The best way I can describe this book is like Bunny by Mona Awad, but actually fun. The writing wasn’t perfect but I vibed with the style, and it’s still pretty polished for a debut novel.

I had some issues with the characters and pacing. Luna doesn’t really work as an actual person. We never really find out anything about her even after the revelations happen. She could have been a really fascinating character if she had been handled a bit better, she’s such a driving force for the whole novel. Marnie though is exactly the kind of person I would expect could get dragged into this kind of situation. The ending feels very rushed which I think ties into my issues with Luna’s characterisation - there’s just not enough there to justify how things go off the rails so quickly. Things really needed to be built up more to make it work.

Overall though I didn’t need this book to be perfect. It was readable, funny, and the setting and everything around Rytuał was just really fun. Also loved that this was set in Melbourne which I didn’t expect when I picked it up.

“Moron-Genius and Mouse Go Berserk.”

I really loved the concept of this book. Charlie Gordon is a man with an intellectual disability who is given the opportunity to undergo an experimental surgery to increase his mental capacity. The book is told in an epistolary format from Charlie’s perspective so we directly see his development and the changes over time. The author handles this in such an interesting, nuanced way and with a lot of attention to ethics and philosophy. There’s a lot to think about everything that happens and is discussed in this book. The last page completely took me out.

On another note though, my alternate descriptor for this book is ‘Man develops genius level intellect and immediately becomes a raging misogynist’.

The way he thought about and treated women (solely as sexual objects or romantic partners) was gross. He tried to pressure Alice into a physical relationship with him when she was clearly uncomfortable. He approaches everything in terms of sex instead of relationships, before even attempting to woo or kiss a woman. There’s this gem of a line: “There was no place to enter. No street, no room, no woman.” A woman is not a place for you to “enter” for your own gratification. He can’t bring himself to sleep with Alice so he immediately goes home and sleeps with Fay. Fay isn’t exceptionally interested in everything he does so he says this is an argument for polygamy. He makes a joke about “goosing” another man’s wife if she “keeps shaking her fanny at him” when no such thing has happened. He whines that he has no friends when he hasnt made a single attempt to reach out to anyone except Alice who he uses as a sounding board to eject every thought in his head, but apparently that’s not enough to qualify her for friendship. He’s awful. Alice is bad enough in her own right, being willing to even entertain a relationship with a man who she mainly knows through her classes as a teacher at a disability support centre.

It’s unclear how of this was intentional given that this book was published in the 60s, but I’m choosing to interpret it as deliberate commentary on how IQ does not correlate to emotional intelligence or empathy. Charlie doesn’t have any experience with relationships or romance. The book acknowledges on a couple of occasions through other characters that Charlie has become arrogant, self-centered, and cynical. I do think that the time period ties into the misogyny though.

This book has a lot of complex characters who aren’t always likeable, and a lot to say.

This is the best Nightwing run I’ve read in a while, which honestly isn’t saying much given the quality of the preceding issues.

I really liked that this was a return to form for Dick that characterised him well, and there were some fun cameos and relationship dynamics (Wally, Roy, Tim, Clark, and Talia). The plotline was interesting but honestly didn’t make much sense and didn’t feel well plotted.

The villain and enemies were forgettable. The pregnancy/super baby storyline felt very uncomfortable and didn’t seem to actually contribute that much to the story since it was majorly glossed over. I don’t mind dark themes or villains doing things that are incredibly evil, but when those things aren’t acknowledged by the story they don’t feel intentional. They should have just had the babies being grown in vats or cloned if they weren’t interested in exploring it properly, because the way it was written felt very exploitative.

The Nightwing storyline is still in kind of an odd place where the writers don’t seem to know what to do with Dick. They’ve put him in New York this time building himself a base and taking on a job as a museum curator which seems like a strange fit even as a cover. DC are obviously really struggling to set him up properly as a hero after the decision to destroy Blüdhaven while also not wanting to return him to Gotham. That storyline is still really harming his character development and making everything feel kind of unstable, but not leaning into it at all as a plot device. There was also a very forgettable romance shoehorned in here with a woman who has about -100 personality points. I can’t remember her name and Dick doesn’t even seem very interested in her as a romantic partner.

For context for this review, I read the translation by Eugene Mason.

I really enjoyed the content of these lais but I needed to read them translated by somebody else. The introduction belittles Marie de France’s ability as a writer and is shockingly sexist.

“At the commencement of this Introduction I stated that Marie's romances are concerned mainly with love. Her talent was not very wide nor rich, and I have no doubt that there were facets of her personality which she was unable to get upon paper. The prettiest girl in the world can only give what she has to give.”

“The noble maiden seldom had a love story…As a rule, however, her inclination was not permitted to stand in the way of the interests of her parents or guardians. She was betrothed in childhood, and married very young, for mercenary or political reasons, to a husband much older than herself. We read of a girl of twelve being married to a man of fifty. There was no great opportunity for a love story here …Not that the mediæval maidens showed any shrinking from matrimony. ‘Fair daughter, I have given you a husband.’ ‘Blessed be God,’ said the damsel. There spoke a contented spirit. Things have changed, and we can but sigh after the good old times.”

I then realised that this translation was published in 1911 and this made a little bit more sense. For context, Marie de France is the earliest known French female poet and one of the earliest to record Arthurian legend. She was possibly the first person to write chivalric tales. She created the short form Breton poem as an art form. The above introduction makes no mention of any of this. Maybe Eugene should have chosen to translate a different poet if he didn’t like the content.

These poems are translated in prose instead of verse, so there’s no attempt to preserve the original rhyme scheme. A lot of the tone and style is completely lost.

The stories are so good though! The women have real agency and are often the initiators of the romance and the planners.

I especially liked The Lay of the Were-Wolf (Bisclavret), the Lay of Sir Launfal, and the Lay Four Sorrows. Bisclavret is particular was really good.

Oddly there are 16 lais included in this collection when only 12 are actually attributed to Marie de France. The last 4 feel very out of place in tone and content compared to the rest and shouldn’t have been included. This would have been a 4 star read if not for the questionable translation and the extra lais that didn’t belong here and ended the collection on a sour note. I’ll be sourcing a copy translated in verse to read next.