Dobes Zone

      I'm dusting the cobwebs off my blog, realizing that I had a couple unfinished book reviews waiting for me, I still have a couple on the backburner and yet here I am working on a new review. I'd previously reread A Clockwork Orange and also read Phantom of the Opera as well as The Island of Doctor Moreau for the first time. For the book club I'm running myself, we just wrapped up Watership Down by Richard Adams. This was a reread for me and also was a childhood favorite. It's the kind of book that a kid with a certain type of brain gets sucked into. Admittedly Watership Down was an obsession for me for a while. I read this wonderful illustrated edition of Watership Down which includes paintings by Aldo Galli in glossy inserts. Good stuff.       Revisiting as an adult, I can really appreciate why this particular book has had such staying power. Along with being just a fantastic and epic tale, Watership Down is also impeccably researched both for the behaviors and na

 Kindred by Octavia E Butler is an incredibly heavy book and perhaps the one that the author is best known for. It's the kind of book that definitely is important while being unpleasant, gripping and utterly terrifying. If you want to read sci-fi/fantasy that's socially relevant, it's something I'd consider essential reading. Not my own copy, just the first edition cover which I like better than the edition from the library. Laughing at the Harlan Ellison quote though, cruel yes, sensual? No.       In Kindred, Dana, a black woman living in 1976, finds herself spontaneously traveling back through time to rescue a white boy from drowning in the river, and then again to save the boy from a fire he'd started in his room. On this second visit she pieces together that this boy is her ancestor and he is somehow calling her to him in times of danger. Dana has to protect Rufus, her ancestor, in order to assure that her own family and existence is preserved. Most horrifying o

     I recently got my library card- something I'd been meaning to do and then a pandemic happened and I forgot that I wanted to get a library card until now. I decided to pick up two books on a whim, one a been-meaning to, and the other just something that caught my eye. Kira Jane Buxton's Feral Creatures seemed like a natural choice for me as I always have a soft spot for talking animal stories, especially if they're satirical and aimed at adults. The book cover design is quite pretty too. I've often felt contemporary publishing trends are lackluster so it's always a bonus to see a lovely cover. That old adage about not judging books by their covers can kiss my ass, I love seeing a beautiful illustration or at least some slick stylish design-work to pull me in.         The book tells the story of the last human being on earth and the animals taking care of her. A strange plague has swept the world, mutating all human beings into monstrous and lethal abominations

       Octavia E Butler really is one of those authors whose work is impossible to put down once you pick it up. I read Fledgling as part of my book club (a special benefit for those supporting the excellent Girls Guts Giallo Patreon ) and it was almost impossible to not zoom through the book in a couple evenings. World building and exposition in sci fi and fantasy stories can really be make or break with how they're handled, and even quite skilled authors can lose me a little when they get lost in the reeds dumping a ton of info about the politics, culture, etc about a fictional world or people. A lot of the brilliance of Fledgling is how effortlessly Butler leads us into the world of vampires and making things like their customs, their biology (and even court proceedings) unfold in a way that's natural and riveting for the reader. Her style is sharp, precise and highly digestible while dealing with difficult concepts that have multiple interconnecting layers.   Fledgling is

       My choice to read Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner started with my desire to re-read The Fall of the Kings, a book that I happened to pick up randomly at a book outlet when I was maybe 12 or 13. At this same outlet I'd also picked up Katie Waitman's The Merro Tree as well as The Essential Bordertown: A Traveler's Guide to the Edge of Faerie- a collection of short stories about the human world and the elfin world connecting. At this age I was totally rabid for anything SF/F and often brought home huge hauls of books from library book sales, where you could fill a bag for a couple dollars on the final days of the sale. It should probably surprise no one that a lot of my experiences with these books were formative and were some of my earliest experiences with queerness. Generally I was reading books that were only aimed at adults for the most part since I didn't really *do* YA except when I was quite little- barring some obvious furry bait choices like Redwall. The Fall

       I should start this review by mentioning that I would never even have heard of Andrei Codrescu's Blood Countess if not for the Girls Guts Giallo book club. If you support the podcast on patreon , you get access to curated weekly movie screenings, a fun discord server, and a book club! I've never been a part of a book club before and having one hosted by and joined by smart, funny, insightful queer folks has been an invaluable experience. If you like subversive film, kink and queer horror you'll love Annie's podcast and the inclusive community she's building. I've learned so much about weird and beautiful works and a lot about theory from listening and participating in her spaces. I'm not being paid to promote this, it's just something that's been meaningful and a source of joy for me, especially when the broader online conversation about art tends to be really reductive, skittish about sex and taboo, and moralistic to a degree that creators ge

       Wow! Honestly I love the way Castlevania wrapped up. For all its grimness and violence and tragedy, the series is ultimately quite hopeful- its characters have chances to grow and change, to think of themselves as their own people and not beholden to someone else's grand plan, instead moving towards ideas of building a kinder future for everyone. Isaac especially has a neat story arc and I love how it resolved. Alucard also gets a girlfriend who is bisexual and poly, good for him. All-in-all a fun watch, would recommend if you like horror, fantasy, and dynamic battle scenes. Playing the games is not necessary for you to enjoy or understand the series.   Moral of the story- just don't fucking kill Dracula's wife. Here's screencaps, though I didn't cap the last two eps because that felt spoiler-heavy.

 More screencaps of Castlevania. I'm still enjoying the series, though it's going darker as the story is expanding beyond the now deceased Dracula and into the worlds of other powerful vampires like Carmilla and as we follow the lives of the forgemasters Isaac and Hector. Sypha and Trevor also run into trouble with an insane Orthodox church that's turned to devil worship. I like how every form of the church in this series is shown in a terrible light.  We also get lots of sex and sexy betrayals in this season. It's a real shame that Alucard doesn't get to have a sexy polycule but oh well, it's nice to be thrown a bone once in a while. I do kind of wonder if this was a last minute writing decision because they just had no idea how to handle this dynamic, or they wanted a cheap bit of tragedy. It really didn't feel cohesive. On the plus side, we do get a lesbian vampire couple.  There's of course, also tons of monsters. My screencaps also decided to upload