “Thin Narrow Hand,” “Las Hoyas Dawn Bastard-wing Bird,” and perhaps the worst offender, “Lithographic Ancient Wing” (Urvogel, I’m so sorry...) It’s the little things like Caudipteryx being rendered as “Tail Feather” where “Feathertail” would make more sense as the name of an animal, yknow? And is it necessary to translate the species name when there’s only one species in the genus? Surely we wouldn’t need to specify which Utahraptor or whatever it is if it’s the only one.

The illustrations are nice, though. Generally speaking I prefer a little more detail in the integument but I recognise that 1) these images are small so detail would probably just muddy the design, and 2) Martyniuk had dozens of dinosaurs to draw and probably didn’t want to develop carpal tunnel syndrome.

As much as this book looks like a field guide, however, it doesn’t quite feel like one. The species described within its pages have all been dead for millions upon millions of years; I can’t go raptorwatching. The book could lean into that hauntological aspect but it doesn’t, for the simple fact that the text is written in the past tense instead of the present. There’s a passage in the introduction which encourages the reader to “imagine a time travelling paleontologist” – I think this book should have been written for her.

A Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and Other Winged Dinosaurs is... alright. I think it’s a great concept that just wasn’t realised to its full potential. 

“Ghosts in the water, ghosts in the blood. Everything, once you start to look, is haunted.”

A beautifully written memoir, moving and evocative. I love the water motif, the way the weather sets the mood, the gothic quality of ghosts and graveyards. It feels right reading it at this time of year; I don’t often reread books, but I could see this becoming a late autumn tradition for me.

Hewitt is sympathetic – more so than I would have been in his situation, I know. He’s honest about his fear and anger without getting stuck in it. His writing is deeply personal but he also relates his experiences to The Queer Experience more broadly, with musings on the closet, on assimilation, and how our survival strategies protect us at the cost of eroding our Selves.

It hits like cold rain. I needed it.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

depression, suicidality, grief, guilt, paranoia/panic, dependence on alcohol and smoking, unhealthy relationship, homophobia

 

“Most of the time, the future felt like an obscure projection I was afraid to want because there wasn’t evidence of future me anywhere, in life or in fiction. I just knew Jack Halberstam and I were the same, so I existed there, in theory.”

You know when it’s evening and everything’s just so clear but also hazy? This book is like that. The text is split into small chunks, which makes it easier to swallow.

The first two thirds of the book are eclectic and frenzied and the last third feels like it’s settling. It works well thematically, but the book had relied so heavily on its writing style until that point. I wasn’t invested in the characters so much as the prose. So when the prose changes shape and we see the characters more clearly, it feels odd. I stuck around for the purple, so why is it fading now? The ending is sweet, though.

Ponyboy isn’t for everyone but it (mostly) worked for me.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

lots of drug use and drinking, addiction/alcoholism, bulimia, dissociation, suicidality, dysphoria, transphobia, sexual assault (including csa), cheating

 

“It’s hard to just look, isn’t it?”

To describe Irina, the protagonist/narrator of Boy Parts, as unlikeable and unreliable would be an understatement. “Cruel” is a word that comes up a few times. She’s sadistic. She’s irreverent. She’s, uh... messy. She’s also a photographer, which is neat. Clark does some interesting stuff with this; the camera producing a perfect record vs the human mind distorting images, Irina’s need to be seen vs the way she situates herself behind the camera, documenting. There’s a lot to interrogate thematically.

Since there’s not much in the way of plot, I’m compelled only by the quality of the prose. Fortunately, I really like the way Clark writes. I’ll keep an eye out for her other work.

Unfortunately, I don’t like the way the story starts to form

as the titular(?) “boy” is revealed and Irina’s delusions become more severe as she fixates on him

but that belated momentum goes nowhere. It just... stops. There’s no satisfaction in the ending.

I liked most of it. I’m giving Boy Parts four stars because it is good, but not spectacular.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

violence, murder, sexual harassment and assault, grooming, verbal abuse from a parent, classism, body image stuff, self harm and self-destructive behaviour, drugs and alcohol, vomit, some blood and gore, hallucinations