Book Review: Wayward Son

Review: The Cursed Child

Holy Smokes but this review has taken all of time to write. Seriously, I cannot actually remember the last time I found it hard to put my feelings about a book into words. I mean I know I flail sometimes and I have kind of made the incoherent keysmash into an art form of my own (and I am eternally sorry for any and all posts that are basically just READ THE DAMN BOOK) but I hardly ever sit and just think ‘well then.’

Thing is, ‘well then’ is pretty much what I did think when I got to the end of The Cursed Child and now I don’t know quite what to do or say. WHAT SHALL I DO OR SAY?

I’m not going to talk about it lots. I could, and maybe I should. But I’m not going to, partly because see above and partly because I know some people haven’t read it yet and I don’t want to be SPOILER GIRL. I’m basically going to say that I have feelings and they’re mixed and a lot of that might be down to what Harry Potter means to me, and how despite myself my expectations for The Cursed Child were unrealistically high. So high though, you don’t even know. They were always going to be. Harry Potter owns a part of my soul, my love for this franchise knows no bounds. For all of time I have – for all of time I will – make grabby hands at anything new that JK Rowling and her cohorts want to throw at me. I will grab it all and I will want it all and I will devour it all, and I will expect it all to fill me with the same wonder that the books did the first time around.

And when it doesn’t, I will feel sad about it.

I think that’s perhaps what I’m feeling now. Sad. Because you see, I remember so well the last time a new Harry Potter book arrived on my lap. I remember Deathly Hallows release day so well. I remember how it was so very very worth the wait. I wanted to love The Cursed Child, believe me I did. & I read part one and made myself stop for the night because I didn’t want it to be over too fast – who knew when (if ever) I was going to get this again, I didn’t want to rush it. & it felt good to be back at Hogwarts, it did. So good. I giggled, and I rolled my eyes and I thought ‘yeah, of course he said that’ and I snorted at Draco and Harry and I was mildly irritated by Ginny and I felt strangely calm and settled and like as JKR promised me, Hogwarts was still there to welcome me home. It just….wasn’t entirely the Hogwarts I was expecting. 

& still, I don’t want to say too much, I don’t want to spoil and I don’t want to bias and to a point I don’t actually want to say anything negative about a part of something that I love so hard (writing this review is hard, dammit. I feel like a house elf.)

I’ll tell you a few things though and the main one is, is that it’s glaringly obvious that a JK Rowling piece of work this is not. Jo very kindly agreed to let somebody play in her sandbox and that’s fine because it’s nice to share your things, but it’s not Harry Potter in the way I know Harry Potter. It doesn’t feel to me to be Jo Rowling’s Harry Potter and I have feelings about that, because it kind of should be, you know? Jo’s Hogwarts is also my Hogwarts and this, this is something else. I didn’t want something else.

It was weird to read too, in some ways, perhaps because it was a script and not prose. We lost a lot there, a mon avis, because a lot of Harry Potter is in the storytelling; the world JKR built; in the way she used her words. So much of what made me fall in love with the whole damn thing in the first place was lost, and I missed it and it was so obvious to me that it wasn’t Rowling’s writing and that made me sad. You don’t get the same level of description in a script, the same level of detail. The detail is what made Harry Potter and without it, at the risk of sounding like a poor and broken record, it just wasn’t the same.

Also, there were flaws in the plot: things that really bugged me and things that felt too convenient and things that needed explaining and things that made me facepalm so hard and there were some pretty major issues with characterisation, such as (sometimes) Hermione (holy feminist issues batman do not let me get on that soapbox because I was a little bit ragey) and Ron (who albeit had some excellent lines) coming across like he was a caricature of himself.

& then there was pretty much everything about Harry as a parent. I felt like some key issues from the books had been conveniently cast aside in order to try to make the story work. Anyone else remember Sirius, and Remus and how thanks to them Harry sort of did have a father figure? Ok, good. Because all of that stuff, the Harry as a father stuff… actually, no. Let’s not. Don’t get me get on the Sirius Black train, it won’t be pretty.

Oh, and I missed people that I thought should have been there – where was Hagrid please? Where exactly was Hagrid. Perhaps Jen was right (and I don’t mind telling you that our live texting of this was a world away from our live texting of DH) and they just didn’t know how to stage him, ha, but still. WHERE WAS HAGRID???

It’s just….I was from the fanfic era you know? I read a lot of fanfiction back In The Day. A lot. And some of it was out of this world excellent. I read fix-it fic, which essentially is what this play was and whilst I was totally a Marauders fangirl, after Deathly Hallows I also read a fair amount of Next Gen fic and that’s kind of what this felt like to me. Next Gen Fix-It Fanfiction. I already knew this version of Albus and Scorpius because I’d met them – they felt like they’d been lifted straight from the internet.  (& if you want to tell me that Scorpius has a thing for Rose then sure, go right ahead, but that’s not the play I read.)

On the flip side, the Voldemort storyline made my skin crawl in the way I imagine it was supposed to and there was also a scene with Harry that ripped out my heart in a way that I was not prepared for, fuckety fuck and also ouch.

There was some excellent and very moving Snape stuff (good God is anything to do with Severus Snape ever not going to destroy me?) and, there was Scorpius. Oh, Scorpius Malfoy, how I love you. If JKR wanted to write an actual book about that kid, I would so totally be down for reading that thanks.

& despite my misgivings I can totally see that it would be pretty impressive on stage, and I really want to see it. I also loved the little bits of JKR that shone through – I mean look at Albus’s initials and tell me she hadn’t already sorted him when she wrote the epilogue. There are zero coincidences in Harry Potter and I have always loved Jo for that. Those little bits, the blink and you’’l miss it foreshadowing, the ‘fuck yes’ moments of realisation, the seemingly insignificant details that turn out to be epically important, the things. Those are what I love. This play was lacking in things. I WANT ALL THE THINGS. 

TL;DR: If you want to read some really excellent fan fiction then start here. For the love of God if you’re going to read The cursed Child because you’re a Harry Potter fan, then read this because wowzer.

If you want to read something that’s been for actual real published then read this and then read this because Rainbow Rowell is a genius. 

& you know what, read The Cursed Child. Let’s be honest, you’re a HP fan so you’re going to anyway. Just, just remember that it was never meant to be read like this, it was supposed to be seen and remember that JK Rowling didn’t write it, and don’t expect it to be like the books, and make your own mind up afterwards.

(Sad Jo is still sad about this whole damn thing.)

Review: Carry On

Simon Snow just wants to relax and savor his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest, and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he’ll be safe. Simon can’t even enjoy the fact that his roommate and longtime nemesis is missing, because he can’t stop worrying about the evil git. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you’re the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savor anything.
Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story — but far, far more monsters.

Rainbow Rowell, let me love you. Goodness gacious. I have such an author!crush you don’t even know. Do I want to be friends with her or do I just want to be her. I don’t know. I just know that actually she can do no wrong. HOW DOES SHE WORDS.

“He’s a book full of footnotes brought to life. He’s a jacket made of elbow patches."

How. Does. She. Words.

Anyway.

In case you missed my prior Rainbow love-ins, I talk about Eleanor & Park here and about Fangirl here. I’ll also be back soon to talk about Landline soon. Right now though, you guessed it (and pull up a seat and flail with me, or if you don’t like Rainbow’s other stuff then you know, don’t because this book is so Rainbow Rowell) I’m talking about Carry On and how it delighted me from start to finish. Seriously. Delighted me. & if you stop here often you’ll know that occasionally I lose all coherency and just shout a little about how much I love a thing. I’m about to do that right now. Sorry not sorry.

I out and out cackled when I found out that Carry On was going to be a thing. I mean a book that originally existed as a fictional book in one of Rainbow’s other books about a girl that writes fanfiction and that is clearly a tongue in cheek look at the whole fanfiction world in general and specifically (or so I thought anyway) the whole Harry/Draco fandom becoming it’s own actual hard-backed fully fleshed story. WHY WOULD YOU NOT WANT TO READ THAT and how gloriously excellent and amusing is it that Rainbow Rowell made it happen. 

GIVE ME ALL THE WONDERFUL META.

Also: insane. This book is fucking nuts I swear and it’s brilliant. It’s like Harry Potter gone batshit crazy and at the same time it’s….I mean you start off comparing to HP a little because it’s a book about a magical school and a war against a Big Bad and this one student that’s The Chosen One even though he doesn’t want to be really, and is sometimes a little bit shit at well, life, so how can you not.

(Just when you think you're having a scene without Simon, he drops in to remind you that everyone else is a supporting character in his catastrophe.)

Ha ha and also ha.

Pretty soon though you forget the whole Potter thing because there is so much going on here, this whole brand new world, these brand new characters, and whilst you still totally gigglesnort a little at the occasional tip-of-the-hat you mostly just get totally swept away in the Watford of it all, in Simon and Baz and spells that reference Bohemian freaking Rhapsody and the fact that it’s so gay. 

And also marvellously diverse in the way that all Rainbow’s books are and everybody else’s books should be. Example one, because I’m nice like that

“I didn’t know someone like you could be named Penelope,” I said. Stupidly. (Everything I said that year was stupid.)
She wrinkled her nose. “What should ‘someone like me’ be named?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know. Other girls I’d met who looked like her were named Saanvi or Aditi—and they definitely weren’t ginger. “Saanvi?”
“Someone like me can be named anything,” Penelope said.
“Oh,” I said. “Right, sorry.”
“And we can do whatever we want with our hair.” She turned back to the assignment, flipping her red ponytail. “It’s impolite to stare, you know, even at your friends.”

Also. Baz and Simon.

Everyone knows that hate/love is an excellent trope, right? I mean it’s where the whole Harry/Draco ship stemmed from isn’t it. & it goes back so much further than that. Let’s make a list of the great love stories that stem from this trope. Or let’s not because ain’t nobody got time for that. Point is, I love that trope & this book, it’s the stuff dreams are made of I swear to God. Rainbow takes all that tension and all those misunderstandings and all that anger and all the shitty spiteful comments and makes it all her own and THEN THE CUTE BOYS DO KISSING.  & obviously you know there’s something there because Cath ships Baz/Simon in Fangirl with the fire on a hundred burning suns and it would have been weird for that not to have been a thing here but I didn’t know how subtle a thing it might be (partly because Baz and Simon aren't canon in Fangirl), how much reading between the lines one might have to do *coughRemus/Siriuscough* but, well, nope not subtle at all and it makes me hope for a world where LGBTQ characters are so common a thing in books that it goes without saying.anyway, both boys are excellent in their own right and they're gorgeous together and I swear nobody writes falling in love, being in love, love like Rainbow Rowell. I said it about E&P (and I am still not over that) and I said it again when I read Fangirl and I say it again now: she just gets it and wow can she carve a sentence from your very heart.

Sharing a room with the person you want most is like sharing a room with an open fire.

He's constantly drawing you in. And you're constantly stepping too close. And you know it's not good--that there is no good--that there's absolutely nothing that can ever come of it.

But you do it anyway.
And then...
Well. Then you burn.

 ***

He's still looking in my eyes. Staring me down like he did that dragon, chin tilted and locked. "I'm not the Chosen One," he says.
I meet his gaze and sneer. My arm is a steel band around his waist. "I choose you," I say. "Simon Snow, I choose you.

Also.  This book is funny. . And also also there is dialogue like this:

“I can’t believe there’s a part of your body that grows when you need it. You’re like a mutant.”
“I’m a vampire,” Baz says, “and can you hear yourself?”

***

She told me later that her parents had told her to steer clear of me at school.
"My mum said that nobody really knew where you came from. And that you might be dangerous." "Why didn't you listen to her?" I asked.
"Because nobody knew where you came from, Simon! And you might be dangerous!"
"You have the worst survival instincts."
"Also, I felt sorry for you," she said. "You were holding your wand backwards.

& does Rainbow Rowell have a professional Brit-picker because for the most part this book is so gloriously British and I loved that.

I want, I WANT, I want the other 7 books. I’m not going to lie; I would read every single moment of Simon and Baz’s school experience in the same way I read Harry’s. ALL THE FEELS. One book was not enough even though it’s a long and very pretty book. & holy smokes is it pretty.