Jul 18
I know he’s already booked and busy and I’m still convinced that this movie will unfortunately become collateral damage in the Paramount/WB merger but putting into the universe Hudson Williams as the VA for Prince Kai
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I know he’s already booked and busy and I’m still convinced that this movie will unfortunately become collateral damage in the Paramount/WB merger but putting into the universe Hudson Williams as the VA for Prince Kai
So I just remembered that in year 7 we did this assignment where we adapted (subverted) fairytales and changed elements of them and I did sleeping beauty but I made it so that he was a boy who was gay, and instead of falling asleep he lost the ability to talk. Also he ran away to a castle in the woods, met a boy, kissed the boy, and then he was able to speak again. I wanna rewrite it now.
More rambling under the cut:
Hello, I’ve noticed and enjoy your posts where you put the same fairytale character in different media together. And every time I think about the Efteling fairytale versions. I used to watch them on dvd, and found this playlist on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoworyX79NfD0ZyaCIZxURfPaTomwfp4U&si=-5ANBqZ6uIiJ6g-O
If it’s alright I’d love to see these versions on your blog too! (The DVDs are called “Efteling Sprookjes”)
I didn't even know these existed! I mean... it makes sense that a theme park entirely centered around fairytales would end up creating its own production of them... I'll need to take a look when I can! I don't know much about Dutch fairytale media (outside of this one lost animated Hansel and Gretel app I couldn't find back in any way Xp)
Is it just me, or Americans and Europeans depict the standard, stereotypical fairy tale setting differently?
In my opinion, Americans depict the fairy tale setting as closer to the middle ages. The Fairy Tale Setting is often just a more colorful standard, almost Tokien-like, Fantasy Setting.
Meanwhile, in actual European adaptations of said tales, the stereotypical fairy tale setting is closer to the 18th, 19th century, with the architecture being the only thing vaguely medieval
Yes, I actually do believe as such. Mind you, I cannot speak for all of Europe - mainly France and a handful of other countries I am vaguely aware of adaptations (like England or Germany).
And I believe it is due to two specific things.
A) The very "American" view of fantasy. I mean, we have been repeating and endlessly talking about it for decades now - but for Americans everytime there is something fantasy or magical it is either "standard European medieval setting" either "modern-day America". And when I say "standard European medieval setting", it is this sort of idea and phantasm American built of a vaguely European setting which mixes various countries of Western Europe (Americans only have taken recent interest in other parts of Europe, such as Northern or Eastern, due to the success of things like "Midsommar" and folk-horror and whatnot), and various eras of the Middle-Ages (the Middle-Ages were divided into three specific period quite different from each other), with a good handful of things that were not from the Middle-Ages (like the witch-hunts, for example, they were Renaissance, not medieval).
Of course it is due to a mix of general ignorance about Europe (or any part of the world that is not the USA), and of not actually caring about the original setting since their point is either to parody/reinvent the fairytales in lighter/darker ways, or prove that theses stories are "timeless" and can invent outside of any specific context (which does greatly benefit Americans since like that they can snatch anything they like). Mind you it isn't something universal - take the Disney movies for example. They might not be quite exact, but at least they made a neat effort to evoke different cultures and different eras of Europe. It is very obvious that Disney's Snow-White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty take place in various points of Europe's history and in different countries (Snow-White's visual influence by German furniture and statues versus the nods to French culture in Cinderella ; Sleeping Beauty's medieval illumination visual versus the more modern royal outfits of Cinderella, etc...). But it is an effort that got completely lost through time (and I think it can be shown in how, when Disney made "Enchanted", their fairytale setting was turned into a random fantasy setting outside of time and space - it did reflect quite well how people saw the fairytale world at the time).
And you know what is even worse? This "random medieval setting" you speak of is NOT even Tolkien's! Tolkien setting was not medieval in the slightest, and doesn't look like your usual "medieval setting". Just look at the visuals of the Lord of the Rings movie, compare it with some "random fairytale setting" and you see the huge gap. If anything, Tolkien's world is more of a "Dark Ages" (you know, this unknown gap between Antiquity and Middle-Ages) feeling than anything, due to mixing Ancient Scandinavia with Ancient Greece and Dark Ages Arthurian Britain.
But... when you think about it, that the Americans would create such an unclear and artificial setting for their fairytales make sense, since this is literaly what "their" fairytales were compiled as. I'll explain: when you ask an American to list you fairytales, when you see the fairytales used in the American media, it is a Frankenstein-creature. You've got the brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault and Andersen and Joseph Jacobs and nursery rhymes and some Asbjornsen and Moe fairytales... Their exposition to fairytale was by compilations of stories literary and folkloric, from different centuries and different countries, mixed together as one. As such... it makes sense for them a fairytale world would look like a pile of mashed-potatoes in terms of history-geography. Because they have to build a world that mix all of these stuff as one... (Plus something-something about the Americans being fascinated by the Middle-Ages because they did not have one?)
B) The Europeans are very "conscious" about fairytales. I will almost say "self-conscious".
Europeans are bound to always test and try various time-eras, fashions and context for fairytales due to a set of three reasons.
1) We have centuries of "traditional medieval imagery" that the Americans lack. Since our fairytales were published between the 17th and 19th centuries - some even by the 20th - Europe already underwent the whole "Random medieval setting" phase through popular imagery and children book and whatnot. America just begun it from the 19th/20th century - we have been at it for two, three more centuries. So today we are moving forward (and in general, while there are many aspects Europe is "late" compared to the USA, in many other ways Europe is "in advanced" compared to the USA, just because of how "young" this country's history is).
2) We are aware of the context of our own fairytales. Due to the language barrier, for example, we know every time a story comes from somewhere else. We have folktales compilations classified by countries and regions. And everytime we bring up a specif set of fairytales, we bring up the life, job and time-era of the fairytale tellers (Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, which are our "national treasures" - unlike Americans for which they're just "yeah little foreign guys we see in the distance"). As such when the French talk about Cinderella or Puss in Boots, the very images of Renaissance are brought up, the same way a German will immediately think of the Napoleonian wars and the post-Napoleon era when thinking of the Grimms - even though the fairytales are supposed to be in the "pseudo-medieval" setting.
3) Europe has been flooded and dominated by the American media when it comes to fairytales. As such we are very aware and accustomed to the "pseudo-medieval" setting popularized by America, and when Europeans try to do their own thing, they usually try to set themselves apart from it, due to knowing how cliche and Americanized this already is. Something very similar happened with French fantasy literature for example - French fantasy books are always trying to stand away from the "cliche American fantasy book" precisely because we are flooded with them and they form the bulk of our fantasy literature, so as such we are very aware of the flaws and stereotypes and expectations coming with the genre... It also doesn't help that most of the castles and "old-fashioned" architecture around Europe is not medieval per se (or that the medieval architecture is for example very impractical when it comes to filming movies), and we have much more Renaissance buildings and the like. In France for example most castles are Renaissance-era. "Real" medieval castles (as in medieval castles not "remade" by Renaissance or modern designers) are much rarer, or not as well preserved as the Renaissance ones.
Anyway this post got way bigger than I intended, but if you ask me some of my thoughts, here they are - mind you they are just my thoughts and I can't speak for every European. I am just one little eye and one little mind in a big big world... But that's the things I am led to believe.
The sequels of the Three Little Pigs
I talked previously of Disney’s “Three Little Pigs”. But what few people know is that The Three Little Pigs wasn’t just one animated short among the Silly Symphonies, but a whole series! To bank on the success of the original animated short, three different sequels were created. Overall, all three were considered to be “failures” which led to an iconic line of Walt Disney “You can’t top pigs with pigs” - but they actually form a trio of important shorts that influenced further development of the “Three Little Pigs” world later on, for example by introducing several elements and characters that Disney would repurpose in various forms and shapes.
We are not here however to make a history of Disney characters - rather we are here once again to compare fairytales and adaptations, and analyze what exactly the adaptators did through their work.
The Big Bad Wolf, 1934
# Disney’s “Three Little Pigs” already played a bit with fairy tales inter-connections by referencing in an indirect way “The Wolf and the Seven Goats” - but here, the short “The Big Bad Wolf” fully plays on the fairytale crossover by having the Three Little Pigs meet Little Red Riding Hood. In this short, little Red Riding Hood, on her way to meet her sick grandmother to give her cake and wine, passes by the house of the Three Little Pigs. While the two first pigs are still playing music and dancing around, the third pig is still building with bricks - this time an extension to the house. It presumably seems to be a nod to the continuity of the shorts, as given his two brothers live with him now he needs to expand his own house.
# Here the careless two little pigs advise Little Red Riding Hood to take a shortcut through the woods to reach her Grandma, much to the dismay of the third pig who explicitely says how the shortcut is dangerous due to the wolf living in the woods - he rather advises to take a longer road out of the woods, but his brothers mock him and express their lack of fear of the Big Bad Wolf who just “huffs and puffs” (clearly here a reversion of the traditional tale, as huffing and puffing is precisely the very real threat of the menacing Big Bad Wolf, but here reinterpreted literaly by the pigs as the wolf being basically “full of hot air” or “just air”). Once more, the fault of the two first little pigs is too much careleness, not taking anything seriously be it threats or warnings.
# So the two little pigs escort Red Riding Hood through the forest. Someone else pointed out in a blog that it is quite disturbing how the human design of Little Red Riding Hood makes her look like the pigs - but I think it is the entire point. Like the Pigs, she is small, plump, pink-skinned, and when she leaves with the two pigs she becomes the third part of their trio. All of them the perfect victims for the hungry wolf... There is also a clear divide between the countryside and the woods - the countryside the pigs live in and Red Riding Hood goes through is an open place with no obstacle to see the sky, gentle slopes of pastel colors with gentle flowers, birds and insects everywhere... Meanwhile, the wood is clearly designed as an enclosed place where the trees prevent from seeing the sky or the horizon, with darker colors and a lot of shadows everywhere - and while it is not a “creepy wood” in itself, just a normal wood, there is a clear intention at creating a darker and more claustrophobic feel for the wood.
# The Big Bad Wolf tries to get the protagonists again through the use of disguises - this time, by becoming a ballerina-like fairy-queen called “Goldilocks”. On one side, it obviously plays into the grotesque here. The masculine, hairy, ugly wolf tries to mimick a beautiful and feminine entity ; in doing so he actually mixes up everything by acting both at the same time as a fairy and a ballerina, and adding the name “Goldilocks” taken from another little girl lost in the woods, there is a comical effect here. But on the other side, such a disguise is PRECISELY the best disguise the Wolf could have, as it is the complete antithesis of what he is. He takes an “superior” being, a fairy AND a queen, when he is an “inferior being” (an animal dressed like a hobo) ; he takes a female persona when he is male ; he tries to become your typical adjuvant and helper of fairytales when he is a villain ; and finally he tries to have the grace of a ballerina when he is clumsy and violent. In fact it is the later opposition that breaks his costume, as his heaviness is precisely what results in the destruction of his costume ; and later we again have a play on the wolf’s girth as he is too big to go through the narrow passages the smaller Red Riding Hood uses.
# As with the previous short, the story of Red Riding Hood is HEAVILY softened here. Not only is Grandma not eaten, rather hiding in her closet at the wolf’s arrival, but Red Riding Hood either is left untouched, as she joins her grandma’s hiding in the closet (which results in a funny call-back as the Wolf asks for the women to open the door and let him in, a clear re-playing of his earlier fights with the pigs, except here instead of trying to enter a house he tries to enter a closet). In fact, while the Three Little Pigs original fairytale was adapted in a pure “adaptation” way, this short plays much more with the fairytale of Red Riding Hood by notably having the Big Bad Wolf break the fourth wall during his recitation of the “Oh my Grandma what big X you have / It is better to X you”, asking the audience “How am I doing?” ; but also by changing the last line which isn’t anymore “The better to eat you!” (which becomes invalid as he doesn’t end up eating her), but rather “You haven’t seen the half of it”. Clearly, the short considers that Red Riding Hood is such a well-known and classic tale that it can’t be fully adapted in a straightforward way and needs to be played with to work.
# If we base ourselves on the Grimm version of “Little Red Riding Hood”, then the third pig actually fills here the role of the Woodsman, as in he is the one who, alerted, goes to save the two women. In another continuity-nod, we see that now the third pig has got a full arsenal of “wolf exterminators” ranging from rifles, bear traps and knifes to swords, canons and axes, passing by poisons and bombs - weapons he even keeps in a bag paralleling the Wolf’s own bag in which all of his disguises are hidden. But, fascinatingly, the third pig doesn’t use any of those weapons - rather he vanquishes the Wolf by throwing unpopped pop-corn in his pants, and coals.
This demise is supposed to mirror the defeat of the Big Bad Wolf in the first short: once again we have a food-related demise (popcorn), and once again we have the Wolf being hurt on his butt. Which, as you will notice, is a recurring theme of these shorts who have a strange “let’s harm the butt” obsession... I could push forward the idea that it might be a cultural reference to a very iconic wolf-demise in European literature, one of the harsh tricks of Reynard the fox played on Ysengrin the wolf - the fox betraying the wolf so that he loses his tail... But this is probably just looking too much into what was just the humor of the time. Hit them in the butt, everyone laughs. In fact this very demise, unlike the one of the previous short which robbed the Big Bad of his human disguise and pretense, this one is just designed to be goofy and silly as the wolf runs away in a rain of popcorn.
Three Little Wolves, 1936
# Now this short actually does what the subgenre of “fractured fairytales” would later do: start playing on the concept of twisting, reversing, breaking fairytales. And here the twist comes in the very title. We do not follow Three Little Pigs here anymore... but Three Little Wolves, who as it turn out are the triplet children of the Big Bad Wolf, miniature copies of their father.
# We are introduced to the “house” of the Big Bad Wolf, which as it turns out is an underground lair under a big tree. A negative picture of the brick house of the third pig : both are strong houses that hold on to attacks, but where one is bright and good-looking and on top of a hill, the other is a dark and creepy underground lair. The Big Bad Wolf is notably introduced singing to his sons a song about cooking pigs... in a strong German accent and with German words mixed with the English. We are in 1936... This is not a coincidence.
# The parallel between the Three Little Wolves and the Three Little Pigs is driven even further by the three wolves imitating the pigs’ song “Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”... except that they perform this song to mock their own father due to them being naughty brats... and they use a bone instead of a flute.
# The previous short mixed the Three Little Pigs with “Little Red Riding Hood”. Here, the fairytale is mixed yet again with another famous wolf-involved children story, though not a fairytale: rather, it is The Boy who Cried Wolf, a fable. Here the two pigs play the role of the Boy, as they blow the horn used as a “Wolf Alarm” just to play a prank and have fun on their third brother. Which later bites them back when the Wolf kidnaps them and their brother ignores the horn as one of their pranks.
# Here, to trick the Little Pigs the Wolf disguises himself as Bo Peep, from traditional nursery rhymes (again, another confusion between fairytales, fables and nursery rhymes) and his sons as sheep. What I should note is that a recurring theme of all these sequels is how the Wolf takes on female disguises. Before we had a fairy-queen, and a grandmother ; here a sheperdess (even more, a “little girl” sheperdess), and as we will later see this continues in the next sequel. And this is driven even further by a later fact: when the Wolf, still in his Bo Peep disguise, manages to lock the Pigs in his lair... the Pigs blush and whisper “Oh, Bo Peep” as they believe something ELSE will happen now. Only to have their (either romantic, either lustful) hopes crushed when the sheperdess removes her disguise... There is clearly something to say here about the Wolf, a purely male force in all its nastiness (ugliness, brutality, hairiness), tricking the Pigs constantly with female disguises of various forms of kindness and innocence (fairy-queen, grandmother, little girl/sheperdess), and the disguise even pushing as far as hinting at a romance... Of course, the little wolves being disguised as sheep is also a nod to the expression “a wolf in sheeps’ clothing”, an expression already used in the first original short.
# In a very nice moment, after locking up the Pigs in his lair, the Big Bad Wolf swallows the key. Beyond it possibly triggering any trauma one may have gotten watching “Coraline”, it also highlights subtly the nature of the Wolf. He is a being of devouring. He only cares about eating little pigs or little girls, and he even only teaches his sons about how to cook and eat pigs - so of course, it would make sense for him to swallow the key. Swallowing the only mean of escape for the pigs is a foreshadowing of how the wolf himself will swallow them later. And the little wolves are not paling in comparison to their father, as they gleefully hunt down the pigs with a big meat cleaver - but hopefully for the pigs, the little savages are as much busy fighting each other for the meat as they are hunting the pigs.
# The plot of this short is resolved when the Pigs trick the Big Bad Wolf into blowing the Wolf-Alarm horn. This is the reusing of a traditional and classical element of fairytales: tricking the villain in its own demise, or more specifically tricking the ogre into destroying itself. You can see it for example in the Hansel and Gretel fairytale, when Gretel convinces the witch to climb herself in the oven, or in Puss in Boots when the cat plays on the ogre’s pride to trick him into becoming a mouse. Here, as with many ogres of fairytale, the Big Bad Wolf is tricked by his own meal as his preys play on his arrogance.
# Interestingly, to defeat the Wolf, the Third Pig reverses the original situation of the first short: this time, it is the Pig who disguises himself (into an Italian merchant) and knocks at the door of the Big Bad Wolf. And the Pig plays on the Wolf’s greed and gluttony - by offering “free tomato samples”. But unlike the Big Bad Wolf, who wanted to ENTER the Pigs house, here the Pig tries to convince the Wolf to come out, so that he can fall in the trap he purposefully designed for him... a trap disguised as a Fruit and Vegetables Shop. Here a double-play, again: the Wolf, the meat-eater by excellence, meets his doom by entering a place selling anything but meat ; and the Third Little Pig did not built a real, safe, solid building as he did with his brick house. Rather he completely inverted things by building a fake building that crumbles as soon as the wolf enters, to reveal its true nature of a trap.
The Practical Pig, 1939
# The fourth part of the Three Little Pigs series, and the third (and last) of the sequels of the original short. Here we have again an opposition between the two little pigs and the third, the former mocking the latter for working all day and having no fun. Even more egregious: they mock their brother for building “yet another wolf machine”, and think he is crazy for building so many defenses against the wolf. And they decide to go swimming in the nearby pond, despite their brother’s insistance that the pond is a dangerous place as the Wolf is known to roam nearby.
This is what actually made a lot of people dislike those sequels: in each of them, the two little pigs seemed to remember less and less about their original ordeal. The “moral” and the “lesson learned” after each short disappeared by the next, making it seem like the two little pigs basically deserved to die for not learning anything and not growing any kind of common sense. But it also shows one of the “traps” of fairytale adaptations: the cycle. Fairytales are basic stories with identifiable structures, repeated again and again and again. And while this series of Silly Symphonies tried to capitalize on one given story, they did so by repeating the story again and again - more specifically, they ended up returning to the same beginnings, the same “faults” leading the characters in dangers, the same mistakes... which in turn makes it feel that nothing is learned, that all the adventures are worthless, and that ultimately the characters of the Pigs and the Wolf are trapped in an endless cycle of hunts and pursuits. We already have here the logic of cartoons such as Looney Tunes - but this logic clearly was not mastered by the creators of the shorts ; OR was not appreciated back then by the early 20th century audience.
# The Wolf tricks again the swimming Pigs by putting on a disguise ; again he uses a female disguise, as I pointed out earlier. He takes the form of a mermaid - after the supernatural fairy-queen with insect wings who flew around like a bird, we have now a half-fish half-human creature. But as I also pointed out earlier: as the shorts go on, the Wolf’s disguises and luring tactics become much more overtly sexual and seductive in nature. In “The Big Bad Wolf” there was no obvious seduction or sexuality ; in “The Three Little Wolves” there was sexuality/attraction coming from the Pigs and not wanted by the Wolf ; but here the Wolf expressively plays on that, sending kisses and roses to the Pigs to lure them.
# We find back the Wolf in his lair with his three boys, and we have a bit more of a glimpse at the dysfunctional family that is the Wolf family. This clan was clearly designed to be a clan of disorganized and chaotic brutes. In the previous short we knew that the three wolves clearly did not respect much their father (using slingshots on him and openly mocking him, even though they did obeyed to his plans and went searching for him when he was defeated), and also were quite selfish as when it came time to eat the bigs they fought among themselves. Here we see that the three little wolves are like their father brutal embodiments of gluttony, unable to wait to eat the pigs on the spot. But we also see how the Big Bad Wolf is a brutal father that answers his sons lack of obedience with violence, at first by hitting them, then by using his “huffing and puffing” on them to blow them away. It is clear that this “clan” is broken by their own selfishness and lack of respect for each other.
# Unlike his sons’ desire to eat the pigs on the spot, strangely the Big Bad Wolf refuses. Despite having his long-desired meal in his grasp, he decides to wait. Why? Because as he explains he wants to have the Third Pig too and to eat them all at once. And this, as it turns out, will be his downfall, because his very decision to go after the Third Pig before eating the siblings will make his entire plan fail. Did he act by pure gluttony, wishing to have all three in his belly? Or did he act out of a petty revenge, unable to let go of the several times the Third Pig beat him? Or was it more of a mesure of cautioness, not wanting the third brother to spoil his fun at the last minute, as he always do? We don’t know for sure.
# Similarly it is the three wolves own gluttony that will lead to their meal escaping: not only do they not follow their father’s orders of not eating anything until he gets back home, but they also decide to add pepper for the flavor to the baked pigs. This act of gluttony will actually accidentally free the two pigs and immobilize the three wolves, unable to catch their prey fleeing away.
# The last thing I want to talk about is the machine the third pig newly built for the Big Bad Wolf: a lie-detector machine that beats up the liar strapped in it. What is interesting is that the machine displays only two types of punishment. One, rincing mouth with soap, which is a traditional expression when it comes to punishing people for lying or saying bad words (and unfortunately was sometimes taken literaly by some very harsh and unpleasant parents) ; and the second is rather spanking - a punishment clearly designed for a child. By using these two punishments in the machine, the short clearly targets its audience as children, because they are precisely two typical punishments inhabiting the minds of children and existing in the “children universe”
Степанова памятка / Stepan’s remembrance (1977, Konstantin Yershov)
Степанова памятка / Stepan’s remembrance (1977, Konstantin Yershov)
Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
"'Why, is he scared of the dark?' I meant the words for a joke, but Shade nodded seriously. 'Like all monsters. Because it reminds him of what he truly is.'"
Year Read: 2019
Rating: 4/5
About: Nyx had always known she was to marry the Gentle Prince, the demonic being who rules over Arcadia. Long ago, Arcadia split from the rest of the world, leaving it in limbo where demons lurk in the shadows and anyone can make a deal if they're willing to pay the price. Her father has coached her in the Hermetic arts, desperate to send Nyx into the castle, not just as a bride, but as a secret weapon. If she can find the Gentle Prince's weakness, she can save her people and restore Arcadia to the rest of the world. But the more she learns of the Prince, the less she's able to hate him. Can Nyx break the curse on her people if the price is betraying the man she was never supposed to love? Spoilers will be clearly marked under the cut. Trigger warnings: death, parent death, injury, severe illness, threats, mental illness.
Thoughts: I blew through this in about twenty-four hours, which is partly the universe aligning to give me time to read, and partly a credit to Hodge's writing. I was captivated by the story right from the beginning, and the world-building is interesting and well-developed without ever being overwhelming. It's a delicate balance to strike, and it doesn't work quite as well with the numerous mythology threads running through the novel. There's the obvious Beauty & the Beast adaptation (Nyx is a prisoner in the castle, there's a magic mirror, etc.), which works best of all of them. It's there to give the story flavor, but the novel is still entirely its own thing. The Greek mythology is second, and there's a Hades & Persephone parallel with Ignifex and Nyx and yet another with Pandora's box. Third, and least developed, is the story of Nanny-Anna and Tom-a-Lone, which might be an invention of Hodge's (or might not--I'm not really sure). It's sort of background noise until it suddenly becomes important, and I didn't quite follow all of Nyx's leaps of logic on how it applies to her own story. A reread might help in that respect, but all things considered, it's a lot for one relatively short novel.
I was equally enchanted by the characters. I liked Nyx a lot because she's far from a perfect heroine, and we get to see that many times in action. She's angry and spiteful and selfish, and she makes decisions based out of those things--but I also totally get why she's like that, and I found it easy to sympathize with her. She has an excellent sense of Catholic guilt, despite Catholicism not being one of the mythologies in the story. I also loved the duality between Ignifex and Shade and their mysterious connection. I can never resist a good villain, and Ignifex is wicked, arrogant, and snarky with the best of them. I'm fond of villain love stories (because there is something deeply wrong with me, probably), and Nyx and Ignifex's enemies to lovers relationship is properly complicated.
The end of the book isn't quite as solid as the rest of it for a number of reasons, one of which enters into spoiler territory. The biggest is that it just gets too complicated too fast. I didn't quite follow all the many layers of the mythology and the solution to Arcadia's problem, and I agree with other reviewers that a simpler conclusion might have worked better. But then, I rarely ever find solutions as interesting as problems. There's also the problem that even the most attentive readers won't be able to solve the riddle because we don't have all the necessary information, which is a cheap way to write plot twists. I'm a little disappointed that Crimson Bound doesn't follow the same characters, but I'm looking forward to reading more of Hodge's writing.