The Folk of the Air | Review

I know I usually write about each individual book in a series but I read The Cruel Prince, The Wicked King, The Queen of Nothing, and How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories in such quick succession that they have all blurred together for me. The fact that I read them all so quickly is probably more than enough of a review for some of you but I actually started and ended the series a little unsure, it wasn’t until I accepted that it’s mis-sold as purely enemies-to-lovers (this is a plot point but it’s such a small part of the plot!) and that it’s YA for a YA audience (Holly Black’s writing style is so brilliant I could have mistaken it for adult fantasy if not for the ages of the characters and some of the tropes) that I realised it’s actually pretty amazing. After I finished these books I really thought I’d just forget them in the same way I’ve sort of just let go of The Grisha Trilogy but Holly Black’s The Folk of the Air has stuck with me and I can’t stop thinking of it for a few reasons;

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The Fae

First of all, anyone who knows me will know I’m deeply obsessed with the Fair Folk, the Good Neighbours, the Hidden People, they are my jam, literally just look at my blog title, I wanna look at goblin men and Black delivers plenty of hobgoblin-y goodness for me to gaze upon. Black’s fae, or the Folk, are so close to real folklore they are horrific and believable and utterly inhuman. I know it sounds silly but I love that aesthetic of the fae in literature that isn’t particularly dark or light, evil or good, they are just a terrifying morally neutral thing that dwells in nature. For me Holly Black’s work is up there with books like Jonathan Strange and Me Norrell and Under the Pendulum Sun which are perfect examples of fae to me.

The story follows Jude Duarte, a human whose parents are murdered in front of her by her mother’s ex, the redcap and general of Elfhame, Madoc, only to be taken in and raised by him. Now Madoc isn’t the small redcap goblin we usually imagine; he is tall, but that’s the only real difference from folklore (and I’m sure there’s folklore of taller redcaps) he is green, goblin-like and does indeed have a red cap that he dips in the blood of his slain enemies. He is bloodthirsty, but he is also a father to four children, two of them human, who he raises with care and genuine affection and worry. If you couldn’t tell Madoc is my favourite character but he’s also the perfect example of how complex and interesting Black’s Folk are, they are just so genuine it’s hard not to become a little obsessed with them.

The Politics

Though I’ve spoken about the fae being morally neutral I mean that as a whole. They are not an evil race in the way orcs are in LOTR, but individually they are as morally complex as humans but without the ability to lie. How exciting is that?! Imagine Game of Thrones where no one can tell a lie except for Tyrion. That’s basically how the politics here work, everyone has to be underhand and clever with their words, except for Jude and her sister. Jude would rather live her life by the blade but her ability to lie pulls her into a tangled web of faerie politics that involves her with her arch nemesis Prince Cardan Greenbriar.

Jude and Cardan

Jude and Cardan could be the stuff of a ye olde folk ballad or a medieval epic. They are such strong and distinctive characters. Even without the enemies-to-lovers subplot their relationship is a wild ride. I can’t give away too much but every small progression of their relationship ties in so well with the rules of the Folk, their magical limitations, the relationship between the Folk and humans, it’s just brilliant. Although I wouldn’t say this series is explicitly enemies-to-lovers I can see why people focus on that arc so much Jude and Cardan are just a car crash character pair you literally can’t look away no matter how brutal it gets. I did feel like their relationship was a little rushed towards the end (in fact the whole last book felt rushed) but it was still compelling nonetheless and I think it’s a testament to Black and how she writes relationships that this small aspect of a massive plot captures everyone’s imaginations so thoroughly.

So I guess that’s my review/thought-vomit over, I loved this series and I can’t imagine any lovers of the fae or urban fantasy wouldn’t love it too. It’s probably some of the first YA I’ve read in a while that crosses over very well to adult readers too without relying on steamy romance to build that bridge, looking at you Maas!

The Southern Bookclub’s Guide to Slaying Vampires | Review

It’s been a good few years since I’ve endeavoured to read any horror. I read Shirley Jackson and sort of figured it wouldn’t get much better so why bother? But I’ve been writing a story that involves vampires and as much as I adore Shirley Jackson she has very little to offer in the way of vampires and having read all the vampire books I own I thought I’d pick up something new. I picked up Fangs by Sarah Anderson, a cute little graphic story about a vampire and a werewolf dating, and then I found the complete opposite of that in Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Bookclub’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.

The Southern Bookclub is a lot like what the title sounds like; a group of housewives in the south come together over their love of true crime fiction (which we can all relate to) but when a new neighbour arrives in town with an aversion to sunlight, a Ted Bundy feel and a trail of missing children behind him Patricia tries to spur the bookclub into action.

This is the first of Grady Hendrix’s work I’ve ever read and holy crap did it revive my faith in horror fiction; the bitter cocktail of suspense, frustration, and beautiful writing that Hendrix mixes makes a work of art that to me at least is better than anything Stephen King has ever even dreamed of.

The horror was hardly in the vampire at all, this was an exploration of the inherent horror of womanhood in a patriarchal society. The lack of agency and lack of protection these women and their children are offered is at the centre of the novels terror, because their lack of agency endangers everyone. These women are knowledgeable and fiercely protective of what they have, but they cannot move freely through their community outside of what is acceptable, despite this they are the communities last line of true defence as they try to protect their families. This is a harsh critique of gender roles and racism and oppressive communities all wrapped up in the most textbook perfect (though no less brilliant for it) example of southern gothic horror.

I’m usually quite wary of women’s stories written by white men, and thankfully I only bought this book based on the title or I might not have considered it. Hendrix writes womanhood better than any cis white man I’ve ever read, no one is boobing boobily down the stairs in this novel. The race side of things wasn’t explored too much, but when it was it was painfully realistic and our protagonist, Patricia, fell short a lot in this regard and became a painfully realistic example of passive racism that Hendrix did so well with a subtlety in Patricia’s own thoughts that only make her shortcomings more horrid to the reader.

Hendrix offers us a new and original kind of vampire, laced with the same classic concerns of sexuality and corruption of community that Dracula brought with him when he docked at Whitby, but his critiques of American values makes it a brilliant and fresh addition to the vampire genre. I’m almost scared to read anything else by him in case it doesn’t match up to this masterpiece.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue | Review

I read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue toward the end of 2020. Addie and Piranesi were the only two books I’d been really excited for last year and thankfully neither of them let me down. VE Schwab gives us a fresh take on the Faustian bargain and makes it so somber and sweet and gentle that it was a balm for a troubled soul, ironically. It took me a solid week to finish it though, simply because I knew I’d never be prepared for the book hangover that inevitably came afterwards.

In case you avoided everything online in 2020, which is understandable, here’s a quick outline. Addie LaRue is a girl, born into a French village in the 1600s. Even as a child she knows she doesn’t want what her mother wants for her; marriage, husband, domestic life (cue some real Belle vibes), she prefers running wild and hanging out with the village wise woman learning about the old gods. So when her mother tries to force her into marriage she calls on the old gods, and a dark one answers, she wishes for escape to live forever to be entirely free, and she is granted all of it with a cruel twist: every person she meets immediately forgets her, and once she is fed of up this existence she can give her soul to the darkness. Addie is a survivor though, and centuries later she finds the one thing she never thought she would; someone who remembers her.

If you happen to be a big VE Schwab fan (and you should be if you’re not) this isn’t like her other books, or at least not like the ones I’ve read. It’s a gentler, more folkloric sort of fantasy, that tackles morality and personhood and memory other wonderfully deep things without a whole lot of world building. This surprised me because Schwab’s world building is kind of what I loved most about her other works, but I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of it in Addie, as the reader we just have to accept what we see and sink into the story she offers us and let it soothe us. And while it definitely does soothe it also hypes you up to possibilities, to enjoying little things like walks in the park, old films, paint stains and good books.

What really intrigued me about this narrative was the jumping through time. Obviously Addie’s story is epic, it spans centuries, centuries filled with mostly the same things over and over; Addie stealing, Addie learning, Addie being forgotten. Schwab keeps it exciting by playing with Addie’s memories, we slip through her consciousness in a way, things she sees spark the narrative back a few hundred years, pieces of art, books, sculptures, memories all weave together to create a tapestry of Addie’s life and stitch it seamlessly to how she exists in our modern world.

Honestly, I wouldn’t even be mad if Schwab dropped her more typical fantasy for this sort of narrative entirely. Next time I need a comfort read I’ll definitely be turning to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Why Men Want to Fuck Seals | thoughts on mermaids, men, and marriage

So this week I was listening to the Breaking the Glass Slipper Podcast (one of my absolute favourites I recommend everyone listen to it) and the episode on mermaids with Beth Cartwright, author of Feathertide, and it’s sent me into a spiral of thinking about mermaids so I thought I’d get it all out here since Covid-19 has me miles and miles away from anyone who would be willing to listen to this.

We all know what mermaids are, sexy fish-tailed ladies with flowing locks and lovely voices who tempt sailors to their doom. They aren’t the only ones who do this in folklore, there’s sirens, rusalkas, huldras, selkies, and about a million other terrible women who are completely at fault for the men chasing them. A mermaid, like a selkie, usually has a kind of love story to go along with their tales (ha); they either pursue a human man and either succeed and gain a soul or die and turn to sea foam, or they are stolen like Selkies with magical objects like combs, pearls, dinglehoppers you get it.

First of all, in the BTGS episode they discussed why these stories are framed like this, why have a woman who is half beast and the discussion on the meeting of a human mind with animal instinct was very interesting but it got me thinking about the more literal purpose of telling fairy tales. Beauty and the Beast is famously considered to warn women about their new husbands; they will be surly and strange and other at first but with time and patience the beast facade will disappear and you won’t feel so trapped. And I think possibly in the same vein mermaids serve the same purpose for men the beast serves for women.

• Your wife wants to go home to her family = your selkie bride longs for the sea
• Wife suffers postpartum and leaves/kills herself = she returned to the sea
• You get a big fancy dowry for marrying a women = magical items that bind her to you
• Your wife is having an affair = she’s simply going to stare longingly at the waves
• You can’t for the life of you understand your children = it’s just their watery merblood

Of course, unlike beauty, the bride stealing fisherman has control until he doesn’t. This isn’t “put up with your husband until you love him” this is “it’s not your fault you’re an awful husband who’s made no effort to understand his new bride, it’s the sea.” And why should a man feel bad about this anyway? He’s married her, given her children, given her a home, and most importantly given her a soul.

This idea that the mermaids should be grateful for what they’ve gotten from this intrusion practically screams out my next idea; the mermaid/selkie/crane wife myth is one of colonisation. Offering a soul in return for conformity is a pretty basic colonising tactic dressed up as missionary work and Christian concern. It’s almost a reversal of the Garden of Eden mythos; a woman is living perfectly in innocence beneath the waves before some interfering old fucker turns up and gives her knowledge damning her and telling her to be grateful.

These white men turn up in a strange land and promise everything good; new ways of living, new food, love, security, a thriving partnership, and a chance at a shiny new afterlife, only to use their stolen wives to temper storms at sea and take her land (well, sea) refuse to give it back. The colonised either have to make do or rebel. The greatest rebellion a mermaid can make is to leave and return to her native ocean home, a place where, though he’s tried, her husband cannot colonise or utilise without her. In this case what exactly is the mermaid myth saying? Is it for the colonisers, saying “keep those you colonise happy”? Or is it for the colonised, a sort of “this too shall pass and you can return to the sea” kind of thing?

Maybe it’s none of these things. Maybe it’s just a bunch of horny dudes at sea suffering from scurvy and debating how they’d fuck a fish. Either way I think about mermaids too much so I will probably come back and write a more coherent post soon.

Silver in the Wood | Review

I think I’ve made it pretty clear in my posts that I am a HUUUGE fan of folklore, I am obsessed particularly with the folkloric archetype of the Wild Man who comes in many forms; the green man, the god Pan, the wild hunter, the erl-king and more, but I realised I’d not come across this figure too much in my reading so I sought out some stuff and came across Silver in the Wood a novella about Wild Men by Emily Tesh.

Silver in the Wood follows wild man, Tobias, who is tied to the Greenhollow woods that he inhabits, and the new owner of Greenhollow Manor Henry Silver, a folklorist, who quickly becomes involved in Tobias’s world.

ft. my own little green man

The Wild Man element of the book was immensely satisfying for me, it was made even better that it came from its own local folklore within the story and didn’t rely on a religious element. I don’t want to spoil too much about that aspect because it’s so fun, but that combined with Henry Silver’s folkloric interests you could tell this novella had been written by someone who really loves folklore and that passion really shone through and made me love this story all the more. I just wanted a little more MEAT to it, clearly this is personal preference though I love a big beefy book I’m not sure if novellas are for me but I’m invested in Tobias and his story, especially the romantic element!

I found this book whilst looking for Wild Men stories and was pleasantly surprised to find it had a romance element too. I would have enjoyed if there was a bit more attention paid to the romance as it seems to all go a bit quick (well it’s a novella so maybe I’m just not cut out for the length) and prefer a good meaty romance if there’s going to be one. It had the added bonus of being an LGBT romance in a historical fantasy setting so it really ticked all my boxes I just wanted MORE of it! Thankfully there is a second one coming!

‘Embracing the Hag’: The Older Woman in Folklore

So I’ve been immersing myself deeply in folklore for about a week. I read Dee Dee Chainey’s (creator of #FolkloreThursday) A Treasury of British Folklore and listening to the Feminist Folklore podcast from the very start as I’ve somehow only just discovered it! But in both the book and the podcast I noticed that the figure of the Hag or Crone was popping up quite frequently. It wasn’t exactly news to me, we are all aware of the Hag/Crone figure especially in Western canon, but I realised I’d never paid her much attention as an archetype so I wanted to write down some thoughts.

Statue of Mother Shipton at Mother Shipton’s Cave in Knaresborough, Yorkshire

Before I carry on I want to stress that I am using the term ‘Hag’ to mean the old woman who is often a faery or goddess figure in folklore or representative of the final stage of a woman’s life (i.e. Maiden, Mother, Crone) and not in the sense that edgy dudebros attribute it to any female politicians older than them. So let’s get down to it.

As I mentioned the Hag/Crone figure is often seen as the last stage in a woman’s life. There is the Maiden, unmarried young and energetic, followed by the Mother, the wed fertile caregiver, and finally handed over to the Crone who, despite the negative image, I’ve always viewed as the female equivalent of Gandalf, a wise figure. However, that’s not how most of folklore sees the Hag, she is often a trickster, a cannibal, a scary old witch, or even a younger woman disguised as a Hag to test the kindness of another.

The most prominent two things I’ve noticed about the Hag/Crone is her hideous features. From the sweet, caring mother women (according to folklore) immediately become wrinkled, hook-nosed, bent-backed, warty child stealers. There are a couple ways to read this character though the most obvious seems to be that the second a woman loses her fertility and youth she is discarded from society as a decrepit leftover (I’m using all the descriptive language here, strangely I don’t get to describe ugliness often). But another way of reading it is, as with Gandalf-esque characters, that women become independent mysterious and powerful the more years they live much like men.

Granny Weatherwax from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series

Of course the other way to read this archetype is to not read it at all. Even as I write this staring at my bookshelf the only elderly female characters I can call to mind are Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and one of the Zorya Sisters (I can’t recall which) from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods who fit into the Maiden/Mother/Crone archetype. In film all I can conjure up (pun intended) is Professor McGonagall and casts that demand older actors like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011). The only genre I can really think of that will utilise an older female character is horror, and often then they are the source of fear for those consuming the media.

So why is the Hag so prominent in folklore and fairy tales but so absent from modern media? Personally I think it’s because age is no longer a concept to be respected, life spans in developed countries are longer than ever and one does not have to be particularly blessed, lucky, or even healthy to make it to the ripe old age of the Hag. But there could be other reasons, for such long life spans we are still youth obsessed and the Hag is not feared out of respect but as a kind of warning of what not to be.

Whatever the reason I particularly enjoy the Hag/Crone as an archetype. Since I was a child I was deeply obsessed with elderly witches like Baba Yaga, Mother Shipton, and Black Annis to name a few. Even as I find myself about to become a mother I still align more closely with the crotchety old Crone, and this isn’t individual to me. There are Buzzfeed quizzes to find out how much of a Grandma you are, things like baking, sewing, crochet and knitting are becoming more and more popular and a sort of Grandma Chic seems to have entered the public consciousness. So hopefully (or at least I’m hoping) as a result of this we will see a resurgence of the Hag in speculative fiction that doesn’t see them only as something to be avoided.

Some Announcements and Some Spring Cleaning

Hi guys, I’ve got a few quick announcements to cover including my first publication, meeting a hero, and my blog’s new look so get ready for some rambling.

Science Fiction for Survival: An Archive for Mars

So my short story ‘A Young Person’s Guide to Colonising Mars’ (which is available to read on this blog) has been published in an anthology! Science Fiction for Survival: An Archive for Mars is a publication from the genius behind the Terra Two Project, Leisl King, and her co-editor Rob Edgar.

The anthology contains work from the project which analyses the ethical, philosophical, and artistic takes on terraforming and colonising other planets. Through short stories, essays, and imaginative illustrations the anthology examines humanity’s place in space.

If you do want to check out the anthology (as it does have six new pieces not featured on the website) it is available from Valley Press and the proceeds go to the Rwandan charity We Are Limitless, so you can perform a good deed and read some great work.

V.E. Schwab

This next announcement isn’t so much of an announcement as my own personal excitement. Basically I went to a discussion and signing with V.E. Schwab that was held at the central Waterstones in Nottingham and it was possibly one of the greatest experiences ever. She has been touring the UK to promote the re-release of her first ever book The Near Witch.

Anyone who’s even glanced at this blog casually knows I love V.E. Schwab’s work and it turns out she’s a wonderful person. There’s nothing more inspiring for a wannabe writer than hearing that one of their heroes struggles sometimes too, and Schwab certainly touched on that concept when she discussed how her career has changed since the release of her first book to now. I felt inspired and ready to get back to writing with the knowledge that it could actually take me somewhere as long as I stick with it.

Spring Cleaning!

So The Trouble with Triffids is no more folks! I’ve decided, after much deliberation to change my blog up a little, though not much I’m not really one for change. The biggest change is really the new name: Let Us Look at Goblin Men, my content will remain the same, but I will no longer feel irrationally guilty for posting anything non-sci-fi based. Anyone who’s followed this blog from the start knows it started out very heavily sci-fi, but I want to explore all speculative fiction including fantasy, horror (which I have already been doing) and even some poetry and film, and I want the blog to reflect that a little more.

So why did I pick this new title/url? There’s a few reasons really so let’s get into it. I first came across the Rossetti poem ‘Goblin Market’ when it was quoted in the Doctor Who episode ‘Midnight’, in which the alien threat is never seen and cannot truly be looked at. The quote reads:

We must not look at goblin men, 
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?

Now I love this poem, but the fact that I found it through Doctor Who means I always read it slightly in reference to sci-fi and the intensity of looking at the true horrors of the universe. Along with sci-fi I feel the quote embodies fantasy, poetry, folklore, and horror all in a nice little bundle, so it feels like an accurate representation of the sort of things I want to explore here.

So if you want to look at some goblin men stick around.