Tag: fantasy

Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Spoiler warning. I will be discussing parts of the novel’s story as well as things that may – or may not – go on in the movie adaptation.

Background & backstory

When former illustrator Philip Reeve’s first book, Mortal Engines, was released in 2001, he couldn’t have known it would be that successful. Coming out amidst the Harry Potter craze and Lord of the Rings movies, the book market had started to focus on young adult novels, very often with fantasy or SF-themed plots, resulting in a sharp increase in their sales. For a time that worked very well: I like to see how these genres, usually only occupying a little niche in bookshops, were getting their own big areas, shelf over shelf filled with books of this sort. However, I also saw traditional books for boys and girls, well-liked evergreen children’s classics for decades like Pippi Longstocking, The Robber Hotzenplotz and the books of Michael Ende, more and more pushed out by the Harry Potter type. That personally hurt me a bit as I grew up with all these classics.

But things have changed. Traditional book shops seem to have become a thing of the past, with more and more people seeming to order books online. Books themselves seem to have become an oddity, with every second person reading e-books on their Kindle and the young adult genre seems to be dead now. Few of the many authors walking in Joanne K. Rowling’s footsteps were able to compete with her enormous success. Though the YA genre would enjoy other successes such as The Hunger Games or Twilight, this genre really seems to have seen its day. Even in the cinemas, many attempts flopped. Percy Jackson never became a franchise; Divergent ended before its final part; and did anyone really watch the last movie in the Maze Runner series?

While some numbers give cause for concern, such as a drop in book sales in  the last four years, there is also positive news as classic children books seem to have made a comeback, in film form. German cinemas enjoyed new movies based on The Little Witch and The Little Ghost (Otfried Preußler), Hannie & Nanni and the Famous Five (Enid Blyton), The Boys from Castle Horror Rock (Oliver Hassencamp) and Jim Knopf (Michael Ende). A new Robber Hotzenplotz book has also come out, 45 years after the last one – and 4 years after author Otfried Preußler’s death!

But I digress. ;-)

Reeve’s book came out in the midst of the YA craze and was received very well. It obviously proved popular enough that the author would follow this success with 3 sequels, 4 prequel novels, an illustrated guide and a short novella. Film-maker Peter Jackson had been interested in the series since 2008. But the idea of enormous cities rolling overland was not translatable to the big screen with then-available CGI. Add his own sudden involvement with the Hobbit movies (originally to be directed by Guillermo del Toro), and the idea stalled. Now, it seems these hurdles have been cleared, and though Jackson left directing to his prodigy and co-worker for 26 years, Christian Rivers, we finally saw a movie version of the first book in December.

But what are these books – specifically, the first – about?

Summary

Reeve invented in his first book a rich colourful world which plays far, far in the future but feels definitely retro. Aficionados know this kind of genre which often is labelled “steampunk” – or in this case even “dieselpunk”. But Reeve, as well as Jackson and Rivers in recent interviews, stress it’s not quite that, but rather incorporates elements of steampunk as well as of post-apocalyptic science-fiction with the Young Adult approach of something like let’s say… Harry Potter. It should be also noted that the idea of “cities on wheels” had already been used before in Edgar Rice Burrough’s “John Carter of Mars” series.

In the book, the world has been devastated by a terrible conflict, called the “Sixty Minute War”, thousands of years ago. It destroyed most of the ecology of the earth: earthquakes and volcano eruptions were caused by the aftermath of that war. Traditional knowledge about our world, our history and our technology has been lost. New knowledge has replaced it, that has changed the way people live in this post-apocalyptic world.

In order to survive, people have found a way to put entire cities and towns on wheels. These now roll over land and through dried-out seas, in order to capture and “devour” other cities, whose parts and elements are used to fuel their own city and replenish resources. The captured inhabitants of those cities may be integrated into their captor’s society or be sold as slaves. Transport to or discovery of other cities is managed via fast airships.

The story revolves around young orphan Tom Natsworthy, third assistant in the Guild of Historians, who works in a museum. Things seem to be going fine for Tom and his dreams of a better life, as he meets Thaddeus Valentine, a key figure in the city of London. Valentine seems very positive towards Tom, and his daughter Katherine seems to take a liking to him. At least, until a girl with a scarf across her disfigured face tries to kill Valentine. Her attempt is thwarted by Tom, though he can’t prevent her from falling into a waste chute during the subsequent chase. She had just revealed her name to him as Hester Shaw, information which proves so embarrassing for Valentine, he throws Tom right behind her.

That is just the beginning. Out of need, Tom joins the young woman in order to get back to London. They experience a series of adventures on their journey involving a city in the air, pirates, cool aviatrix Anna Fang, a big city not on wheels but hiding behind a big wall, and a forgotten weapon of mass destruction called “Medusa” from the Sixty Minute War. Shocking revelations are… ahem… revealed to the characters and readers, resulting in a finale that leaves no eye dry, and with a death toll that would have Game of Thrones nodding in approval.

I don’t think Reeve planned this book to become the first in a series, or he wouldn’t have written such a definitive ending. I suspect book two, which I haven’t read, will probably have to kind of “re-start” the series. But it’s perhaps fortunate he did, for as we say in Germany, it means he’s really making “nails with heads”. That means he’s not above making tough decisions, which readers may not expect (or even approve of, had they known beforehand). As far as I’ve heard that’s something that he stays true to, for the remainder of the series.

Style & themes

Reeve writes in a very fluent and “readable” style. He gives descriptions where they are needed but doesn’t exaggerate them. It’s definitely the writing style you expect in a YA novel (this is not meant to be negative at all). Very often, he lets you into what his characters are feeling or thinking, without the characters articulating their thoughts or emotions directly. Sometimes I wish he would be a bit more direct, but then I think Reeve believes in the old “actions speak louder than words” approach, and has his characters give verbal explanations only where he deems them necessary.

The story is told from different perspectives, Mainly it alternates between Tom and Katherine, so that one chapter describes Tom’s and Hester’s exploits and the next reveals what Katherine and her tame wolf  discover. These are interspersed with chapters from other perspectives and sometimes longer descriptive passages, mostly about the cities. A nice trick Reeve plays, is often having a chapter end with a little climax or “Aha!”-moment. It leaves the reader wanting to know what happens next – only to have another person’s story in the next chapter. This is an effective storytelling technique to keep your reader’s interest awake.

Principally, my feeling is that in this first book Reeve is still “trying”, but the rich- and inventiveness of his fictive world is already there. He seems to be “finding his voice,” and according to others who have read his follow-up books he has succeeded better in these. The basic idea of cities on wheels that “eat” other cities is intriguing, and that image must probably also have been what may have captured Peter Jackson’s imagination.

Whether there is a deeper meaning behind the book’s story is left to the reader’s own interpretation. Though without much effort I can see a couple of possibilities. Isn’t there right now a “culture war” happening, with different cultures battling it out over dominating each other? And aren’t many employees forced, day in and out, to travel to locations far from their respective homes for work? Where is your real home if you are constantly being asked to be “flexible”?

A couple of years ago, I was in Brighton where people explained to me that this is actually “Brighton & Hove” but the two united into one over time. While for the tourist it presents itself as one city, the inhabitants still can tell you exactly where Brighton ends and Hove begins – a very good example of a “real” city “devouring” another city. I’m not saying Reeve may have intended any of these associations. Maybe he just saw The Spy Who Loved Me with a big ship swallowing submarines! Interestingly, the main villain is London’s Lord Mayor Magnus Crome, and his last words are: “I just wanted to make London strong!” I couldn’t help reading the line as “I just wanted to make London great again!” While that’s my own mind playing practical jokes, considering the book was written 17 years ago, maybe it has acquired contemporary resonance?

A recurring motif of the novel seems to be that things don’t necessarily turn out as planned. In the beginning, Tom dreams of making a career, and in his day-dreams experiences an adventure with him as the hero and a beautiful girl at his side. Instead, he finds himself literally tossed out of his comfort zone by his almost-mentor, his hopes having dissolved into dust within a moment. He’s stranded in the outside world with a disfigured girl on his side, who is far from being nice or friendly (at least at first).

Similarly, Thaddeus has big plans and understandable motivations, having made a career after acquiring devastating ancient technology by killing Hester’s parents. He ends up pressured by Crome, and all of his hopes go down the drain at the end of the story. Valentine may be a villain but he’s more a fallen hero – Reeves wins extra points with me for not falling into the trap of creating simple “good” and “evil” characters. You may even feel some pity for Valentine as Hester does at the end when she decides to spare his life. We’ll see how the movie will handle these aspects of the novel!

Again and again, Tom and Hester have to counter new problems and challenges on their way back to London. Reeve may be saying that you can make a difference and change things for the better, despite being in an unfortunate position, by working hard to overcome one’s personal hurdles. To me, it’s a very positive message that reminds me of the basic tenor in my preferred YA series The Wardstone Chronicles by Joseph Delaney.

The girls

I almost forgot about the girls – though I’m not really sure if I would call this a GWG book, since the main protagonist in this volume is definitely male. First, there’s Hester Shaw, the young, disfigured woman out for revenge. Though she may be the most prominent overall character of the series, she isn’t so in this book: it’s Tom. I’ve heard that the second book is told from her perspective, with her being center-stage, while book 3 and 4 are focused on her and Tom’s daughter, Wren. This reminds me of some other literary characters: for example, Lisbeth Salander was a supporting character in the first Millenium novel, as was Hannibal Lector in Red Dragon.

Here she’s mainly a supporting character. After her initial attack on Valentine, which she survives badly wounded, Hester doesn’t do much for the next 100 pages and is mainly half-carried around by Tom. He has the biggest character development, finally deciding to help the “anti-tractionist”, those who are against the moving cities and live behind the walls of Batmunkh Gompa. Still, it’s a strange, unique character Reeve has created: Hester isn’t really sympathetic at first sight and not a beauty on any sight, but the reader slowly warms up to her. Her life-story hasn’t been a beautiful one, she has similarly “fallen out of paradise” like Tom, but doesn’t show much empathy for him.

Her disfigured face leaves her far from a beauty queen; maybe this was Reeve’s intention, to point at the fact that we too often judge just by that what we see on the surface than what’s inside. In contrast, Valentine who comes across as likable at first and is described as an honorable, remarkable man – only to try to murder Tom moments later. What I find strange is that obviously in the promotion of the movie, Hester is in the front of the marketing material (as in the movie tie-in version of the book above), and the powers that be have definitely dialed back on her ugliness. This makes little sense. The original idea seems to have been it was this hideous scar which made Hester the tough, harsh character she is. In the trailer, the actress playing her is a very beautiful young woman with two eyes, an unharmed nose and some, well… let’s call them scratches on her face which do not really require to be hidden. It feels a betrayal of the original intent for this character.

Maybe it’s enough that the villain killed your Mom. But why, then, put a scarf around that girl’s face and advertise it with, “Some scars never heal”? Some fans have already voiced their disapproval of what’s typical for Hollywood. Remember how Brienne of Tarth was so much more “eye-friendly” in the Game of Thrones TV series than the books? They see that disfigurement making a huge statement: not every female character has to be a typical beauty to be a heroine (although Hester probably falls more in the category of anti-heroine) and there even existed an online petition with the intention to change it. This worked as well as the one to replace Ben Affleck as Batman before the production of Batman vs. Superman.

I personally think it takes quite a bit away, from a character who always wears that red scarf when depicted on a book cover. There are also fan drawings and paintings online that show how Hester could have looked with her terrible scar, without appearing downright nightmarish. I can’t help but suspect the studio (maybe Jackson, Rivers or the make-up department) realized that they have a very cool character on their hands – then lacked the conviction to go with it, and watered the character’s appearance down. Just my 2 cents.

Another important character is Katherine Valentine. She is a good person, regrets the presumed death of Tom whom she liked, and with the help of a young engineer and her own tame wolf “Dog”, slowly discovers the big secret of her father’s and Magnus Crome’s secret plans. She definitely plays a bigger, more active role in this book than Hester. Actually, I’m astonished that she is not the poster-girl for the up-coming movie, or even obviously in the trailer, as she does really much more than Hester Shaw, though the fails in the end.

Finally, there is Asian aviatrix Anna Fang (known as “Feng Hua” to her air collegues). She is working for the “anti-traction league” and helps Tom and Hester more than once. She has a nice sword fight with Valentine at the end, but unfortunately loses to him. Obviously Reeves regretted that decision later. I read that when he met the actress who plays Fang in the movie Korean singer Jihae), it inspired him to write a book of short stories all about her character, published under the title Mortal Engines 05: Night Flights.

Conclusion

Mortal Engines is a very readable YA novel, which can also be read by grown-ups without any problems. It’s fast, action-paced and never gets boring, though it could have had some more work done in the character depiction of Hester. Reeve creates a rich, fascinating and colourful fantasy world with some good surprising “A-ha!”-moments and doesn’t make life easy for his protagonists. He doesn’t flincg from describing grisly situations, physical battles or blood, and surprises his readers with outcomes for his characters you wouldn’t necessarily expect. I never regretted having bought this book, without any specific expectations. I might even be interested in buying book 2, which some people – including Peter Jackson – claim to be better than the first.

Author: Philip Reeves
Publisher: Scholastic Inc., available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Mortal Engines series.

Sanyare: The Last Descendant, by Megan Haskell

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

Nuriel Lhethannien, known as Rie, is an orphan human in a multi-verse, populated by elves, vampires known as sidhes, trolls and a host of other magic creatures. She has a job as a messenger for King Othin, the ruler of the Upper Realm. But when she’s attacked by assassins from the Shadow Realm, she’s in deep trouble. For such is the enmity between the realms, that Othin decreed, “Anyone in contact with the Shadow Realm, in any way, would be executed.” To save her own life, Rie has to become even more of an outlaw, and journey down below, seeking to find the truth about who attacked her and why.

The Shadow Realm is no more keen on Upper Realmers, and Rie’s boss, Rolimdornoron, demands she be arrested and returned for punishment. Fortunately, Rie’s heritage provides some unexpected assistance, along with the combat training given by her foster father, the head of Othin’s guard. She’s also helped by Prince Daenor, who has issues of his own to handle in the intrigues of the Shadow Realm court. Oh, and a small flock of highly carnivorous pixies.

It’s a solid read, which might have benefited from slightly more fighting and less talk. My opinion there is likely skewed by the lack of any real climax in that department – perhaps a result of this being the opening volume. Action-wise, the book peaks about 40% in, when Rie and Daenor have to battle their way past the guards of a master smith who made the weapons used to attack the heroine. And there are a lot of guards. It’s an especially good sequence; I was waiting for anything similar to show up the rest of the way, and was disappointed. Things instead ended in something closer to a royal courtroom, before a reveal which I found a bit too obvious. Let’s say, the title alone is a bit of a giveaway to the fact that Rie’s “orphan” status is not quite what it seems.

The political machinations are well-handled, dancing on the fine line between complex and convoluted, and I appreciated the way Rie drags herself up by her own boot-straps, despite humans being seen as “second-class citizens” by many elves. The romantic feelings she has for Daenor are also somewhat conspicuous, yet they manage to avoid getting in the way of the story – it helps they’re largely unrequited, at least, in this section [score one for opening volumes, yay!]. I reached the end somewhat interested in seeing where things go, though likely not quite enough to justify any immediate further purchase. With her skills apparently continuing to blossom, and some new friends (and relations) in very high places, there hasn’t been enough sense of a threat to Rie established to leave me interested in finding out more. I don’t feel as if my time was wasted, however.

Author: Megan Haskell
Publisher: Trabuco Ridge Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Sanyare Chronicles series.

Maggie for Hire, by Kate Danley

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

Maggie McKay is an inhabitant of two overlapping worlds, courtesy of her genetics and upbringing being a little bit from both. Her father was from the “Other Side,” but her mother was from Earth, and they lived here until Maggie’s awakening talents of her own necessitated a quick departure back to the O.S. She still operates mostly in this realm, hunting down and dispatching the nastier denizens who sneak across: vampires, ghouls, werewolves, etc. This everyday work gets escalated, when she discovers her previously unknown (and not very nice) uncle, Ulrich, has teamed up with a vampire clan, to acquire a pair of artifacts which control portals between the sides, and also allow the vamps to walk in daylight. Unchecked, this could lead to chaos, and it’s up to Maggie and her elf sidekick, Killian, to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Blandly generic urban fantasy, it’s the kind of book I finished reading on Friday, and am struggling to remember much about on Monday. This is not to say it’s bad, and going by the fact that this series has reached 10 novels (not including a trio of holiday specials, with titles like My Maggie Valentine), there’s clearly a market for this kind of non-threatening light action. It just isn’t anywhere near me. It feels as if the writer tossed a hundred other urban fantasy novels into a blender, and poured the resulting smooth, pastel pink concoction directly onto her own pages. For there are hardly any elements here which I haven’t read, probably about a hundred times before. From the world-threatening villain, all the way through to the unresolved sexual tension with the devastatingly attractive (aren’t the partners always?) Killian. Yawn…

It’s all unrepentantly old-school, e.g. the vampires can’t come in to a building unless they have first been invited. Which is fine, except when Danley has Maggie and Killian chased by the bloodsuckers into a motel, where… Well, absolutely nothing happens, because the vampires can only hang around outside, before eventually getting bored and drifting off towards dawn. It’s an entirely pointless incident, and does nothing except bring home how crappy “traditional” vampires are as antagonists. There are good reasons most incarnations of them beef up the threat level considerably. The whole “portal” thing is also kinda confusing and executed somewhat sloppily: Maggie seems to be able to open them up at will… except when doing so would offer an easy escape from a threat.

Trying to carry out a critical appraisal of this is hard; it’s like trying to write 500 words reviewing vanilla pudding. I’ve had to work harder on this piece, than almost any of the other novels I’ve covered, and just knocked half a star off the literary rating as a penalty. Maybe such savagery will teach Ms. Danley a lesson.

Author: Kate Danley
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 10 in the Maggie MacKay Magical Tracker series.

Sheena

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We recently wrote about the movie version of the Sheena story, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, but that was not the most recent adaptation. For Sheena would eventually return in form of another TV-series that ran for two seasons and 35 episodes from 2000-2002. It’s quite likely that producers Douglas Schwartz and Steven L. Sears hoped to cash in on the trend of action-adventure TV-shows that were then popular thanks to series like “Hercules” and “Xena”. Sears himself was enjoying quite some success with “Xena – Warrior Princess” which he wrote several scripts of and partly co-produced.

Unfortunately, the “Sheena” show was nowhere near as captivating as “Xena” was. Sheena (Nolin) is far from the “cute but a bit naive” version that Tanya Roberts played. Here, Sheena is more a kind of eco-terrorist, fiercely protecting “her” jungle of Maltaka – so you’d better behave if you go there! Along comes Matt Cutter (Nelson) with his constantly ironically snarky companion Mendelson (Quigley). Cutter is out for the quick buck, leading tourists in the jungle, trying to forget his former career as a CIA-agent (!). But after clashing with Sheena in the beginning they quickly establish a working relationship – usually meaning Sheena will draw the poor man into another harrowing adventure of hers.

Obviously, there are plenty of terrible things that can happen in the jungle, be it big game hunters, terrorists, military coups or tribal wars that have to be prevented. While the show quite obviously had a very limited budget – I couldn’t escape the fact after some time that they always filmed at the same five locations – I give the film makers credit. They tried to make their show as diverting as possible as they could, with the time and money they had at their disposal.

Sheena has changed quite a bit from her previous version; she is no dumb blonde in the jungle, she reads Tom Clancy and romantic novels, has her own cave, is trained in the mystical art of transforming into any animal with whom she has eye-contact (I immediately had to think of the old TV-show “A case for Professor Chase” when seeing this) by Shaman Kali (Moorer) and has absolutely no qualms about killing off evil-doers in the jungle – and there are plenty over the course of the show).

Usually she transforms into what she calls the “Darakna” – which essentially means she puts black mud on her body and gloves, with bone claws on to slash her enemies to death. Don’t worry: it’s neither bloody nor (after the first time they show it to us) very exciting. I just wonder if, by doing that, she also immediately became super-powered. though she already is a strong fighter. Or if it just made the killing easier for her, as she then wasn’t “quite herself” (to quote Norman Bates!).

It seems the producers were going for some kind of developing love story – differently to “Xena”, there are no overlapping story-arcs, just stand-alone episodes. But if so, they blew it. It seems all the efforts of Cutter were in vain, after early in the second season, Sheena has sex with a random stranger after a couple of unsubtle compliments from him. A couple of episodes later, we are asked to believe that Cutter gets together with an Asian women he once met in a training unit at the CIA. Oh, and we have to suffer through the usual episode where Sheena meets her “first love,” or the one where a special-mission leads Cutter’s ex-wife into the jungle.

Nolin and Nelson never have much chemistry with each other, that would let them appear as anything more than good friends. There’s no Xena-Gabrielle spark here, if that’s what you were hoping for! So if you thought we were getting the Sheena-Cutter-happy ending no one was asking for, you’d be wrong. Cutter says good-bye to another beautiful blonde at the beginning of the last episode, who thanks him for “showing him the world”, and the rest deals with a tribe mistaking constantly monotonously babbling wanna-be-snark Mendelson for a wise, old leader with the same name. The series ends as unspectacularly as it began.

That said, while the show (like most shows of its ilk at the time) is underwhelming compared to “Hercules” and “Xena”, I do think the screenwriters really tried to come up with as inventive stories as possible, given the fact that the “adventures in the jungle” was already a genre as dead as a door-nail. There are some good ideas here: plants that raise certain hormones in your blood, making you love-struck as well as murderous (therefore having Cutter and Sheena try to kill each other); a female black Rocky in the jungle, faced with countless attacks by her opponents; a kind of “X-files”-episode, with the audacity to play that show’s musical theme a couple of times in the episode; or the dangerous giant ants that eat anything. setting Cutter and Sheena in quite a distressing position.

There are also some “guest stars” though you shouldn’t expect the A-class of actors here. I noticed Grand L. Bush (whom I know from a minor role in the James Bond-movie Licence to Kill some 11 years earlier), make-up specialist and occasional actor Tom Savini (From Dusk till Dawn) and the Tarzan of the 60s, Ron Ely in a villain role. At least the team tried, though you hardly ever can speak of three-dimensional villains here. You also have to forgive the typical 90s CGI-morphing and masks that were terrible, even in better and more prestigious TV shows of the time than this one.

All in all, “Sheena” is not a great show but given its limitations I would say the people in charge tried to do their very best. Though while I could still binge-watch “Xena” today, “Sheena” is something that I would probably only watch again if I woke up at 2 a.m. and regular TV didn’t offer anything better at that time.

Creators: Douglas Schwartz and Steven L. Sears
Star: Gena Lee Nolin, John Allen Nelson, Kevin Quigley, Margo Moorer

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle

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★★★½
“How I stopped worrying about jungle ridiculousness, and embraced my love for scantily-clad jungle girls!”

It’s actually astonishing how much info one can dig up on a specific subject when you put your mind to it. So, where to start? Let’s see…

Quite recently, the big success of Wonder Woman made Hollywood aware that you actually can make money with comic book heroines. after so many years where the common wisdom – also in the comic book industry – was that “heroines don’t sell”. That the success of almost any given product might also depend on the quality (and of course “enjoyability”) of its execution, seems to have escaped those of such a mind-set. But sometimes it may also just have something to do with the right timing; sometimes the era is not ripe for this or that, or something isn’t en vogue or contemporary anymore – that’s also a factor that one always should take into consideration.

One of the properties which has become interesting for Hollywood again after WW’s success, is the old comic heroine, Sheena. Millenium Films, who were also recently considering a new Red Sonya movie have been rumored to considering a film with said heroine. Which is enough reason for me to revisit the movie Sheena, Queen of the Jungle from 1984!

The first important thing to mention here, is that when we talk Sheena, we are essentially talking Tarzan territory here. So, if one you have a problem in essence with jungle warriors hanging from trees and lianas, or being on a first-name basis with virtually any animal in Africa, you won’t be able to experience the charm a movie like Sheena offers. For the movie already has lost you. I’m saying this, because when Sheena came out, it was torn into pieces by critics. They may have been just a bit too cynical or overly critical, for an innocent entertainment movie that never was intended to be deep and meaningful.

Wikipedia tells me that the movie “was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards (Worst Picture, Worst Actress, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Musical Score) but reportedly did find some cult success on home video and DVD.” I say: Sheena is harmless fluff that can be enjoyed when in the right mood – maybe with a beer and a pizza or some ice cream on a rainy Saturday afternoon. And in any case it’s many times better than Halle Berry’s Catwoman! My point is: When is something “good entertainment” and when is it downright “cinematic trash”? I myself have no answer to that. We accept the most lunatic premises in every Marvel movie at regular intervals and don’t feel the need to second-guess its logic.

The year after “Sheena”, another fantasy movie with an absolute ridiculous premise was released, about immortals that are fighting each other over centuries, hacking off their heads to consume their life energy to finally receive some dubious prize after the grand finale came out in cinemas. It flopped equally hard. But, over time, Highlander became a big hit on home video, and its own franchise that has a devoted fandom and stands in line for its own remake right now. So the question here is: What makes the one movie a “good” movie and the other not? My guess? Sometimes it just depends who watches a movie and if it was a financial success or not. It’s not always a question about quality: too often you can find many good “logical” reasons to critique a movie negatively, even though it may not be that bad (or, at least, any worse than others of its kind) at all.

But let’s jump a bit back in time: I love those flashbacks! Sheena started as a British (!) comic strip in 1937, co-created by Will Eisner (The Spirit), and debuting in the US in 1938. That was a good 3 years before Wonder Woman appeared for the first time, which essentially makes her the first female comic book hero ever. The character is essentially a female version of Tarzan, strongly taking inspiration from a 1904 book, “Green Mansions” by William Henry Hudson. In this, a cynical rebel from civilization meets cute feral girl Rina in the South American jungle. The book was filmed in 1959, starring a pre-Psycho Anthony Perkins and Audrey Hepburn, produced by her then-husband Mel Ferrer. But as Rina and Sheena have very little in common, we won’t go into more detail here.

Sheena was successful as a comic strip,so much so that she got her own TV show a couple of years earlier, in 1955 starring Irish McCalla as the main role. I’ve not seen this series, so can’t judge it but there are some episodes of it as a bonus on my Sheena DVD box-set (ordered from the US for a reasonable price!), so sooner or later I will have to have a look at them, too. The Sheena character then seemed to be dormant for many years until she was suddenly re-awakened with the 1984 picture. The logic according to the producer was quite strange: Raiders of the Lost Ark had been a great hit, cementing the reputations of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as “can’t do wrong” filmmakers, and everyone in Hollywood was trying to find a way to climb on board the fantasy-adventure cash-train.

This led to some very different films and series during the eighties, ranging from the Conan movies with Schwarzenegger bringing Robert E. Howard’s pulp hero of the 1930s (and the later Marvel comic book version) on the big screen, to resurrecting Africa explorer and adventurer Alan Quartermain, in the form of action-comedies starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone. The producer of Sheena just figured – and it’s not such a bad assumption at all – that since 1980’s audiences were interested in all those old heroes from the 1930s, it was therefore logically to bring a contemporary version of Sheena into cinemas.

Here’s the resulting story in a nutshell: Reporter Vic Casey (Wass) and his camera man Fletch (Scott) are filming on an official event when they witness the murder of King Jabalani of the African country Tigora. The shaman of the free-living Zambouli tribe (played by Princess Elizabeth of Toro, who was the first East African woman admitted to the English bar, and briefly Idi Amin’s foreign secretary in Uganda!) is accused of the murder and thrown into prison but freed by Sheena, a white girl that she adopted and raised, after Sheena’s parents died years ago in an earthquake.

Fascinated by this unusual woman who can command wild animals with her thoughts, and in possession of evidence that can prove how the murder was actually committed, Vic follows Sheena into the jungle. They’re unaware of the fact that the real ring-leaders, Prince Otwani, brother of the deceased king, and Countess Zanda, the dead king’s wife, are on their trail with an army of mercenaries on their trail.  They conspired to kill the king to get possession of the Zambouli land, whose soil is Titanium-rich and has special healing abilities, and now need to kill the pesky witnesses.

The movie was directed by John Guillermin who already had some experience in this territory having directed Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure in 1959, including a young Sean Connery in a supporting villain role and the Dino de Laurentiis mega-production of King Kong in 1976. He also was once on the short-list to direct the first Bond movie, Dr. No, but lost out to Terence Young. The script was written by David Newman and Lorenzo Semple Jr., also indicating the filmmakers were relying on people with experience in the genre. Semple had been responsible for the sixties Batman TV show and movie. He got a credit for unofficial Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again (though, according to sources nothing of what Semple wrote for that movie made it into the final script), and did the similarly comic-book inspired Flash Gordon at the start of the eighties. Meanwhile, together with his wife, Newman reportedly re-wrote the final script that would be turned into the movies Superman and Superman II.

The music by Richard Hartley is something the viewer really has to get used to; this was the era of synthesizer soundtracks (even Jerry Goldsmith would get into that for a certain time) and the score here reminds me of similar sounding music by the then-popular Tangerine Dream. It often comes across as too bland and unfitting – it feels deeply wrong when something that sounds almost romantic is played in scenes were people die or get killed. I wonder how this movie might have played with a classic Goldsmith, James Horner or John Barry soundtrack. and is again a reminder of what a pivotal role music plays in a movie.

The actors… Well… There’s not so much to say about the actors: Tanya Roberts (“3 Angels for Charlie“, the original TV show) is definitely the most well-known here which already tells you enough. Her performance has been often mocked and ridiculed, but I don’t find it terrible. If you play an orphan that has grown up in the jungle. it seems logical that most things from civilization must appear for you like magic e. g. binoculars. The dialogue could have been better here and there but hey, at least we are miles away from Johnny Weismueller  Tarzan-talk.

My personal feeling is that reviewers had fun putting the whole thing down as some kind of “dumb blonde” joke, ignoring completely that Sheena is definitely not an idiot: she knows her way around the jungle, how to ride, command the animals in battle, etc. The recent Tarzan movie with Alexander Skarsgard, Christoph Waltz, Margot Robbie and Samuel L. Jackson did much the same and there weren’t any big complaints about these similar animal scenes (apart from their bad CGI), or how to become invisible in the jungle and make an ad hoc bow and arrow out of the material Mother Nature provides.

Of course the movie shoots itself in the foot a couple of times. Sheena is quite often objectified, even though it’s played for laughs thanks to the awkward reactions of the man accompanying her. Those prudish boys from civilization! But gosh, I’m really the last ever to complain about a naked Tanya Roberts taking a bath in a river or watching her climb up a mountain or a tree with very small panties on… Of course this was fan-service (did such a thing exist in 1984?) and I don’t mind. This is not really so bad: anyone who ever saw the tedious Bo Derek version of Tarzan – which essentially played like a soft-porn-tease-movie with a bit of drunken Richard Harris thrown in for good measure – will probably agree.

Roberts plays Sheena as some kind of nature child and that’s fine. There is something enormously cute to this innocent ethereal spirit, who doesn’t know about the evils of civilization and is limited to what she has experienced up until then in the areas of her territory. I think that innocence is  the direction the movie is consistently aiming for, especially at the end. Additionally, there are some Rousseau-esque ideas about the noble savage going on here, though you can take or leave those. 

One thing worthy of criticism in regard to Roberts’ acting is, she seems to overdo it a bit here and there. It’s much the same complaint frequently levelled against her when people discuss her performance in A View to a Kill, the James Bond movie which she was offered due to this film. So there was at least one positive result of Sheena! Sure, I wouldn’t have ever hired her for a Shakespeare play and her status as a possible star evaporated very quickly after Bond. But I just don’t think she is as terrible an actress as a lot of people think.

The only other actor known to me here is Ted Wass, playing the reporter who follows Sheena into the jungle and falls in love with her. Wass appears terribly bland and uninteresting for me, like a stand-in for a much better actor, but as he essentially has the “Jane” role here, I didn’t really care. The movie I know him from was Curse of the Pink Panther, where he was an American police man chosen to find the missing Inspector Clouseau. As Peter Sellers had already died, this was obviously Blake Edwards’ attempt to continue the series with another actor in a similar role. But Wass appeared very awkward; you can’t just replace Peter Sellers like that.

There’s not much else to say about this movie. It came, it flopped in cinemas and was forgotten but in retrospect it’s not that bad. I definitely find it a better movie than the recent Tarzan movie with Skarsgard, and 1000 times more entertaining than Bo Derek’s Tarzan the Ape Man trash audiences had endured a couple of years before. My feeling is that Sheena. though definitely not a lost classic from the mid-80s. makes for decent entertainment if in the mood for a jungle adventure. Seeing it on a big TV screen actually makes it look quite cinematic as the beautiful landscapes of Africa were nicely captured here – as well as the natural beauty of Mrs. Roberts!

I do think there was not really an audience for this in its day. I really do think today’s generation of girls and females are much more interested in the comic book movie genre and that male comic book fans in the 1980s may have consciously avoided movies like this. But I do think that – given the right attitude – Sheena makes a good combo with Supergirl, or perhaps Clan of the Cave Bear. Most would give this movie 2 stars, but for me it’s not that far from beloved trash like One Million Years BC and give it a generous 3½ stars. I simply like the movie, not least the ending in which Vic leaves Sheena in Africa, despite his love for her, knowing that our modern world would just corrupt and destroy her beautiful character. It’s an astonishing and thoughtful bitter-sweet ending for a movie that hardly wants to be more than just two hours of easy entertainment.

I say it again: Critics were overly harsh to this little Africa adventure. Maybe there’s just something in Tanya Roberts acting that triggers that kind of reaction?

Dir: John Guillermin
Star: Tanya Roberts, Ted Wass, Donovan Scott. Princess Elizabeth of Toro

Sheena

“Sheena” would eventually return in form of another TV-series that ran for two seasons and 35 episodes from 2000-2002. It’s quite likely that producers Douglas Schwartz and Steven L. Sears hoped to cash in on the trend of action-adventure TV-shows that were then popular thanks to series like “Hercules” and “Xena”. Sears himself was enjoying quite some success with “Xena – Warrior Princess” which he wrote several scripts of and partly co-produced.

Unfortunately, the “Sheena” show was nowhere near as captivating as “Xena” was. Sheena (Nolin) is far from the “cute but a bit naive” version that Tanya Roberts played. Here, Sheena is more a kind of eco-terrorist, fiercely protecting “her” jungle of Maltaka – so you’d better behave if you go there! Along comes Matt Cutter (Nelson) with his constantly ironically snarky companion Mendelson (Quigley). Cutter is out for the quick buck, leading tourists in the jungle, trying to forget his former career as a CIA-agent (!). But after clashing with Sheena in the beginning they quickly establish a working relationship – usually meaning Sheena will draw the poor man into another harrowing adventure of hers.

Obviously, there are plenty of terrible things that can happen in the jungle, be it big game hunters, terrorists, military coups or tribal wars that have to be prevented. While the show quite obviously had a very limited budget – I couldn’t escape the fact after some time that they always filmed at the same five locations – I give the film makers credit. They tried to make their show as diverting as possible as they could, with the time and money they had at their disposal.

Sheena has changed quite a bit from her previous version; she is no dumb blonde in the jungle, she reads Tom Clancy and romantic novels, has her own cave, is trained in the mystical art of transforming into any animal with whom she has eye-contact (I immediately had to think of the old TV-show “A case for Professor Chase” when seeing this) by Shaman Kali (Moorer) and has absolutely no qualms about killing off evil-doers in the jungle – and there are plenty over the course of the show).

Usually she transforms into what she calls the “Darakna” – which essentially means she puts black mud on her body and gloves, with bone claws on to slash her enemies to death. Don’t worry: it’s neither bloody nor (after the first time they show it to us) very exciting. I just wonder if, by doing that, she also immediately became super-powered. though she already is a strong fighter. Or if it just made the killing easier for her, as she then wasn’t “quite herself” (to quote Norman Bates!).

It seems the producers were going for some kind of developing love story – differently to “Xena”, there are no overlapping story-arcs, just stand-alone episodes. But if so, they blew it. It seems all the efforts of Cutter were in vain, after early in the second season, Sheena has sex with a random stranger after a couple of unsubtle compliments from him. A couple of episodes later, we are asked to believe that Cutter gets together with an Asian women he once met in a training unit at the CIA. Oh, and we have to suffer through the usual episode where Sheena meets her “first love,” or the one where a special-mission leads Cutter’s ex-wife into the jungle.

Nolin and Nelson never have much chemistry with each other, that would let them appear as anything more than good friends. There’s no Xena-Gabrielle spark here, if that’s what you were hoping for! So if you thought we were getting the Sheena-Cutter-happy ending no one was asking for, you’d be wrong. Cutter says good-bye to another beautiful blonde at the beginning of the last episode, who thanks him for “showing him the world”, and the rest deals with a tribe mistaking constantly monotonously babbling wanna-be-snark Mendelson for a wise, old leader with the same name. The series ends as unspectacularly as it began.

That said, while the show (like most shows of its ilk at the time) is underwhelming compared to “Hercules” and “Xena”, I do think the screenwriters really tried to come up with as inventive stories as possible, given the fact that the “adventures in the jungle” was already a genre as dead as a door-nail. There are some good ideas here: plants that raise certain hormones in your blood, making you love-struck as well as murderous (therefore having Cutter and Sheena try to kill each other); a female black Rocky in the jungle, faced with countless attacks by her opponents; a kind of “X-files”-episode, with the audacity to play that show’s musical theme a couple of times in the episode; or the dangerous giant ants that eat anything. setting Cutter and Sheena in quite a distressing position.

There are also some “guest stars” though you shouldn’t expect the A-class of actors here. I noticed Grand L. Bush (whom I know from a minor role in the James Bond-movie Licence to Kill some 11 years earlier), make-up specialist and occasional actor Tom Savini (From Dusk till Dawn) and the Tarzan of the 60s, Ron Ely in a villain role. At least the team tried, though you hardly ever can speak of three-dimensional villains here. You also have to forgive the typical 90s CGI-morphing and masks that were terrible, even in better and more prestigious TV shows of the time than this one.

All in all, “Sheena” is not a great show but given its limitations I would say the people in charge tried to do their very best. Though while I could still binge-watch “Xena” today, “Sheena” is something that I would probably only watch again if I woke up at 2 a.m. and regular TV didn’t offer anything better at that time.

Star: Gena Lee Nolin, John Allen Nelson, Kevin Quigley, Margo Moorer

Terminal

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★★★½
“Style wars.”

Oozing with a unique visual style that’s like a brutalist cross between Blade Runner and Alice in Wonderland, this focuses on a battle for business between assassins. Annie (Robbie) – or, maybe, she’s called Bonnie – wants to take over the murderous commissions of the mysterious Mr. Franklin. He agrees, only if she takes out the current incumbents, Vince (Fletcher) and his apprentice, Alfred (Irons). Simultaneously, while working as a waitress in an all-night diner at a railway station, she meets Bill (Pegg), a terminally-ill English teacher, who enters her establishment while waiting for a train in front of which to throw himself.

This was ferociously slagged off by many critics, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calling it, “one of the worst movies ever made.” [Mind you, as the man after whom eFilmCritic named their Quote Whore of the Year award, all his opinions should be taken accordingly…] It’s certainly not that bad, though having stumbled across it on Hulu, our investment in it was strictly limited to 96 minutes. I do admit, the two strands which run through much of the film, never truly mesh. Each works well enough individually – they are just so different in tone and content, you wonder if the script would have been better off sticking to one or the other, and figured out a way to avoid the rather large lump of expository backstory delivered at the end.

However, Annie/Bonnie acts as a binding element to the storylines, manipulating the other three participants with the practiced ease of the expert sociopath. Robbie, who was also a producer, is a hell of a lot of fun to watch, channeling the spirit of Billie Piper, all blonde hair and perkiness; Pegg is also good value, going significantly against his usual type. Fletcher, best known for his roles under director Guy Ritchie, still seems to think he’s in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, yet it’s not ineffective. The only performance with which I had a problem was the stunt casting of Mike Myers, in a fairly pivotal role as the station-master. I’ve never exactly been a fan of his approach to (over-)acting, and this film reminded me why.

When it comes to cinematic style, I’ve also been a believer in “go big or go home,” and you won’t be surprised for which direction Stein opts. As a result, this feels not dissimilar to Sucker Punch in its approach, both in terms of the hyper-stylized picture it paints, and also in treading the line between exploiting the male gaze and undermining it [there’s no doubt who the sharpest tool in the box is here, and it’s not even close]. I’d like to have seen the film go a bit more full-bore with the Wonderland theme; the potential there is ignored, and largely limited to a few quotes and nods. Still, we were certainly never bored, the visuals proving capable of tiding us over both the weaker moments in the script, and Mike Myers.

Dir: Vaughn Stein
Star: Margot Robbie, Dexter Fletcher, Simon Pegg, Max Irons

The Steel Queen, by Karen Azinger

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

“In this world, you are nobody unless you can wield a sword, and I will not be nobody! My life will count for something!”

Another one in the ongoing series of “books I read because of the interesting-looking cover,” I suspect I may have lucked out here. Most of the other six volumes in the series possess rather more generic fantasy covers, and I’d likely have browsed past them. That would have been a shame, because I’d have missed out on a well-written story that combines many threads, and has three… two… dammit, 2½ heroines worthy of our site’s interest.

It takes place in the land of Erdhe, across in particular the kingdoms of Castlegard, Navarre, Lanverness and Coronth. Magic exists, but fell into disrepute centuries ago, after the War of Wizards, and things are roughly around the early middle ages, technology wise. At the highest level, it’s a straightforward “good vs. evil” tale, with the forces of the Lords of Light facing the Dark Lord and his minions. But the story proceeds, mostly around the various royal courts and their interactions.

To our end, the two most interesting characters are Princess Katherine of Castlegard, and Queen Liandra Tandroth of Lanverness. The former is the youngest child of the monarch, coming after five sons, and has absolutely no interest in being the demure, marriage token her father wants. She gets secret sword lessons from one of his knights, and after the King sends her off to Lanverness, in the hopes of her becoming more ladylike, fate (and the Lords of Light) intervene. It becomes increasingly clear Kath will play a significant role in the upcoming conflict against the Dark Lord, especially after his minions abduct her on the way to Lanverness, and she has to fend for herself and try to escape.

I thought Queen Liandra might be the monarch of the title, but her nickname is the Spider Queen, for her astute political instincts. She was the king’s sole heir, and was only allowed to assume the throne if she got married. Her husband died in a hunting accident – very Game of Thrones! –  and she has ruled ever since, using her unsurpassed wits and guile. While we’re on GoT, imagine a kinder, gentler version of Cersei Lannister, without the incest, and you’re in the right area. She has managed to out-think her opponents so far, but a conspiracy is under way to remove Liandra and put her dissolute (and easily manipulated) second son on the throne instead.

There’s also Princess Jordan of Navarre, one of seven siblings, who is as martially-inclined as Katherine; the two become ‘sword sisters’ after meeting in the Lanverness court. She’s the ½: for spoilerish reasons, I suspect she may be somewhat peripheral, shall we say, to the saga as a whole. These are the main players of relevance; it’s not all action heroines, by any means, and that’s perhaps Azinger’s main talent. She’s great at telling a story that has a lot of moving parts, in a way which keeps things clear in the reader’s head and builds well-defined characters, that engaged and interested me – even the villains. 

I get the feeling she is perhaps trying to draw parallels between events here and contemporary social politics. The Flame God who has taken over Coronth is brutal fundamentalist religion at its worst and most corrupt. However, the book originally came out in 2011, so it’s not necessarily quite clear now what those parallels are. It’s also far from a complete story: as you’d expect from the opening volume in a seven-book saga, things are only just beginning to get going by the end here. Yet, I was still reeled in, and if I didn’t already have a “to read” pile the size of a small mountain, would likely head straight into the next part. That, however, will likely have to wait until I retire from doing book reviews for the site…

Author: Karen Azinger
Publisher: Kiralynn Epics, available through Amazon both as an e-book and paperback.
Book 1 of 7 in The Silk & Steel Saga series

Venom in the Skin, by Jessica Gunn

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Literary rating: ★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

To be fair, the low rating here is not necessarily just the author’s fault. It was only almost at the end – when I was checking to see how much more I had to endure – that I discovered a salient fact. While this is described as being “Book 1” in the series, it appears to be a follow-up to the same writer’s five-volume Hunter Circles series. The heroine there, Krystin Blackwood, turns up in a cameo here, as do other characters, and it’s quite possible this would make more sense if you’d read that series. However: if you call your novel “Book 1”, it should be capable of standing on its own merits. Otherwise, call it “Book 6,” dammit.

As is, for a rookie reader, the does a really poor job of world building, presuming far too much of the background as known, and setting up situations where the reader is left entirely in the dark about who is doing what to whom, and why. The heroine is Ava Locke, who was previously part of a team of demon hunters, involved in a secret war between the forces of light and darkness. Save Ava, all her team were wiped out by Veynix, one of the enemy demons. She goes into her side’s version of witness protection, yet ends up the masked champion at an underground fight ring which pits demons against humans. That is, until her identity is exposed, and it turns out Veynix (and his collection of venomous poisons) is on her trail again. And the authorities behind Ava don’t exactly have her back.

For this novice reader, it was a real struggle, and if I didn’t feel like I had to write a review, this would likely have been a DNF (did not finish). The first half in particular, felt like really lazy writing, elements being dropped in without explanation. Even after I got to the end, and saw the semi-helpful chart at the back, I’m still not sure what a Hunter Circle is supposed to be or do. And is there magic – sorry, magik – or not? Seems most people can teleport at will, but other magic is… vague. [I have no clue about the significance of Ember witch magik] Some have it, others don’t. And a central character uses it once, then conveniently “forgets” they have it for the rest of the book – until it becomes necessary to the plot at the end. If I’d been reading a physical copy of this, and not an e-book, such a convenient contrivance would likely have led to it sailing across the room at that point.

There is a fair amount of action, from Ava’s fight-club contests, building to a battle against Veynix in his lair, and these are hard-hitting encounters. I just didn’t care about them or or the outcome, since I had no investment in either the participants or the world they inhabited. #RemoveFromDevice

Author: Jessica Gunn
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon both for Kindle and as a paperback.
Book 1 of 2 in the Deadly Trades series.

Slave, Warrior, Queen, by Morgan Rice

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

The author  is certainly prolific: this series, Of Crowns and Glory is eight books, yet only her third-longest, not even half the length of The Sorceror’s Ring. Unfortunately, based on this, what she delivers in volume, is negated by the low quality. The first problem is the setting, which is a lazy version of ancient Rome, right down to a population kept in thrall by gladiatorial games. Except, it’s actually “Delos”, which seems a convenient way for the author to avoid having to do any research; she can then make up whatever she wants, since it’s not a “real” place. You certainly don’t get much sense of it being a world into which much thought has been put.

The heroine is 17-year-old Ceres, whose father is a weapon-smith to the monarchy, though this brings in barely enough money for the family to survive. When he has to go off to try and earn his fortune, Ceres is on thin ice, because her mother tries to sell her. She runs away, and gets a job in the palace, becoming the “squire” (for want of a better word) to Prince Thanos, the only member of the ruling class who is not a scumbag, and is as handsome as he is moral. [Insert eye-rolling here. Just once, I’d like to read about a character who was smart, kind and ugly…] Elsewhere, Ceres’s brother and boyfriend have taken up arms as part of a rebellion against cruel King Claudius.

You can probably figure out where the rest of this goes, with Thanos having a jealous fiancée, while Ceres bounces in and out of dungeons, and has unexplained magical powers that manifest only when necessary to the plot. The last is a particular annoyance, not least because her upbringing has led Ceres to be not exactly short of combat skills herself, in defiance of society’s mores. This aspect is sadly underdeveloped, and she spends more time moping in cells than putting her skills to use. Although the cliff-hanger ending, with Ceres thrown into the gladiatorial arena as a political pawn, suggests more might perhaps be made of this in ensuing volumes. And is it wrong of me to mention that she never even touches a bow, as the cover depicts? On further investigation, it’s a stock photo, used by at least one other novel…

The plot and characters might also have been bought off-the-shelf, since they are hardly any less generic. The simplistic politics on view are particularly irritating, with noble peasants being relentlessly oppressed by their cruel overlords (Thanos excepted). The story keeps cutting back and forth between the palace intrigue and the rebellion, and the two sides never manage to mesh: the latter seems more an annoying distraction than anything. Rice does deserve credit for killing off some unexpected characters, which provides some sense of peril. But the ratio of title present here is about 80% slave to 20% warrior, with queen present only at trace, “produced in a facility which processes peanuts” levels.

Author: Morgan Rice
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon as an e-book or paperback.
Book 1 of 8 in the Of Crowns and Glory series.

The Last Dragonslayer

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★★★½
“Here be dragons. Well, a dragon, anyway…”

This slice of British televisual fantasy was offered up on Christmas Day, and provides a pleasant, warm and unchallenging slice of family fare. It takes place in a world where magic has ruled, but is gradually fading from consciousness and being replaced by technology. The magic appears connected to the dragons with which humanity shared the planet, uneasily. After previous battles, a kind of apartheid was set up, with the world divided into dragon and human areas. Overseeing the peace is the Dragonslayer, who is charged with killing any dragons who violate the treaty and attack humans or their territory. But some members of mankind are casting envious eyes on the unspoiled territory of the dragons, and would love an excuse to take it over.

Into this comes Jennifer Strange (Chappell), an orphan who was adopted as an apprentice by the magician Zambini (Buchan). A decade or so later, he vanishes suddenly, and while Jennifer is still coming to terms with that, a bigger shock occurs. Fate has decreed she is to become the Dragonslayer, the one prophesied to kill the final dragon. Having grown to love magic in all its forms, she’s extremely reluctant to do so. But how is a teenage girl supposed to escape what the apparently immutable finger of fate has written? And never mind, having to cope with all the other unwanted attention, from interview requests to merchandising deals, that comes to Jennifer along with the unexpected position.

It’s a nicely constructed alternate world, part steampunk, part modern and a declining part magical – wizards, for example, are now reduced to doing rewiring work for employment, such is the low demand for their skills. This offers scope for satirical elements, such as the Dragonslayer having to do adverts for a soft drink to pay off an unexpected tax debt. There are also any number of faces you’ll recognize if you watch much British TV: Buchan is familiar from Broadchurch; Bradley, who plays Jennifer’s sidekick Gordon, is best-known as Jon Snow’s wingman Samwell Tarly in Game of Thrones; and King Snodd is Matt Berry, who played a similarly mad boss in The I.T. Crowd. Richard E. Grant voices the final fire-breather, though is largely wasted in the role.

Chappell makes for a good, plucky heroine, even if her willingness to accept the hand dealt to her is a little fatalistic. Why not just walk away? Can’t kill the last dragon if you don’t pick up the sword – even if it does have your name engraved on it. While light in tone, this does have its action beats, not least when Jennifer has to fend off an assassination attempt, and an occasional moment of surprising poignancy. The finale perhaps asks more questions than it answers, and it’s clear the aim is an ongoing saga of films to follow the books (there are three volumes in the series by Jasper Fforde with a fourth in preparation). Yet if this does become a Christmas Day media tradition in Britain, it’s one to which I’d not object at all,

Dir: Jamie Magnus Stone
Star: Ellise Chappell, Anna Chancellor, Andrew Buchan, John Bradley