Always Read

The Human Chair was my favourite from this collection. Adapted from a story by Edogawa Ranpo, this story is about a writer who keeps getting creepy letters from a main claiming to live in her writing chair - which is, in fact, exactly what's happening. It's not just the creepiness of being watched all the time that hits here, it's the violation involved with someone being that close to your body without you knowing about it, having that intimate a knowledge of you while you're unaware. Though some of the imagery is a little silly (the woman's husband is killed by the intruder, which just looks like the chair has a little knife poking out of it), I can't deny that this one creeped me out to read. And, interestingly, it didn't rely on Ito's body horror artwork, instead building up a tense atmosphere, which was cool.

Speaking of body horror, though, The Licking Woman was just gross. A woman with an elongated, monstrous tongue licks people, poisoning them. There's no reason why she does this, though it's implied that the tongue itself is somehow sentient and controlling her actions, at least to some degree. There isn't much there in the way of story, but this one pushed Ito's artwork to its furthest points, to the point where I actually experienced some physical revulsion just from looking at the damn thing.

The titular Venus in the Blind Spot was actually one of the weakest stories in the collection, to my mind. The plot is that a young woman who belongs to a UFO society is being lusted after by all the men, so her dad is abducting them and implanting them with chips that make her invisible to them. Predictably, they all go mad and tear her apart. It was another Junji Ito story about a beautiful but dangerous young woman that didn't really go into what the true horror in that situation was. The focus wasn't on the personhood of the woman being stalked and obsessed over, it was on the men being abducted, with her as just sort of a sexy lamp for them to lust over. There wasn't really anything compelling there at all.

And finally, The Enigma at Amigara Fault. You know it, you love it. This is my hole! It was meant for me! It's not my favourite of Ito's stories, but I think there is a certain horror and claustrophobia in the conceit that makes it interesting, added to the creepy imagery and the unexplained nature of the titular enigma. What are these holes, and why do they look like modern people? What is the compulsion to go into them? Nobody knows, and that's part of what makes it creepy. It's a classic for a reason.

The premise here is that a cop is delivered a dog-eared manuscript of this very book, referring to a mystery between these two families that resulted in someone dying in ways that definitely weren't murder, but the cop is convinced having read the book that it was. The Gaveys start claiming that Champ bit Tess, and Sally, the Lambert matriarch, absconds with the family and dog to stop him being put down. Two things, just off the bat. First, the book has that writing quirk that I absolutely detest, where it keeps pointing out that oOoOoOh, there's stuff the reader doesn't know, there's a ~mystery~ here. Okay. Stop telling me this and actually show it. It's not more mysterious to just withhold information from the reader while telling them that you're withholding it. You're gonna tell us that info later, you're just not doing it now to keep suspense. This is not an interesting way to hold tension. Secondly, the sort of metanarrative with the majority of the book being an in-universe book seems to only exist so that Hannah can hold the notion of an unreliable narrator over your head, but instead of you figuring out that the narrator is unreliable, she inserts characters telling each other how the narrator is unreliable frequently just to make sure that you're getting the idea. The end result is a narrative that doesn't trust its reader to pick up on nuance or anything deeper in the story, it's holding your hand the whole way through.

Secondly, either this story is meant to be a satire that doesn't hit or every single character is plain unlikeable for no reason. Or both. Sally is neurotic and melodramatic, overreacting to everything. The narrative screeches to a halt at various times for characters to go on huge conservative rants that don't really add anything to anything. Are we meant to be agreeing with these rants? Hell if I know. I understand that the point might be to satirise and ridicule middle-class life in rural England, but there's no actual satire here, just horrible people being horrible to each other. The only point the narrative really makes is that the horrible people doing horrible things are kind of horrible, which…yeah, I figured that one out on my own, thanks. And it's to the point where I'm not even sure how much the narrative is aware of what it's doing. For example, the main conflict here is between the Lambert family and the Gavey family. We see them through the eyes of various Lamberts; the Lambert narrators think they're in the right, but show themselves to be pretty awful too. You'd expect that the Lamberts would trash Gavey characters, but the reader would be able to intuit some nuance, or that the Gaveys aren't all that bad, or something. Nope! All we know of the Gaveys paints them as one dimensional awful people without a hint that there's anything else there. Tessa Gavey is the most egregious case - from what the characters say, Rhiannon Lambert (the teen daughter) bullied Tessa until she was left with no friends. Ree justifies this as Tessa having been awful to her first. But the narrative never shows Tessa in any good light. She's just spoiled and bratty every time we see her, so…maybe she did deserve it, I guess. What is moral complexity.

And finally, the plot is just damn ridiculous. The big twist? Is that the book's first person narrator is the dog. Not Champ - Furbert, the Lamberts' previous dog, now dead, who is narrating from Doggy Heaven. This wouldn't be quite so bad (there's a high chance that the in-universe manuscript was written by Sally, who would do something like that) except for the fact that the book kind of wants you to take Furbert's spectral existence seriously. Tessa, we find out, dies of an allergic reaction to fish, only there wasn't any fish in her system at all when she died, an impossibility. Furbert's explanation is that he was there as a ghost, saying fish words to her, then pointing out that she's full of fish because she's selfish, which kills her. There is no other explanation given, other than 'it's just a weird coincidence', for how Tessa could have died. The alternate explanation is vaguely that Sally did something to her, but like, that cause of death would be impossible for a normal person to do. How could Sally have caused her allergic reaction if there was no fish in her system at all? The only credible explanations that the book posits are that it's a weird coincidence, or it's a ghost dog. Which, I'm sorry, is just ludicrous. If this is meant to be funny, it doesn't match the tone that the rest of the book has. If it's meant to be satire, I'm struggling to see what it's satirising. It's just weird for its own sake, and really stretches any credulity I have towards the narrative. Ugh. No more crime for me, that's what I'm concluding here.

I think it's the writing style that turned me off this the most. This book belongs to the genre I call 'granddad fiction' - the same as the Westerns that we have at work, the kind of thing that the prototypical granddad would be caught reading. And that's not a bad thing at all, it's just that the kind of thing that might appeal to someone who was a young man in 1970 would not necessarily appeal to a me here in 2026. And, well, what would appeal to the kind of men that Master and Commander was written for is, apparently, naval jargon. A lot of naval jargon. Now, I've said before that, while I do know some things about how tall ships operated, it's not exactly my area of expertise. And I got very, very lost. It seemed to me like there were so many interesting things that happened in this book, but not a lot of them actually made it into the narrative, because the narrative is instead going over the specifics of how the foremast topsails are rigged. Like, at one point Maturin does brain surgery on a man, who unexpectedly survives the whole thing, but it happens entirely off-page! It was infuriating to me in a way, but also, I kind of understand it in one sense. Styles of writing change, and this book is over fifty years old - that this book is not as character-focused as I would like just tells you what my priorities are, moreso than an objective statement on how books should be. Still, that's a reason why I didn't connect to it specifically. And, you know, this isn't necessarily a criticism that only I have. I hear that fans sometimes tell people to start with the third book in the series, and there's whole books written to explain the naval jargon and references in these books! (One of which I might get, because I still really wanna understand how boats work.)

Because despite everything else, this book has a lot of charm. I persevered because I wanted to see what was going on in one of the most famous tall ship books of all time, and I did get a fair amount out of it! There were just so many small moments of charm in between the tall ship jargon and the battle scenes and the politicking. Like, there's a moment where we see Maturin engrossed in watching two praying mantises fuck, or the ongoing implication that Aubrey fucked around and was a little shit all the time when he was a midshipman. That's part of the reason that I persevered with this book; while the book is not necessarily character-focused in the way that I would prefer, there's still consideration put into the characters and world, it's not like it's completely sidelined for the battle scenes, which I think is nice. I'm probably not gonna read any other Master and Commander books unless someone convinces me it might be worth it for me, but I can see why this series has fans. It's good! It's just not for me.

First of all, parasites. Vanya has a kink for being infected by parasites, which is something that they actualise on a few occasions. They are also in an abusive relationship with a cis man called Gaz, who is part of an underground anti-trans cult which is seen in the middle of the book tearing apart a trans woman as part of some kind of fucked up ritual. Sometimes, characters can see worms coming out of the orifices of people in this cult. Have I mentioned this book is fucked up? But really, this serves as a potent metaphor on how people use other people. Gaz is using Vanya, grooming them to fulfil his fetishes and manipulating their life. Vanya's mother, who (spoiler!) is the one who bombed Frankie and devolved into a full-on TERF is a parasite on Vanya and their brother's lives, hating them for being trans. Frankie has a thing about pregnancy, wanting to become pregnant in a way that rings true for many real-life trans women, and uh. You can imagine how the parasite theme comes into play there. Especially in the first scene, which chronologically occurs at the end of the narrative and is recontextualised when we see them at the end.

Secondly, this book is about transmisogyny, and is not aiming to be subtle on that mark. Rumfitt directly addresses the audience a few times, and does so before the main narrative to talk about how she is writing from 2030, when being transgender is illegal. Later, there is a section about banning public bathrooms in general, which is a pointed commentary on the public bathroom 'debate' here in the real world. Frankie is constantly denigrated for being trans. One horrible moment that is so resonant to the abhorrent treatment of trans women in reality and also constantly on this very website is one night when Frankie sees a notable TERF being awful on social media, and lashes out, tweeting at her that she should kill herself. And her life implodes overnight. She is fired, socially ostracised, and placed in the middle of a media furor that basically wants her dead. Just for lashing out one night on social media over a person who wants her, and literally everyone like her, dead. It's at this point that her life truly descends into darkness and, like, this kind of thing is happening literally every day. This is what trans women have to face, constantly. They have to be constantly perfect all of the time, or society will treat them like monsters. Hell, they're treated like monsters even if they don't actually do anything, and this is one of the points the book was making.

If you think I haven't really described the events of the book particularly, that's deliberate. There's a lot going on in this book that, honestly, needs to be fully read to be understood, and I don't think that I can do it full justice here. The tone is completely disturbing, weaving between the seemingly mundane and the surreal, with this sort of heightened reality that is close to the realistic, but is just a little off. Strange things happen constantly, but outside of some hallucinogenic sequences, nothing gets too away from the real world until the very end. It's honestly better experienced that described. There's so much meaning packed into it, so much detail and nuance and messiness. If you can handle it…I'd definitely recommend it.

You know, I think there's something radical in the fact that Dalinar hates his wife. This is not true. Dalinar to this point has been under a curse - he was given strength, but lost all memory of his wife, and could not even remember/hear her name. His stoicism around that in the first couple of books invites a particular narrative - Dalinar loved his wife and giving up her memory was a great sacrifice. But the truth, as revealed here, is more complicated. Dalinar did love Evi, but she often exasperated him because she was very much his opposite, a peacebringer where he was a warmonger, sensitive where he was sharp. Their mutual frustration led to a rocky marriage, and their philosophical disagreements led to tragedy, when Evi followed Dalinar into a city he was attacking to try and make peace, and was killed when Dalinar set fire to the city in vengeance. That Dalinar is a war criminal (by our world's understanding) is not all that surprising. Career soldier, and all. But the disparity between the angry, vengeful man of the past and the stoic, disciplined man we see now is stark, even moreso when Dalinar gets the full context of what he did and lapses back into alcoholism to deal with the trauma. Funnily enough, you can't character-develop your way into having Absolutely No Trauma over something terrible you did. But he's in a better, more reflective place now. Really, that's the interesting thing I find about Dalinar - his capacity for self-reflection and his ability to at least try and make peace, try and change, try and be better for the world he wants to create. His moments of power, physical and mental, are glorious. And his big moment on the battlefield in the climax? So juicy. I love it.

Shallan, in this book, has DID. Like, that's just what this is. She creates new personalities for herself when she can't cope with a situation because of the trauma that she has been through. Her main two are Veil, the streetwise thief from the last book, and Radiant, a newcomer who doesn't have Shardblade related trauma so that she can learn to spar with Adolin. Of course, Shallan's personalities are literalised in the way that fantasy can (she can Lightweave their appearances over her) but at its core, it's still a highly traumatised woman literally constructing alters to help her deal with stressful situations. What I find interesting is that, though I don't think Sanderson was conceptualising this as DID per se, it's still an interesting way of looking at mental health and mental illness. Shallan is clearly struggling, but she's also competent and manages to pull off some impressive things, even if she makes a lot of mistakes and is dealing with her fracturing mental state as she goes. She's a really strong character, and the return of Jasnah in this book really encapsulates how much she's changed and grown since we first saw her - she's no longer cowed by Jasnah, making things up as she goes along. She's a Knight Radiant! She has power! And she uses it well.

Kaladin is once more the universe's punching bag - well, I say that, but he does have some high points in this one. Bridge Four is coming into their own with their Radiant powers. He gets to go home, see his parents, and meet his little brother, which is absolutely adorable and I love him. But once more, he gets everything torn from him. While the messaging of it is a little on the nose (whaaaaaaaaat war causes ordinary people to fight and kill each other for someone else's gain you don't say) him befriending both the Wall Guard in Khloinar and a group of escapee Parshman slaves who then are on opposite sides of the fighting in Kholinar and end up killing each other is emotive, it's still a gut punch. I didn't like some of the writing around the Wall Guard? Kaladin seems to be learning a Very Special Lesson about how the privileged people who made his life hell are, in fact, people too which…I'm not sure it was needed. But anyway. I love his bond with Syl, as always; his protectiveness, his loyalty, trying to help his people in the best ways that he can. Even though he's separated from Bridge Four for most of the narrative, there's still an undying camaraderie there that's lovely to see. Have I mentioned how Broken Men are one of my favourite character archetypes yet?

For other stuff…Shallan/Adolin/Kaladin is still OT3, sorry not sorry. I have to admit, I am struggling with some of the wider-universe stuff - either the narrative is referring to stuff that happens in other books which I haven't read, or I've forgotten some of the metaphysics of how this world works because, you know, this isn't the only fictional universe I'm trying to keep in my head. There's a little bit of under-explanation, overreliance on the reader being able to recall information from the other Cosmere stories that means I feel somewhat left behind here when it comes to the specifics of Honor and Odium and the other godlike figures. As well as some of the specifics of the magic. Sanderson loves making up terms, and sometimes that becomes a bit too much. I know there's a gloss at the end of the books, but that doesn't help me in the moment remember what all this terminology means and why it's important. Maybe it's a me thing, maybe I'm just stupid, but I feel like the story could use a little more exposition at times, just to make clearer what is obviously meant to be clear. Also, unrelatedly, I really like Taravangian. I think his philosophical conversations with Dalinar are fascinating, especially in light of what we know about him; the dramatic tension of how Dalinar sees him is palpable, and only really comes to a head at the end. Interesting lil guy. Anyway, this book was great, and I'm looking forward to the next! Just…not for a little bit, okay?

The problem with this book, however…well, there's two. The first is that, due to the nature of many Jewish people hiding the fact that they were practicing their religion so they didn't, you know, get murdered, it's impossible to tell where many conversos (Jewish people who converted to Catholicism) and their descendants sat on the spectrum from 'actual Catholic' to 'practicing Judaism in secret and just faking the Catholicism'. Understandably, these conversos didn't leave much evidence about their secret, illegal Judaism (known as crypto-Judaism) for future historians. The thing is that Kritzler just tends to assume conversos were also crypto-Jews by default, and as such paints every single achievement of the era as being basically a Jewish achievement because conversos were involved. And it's like, okay, I can understand wanting to write Jewish people back into history where otherwise they have been ignored, and there's solid evidence for some of the groups of conversos being crypto-Jews that he cites! But other groups it's more just 'take my word for it' kind of evidence, and that's not good enough to prove that someone would have identified themself as Jewish. I don't mean to imply that conversos were definitely committed Catholics unless there's a smoking gun to the contrary, just that it can't be known for a lot of people where they sat between Catholicism and Judaism unless there's evidence that points one way or another. Which, for many people, there's not.

The other problem is how the book treats Indigenous and enslaved people. You know how I said that the book presents a lot of European achievements in the Caribbean as being Jewish because of the conversos involved? That includes trade. The rum trade, the sugar trade, and the slave trade. Kritzler treats Jewish people being successful in the slave trade as…kind of a good thing. Now, to be fair, there is a passage that points out that Jewish people were no more complicit in the slave trade than other white people of the era, which is true! But they were still complicit in it nonetheless, and the book kind of glosses over the fact that every white person in the Americas at this point was either outright committing, or was passively benefitting from, the colonial genocide of Indigenous people and the widespread slavery of Africans and African-Americans. Again, this is not to say that Jewish people were to blame for all of this - absolutely not, they were a minority among the white people who were committing these acts, and the blame can be equally if not moreso placed at the feet of non-Jewish white people. But to not acknowledge that the Jewish settlers in the Caribbean were complicit in these things is to whitewash a part of history, and it feels like Black and Indigenous people were somewhat thrown under the bus by this book.

Thorn has to deal with having his teenager self around, and it's interesting how both of them are characterised - Thorn has an immediate protective instinct over Kid!Thorn, but his instinct is to treat him like he is literally himself as a teenager, as opposed to a parallel teenager, which causes a little tension between them. Kid!Thorn is eager to get home, but all of the adults are either treating him with suspicion or lying to him, which isn't necessarily helping. Thorn's PTSD comes up here - his former commander is involved with testing Kid!Thorn's abilities to see how they differ from the magic available in their home, but his former commander is the one who got half of Thorn's squad killed and Thorn's arm irreparably damaged in the aforementioned dragon fight. Thorn is understandably nervous letting him near Kid!Thorn, but he's being professional about it; ready to jump in if there's an issue, but not causing arguments, even when it's clear that he's strained by the interactions he has. See, this is where I keep going on about Thorn being Good, but not boring - he's clearly affected by PTSD, he's clearly unwilling to give this guy an inch, but he's trying to be diplomatic and work for the best of everyone, while still making contingencies. Kid!Thorn is just adorable, too. A little more emotional and impulsive than our Thorn, but you can clearly see that they're the same person underneath everything, and he's so easy to sympathise with. Especially when he's playing Fantasy Candy Crush for hours. Same, kiddo.

The other character with a lot of focus in these storylines is Kale, aka former dark magical boy Kudzu, who is trying to get over his own trauma at being manipulated into mind-controlling people by a dodgy pharmaceutical company, which led to him killing a lot of people when his buttons were pushed the right way. Kale is honestly trying to get past the cult mindset and heal, which is difficult when a lot of people think he's history's greatest monster, including himself. Not helping is the fact that Kid!Thorn was sent between universes by Kid!Kale, which means he, too, has a mini-me out there somewhere making all the same mistakes he used to. Kale is always an interesting character to me because yeah, objectively, he has done some horrible things - but that doesn't make him a horrible or unsympathetic person. We see why he did what he did, and we see how he reacts to it going forward. One of the things in this collection is his meeting with Hermosa, to whom he was close and who he hurt terribly when things went bad. There's an ambiguity to Hermosa's thoughts and feelings around it, which is interesting (Hermosa has pretty bad brain damage because of what happened) and there's definitely a lot of nuance around everyone's perspectives. None of them are entirely wrong, all of them are at odds with one another. Kale's self-loathing, Dex (Hermosa's cunning and devious spouse) wanting to kill Kale for all he did, Hermosa being somewhere in the middle of sympathetic and antagonistic to Kale. It's interesting to see unfold.

What's some other stuff in here? There's a neat subplot with Thorn's magical teammate, Atarangi, who's part of a DID system - one of her alters, Kallie, has completely different magic to her, which means her DID comes out when she helps with a water-magic thing that Atarangi, a fire mage, couldn't. This series' treatment of DID is pretty sensitive and, as far as I can tell as a singlet, realistic to how DID develops and what it looks like to have DID, so kudos there! Plus, the Neineikura system is cute. Justice for Pond Thing Neineikura. There's also one of the best and cutest moments in Leif and Thorn's entire relationship, where Kale rents Leif for an evening so that the couple can finally sleep together without there being a power imbalance. (Short version, Leif is an indentured servant who cannot spend time outside work unless he is being rented. There is a sexual services package Thorn can buy, the problem being that Leif would then be compelled to follow Thorn's orders on pain of punishment, which is a power dynamic that Thorn wants to avoid. If it's Kale renting Leif, and Kale just gives an ambiguous 'have fun!' kinda order, Leif is free to do whatever without consequence.) It's been coming for a long time, and the scene where it finally happens is so sweet, they're just overjoyed at finally having this opportunity to act like they're in a less complicated relationship for a night, and they're practically floating on air afterwards. I love these boys, I'm so glad they finally get some happiness!

The Death of Sleep is the first, and imo the best, of these comics. This is the story of a Hunter before the events of the game, trying to understand the meaning of paleblood and trying to survive. For me, this is the best of the comics because of how much it plays with the idea of being a prequel to the story; it obviously telegraphs this with Iosefka still accepting patients, Old Yharnam not yet being burned and Djura being mostly friendly, but it also plays with the game mechanics being literally what it happening. We see the Hunter die and go to the Hunter's Dream, replaying stretches of the game and seeing enemies respawn. There's a sense of inevitable doom about it - this is not your Hunter, the Hunter who will one way or another win the game, but a Hunter who failed, a Hunter who died, a Hunter who struggled and bled like the rest of them but did not make it to the end. And that's interesting, right? This is the bleak kind of world that Bloodborne is. But maybe there's hope. The Hunter does make it to the Fishing Hamlet with the child, and while the child is not the paleblood that they need to end the Dream, they still manage to escape in a way. Out into the unknown.

The Healing Thirst is also a prequel, set among the people of Yharnam as things start to get bad outside, and follows a scientist and a priest as they attempt to figure out the source of the sickness that is covering Yharnam. If Death of Sleep is the best at showing the game world, this is the best individual, standalone story. There's a very real sense of the world crumbling and collapsing around the protagonists, and the desperation of their struggle to keep people alive and try and do what they can to survive. Not that they don't have their own secrets. The scientist begins to believe, while the priest's opinion of the church grows lower and lower as the story carries on, and not all is as it seems with these two characters. It's also interesting to see a version of this story where Hunters are antagonists, as opposed to the hero of the game.

A Song of Crows is focused on Eileen the Crow, the hunter of hunters from the game who is an early influence on your character. This is her backstory…sort of. It's weird. It's surreal, a story told out of time, spiralling around and around the same ideas. We see a funeral, a ritual, a boy drowning in a lake. Another hunter, this one with a human mask, is targeting her. It's very abstract, with similar symbols and ideas being repeated throughout. Honestly, I don't think I'm smart enough to be able to interpret it completely. If I were to pitch an idea, it would be that Eileen is so affected by the death of the boy - her friend - that she begun to get this deep respect for funeral rites and dying well that she shows in the main game. She is, towards the end of her life, haunted by the mistakes that led to the boy dying, to hunting hunters; something she is resigned to, but does not enjoy. The masked Hunter could stand for her guilt and grief, that idea that something has been chasing her throughout her whole life, something with an unknowable human face. It's a hugely interesting story, and I love Eileen so much.

The Veil, Torn Asunder is the weakest of the stories, in my opinion. It's got the surreal trippiness of Crows, but where it falls down is that the protagonist is not someone we already know. And, frankly, not someone I care about. Healing Thirst made me care about its protagonists, it gave them a lot of character and understanding, whereas this guy…was in a war? Killed people? Maybe? I don't know anything about him, because it's just that surreal nightmare nonsense over and over, but this time it's far less engaging. It doesn't help that this guy seems to have just murdered some sex workers, and there are women in his life but they only exist to be dead and motivate him, which. Ugh. I didn't like it at all.

The Lady of the Lanterns is the first of a duology following a set cast of characters - a pair of hunters, a boy whose sister was killed by the titular Lady of the Lanterns, and a few others. This explores a few things - the Chalice Dungeons, Queen Yharnam and the Pthumerians, the Winter Lanterns and the Chime Maidens. The latter two seem to be conflated, or at least placed together, which is an interesting place to go. The stories here are interesting, switching between the Hunter and her apprentice, the boy struggling to survive and his sister waiting for their father to return with food, the old Hunter that they try and help - it's all a very coherent story from the world of Bloodborne, and I really engaged with all of the characters here. I felt like the story telegraphed their whole deals really well, and I thought it was interesting. Although, did the boy really have to have a fridged sister? C'mon.

The Bleak Dominion continues the story, with the boy having been apprenticed to the Hunters until he went rogue, hearing the voice of his dead sister imploring him to lead the Hunters into a trap for Queen Yharnam, who rules the Chalice Dungeons. The Dungeons themselves are just sort of treated as a fact in the world of Bloodborne, so I think it's interesting to see the characters reacting to them being this strange, otherworldly, nightmarish thing. Similarly, seeing the Chime Maidens respawning enemies is just sort of a thing that happens in video games, but imagine seeing that in real life? Nightmarish! That's the strength of these two comics, I think, they take things from the video game and place them into more of a realistic setting, and that makes the reader reevaluate exactly what these kind of things would be if you encountered them in real life.

The actual text of the book is about what you might expect, if you know Gravity Falls. The first part is all Stanford all the time, featuring some of the pages we actually see in the show, like the ones on gnomes and zombies. Woven into this is the backstory of Ford's stay in Gravity Falls, his attempts to create a Grand Unified Theory of Weirdness, and his tangles with Bill Cipher, culminating in him descending into paranoia and being shoved into the portal by Stan. Then we switch over to Dipper, who gives a summary of the events of the show, then back to Ford when he returns to finish up the show and give us a little bit of expansion about some of the events that happened towards the end. It's a really good, coherent narrative! It's carefully written, so that Dipper not knowing or intuiting things about Ford until the show has him know these things makes sense, and there's a definite shift between Ford's narration, Dipper's narration, Mabel's little bits here and there, and such. There were some really touching moments in there, and some legitimately scary things, such as Ford trying to go without sleep after Bill starts to go after him for real and possibly seeing Bill do some bullshit, possibly hallucinate. It's creepy as hell!

But, being a House of Leaves fan, what I really liked was the ability to decode and decipher different codes throughout the book. I didn't even get all of them! There was Ford's letter-substitution cypher and Bill's symbols, but there was also one that looked like Bill's code but sideways, and some numbers that I didn't bother to look at…still, I really enjoyed going through what I could. Bill's symbols are revealed at the end of Ford's first section, before we switch over to Dipper's POV, so going back through what was at that point half the book to see what Bill was scribbling all over it was really cool, particularly given that Bill's bits add some extra context, as well as him taunting Ford all the way through. It was really fun! I like that it didn't handhold you through the whole thing, it trusted the reader to be able to work this out - sure, the cyphers are simple, but again, aimed at kids/younger teenagers. The only problem I had was that some of the letters in Ford's handwriting font were quite ambiguous, so 'g' and 'q' looked very similar, which caused a fair bit of confusion. Still, solid book, I really enjoyed it!

First of all, the content itself was just poor. The actual facts skip around in time so often without much rhyme or reason. Chapters will go between her talking about various bits of pirate fiction, to a profile of a real-life pirate, to talking about more general non-fiction around pirates, then delving back into fiction again with no particular throughline or reason to it. This is meant to be a non-fiction book, and yet I'd say only about half of it is dedicated to actual pirate non-fiction. And the actual facts given are dubious, to say the least. She seems to have only done some cursory research on the topics she's discussing, instead going off on tangents about Black Sails or Pirates of the Caribbean and arbitrarily dismissing some sources and blindly trusting others. (She lists Definitely Legendary pirate Jacquotte Delahaye as having been a real female pirate, for one.)

Second, there's just so much filler. Whole chapters are taken up with lengthy excerpts from the author's own pirate novels, and she will just not stop talking about her pirate, and her novel, and what she did in her own writing, and it drove me up the wall. This was marketed as a non-fiction book, I'm sorry, why are we talking about your fiction novel? Especially when she'll be disparaging towards other works of fiction for being inaccurate in one breath and then talk about her own inaccuracies in another. But more than that, there's a chapter that's just other people's reviews of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. (Her opinion seems to mostly be 'isn't Johnny Depp hot?') Twenty-odd pages are given over to copy-pasting the lyrics of sea shanties and sea songs, which weren't even a thing in the Golden Age of Piracy! And for what? Just to bulk out the page count?

But the thing that was the most heinous to me was how she talked about slavery. Which is to say, not at all. Slavery is something of an elephant in the room when it comes to discussions of Caribbean pirates - it's important to recognise that this was a time where chattel slavery was legal and was probably perpetrated by pirates of this era, as well as the 'legitimate' authorities such as the British Navy. Does Hollick talk about chattel slavery at all? Nope! She talks about how awful indentured servitude (which she calls 'indentured slavery') was for the (usually poor white) people who were subjected to it. She doesn't talk about chattel slavery. She gives the impression that white indentured servants were the most downtrodden people in the Caribbean, the most exploited. She praises Woodes Rogers, an actual slave trader, and considers him 'a man who should have received far more credit for his achievements'. In a chapter entitled 'Trade, Tobacco, and Slavery', she dedicates exactly one sentence to Black chattel slaves and spends the rest of the time talking about how bad indentured servitude was. Which, yes, it was awful! But indentured servants had some rights, and an end date to their service, unlike enslaved people. This is a glaring omission and honestly makes me wonder if Hollick actually thinks at all about the Black people who suffered in this era, or if she just dismisses them as not important? Either way, it's a horrible thing to just gloss over. Don't read this book. It fucking sucks.