In 1957, I was a kid, newly arrived in London. At that time, the two most prominent Britons in my life outside of my family were the Queen, and an affable presenter on the BBC named David Attenborough. Who could have imagined that sixty-five years later, that would still be the case?
The title reminds you of every execrable anime you’ve ever seen, where high schoolers with the personalities and confidence of fourth graders somehow end up saving the Universe, or at least east Asia from Darkseid or Satan or some other out-of-work bogeyman. Accompanied, of course, by an unceasing drumbeat of awkward sexual tension that leaves you wondering how people in that part of the world ever reproduced.
It’s impossible to look OUT from Vonnegut’s perspective. But Cawdron has done a fine job of looking IN. And so it goes.
Never Flinch would probably be a good title for a collection of King short stories, but in this instance, it’s the title of the latest Holly Gibney story—her seventh, I believe. She first showed up in 2014, in Mr. Mercedes, the first of the Bill Hodges “hard boiled detective” series. She was meant to be an incidental character, an emotionally vulnerable but engaging creation meant to stir up reader sympathy by being blown up by the killer. But King, noted for creating unforgettable characters, was so charmed by Holly that he decided to kill her sister instead and keep her around as a motivation for Bill Hodges. She has gone on to surpass even the less-charming Randall Flagg as King’s favorite go-to character.
Abercrombie’s questing group consists mostly of the types of creatures the questors normally have to slay on any given jaunt. The cast consists of a vampire, a werewolf, a dark mage, an elf (Elves are not nice people in this world), and a cursed immortal. There’s also a human virago whose favorite hobby seems to be dismemberment, and they are led by a naive and timid monk. Their job is to ferry a princess across much of early medieval Europe to the city of Troy, capital of the Eastern Church.
Rhiannon is mousy, drab, quiet, with tragic anime eyes, a woman who the world treats, not with contempt, but with utter indifference. The viewer will cringe at the careless cruelty with which the world treats her, buttressed by flashbacks to her school years when she was terrorized by an uncaring bully. She suffers loss in her personal life and humiliation at work at her local small-town newspaper.
But don’t worry: she finds a hobby late in the first episode. She stabs a bully to death. It’s amazing how a horrific crime that happens on the spur of the moment can brighten your day.
Glass Dome is a low-key investigative procedural that leans heavily on the interpersonal relationships of the principal characters involved.
Ludwig is a six-part series about John “Ludwig” Taylor, a reclusive author of puzzles who has to come and investigate the sudden disappearance of his identical twin brother, James, a DCI (detective) for the Cambridge Police Force. “Ludwig” is John’s nom de plume for the books of puzzles he creates. He’s on the spectrum in much the same way ultraviolet is, and so is his missing brother, although the later is a bit better socialized, with a job dealing with others and a wife and teenage son. Both attended Cambridge University.
Touch of the Elegrian is an interesting look at two races forced to co-exist after a First Contact gone disastrously wrong. The two races have much in common—visually, they are essentially identical, so much so that Elegrians visiting in human areas have to wear a shoulder patch identifying them as Elegrians.
Hancock is a middle-class clark (clerk in America). This is at the very end of post-war London, and the city, unawares, is about to be convulsed by a vast societal upheaval, Antony Burgess and Mary Quant and Mick Jagger and London swing like a pendulum do.
But this is right at the beginning, when change is about to stir, and in this time, the clarks all wear black suits with narrow lapels and skinny dark ties, and black bowlers and carry black umbrellas. The only color to be seen is grimy boiled-liver grey.