Exactly what it says on the tin.
9. Winterglass by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
A queer The Snow Queen retelling that's as cold and dull as its icy setting. Some good moments can't save a passionless fantasy novella featuring barely-emotional characters. The writing isn't bad, it just needs room to breathe. Its saving grace is its diversity. Race, LBGTQ, trans, nonbinary - nobody is straight and white in this fantasy story, which is terrific. I couldn't care about anything else in it, unfortunately. The ending is a horrible downer and eff-you to the reader, as well.
8. Batgirl, Vol. 4: Fists of Fury (Batgirl (2000) #4) by Kelley Puckett, Scott Peterson (Writers), Various (Artists)
Yeah, the blurb is a lie. Cassandra Cain's Batgirl never actually fights the Joker in this crap comic. It's a confusing, meandering mess. What was going on here? The issues vaguely tie in together. The only good thing about it is the female companionship and mentorship. I wish I could really like a Cassandra Cain comic - she's a fascinating character.
7. Land of the Lustrous Vol. 1 by Haruko Ichikawa
What did I get here? A confusing Steven Universe ripoff where it is nearly impossible to tell the characters apart. Without colour this manga is incomprehensible. Nothing else to add. Too bizarre, even for its medium.
6. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
So I finally got around to reading some Dickens this year. I surprisingly liked Great Expectations. It's not a favourite, but I thought it was fairly decent. But Oliver Twist? Oh boy. Please sir, may I have some less angst? The title lead is entirely useless and ineffectual in his own story. He is so weak, gullible and pathetic, even for a poor Victorian boy. How many times is he rendered unconscious? And the author's antisemitism is ripe in Fagin, who is nearly always referred to as "the Jew" in the narration. He is a thief and abuser, and is described in disgusting archetypal Jewish traits. And yes, at 500 pages, Oliver Twist is boring, and very contrived. Proof that just because a book is a classic and written by a famous author for his time, it doesn't mean it's any good. If anything, its screen adaptations improved it.
5. Bizenghast, Volume 1 by M. Alice LeGrow
Yet another messy comic. Not a manga, though it very obviously wishes it was. It is so mid-2000s it's almost hilarious. The characters are caricatures. We know hardly anything about them, but especially nothing about the male lead - who the hell is he? Why is he with the female lead, whom this story is supposed to be about? Why does he want to protect her? Where did he come from? Why did this have to have a boy protecting the girl? It's a tired storytelling cliché, but noticeably grating in manga, shoujo manga even. This is one of the most egregious examples of that sexist trope I have ever seen. These kids question nothing about the supernatural events happening to them. They are not shaken by anything. They have little personality anyway, what did I expect? Is there a random comic relief little animal as well? WTF? The concept is flawed from the get-go: like, there are spirits in this place where they are doomed to live out how they died, over and over again, for all eternity, I guess? Do they forget how they died over and over again, too? How did they get where they are? Why exactly is this happening? If they are ghosts then they can't be killed, they're already dead, so what's at stake here? If they are not saved? The two children can die if they fail to "save" the spirits, but again, how and why? Will they become ghosts too and relive their deaths forever as well? Why this endless cycle, anyway? This wasn't thought out very well. So many questions, and I doubt they will be answered satisfactory in the subsequent volumes. Even the artwork isn't that good. Gothic horror? You can do soooooooooooooooo much better. This is amateur gothic lolita rubbish. I hate everything about Bizenghast. How did this win any contest?
4. Queenie by Jacqueline Wilson
The worst Jacqueline Wilson book I've read in my marathon, set in 1953, England. I've found a child protagonist worse than Oliver Twist. By god, Elsie Kettle (clever, Wilson) has got to be the whiniest, stupidest, most pathetic, crybaby, selfish, and self-absorbed of Wilson's characters ever. And she has very stiff competition. I swear there isn't a single page where Elsie isn't either whimpering, sobbing, blubbering, yelling, or vomiting, or crying and vomiting. She may be a hospital patient with an ailing grandmother and an awful, selfish, neglectful mother (stop with this archetype, please, Wilson! It's so old it's crusting over), but I hate Elsie. I want to smack her so hard, and I love children and would never wish harm to a single one on earth. Because she is a JW protagonist, Elsie has to be a good storyteller to a group of other children, none of whom she is particularly sympathetic towards, considering they all have tuberculosis in a ward in a secluded hospital. She's quite bloodthirsty in her imaginings, actually. The white cat, the titular Queenie, isn't even worth mentioning. She's just there to stroke Elsie's fragile ego whilst Elsie strokes her perfectly luscious fur. I'd wanted Elsie to get scratched so badly. The writing is almost painfully inane. And guess what? The bloody Queen of England visits the hospital after her coronation! And Elsie gets to speak to her! Nobody is less deserving of this contrivance! Right, let's move on before I burst a blood vessel and end up in hospital myself.
3. Letorian Descendants (Casey Blane Series #1) by Jodi Ann Fahey
I hate the paranormal genre in books. I hate the romances. I hate the love triangles. I hate the pathetic, ineffectual, male-dependent female leads. I hate them whether they are for adults or teens. I thought this would be different. I was wrong. Letorian Descendants starts off with promise, and it is written nicely and believably. But the further into it I got, the more the cliches started piling up. It is convoluted, uninteresting, and so trite and contrived that it reads like Twilight fanfiction. But the worst part is the love triangle. Oh, wait, no. The worst part is the out-of-nowhere, sudden love interest at the end, who is a typical bad boy, and who had very nearly killed the female teen lead at the beginning of the book. He tried to drown her in a swimming pool, or he was just protecting her from something worse. But he still nearly drowned her. He traumatised her; she's been scared of him throughout the book, and for good reason. But now he is a legit love interest. He's not even sorry for what he did to her. He wants to use her and own her, in some BS patriarchal vampire hierarchy. And the heroine gives in to him. She gives herself to him. Why? Fuck if I know. I seem to remember forced control of her emotions and mind being involved, making all of this even worse. She is forced by the men around her to pretend to be dead to her family, for some saving-the-world-type BS I wasn't really paying attention to. Yep, fuck this self-published shit (it was published in 2016! Why aren't these clichés and misogynistic abuse tropes dead yet?!). I won't be fooled by this redundant genre ever again.
2. Showcase Presents: Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, Vol. 1 by Gary Cohn, Dan Mishkin, Ernie Colón (Illustrator)
Disgusting. A comic for children that features the preteen-in-a-hot-woman's-body being threatened with rape in its first couple of issues. The sexual assault is not mentioned again. In fact, allusions to attempted rape happen more than once. Even for the eighties, this is reprehensible. It is inexcusable. The whole tome is too long, dense, convoluted, and boring, too. And all in black and white. Amethyst seems like a character I could like, in a nostalgic, Magical Girl-loving sense. But she is no She-Ra. Her character and lore are improved in Sword of Sorcery. Shame it didn't get to last.
1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Expected anything else? I hate this book so much that I did a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of it here on the reasons why I think it is contributing to the death of the human race as we know it. The self-indulgence, geek snobbery, and tone deafness on how geeks are viewed in the 21st century are the least of its problems. The male problematic figure arse-kissing is the tip of the iceberg. As is the lack of social commentary and self awareness for a science fiction novel. Things I should have mentioned about it in my read-through are its smug nihilism (that video games are literally the only thing that make life worth living) and shameful gatekeeping, and how the author thinks that there is only one way to be a nerd - keep living in the eighties, the best decade ever, apparently. Yeah, if you're American, white, male, straight, cisgender, fairly wealthy, and abled and healthy. I don't understand why it is so popular, even among woke feminists. Still haven't seen the film. I am beyond tired of talking about this overrated garbage heap. It is one of the things that depressed me in 2018. Fuck you, Ready Player One, and may 21st century intersectional feminists beat thee to thy Atari 2600s landfill. The ET game cartridges await you.
Phew! Too much negativity isn't good for anyone. Let's look at the positives of this year next time. Join me soon for my Top 20 Best 4-Star Books of 2018! Goodnight!
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