Author: Beatrine Shahzad

Ranking the 18 Classics I Read in 2022

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

Somehow, “Classics” was my second most read genre in 2022, right after Fantasy. To be honest, I read a lot of short ones and they added up. I find reading classics helpful for my personal development. Older books from different eras, which have withstood the test of time, allow me to think about literature differently. They flex my brain muscles. Sometimes.

I try to get through a couple every month, and usually just read whatever ends up in my lap. Also, I run a book club and try to chuck a couple of classics in there. I’ll continue to do that in 2023, but also I’m making a commitment to conscientiously read more diversely, not only with Classics but Fantasy as well. I’m so preoccupied with catching up that, often, I forget to reflect on why the most popular classics reached that status. I thought I was doing a good job, but looking back on the year… yeah I have a ways to go.

This ranking is in order of personal enjoyment, but if I think a book is bad, I will share why. These books are considered classics per The Storygraph’s database. There are a couple of other books I would personally qualify as classics that did not make the list, but alas, I have decided to abide by a rigid system of classification. Be sure to look up any content warnings if you decide to pick any of these up.

Also, be warned that there are quite a few spooky stories in here. This year I tried writing something in that genre and knew I had to become well acquainted with the gothic/spooky/monster vibes. I asked around for recommendations, and most of what was given to me happened to be the #classics.

18. On The Road by Jack Kerouac

I have a full review of this one on GoodReads, but man, this book blows. I chose to read it because I’m actually one of the cringiest people alive. I heard it was an inspiration for Supernatural (yes, the TV show) and also I’m assuming a source of inspiration for the musical The Mad Ones. I have not seen The Mad Ones but this song is on repeat in my brain constantly (my favorite version on Spotify). And so, I thought I was receiving some sort of divine nudge from the universe to read it. Or, at the very least, I was curious.

As Truman Capote most eloquently described Jack Kerouac’s work, “That’s not writing, that’s just typingwriting.” I picked up On The Road because it seemed like a short read, not a huge investment, but it seemed to drag on forever. It was indulgent in how much it depicted, especially its racism and sexism. For how irrational and adventurous the main characters were, I found much of it to be incredibly dull. Within 50 pages, we can surmise the point of the book, and yet there’s more left. Most of the interesting ideas are left by the wayside in favor of long ramblings from the main character or second hand recollections of exploits by the supporting characters. I hated most of the people in this book and did not care about them. The Americana free spirit vibes were the primary driving force attempting to keep the narrative together, and although it was vivid and fresh at times, it could not overcome the book’s pitfalls.

I go more into what On The Road does right, how its unfocused nature ruins any point it’s trying to make, and compare it to Breakfast at Tiffany’s in my GoodReads review. But it’s safe to say that I was not a fan.

17. The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe

I read three Poe short stories in preparation for spooky season, and I cannot call myself a fan of any of them. I might be reading the wrong sorts of works from him, but alas.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue by far was the worst of the three. Poe should stay away from murder mysteries. The introduction in which the detective explains how he uses logic to step through an issue, although dry, I actually found very enjoyable. Then we get into the actual mystery and it all falls apart. The clues aren’t intriguing, the list of suspects and their motives are poor, and the mystery is unsatisfying. Extreme violence is used for shock value, and the mystery culminates in one of my least favorite tropes. This story left a bad taste in my mouth.

If you like mysteries, maybe give it a go? Or you should do yourself a favor and read a Christie instead.

16. The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather by Edgar Allen Poe

I have no strong feelings. It was all vibes, but none of them were particularly strong. There is a pretty consistent sense of dread throughout reading it, which peaks nicely at the end. It just isn’t very imaginative. A so-so story.

15. The Imp of the Perverse by Edgar Allen Poe

Ah, the best of the Poe stories. Imp of the Perverse is a manic short. The setup is interesting as it explores self-destructive impulses through metaphor. It actually gives you something to chew on and both succeeds in creating a sense of horror and dread while exploring it in an unconventional way. I could have better appreciated it if more was told through story than explanation of the metaphor, but it still does well.

14. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

I read this book because I found a Signet Classics copy for one dollar at a library book sale and thought it would look cute next to my Signet Classics copy of Phantom of the Opera. The cover is horrendously ugly (it’s the same one to the left). Once again, it was a short read so I thought I’d give it a go.

The premise, the concept of the split self, is compelling. But, this is a big but, the setup is lackluster. The way the story unfolds lacks tension and intrigue. It’s structured almost as if it’s a mystery, but we already know the mystery of it, so it’s not really a mystery. It’s just boring to wade through, as the actually Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde are not featured as much as they really should be.

13. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Read this one because I decided to go two for two on Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Planet and Muppet Treasure Island are both adaptations I regard with nothing but the upmost fondness. So, when I opened Treasure Island, I expected to find the beating heart of those two films that I find so dear. It certainly is not what I got.

Treasure Island is a boyish adventure. Many adaptations make the material more compelling by giving it a sense of tenderness, sort of a found family vibe. But the original lacks those relationships. It’s swapped out for a sense of danger and adventure and villainy. It just isn’t for me.

I will say, there are some raw lines in there. This book basically invented the pirate stereotype, and while dead men don’t bite, Stevenson gave his pirates plenty of bite.

12. Dracula by Bram Stoker

This is where I begin to think the books are enjoyable, and I looked forward to getting through them. I would place these at “middle of the road”, though.

I am very sorry to the Dracula fans out there. I don’t think it’s a bad book. I liked the characters and found myself very invested in their wellbeing. There were portions of the story when I paid rapt attention to every word and held my breath, hoping that the characters would pull through.

It’s a little weird to read Dracula. Pop culture has warped our understanding of the source material. All of the major and ghastly revelations of the book are now common knowledge. Dracula is a vampire? Wow? Real shit? You’re meaning to tell me that he’s a vampire? Really? My familiarity with the mythos of Dracula definitely colored my reading experience, I cannot lie. It felt like a lot of explaining and beating around the bush. If I could go in completely blind, I’m sure it would’ve been a much more intriguing read.

11. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

This was a roller coaster. I’m not a fan of Fahrenheit 451, so I wasn’t sure how I’d fare with another Ray Bradbury. This book is good, though I found it very hot and cold. Once again, like Treasure Island, the adventure parts and the boyish danger of the novel was boring. But there were some scenes, little nuggets of conversation, that were so deeply personal and interesting that I wished I could spend forever in them. The book is at its most fascinating when concerned with the nature of humanity. The vibes are immaculate and the prose gave the story a great sort of texture. Sometimes the novel loses sight of what makes it good, and it feels like it’s slipping off the rails, but it comes back just in time to keep you engaged.

10. The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

We’re getting more into what I enjoyed now.

This short story is all vibes. Fall vibes and spookiness. The prose was bright and colorful and the short story goes on just long enough to keep you from growing restless. It’s a fun read. No substance, but I enjoyed myself.

9. Utopia by Thomas Moore

I read this one because I found a really nice vintage copy at a library sale. It really throws a wrench in my Storygraph stats because now I have this random outlier of a book that was published in 1516. It’s funny how many of the social problems described at the beginning are still somewhat relevant today. The greed of man, innit?

The rest of the book is then dedicated to outlining a satirical utopian society. Were all the solutions presented good? Of course not. But. I will not lie. I found the description of this fake fictional society interesting. If such a society truly existed, would people behave in this manner? This would not be the way to create a true utopia, but are there any ideas from this text we could harvest to make it so? It’s a short read, and I found it compelling.

8. Much ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare [My May Book Club Pick]

Not many thoughts on this. Shakespeare is the GOAT, but nothing about this particularly stood out to me. Read it because it’s my bestie Em’s favorite Shakespeare. His verse is always firing on all cylinders.

Also I didn’t know Keanu Reeves was in the Keith Branagh adaptation until I Googled for pictures. And wow, Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson, and Michael Keaton too. Going on my 2023 watchlist.

7. Hamlet by William Shakespeare [My May Book Club Pick]

And this is where I start to consider these classics great.

Like I said, Shakespeare is the GOAT. Hamlet pulled at me in ways that tragedies are meant to. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did Romeo and Juliet but it was still a great listen/read. I recognized a lot of the famous lines and they’re even better in context, though it still managed to surprise me because I went in as blind as you could possibly be. Most of the surprises came from the convoluted logic that shapes the plot, but alas, that’s what keeps it interesting, no?

6. Beloved by Toni Morrison [My October Book Club Pick]

Increadibly, incredibly, harrowing. Toni Morrison crafts a narrative unlike any other. I don’t even know what I can say about Beloved that would be insightful. It weaves together such a complicated textile of emotions and commentary and horror. I also went into this book blind, and it just wore away at me until I thought there’d be nothing left. But, alas, the ending is good. As a cohesive work, it’s just… very potent. It’s meant to be confusing, but that stylistic choice only strengthens the narrative. A well deserved Pulitzer winner.

5. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood [My January Book Club Pick]

I may be gassing this one up too much because it was one of my first reads of 2022 and I was a little too excited to get to it. But it’s good. It’s more of a novella, detailing a day in the life of a gay man in 1962. And man, he packs a lot into that one day. It’s very frank, at times refreshing, and sometimes teeters next to stream of consciousness. It uses its space well. It can become a little strange, but I think people are weird, and I’d rather engage with oddity than drivel.

4. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [My December Book Club Pick]

Stream Frankenstein by Rina Sawayama

Once again, I don’t think there’s much that can be said that hasn’t already been said. I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect from Frankenstein, as its adaptations often take liberties, but I was far from disappointed. Shelley’s prose is clear and straightforward. Her desolate tale follows a man who sought the impossible without thought of consequences and suffered them harshly. The strife of his creature is one laden with a peculiar sense of empathy. It’s impossible to remain unmoved. If Frankenstein had simply chosen to be besties with the creature he made, would he be in that entire mess? I don’t think so.

3. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin [My March Book Club Pick]

Ursula K. Le Guin is my personal GOAT. I read five of her books this year. This is the only one Storygraph considers a classic, but my favorite was The Dispossessed and I consider that a classic as well.

The Left Hand of Darkness is often regarded as one of the great works of science fiction, an insight into the false construction of binaries and an exploration of gender. And it succeeds greatly, mostly through the raw power of homoerotic tension. What can I say.

Many of Le Guin’s works start off slow, and that’s why I’m a little hesitant to place this higher, but cohesively it’s a fantastic work. Le Guin is one of the greatest authors of the 21st century, mostly because as a genre author she has an incredible understanding of how to utilize allegory and metaphor. Her introduction to this book is how I fell in love with her mind. She just gets it.

2. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie [My August Book Club Pick]

Oh, Christie slayed. I don’t think this is a murder mystery in any traditional sense of the word. Usually, I’d critique how the motives were established, the suspects were profiled, the clues presented, and if there was a satisfying conclusion. This book throws all of those conventions out of the window. We know that everyone is guilty, the question, then, is who is the killer. A group of unconventional people is trapped on an island, and they all begin to die off one by one until there are none left.

By the end of the book, it’s less about solving the mystery of the killer and more about the characters desperately trying to survive. It’s about the alliances they make, how they turn on one another, how their desperation grows. It’s engaging in a way any other murder mystery can’t attempt because it’s half psychological thriller. It’s part horror. Christie does some great ensemble work with the cast, which is perfect because the premise relies on the strength of the characters. A fantastic read.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen]

The 2005 film adaptation of this book psychologically changed me. So I must read the original, and boy oh boy, it did not disappoint. Jane Austen gets to the point clearly and concisely, artfully crafting bright and compelling characters caught in a whirlwind of miscommunications and unfortunate circumstances. The tension between Elizabeth and Darcy is iconic for a reason, and I fear I may never read another romance that rivals it. In its name, Pride and Prejudice, is a delicate see-saw between the flaws of the main pair, but it’s never too frustrating or lame. The book is simply wonderfully constructed and executed, and I can think of no other classic romance that is more deserving of its legacy.

‘The Stardust Thief’ Review – A Love Letter to Stories

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

For some reason, I can’t name many SWANA-set fantasy books written by SWANA authors- especially in the adult category. I have no doubt that they exist, but they simply do not possess the same word-of-mouth hype that really sells books. I don’t know how this happened. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with the spaces I occupy online, and where I get my book recommendations from, but the kicker is that I make an active effort to seek out these sorts of titles. That’s how I found The Stardust Thief. I am Persian, fantasy is my favorite genre by far, and I am well aware of the genre’s rocky history of stealing Asian aesthetics to pad their worldbuilding with little respect for the culture they’re appropriating from.

So, when I find a book that fits into the category of Own Voices, SWANA-inspired fantasy, I get tentatively excited. Excited, because this could be it, but tentatively so because I do not want to count my chickens before they hatch. My chickens rarely hatch.

The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah certainly is an it-girl.

An Arab-penned tale that takes place in an Arabia-inspired desert, The Stardust Thief follows Loulie al-Nazari, better known to those who do business with her as The Midnight Merchant. She’s garnered a reputation for seeking out and illegally selling magical artifacts in quantities that no one else can. Little do they know that her elusive bodyguard, Qadir, is actually a jinn, his people persecuted in this world, and she’s aided by her own artifact that helps her complete the task. Though deft in her trade, she draws too much attention to herself after saving the life of a sheltered prince, Mazen, and is then forced by the sultan to find an artifact his family has been seeking for generations- a lost oil lamp binding an all-powerful jinn within. She is accompanied by her faithful bodyguard, the sultan’s oldest son, Omar, and his forty thieves, Aisha. And so goes a twisting adventure through the desert, one filled with jinn, magic, secrets, revenge, and redemption.

This book is reminiscent of Wheel of Time in that all the characters were instantly recognizable, defined, and bright. Though this is usually the case for archetypes, the characters in The Stardust Thief are not regulated to a mold. There is nuance to them and layers to peel back, but you do not need to peel back anything to be invested. Much of this is accomplished by their distinctive voices and motivations. Their backstory, what drives them, eventually comes to light but by then it’s a matter of falling further into the story.

The book is narrated through the rotating perspectives of Loulie, Mazen, and Aisha. Undoubtedly the main character, Loulie is a quiet force. Her back and forth with Qadir is great. She’s tenacious and bruised by a difficult past, but not yet hardened to the point of indifference. Aisha is a much more prickly character, your standard Girl With Knivesâ„¢. Though there’s less focus on her backstory, it was very easy to sympathize with her motivations and her chapters were some of my favorites. Some of that can be attributed to the great work her audiobook narrator does.

On the flip side, I can not take Mazen’s audiobook narrator seriously. The exaggerated voices he puts on for each character yanked me out of the story. This isn’t really a fault of the writing, but an annoyance I must note. When his voices became too absurd, they inspired a physical cringe or giggle. Maybe it’s because the narrator introduced us poorly, but Mazen and I had a rocky start. Though my love for pathetic characters is well documented, I feared he would be a whiner. I was, thankfully, proven otherwise.

Mazen’s point-of-view was like a breath of earnestness throughout the novel, lending a whole new dimension to the narrative. Not only did he wear his feelings on his sleeve, becoming instantly sympathetic, but he was also the storyteller. The Stardust Thief is inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, a story about the power of stories. Many retellings simply recount, and twist where necessary, the individual stories that the collection is composed of, but The Stardust Thief indulges in them. Stories are interwoven into the narrative and shared with an admirable fervor. The novel understands tales as the push and pull between the teller and the listener, the warnings and wonder that they can inspire. All books reflect a love of storytelling, but this one centralizes that adoration. And I felt it. It was almost like I was a child hearing some of these stories for the first time and inspired by the same warm sort of rapt admiration.

Nostalgia? Maybe. When I was a kid, we had a volume of 10 children’s books, each tome a collection of a different sort of story. One was composed of folk and fairytales, arranged by region. I wore out every single fairytale in that book with the desperation that anyone who loves reading knows. There were only three stories in the Middle East section, all from One Thousand and One Nights, and I must’ve read each one at least three times just trying to catch a glimpse of the culture I came from. Ultimately, it was my mother who orally shared with me the story of Scheherazade. So, there’s a lot of raw emotion tied to the source material of this book, and Abdullah was able to tap it. If you grew up with any of the stories from One Thousand and One Nights, there is another layer to appreciate. If you haven’t, there is still inherently so much to enjoy.

That being said, The Stardust Thief is structured like a quest novel. Since it’s a debut, I know the word count was probably constrained to teeter around the 100k mark, but it would’ve fared much better if it was longer. I like quest novels to be longer, so that you can sit with the characters and don’t feel like that CGI ping-pong ball from Forrest Gump being thrown about. There were so many large confrontations and action pieces, it really felt like any one of them could be the climax. Right as we enter the third act, it’s hard to imagine the climax outdoing what came before it. But, it actually delivers. So, the problem then is not the scenes themselves individually, but the breathing room we have between them. With more time between cornerstone scenes, the audience could have better processed what they’ve learned and contextualized its magnitude in the overall narrative better. Because what sets the final confrontation apart from its predecessors is its depth of emotional inspection.

I am wary of dramatic third-act reveals. Most of the ones I have read recently really do not inform the existing story in any meaningful way, but rather fodder an exciting end with shock value. The reveals in The Stardust Thief were revealing. The twists were twisting. Throughout the book, there is a constant slow drip of reveals that constantly shifts the reader’s perspective and introduces new questions. Then, at the final confrontation, the questions are answered. I fear that I cannot share more, but the drama, the intrigue, it was there.

I’m a fan of The Stardust Thief. It was the first adult high fantasy I’d picked up after a peculiarly long drought and it did not disappoint. Although I wished it had been paced better, all other aspects place it as a strong debut. Chelsea Abdullah’s a talented writer and her books will only get better with time. There wasn’t really a romance in this book, but series with the first book to establish characters and the remaining books to explore their relationships are always the best, so I sure will be picking up its sequel!

★★★★

‘Black Adam’ Review- Anti-Imperialism, Innit?

Beatrine Shahzad1 Comment

This is gonna be kind of a weird one for me.

Spoilers incoming, so be warned.

The superhero genre is built on the backs of military propaganda for WWII, but as the genre has grown with the times, so has the look of military propaganda. The United States has become a global police force and uses that guise to invade other countries. Namely, it has a very strong presence in the SWANA region and uses that influence to maintain control over their natural resources (oil).

This topic has been very important to me for a very, very long time. It wasn’t until I read Edward Said’s Orientalism that I had the words to describe what I was seeing on the screen and what it was advocating for. There’s a lot that seems harmless but perpetuates a norm that’s anything but.

Black Adam finally tried to break that streak in a way I haven’t seen any mainstream superhero movie try so far. It has SWANA people both on and behind the screen in some capacity (I peeped an Iranian screenwriter) and you can tell that at the very baseline level, they cared. And, as corny as that is, that means a lot to me so I’ve extended a lot of grace to this movie’s rating when I probably otherwise wouldn’t have.

That being said, the anti-imperialist themes of Black Adam are like if you took shrooms and stared into alphabet soup. Every so often, for a blissful second, the letter would come together and spell it out for you so clearly, but at every other moment, it’s just alphabet soup. The movie is alphabet soup. Even the worst alphabet soup out of a can still has a little flavor to it, some fun times, but it’s still just trying to make sense of a mess.

When the characters look straight into the camera and are like “imperialism bad”, they’re right! The reason, though, that the bluntness was needed is because the allegory collapses under its weight. With the number of motivations and groups of people involved, it loses sight of the point.

A huge contributor to the confusion is that the allegories don’t have clear equivalencies. The “Intergang” that occupies Kahndaq, the West Asian city where the film takes place, is described as a militant force, but has no country nor ideology. They take these resources… for what? This is never made clear, which later becomes a problem.

At first, based on a bit of a monologue at the beginning, you think that the Intergang is some sort of stand-in for a western force. They’re called imperialists. But later, you learn that Ishmael, who we thought to be working with the protagonists, actually is the leader of the Intergang. So, this isn’t an imperialist force at all, is it? The leader of this group is descended from the region, and they’re abiding by his personal interests, rather than operating under a larger system that imperializes and conquers other lands for foreign interest.

When Ishmael asks Adrianna, the woman he betrayed, how she could side with foreign invaders for teaming up with the Justice Society, I first thought he was being a hypocrite. He’s the leader of Intergang after all. But then I realized that Intergang is not defined enough to be classified as a true imperialistic force, and I just had to accept that his question is genuine. The Intergang, then, is not an imperialistic force in the narrative, but an allegory for oppressive regimes in West Asia.

Black Adam, then, becomes a movie about a foreign force helping liberate a foreign country from its domestic, oppressive, militant regime. Which, let me remind you, is exactly how imperialism actually operates in Central and West Asia. Western (American/British) interests intervene for their own personal interests, destabilize the region, and an oppressive regime takes control in the subsequent power vacuum or in the midst of instability. Those same American forces then use the oppressive regime as justification to occupy and fight a quasi-war in the country as a “global police force”.

Which, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the Justice Society describes itself as a “global police force” or a “global peacekeeper”? Adrianna tries to tell them off for not caring before when they were occupied, instead only showing up when Black Adam does as a threat to be neutralized, but I thought this movie was supposed to be against imperialism aka foreign intervention? It gets murky.

The Justice Society, known as the Justice Society of America in the comics, got its American association chopped for this movie. Probably because the optics would be bad if they pointed attention to how the global police force that forcibly inserts itself in foreign entanglements is, indeed, American. They’re bossed around by Amanda Waller, a US operative, so they’re still American. Just toothless all around. I’m still going to shorten their acronym to JSA, though,

I don’t actually have much to say about the JSA. My brain kinda turned off when they were on screen. What can I say, they were charming to watch. The big emotional moments didn’t work for me, because I didn’t see enough of them to care about them as people. But… they were fun to watch, even if their justification for being in the film, framed as heroes, is weak. Every explanation for why it is okay for Black Adam and Adrianna to work with the JSA feels so “this needs to happen in the plot because it has to” that I don’t think there would be much value in trying to make logical sense of it. But it did, certainly, muddy the thematic waters.

At the end of the movie, the JSA and Black Adam dispose of the dictator together. It seems here that the writers realize they have a power vacuum problem. Putting Black Adam on the throne would be just replacing one dictator with another, since he’d rule entirely through brute force and quite literally does not understand modern politics considering he’s like 5000 years old. And so, they end the movie just resolves with “oh Black Adam will just be the protector of Kahndaq”. So, who’s gonna run this city then? The answer can’t just be “the people”. That’s not how it works. It’s a question that the movie doesn’t seem to be very concerned with, but it has to be if it wants its allegory to check out. Otherwise, the loose strand could very well play into pro-Imperialist and Orientalist narratives.

I want to make it very clear that I don’t think that this was the intention of the narrative. The writers wouldn’t call out Imperialism by name, try to write scenes about the people coming together to fight against their oppressors, and give Adrianna back her agency in multiple scenes to reflect how domestic issues should be handled between their people. When the characters get on a soap box, they are right. Imperialism bad. The west doesn’t care. The people should stand against their oppressors. Yada yada. But, the plot and players involved are so convoluted and toothless that the allegory crumbles.

Another thing that Black Adam wants to do is deconstruct the idea of what a hero is. Which, cool. Whatever. That’s never been an idea I’ve been particularly interested in. I’m just not a morally gray girlie, but I see where others find appeal.

The thing about Black Adam is that his personal moral code is supposed to extend to a larger point about what’s acceptable when fighting an oppressive force. Or, at least it thinks it’s challenging that notion.

But here’s the thing, it doesn’t really challenge what it means to be a hero. Within the context of DC superheroes, maybe it does a little. People get sad when Superman and Batman kill people. They don’t see that as very heroic. But that’s because they’ve been established as heroes that don’t kill and their enemies have been established as people they have a modicum of empathy for.

The audience is not uncomfortable with the bloodshed Black Adam spills throughout the film, from the brutal kills from the beginning to the end, because he is killing people they do not care about. In America, the heroic thing is to murder your foreign enemies. And so killing Intergang, some nondescript oppressive, militant, occupying force occupying a West Asian country, is nothing shocking. We’ve been conditioned to accept it as a necessary evil to the point where most don’t blink twice anymore. It’s almost a staple of all action and war movies that take place in this region and the people who do the killing are always framed as the hero.

There’s a false dichotomy in Black Adam. The JSA doesn’t kill people, they believe in due process, so the only way to actually get rid of these oppressive occupiers is to be willing to resort to Dark Violenceâ„¢. Because Black Adam is violent and Killsâ„¢, he cannot be a Heroâ„¢. In reality, that’s the exact justification that America uses to drone strike West Asia and kill a bunch of innocent civilians in the process. And for the most part, historically speaking, that decision has been framed as the morally correct thing to do in the mainstream. A difficult decision, but one for the greater good. Those who make those hard calls are the heroes of the story.

If Black Adam was an American hero and the movie took place in America, I’m sure we’d be having a very different discussion about the place of violence in revolution and fighting your oppressors. But alas, this is a very specifically a SWANA film, and so its context lies in how violence has historically been wielded in that region and for whom it’s acceptable.

If you want to read an interesting essay about oppression, Ursula Le Guin essay titled “A War Without End” is a great one. It’s about the willingness and responsibility of people to fight against their oppression and injustice and the cost associated with it. It doesn’t come down very strong on a final solution, but it explores a lot of questions around oppression that Black Adam tries to simplify. I was reminded of it a couple of times during this film, and if you have me thinking about Le Guin during your movie, you’ve already lost bro. It’s over.

On to normal movie stuff, when the Rock was cast as Black Adam, I asked myself, “Are they really going to send one of the most easily charismatic actors in Hollywood to the emotionless gulag?” The answer is yes.

The Rock was fine. I did not care about his character. For 70% of the film, we think that he’s a kid with a big heart who was willing to die as a martyr. When we learn that isn’t the case, it really doesn’t recontextualize the Rock’s performance. It’s so stilted that it’s near impossible to get a read on the character’s personality.

This movie’s third act also felt an hour long. There were just so many action sequences that felt like they were supposed to signal the end. Honestly, they didn’t feel like a drag or a slog individually, but so many in succession tired me out. The huge third-act fight sequence with the JSA and Black Adam fighting Devil!Ishmael was just a mess. There was so much going on emotionally that I couldn’t bother to care about any of it.

The third act is also where the themes go all wonky. They just want the cool factor of Black Adam fighting alongside the JSA. Which, I get it. But also, at that point, I found most of what was going on the screen to be completely pointless. The movie had already found a good resolution with Black Adam deciding to submerge himself, his self-acceptance arc as believing that he can do right with the power he’s been given even though he isn’t pure of heart is extraneous. Why should I care? It wasn’t something that we saw him grapple with throughout the film. Even without knowing his backstory, it would’ve been possible to outline this insecurity Black Adam has. Instead, he proudly blows stuff up and kills people. The shame around his morality is such a sharp 11th-hour turn that I’m not sure what to do with it.

On a positive note, both in the narrative and in this review, I kind of love the presence Amon, Adrianna’s son, had throughout the film. His character’s presence was strong and meaningful in the narrative, and it was a fun addition. Screw that Black Adam vs Superman crossover bullshit, I wanna see Black Adam’s Amon become besties with Shazam’s Freddie Freeman.

In the end, the movie was a movie. There were characters in it who did things. I am almost beginning at this point to lean into the zaniness of it. No, I did not laugh once, but the humor kept the movie from sinking. You need the camp, besties. It cannot stand on its own. I appreciate the attempts at heart and authenticity, but it needs cleaner writing to pull it off. I know this script was written and had to be rewritten by new screenwriters and I’m sure they had numerous constraints. But man, the final product was a mess.

‘Seven Faceless Saints’ Review – Una Delusione

Beatrine ShahzadLeave a comment

Before we get into this review of Seven Faceless Saints by M.K. Lobb, let us take a moment to thank netgalley and Little, Brown for the arc. All quotes have been taken from the advanced reader copy, check with the final published copy.

In war-torn Ombrazia, it’s a death sentence if you’re born without magic. Well, practically speaking. Based off of medieval Italy, the country is carved into guilds and each of the seven crafts has a patron saint. Those descendant from such a saint could be born with some of their ancestor’s magic and are called disciples. Disciples’ ability to craft is highly valued by the economy, so they are favored by society. Everyone else goes off to die in a war fought over trade routes against heretics who seceded for following the disgraced and fallen seventh saint.

Prickily and determined, Roz is a disciple, though she isn’t proud of the role. Righteous in her anger, she does not believe in the saints nor does she the society their worship has constructed. Damian is head of security (a cop), a descendant without a gift, and guilt-ridden after his stint as a soldier at the frontlines. They were in love before he was shipped off, but everything had changed between them by the time he returned. Now, they’re just strangers with history and strangers who have to team up together to solve a series of mysterious murders targeting both the unfavored and the disciples.

I want to make it very clear from the beginning that this is a secular review. I’m not religious. I’m not Christian. I was raised Muslim. The most I know about Christianity is the one week of Vacation Bible Study I led when I was in high school because I needed volunteering credit, the Book of Job analysis I had to do in my high school AP Lit class, and just talking to my Christian friends about their faith. So really, I don’t have a horse in this race.

First and foremost, I had a little bit of fun with the Italian setting. I make fun of Italians mercilessly (mamma mia), but the Italian words thrown in here and there were fun. Developing a guild system as a political basis was also a good idea, but I wish the execution had been better.

The prose is very passive. It almost comes across as detached, which is a hurdle to overcome when connecting to characters. Many actions are overly wordy and simply described. For example, there are a lot of “the blank was a blank thing” (the glow was a somber thing, the sound was a deafening thing) which is cute once or twice but with the frequency I noticed it only aided in the detached style of writing. Also, it’s a personal ick. The only time the writing feels alive and you actually feel connected to the characters is when the main couple is attracted (see: horny) to each other, which means that was the best part of the book, but it also means that literally everything else falls flat.

The main pair’s relationship is extremely emotionally jarring to get through. And not in the good way. There are moments where the characters will switch from anger to humor to regret to horniness within one page with practically no sinew connecting the thoughts. Complexity of emotion is expected, but there has to be some continuous layering or transitions between them, or I’m just going to get whiplash. There are chapters of emotional buildup and when the characters finally standoff, there is an uncalled for casual air to the entire conversation. There are chapters ended on extremely emotionally intense dialogue, and when the POV switches into the same scene, the same character will deliver another line of dialogue on the complete opposite side of the emotional spectrum and I don’t know how they traversed that entire gap. The emotions of the chapters contrasted, but the author refused to elaborate on how the character could say something so charged before changing her tune, only why she changed her tune.

So, we have a roller coaster of unconnected emotions making it difficult to connect to the characters. Especially Roz. I do enjoy the hardened female character, but she came off as entirely one note to me. Personally, I think it’s because the author did not allow her to be wrong about anything. She let her desire for revenge and anger get the better of her from time to time, but it was clear throughout every discussion in the book that we were meant to side with Roz. She had very little to learn or understand about other characters, practically nothing outside of a romantic context. It was a boring viewpoint to be in, and it sapped the intrigue out of what could otherwise be compelling dialogues.

I liked Damian but that’s just because the pathetically obsessed man is one of the archetypes I am most fond of. Call it the Raoul de Chagny print. Men who are complete losers >>>. But the way this man was written frustrated me to no end, because MK Lobb could’ve made his arc great but then just… didn’t.

Disinterested prose and disjointed writing aside, the biggest problem with this book is how the author approaches religion. Seven Faceless Saints desperately wanted to be a commentary on religion, or at least religious systems. It wanted to have Damian have a fall from faith arc. But it could do neither of those things, because the book did not care to introspect on what could inspire people to religion or give them comfort. It did not develop a political system built around the ideals of a religion, even though it said it did. And no dialogue on religion was a true dialogue, because it was always, always cut short. Three times the dialogue is interrupted or written off because… the author did not want to write the other side? I’m at a loss.

If Lobb had chosen to take the saints out of the equation entirely, the worldbuilding would be the same. People with more magic are more useful, so they are favored by society. The disgraced society is fighting its war over trade routes. Lobb calls them heretics, but they’re not fighting for a holy cause, they’re fighting because their kingdom is dying. Why is it called a Second War of Saints? When Roz and Damian initially learn that they do not have powers, their first thought is toward Damian’s inevitable enlistment. It’s extremely pragmatic, extremely practical, and does not revolve around the ideas of any sort of higher power.

Damian’s grappling with his faith is embarrassing to read. One of the first times Roz calls his faith lazy, his internal monologue basically throws in the towel, saying, “He couldn’t do this with her. The saints were his understanding of the world, and he wasn’t interested in hearing anyone tell him otherwise. It was how he’d been raised.” It was such a cartoonish depiction of what an atheist would think a religious person believes, I couldn’t believe it. He might have well looked into the camera and said “I’m brainwashed.” And as he begins to doubt his faith, he does it on the basis that “not all the stories are true” or “if the saints aren’t alive and aren’t hearing my prayers then I’ll look stupid for believing them”. Which… is a choice.

This is all exasperated by the fact that you only ever hear 1.5 religious stories and none of their specific beliefs, so instead of having an actual religion to critique, we’re left with the vague shadow of Christianity or Catholicism since that’s the clear inspiration (see: Italian Saints). One of the stories shared is this world’s version of Genesis. Roz flippantly comments that she does not believe that it is real, that the saints existed but did not carve out the world, and Damian has to antagonize with that possibility. Once again, it is embarrassingly flat. Like a child learning that Santa isn’t real. But while adults know that Santa isn’t real, they still in believe the spirit of Santa, the joy he inspires, and the importance of keeping that alive. Belief and faith, and all these things are not dipoles, they’re a complicated gradient.

While it is certainly true that some Christians believe in Genesis verbatim, many understand that many bible stories exist to be metaphor. If religious stories weren’t open to interpretation, then there wouldn’t be a billion denominations. The bible has been studied and questioned for thousands of years, with scholars dedicating their lives to questioning what it means. Regularly, Roz comments on how people who are religious simply accept things without question and how much it annoys her. It’s incredibly close-minded and ignorant, and I’d almost think that she was set up to be wrong except for the fact that the narrative backs her up. When Damian starts to question his faith (oh no the stories aren’t 100% factually correct), it crumbles near instantly.

There are no central religious morals the citizens seem to follow. There are seven guilds, do any of their interpretation of the stories differ? Are there cultural differences between the guilds due to their different beliefs? If there are differences between the guilds, are some looked down upon by others? Do the different saints stress different morals that people who follow them feel compelled to? The unfavored citizens seem not to follow a guild, but do they still worship the saints? These may seem like extraneous questions, but they’re questions you need to answer if you want to make a commentary on religion. It’s hard to critique how a set of ideals can be corrupted and enforced on people when you don’t have a set of ideals. You can’t have saints without sinners, and Lobb never bothered to write sin. There’s a source of evil, in a classical fantasy sort of way, but there is no belief of mortal sin. And it could’ve made the book so much better.

Damian is defined by his guilt. There is a lot he regrets. Yet, he never prays for forgiveness. There’s a big difference between “if the saints don’t exist, I’ll have dedicated my life to nothing” and “if the saints don’t exist, then who can forgive me for what I’ve done?”. The possible drama. The angst. The yearning. The lack of it drove me insane. It could’ve been so good.

Instead, we just got empty appeals to his patron saint, asking him for guidance and asking what he did wrong to not be blessed with a gift. A plea that rings hollow because we don’t know what his saint’s morals are. How did Damian dedicate his entire life to a code of conduct that his saint set up? Is he mad at himself for being imperfect, for breaking it, or is he mad that he forwent his own sense of right and wrong to follow it and it still resulted in nothing?

Damian’s saint is Strength, but the narrative regularly brings up how he’s too soft, a sense of disappointment from his father. Which, wasn’t lost on me, but we could’ve turned up the volume. Just imagine the drama if his father was a stoic follower of Strength, and believing in following the callous will of Strength before any other saint. Damian, on the other hand, could believe in the important of balance, and feels that all saints have important teachings that they must consider. Or even, maybe Damian’s fall from faith would be the fact that he couldn’t dedicate his life to a cruel saint that made his father cruel. There would be an ideological rift between them, one that we never get to know because we don’t even know what Strength’s code of conduct is. We don’t know what descendants of Strength are supposed to believe. If it was mentioned in the book, it must’ve been a throwaway line. But, I must’ve been sleepwalking through this book then, because shouldn’t the religious beliefs of these people be baked into every other line?

Near the end, the narrative does dip its toes within the actual dangers of belief and religion, but it’s more of a commentary on extremism than it is on any sort of organized system. I’m just… very disappointed. I watched Midnight Mass two weeks before reading this book, and maybe if I hadn’t watched that near-flawless, gripping, commentary on religion, then maybe I’d be kinder. But no, I’ve seen how it’s possible to show the dangers of religion while showing empathy to the people who believe. It also just makes for a better story. Dressing your book in religious imagery does little to actual imbue it with the inherent drama and stakes that actual religious belief bestows. Hell, even Book of Mormon, as flawed and blasphemous and problematic as it is, is a more nuanced take on belief than this is.

The commentary on cops is a little sus in places, but I ultimately think it checks out. I think. There’s so much telling in this novel, I don’t know why the author would feel the need to tell us that there are good people in the police force and that Damian tried to get rid of the bad apples (as if this is something to be applauded), but leave the bits about the system getting rid of good, merciful people (because it’s inconducive to their goals) up to critical interpretation. The worldbuilding as a whole needed to be bolstered to make these kinds of commentaries.

I don’t think I’ll be picking up the sequel. Frankly, I can’t see any continuation of the story that would interest me based on where the characters left off. There is more teased, but I just don’t care about this world and I certainly don’t care about the characters that much. I did quite enjoy the climax of the novel, and found myself gripped by the scene. It is emotionally satisfying, but beyond it could not make me care. The plot itself is whatever, I didn’t find it clever, but it wasn’t a bad mystery. Perfectly serviceable. The pacing didn’t drag, though I did find myself growing annoyed with the mismatch of emotions and lack of worldbuilding after the 40% mark. Before that point, I had high hopes for this book. It had slayage potential. Unfortunately, it did not slay.