#empty smiles

My Story: Blitz

I find war stories that specifically deal with the homefront to be interesting, and the child evacuation during the Blitz is especially fascinating to me. This was an excellent middle grade read that's written in the form of a diary by a girl who's living in London when the Blitz begins. You see the way it impacts her family, including her firefighter father, and what happens when she and her brother are eventually evacuated into the country. It had strong character voices, moved at an enjoyable pace, and didn't shy away from some of the harsher realities that would have come from living in a situation like this.

Cluedle: The Case of the Golden Pomegranate

An activity/puzzle book that slowly built up a mystery around a sought after treasure and all the guests aboard a yacht who seem to have motive to steal it. It was definitely aimed at kids, but I had fun playing around with this. I enjoyed it more than, say, a book of sudoku puzzles because the way it wove the puzzles into the story and created something interactive was quite fun. I'm going to have to try a Murdle next, since I think those are the adults equivalent.

The Dangerous Convenience Store v1-2

I was iffy about trying this one, since in the first few pages it really felt like it was going to hit all the classic yaoi tropes: giant hands, weird necks, and of course yakuza-rapes-mc-to-start-the-romance. All the beloved tropes 😒 I did my time in the yaoi mines back in the aughts so I was planning on just returning these ones to the library unread, but I did read a bit farther and it actually seems to be subverting those tropes. In fact, there's explicit discussions about consent! Which was an unexpected surprise! There's definitely more boundary pushing than is ideal, but over all this series seems to be setting up some of those classic tropes with the intention of knocking them down, so I can appreciate that. It ended up being more charming than I expected, and I wouldn't mind reading the next book

Empty Smiles

The final book in the Small Spaces middle grade horror series. It was a satisfying end! I started reading this series in 2020, and I've read one book around Halloween every year or two since then. While they aren't world rocking books, I've enjoyed the story and the way the villain operates, and this book really lets you delve deeper into who or what the Smiling Man is. Unfortunately the end of the book felt very rushed and underdeveloped, and didn't live up to the promising of the beginning.

Neopets: The Omelette Faerie

This one was sadly a disappointment. It shouldn't really be a surprise, but the nostalgia hit me hard and I was really hoping this would be something more than it was. I think I was hoping it would do something similar to what GaiaOnline used to do with its stories and comics... Anyway, the story was dull, the characters were bland, and the relationships were underdeveloped. The art was just criminal. The only positive out of it besides the joy of seeing Neopets again was that we got canonical lesbian fairies in the Neopets world, which I can respect.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth

I seriously adore Cassandra Khaw's prose, it's working on a completely different level. The Salt Grows Heavy is still my favourite of her works, but this made a satisfying addition to her roster. This story follows a completely loathsome group of entitled friends who rent out a supposedly haunted Japanese estate for a private wedding. They treat the ghost stories like a bit of fun and flavour, but the ghosts have no interest in being so accommodating...

It's a strange book, because you will absolutely despise every character in this book, and the story itself is strange, but Khaw's writing and her approach to bodyhorror possess me body and soul, I just can't look away. I need to read more of her work.

The Famous Five: Five Run Away Together

Every so often I just have to read an Enid Blyton book. If you're looking for the progenitor of children's literature as we know it, she is it. The Famous Five is one of her iconic series, about four friends and their dog, that I've never read. I was lucky enough to find some nice editions in a used book story so I picked a couple up and just finished reading this one. It was a complete delight! The friends are staying at George's house when her mother is taken ill and both she and her father are forced to stay at the hospital for several days, leaving the kids in the care of a rather sinister housekeeper. This story has everything you could want in a classic kids adventure story: untrustworthy adults, kidnapping, an uninhabited island, smugglers, and plucky kids that are able to take care of themselves and thwart the evil-doers!

The most unexpected thing was how genuinely mean these kids are allowed to be 😂 What makes Blyton's works notable is that she really focused on writing books about kids for kids -- she wasn't writing from an adult point of view, and she wasn't trying to preach in the way a lot of the moral kids books of the time were. She lets her child characters act like kids... in this case it means they can be absolutely fiendish bullies at times! That's not something that's often allowed in modern day kids books, so it was interesting to read...

The Silver Arrow // The Golden Swift

The Silver Arrow was a very neat middle grade adventure story! I thoroughly enjoyed it! The Golden Swift was a bit of a mediocre sequel, but the first was a delight the whole way through, there was something very classic about it.

This series follows Kate and her younger brother Tom. Feeling rather weary of how mundane her life is, Kate is gifted a strange gift by her very eccentric and very wealthy uncle: an actual steam train! This seems like something bizarre and useless, if thrilling in how unexpected it is and how unwanted it is by her parents, until Kate and Tom realise that there's more to their uncle than his eccentricity or wealth. He is also magic. As is the train. They are soon whisked off on The Silver Arrow, along a magical railroad that specifically services animals in need...

The Summer Hikaru Died v1

I had meant to read the manga, but it turns out that the library got the light novel instead -- by the time I realised the mistake I already had it at home, so I figured why not, might as well try reading this version. Everyone's losing their minds over it after all, so I wanted to see what the hype was all about. And god, I'm actually so glad that I got the light novel first because Mio Nukaga does an amazing job adapting this story to prose. The way he describes the absolute horror of what Hikaru is and what Yoshiki is going through is subtle and masterful and done in a way that pictures alone really couldn't capture. If you haven't read (or seen) The Summer Hikaru Died yet and you enjoy horror, then I definitely recommend it! And if you haven't tried the light novel then you should absolutely do that, it gave me shivers up my spine, the way this author chose to describe the visuals and sensations of what was happening...

And man. The queer / coming-of-age allegory happening here? soooo delicious and fucked up, I am eating it up with a spoon

Thousand Autumns v5

Finally finished off the Thousand Autumns series! I had mixed feelings about it, by and large... there were things I absolutely adored and things that drove me slightly insane.

What I loved without a shadow of a doubt was the characters and the relationships. Shen Qiao is a delight, and he plays off Yan Wushi so well. They create a really entertaining pair, and every scene is improved by Yan Wushi swanning his way back onto the page! Beyond those two though, there's some other really fun dynamics too -- I love Bai Rong with my entire heart, and I like how she and Shen Qiao get along. All the disciples are quite fun too.

However the actual backbone of the story leaves something to be desired for me. I had no interest in the politics, besides how they directly impacted the main cast, and most of the side characters related to that bored me to tears. I also found most of the dueling scenes rather flat. Which isn't ideal for the finale of this series, which was based around the politics and Yan Wushi's final fight.

Still, I didn't dislike the finale. I loved the conclusion of Yan Wushi's fight, and the build up to it between him and Shen Qiao, and the extras were a lot of fun, they were possibly my favourite part of book 5. Honestly I just wanted more of Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi together, Yan Wushi spent a lot of time off screen in this series which is not really my preference in a story like this... let me see the characters actually bounce off each other!! I love them!!

Unico v1-2

This graphic novel series took my breath away. I felt something reading this that I haven't felt since I read the Bone series as a kid. The way it combines highly stylized, cartoony looking characters with more detailed backgrounds and side characters is a pleasure to look at, and Unico is drawn in a way that feels very, very alive. The plot is gripping, both the overarching story and the episodic adventures, and the threat is potent enough that you're desperately cheering along the whole way. I've enjoyed all the characters that have been introduced with each new scenario that Unico finds himself in. I can't wait for the third book, I am completely hooked.

Unmask Alice

I mean, I think the initial offer is because Ollie escaping means the carnival dissolving and all the trapped people going free. And as it’s established, his job is to keep the way to the world behind the mist open, and it’s implied in this & the first book that souls do that (the people-transformed-into-scarecrows are part of the doorway, for instance). If she escapes, it means losing more of that power that keeps the way open.

So if she agrees to stay? Problem solved. And Ollie & co have bested him two times, so he knows it’s a possibility that they might do it again. 

But I do think we get some strong implications that the Smiling Man is lonely. Especially with Ollie’s thoughts at the end of why he refused to go in the funhouse (You couldn’t escape the funhouse alone--’and he was always alone’) And I wonder if, especially by the end, his offer was because he enjoyed Ollie’s company. 

I do think it’s interesting that, after the kids have beaten him, he offers for them all to stay, and that he can show them amazing things. Offering it while Ollie is still trapped is one thing, but offering it after they’ve won to all three of them... I mean, yes, it could be seen as a last ditch “hey don’t open the gate, thus dissolving my carnival” but it didn’t really feel that way, given Ollie’s read on him in the scene. He didn’t seem mad that they managed to find and free Ollie, at that point. 

I think his initial offer was to avoid losing to Ollie and avoid losing his carnival and all the people trapped here, but I do think he was lonely, and wouldn’t have minded a companion. At the same time, I think he did genuinely... care about Ollie, in his way, by warning her to stay in her rooms at night and then warning her against going into the funhouse at night. Because he was right--people who go into the funhouse don’t come out. But that’s because they go in alone, but Ollie wasn’t alone, she had her friends coming after her. 

We also don’t know exactly what agreeing to stay would mean. What would she do, behind the mist? Just travel around with the smiling man? Would she essentially be doing the same job he is tasked with? Would she ever grow older, or stay the same age? Would she live forever? 

Again, we don’t really get answers to any of this. 

To me, the book does imply that others have been on the train before, given that Ollie’s bedroom had old fashioned dresses in it. Did he make the offer to anyone else? Has anyone agreed to stay? What happened to them?