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Book Review: Ever After (2013)

Urban fantasy is a minefield full of mind-numbing exposition and ridiculous ideas. Even authors who develop a compelling mythologies – and keep those mythologies straight over the course of several books – can still fail spectacularly. Maybe reader demand keeps the story going long past it’s natural conclusion. Maybe one or more of the characters contracts Anita Blake Syndrome (a fictional STD in which formerly interesting characters are reduced to gooey, sticky piles of sex organs and hormones). Maybe Deus Ex Machina ends up saving the day more often than the hero.

Ever After, the second to last installment in Kim’s Harrison’s Hollows series, veers very closely to a number of these pitfalls but remains a solid installment of the series that I will be genuinely sad to see end.

The series follows Rachel Morgan, the now-infamous witch/demon, and her business partners in Vampiric Charms. Ivy is the prickly, tortured vampire best friend who lured her away from her lackluster government job at the IS (non-human, or “inderland,” law enforcement) and Jenks is the sarcastic pixie sidekick. They set up shop as runners – a job that is part detective and part private security. At least that’s what they used to do before bailing Rachel out of trouble became a full time sort of thing.  Although the story takes place in present day, it’s established that the long-hidden existence of supernatural creatures was revealed when genetically altered tomatoes wiped out a substantial portion of the human population. Stepping on that particular butterfly has altered things just enough to create a Cincinnati that is charming in it’s mix of the strange and the hey-I’ve-been-there.

In this installment, Rachel has been framed for disturbing the ley lines which is causing the Ever After to shrink in such a way that it will leave the demons no place to go. She also discovers that Ku’Sox, a lab created demon that is more psychotic than most, is trying to use human babies to create new demons. Can she fix the lines and clear her name? Can she save the babies? Will she win the romantic interest in the end? Well, she’s  Rachel fucking Morgan. By book eleven then you already know that the interesting part is not the outcome. She’ll skid into the end of the book by the skin of her teeth like a redheaded Harry Dresden. The part worth reading is how she gets there.

Rachel has always been the main draw of the Hollows series. By this point in the series, she ought be insufferable. She ought to be the Wesley Crusher of Cincinnati. In addition to being a super special one-of-a-kind magical being, she’s the daughter of a famous rock star. The most powerful man in Cincinnati casually invites her for tea. Former presidents drop by her kitchen. The scariest demons grant her audiences. She’s recognized in the street in both the real world and the Ever After as the famous/infamous Rachel Morgan. She uses black magic with impunity. She can be a hypocrite and sometimes kind of an ass. Yet, Harrison writes her in such a way that she remains mostly relatable if not likable. Sure, 90 percent of her problems are her own damn fault but I’m still rooting for her.

Harrison’s supporting characters is equally well-written. The cast has grown substantially since Dead Witch Walking, and she wisely takes regular opportunities to clear the decks. Some exits are jarring, but never in a way that feels inorganic. The ebb and flow of Rachel’s relationships is realistic, and the way Harrison handles this is probably one of my favorite things about this series. The ongoing friction in Ivy and Rachel’s friendship is a nice change from the tired instant-best-friends trope that appears in so many female centric series. Alliances in the Hollows universe are rarely easy. Case in point: Al and Trent teaming up against Nick would have seemed ludicrous early on in the series, but since both characters have made the transition from one-off villain to beloved regular it seems entirely reasonable and plausible.

Even though Harrison’s characters have all grown, it’s becoming clear that The Hollows can’t continue this way indefinitely. In some ways, the air is already starting to feel stale. Ivy has been spinning her wheels for awhile now. Rachel’s continued protests about her moral integrity are exhausting. It’s obvious she’s meant to end up with Trent. Frankly, Rachel is lucky more often than she is good and the fact that she continues to save the day is starting to get ridiculous. It’s time to wrap things up.

Rating:

****

Harrison, Kim. Ever After. 2013. HarperCollins, New York, NY.

Movie Review: Iron Man 3 (2013)

The narrative purpose of any post-Avengers Marvel movie is not to majorly shake-up any of the characters at the core of the franchise—regardless of what Iron Man 3’s closing narration has to say about Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his place in the world, everything you know about him going in remains the same at the end—but to slowly push each individual piece away from alien-wasted Manhattan, towards the next apocalypse. With that in mind, director Shane Black does fine work within the paint-by-numbers structure of a solo Avengers outing. Tony Stark is charming, crass, egotistical, and the possessor of enviable wealth, fame, and success. He deals with the fallout of Manhattan—he freaks out at the mention of wormholes—and with the wreckage of an impetuous youth. In the end, he is Iron Man, and Black and Downey do their best to mash that triumphant, wailing note as long and as loud as humanly possible.

This is the beginning of Marvel Studio’s much-hyped “Phase Two” of Avengers movies, and, while they’ve got the formula figured out, holes in the fabric are beginning to show. However fine or fleshed-out the assembled Avengers seem, the love-interests, friends, and rivals propping up the individual pillars of the eventual tent of proportions beyond belief are frustratingly one-note. This is the third Iron Man film where Stark’s opponent is a disenfranchised corporate raider, where Stark’s claim that he’s not going to play ball with the United States government clashes with the need for him to protect the American status quo, and where Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) serves as Iron Man’s damsel in distress. Marvel Studios will probably never run out of oily businessmen, things that go boom, or plots against America, but considering that the best parts of Iron Man 3 occur just beyond that storytelling triumvirate is enough to make thoughts of such comic book movies pleasurable. Read more

What Now?

I know I got a little huffy on Facebook this past Monday when Brian Williams compared the events of the Boston Marathon bombing to The Town, so excuse me for just a moment while I make reference to another particularly recent bit of popular culture.

One of my main problems with Lincoln was that, like most Spielberg movies about real events, things get all mushy and sentimental towards the end. Believe me, I understand why it was important to focus so much on the gallery during the climactic vote on the 13th Amendment, but with John Williams’ wistful score pumping away and the hearts of every white governmental official voting for the amendment growing three sizes larger at the moment of their vocal confirmation of the basic humanity of other human beings ala The Grinch, things got real hazy, real fast, leading to the beyond awful visual metaphor of Abraham Lincoln as the flame in a lantern—something that could be snuffed out, but reignited. Read more

Two White Writers Discuss VIDA, With Alcohol

Over at The Missouri Review‘s blog, I talked about VIDA’s annual Count with my friend and sometime contributor to this blog, Alison A. Balaskovits. The Count, if you’ve never heard of it, is VIDA’s annual reckoning of the vast divide that exists between men and women when it comes to getting their work published or reviewed in top literary magazines like Granta or The New Yorker. Alison and I go all over the place in this discussion, talking about The Count in terms of what it does well and what could be done better, and why the yearly numbers are always so damn depressing, even though they’re known quantities. Read it here: The Missouri Review

Movie Review: Room 237 (2013)

The theories held by the crackpots who are given time to talk about their obsession with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining during Room 237‘s investigation of the film’s many supposed secret meanings are all crazy, but, in a way, they aren’t. More than any Kubrick film beyond 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining has inspired so much writing, diagramming, alternate screening methodologies, and impassioned conspiracy theories that to print them all out and assemble them into a cohesive narrative of cinematic obsession would be impossible. That director Rodney Ascher has made anything from this geyser of misinformation is a respectable achievement in itself, a remarkable feat of picking, choosing, and whittling down, working an unwieldy tangle of trees into a serviceable canoe. That Room 237 is so compulsively watchable is a tribute to Kubrick’s filmmaking, which is captivating even when taken out of context, toyed with, projected back on itself, and advanced frame-by-frame through moments that, without the benefit of ghost hunting, simply wouldn’t be compelling on their own. Read more