What I Did in October

My mouth was too big, last month! I was so excited about my little yellow puzzle book, but this month it is not yet done. Interestingly I'm experiencing a similar feeling as I did at university: I really want to finish the puzzle book, so much so that I'm committed to finishing it before I do anything else, but this means that when my energy or focus drifts, I lose all my momentum, and work on nothing at all! Unlike uni, though, there's no deadline to crush me into finishing it, so we'll see what happens. Maybe I'll have to impose a deadline onto myself?

I did, however, do a lot of reading, this month.

What I Read this Month!

Twig Arc 20: Crown of Thorns

The big finale arc! I was pretty locked in the whole time, which is a good sign compared to Pact, and gosh, every Jessie moment had my heart tightening. And oh my gosh the chapter where they're cutting plague out of Helen and they keep politely telling her they'll need to remove more and more of her? That one earned tears, too. There was, in this arc, lots of character stuff that got me through the big, faceless battle. The Tangles were good body horror too, I guess, but not the point, hey.

The Infante's ending I liked, he had good dialogue throughout some of the fights, but it wasn't mega impactful, though I suppose it didn't need to be! Character and theme wise I liked that the final confrontation wasn't with the big bad in charge of the country but with their father and mother figures. The confrontation with Hayle and Fray was pretty good, if a bit cheesy to wrap things up with the characters going to the schemers and asking them what the deal was with all the loose threads! Very tidy.

The reveal of the original purpose of the Lambs I liked, though, I don't know, it didn't seem too fitting? I didn't mind it, though. Sylvester's shift to Simon was very strange, because he sort of stayed very similar throughout. My thought was that he had to assume another "role" because, deep down, he doesn't believe that he deserves a happy ending. Either that or he knew that, for the happy ending, he'd need to fit into the role of Lord, which we see when he compromises on ending child experimentation, y'know.

I also really really enjoyed Duncan's character in the last chapter, here! It really put a great button on his arc of going from being the worst of the Lambs to the best of them. He grew up so beautifully. <3

And, gosh, the image of them leaving the Orphanage, the tree with its long branches stretching out over the yard. It's amazing how, particularly with some of the flashbacks in recent chapters, I had so much nostalgia for a place that doesn't exist.

Twig Epilogue: Forest for the Trees

I read the epilogue, too! Once I finish talking about the Epilogue I'll give my thoughts on the book as a whole.

This was really nice! I liked the lens of using side characters that maybe fell by the wayside to show how the Crown States settled over the ensuing year, and gosh, the imagery of the Wolf Clover blooming more and more across across that time was very sweet. I liked that we sort of wound back to the start of the book, following Red, then Shirley and Pierre, then Emily, then all the way back to Lacey (who we hadn't seen in so long it took me a hot second to recognise her). It was really sweet to see see both the places these characters had found for themselves in the changing world, and how the world was changing. For these side characters, it felt in many ways like a happy ending.

Now, the Lambs. Gosh, they got the happy ending that they had been fighting for. Every one of them (bar Gordon, of course) made it out, but at the cost of prolonging and becoming a part of the system that dogged them. "Waiter, waiter, more endless wars and child experimentation, please." Other works of Wildbow I've read have had a very sad ending tinted with sweetness, but this one has a very grim happy ending. I liked the places they'd found, though, and the final image, of the Lord King seeing them stand as a connected unit was very beautiful. I will remember it for a long time.

So, that's it! A book that I've been reading for something like a year and a half, on and off. At the end, I think,,, that Twig is my favourite book.

I read Enid Blyton's The Secret Seven as a kid, those episodic 'kid detective' books, and I love the way the episodic, monster-of-the-week opening section of Twig sort of revels in the nostalgia of the format. It uses this nostalgia to help paint that childlike innocence the kids wear, to begin with, and also, practically, gives the book plenty of stopping points to pick it up and put it down without too much trouble, which I found quite convenient.

The characters are for sure the core of this book, they're the bit that makes it sing, and I have so much love for each and every one of them. The love that they have for one another... My goodness. Such a messy, romantic, little family, with such beautiful connections between them. I will forever hold such fondness for Sy promising Helen teacake, Gordon messing up Sy's hair, Jamie sitting a short distance away, sketching them. I will hold too, such heartache, for Ashton clutching his big sister Helen; Sy helping Mary get her knives on, under the stairs; Sy calling for Jamie, panicked, when Lillian starts to cry; Jessie falling asleep on Sylvester's lap at the worst possible moment. I'll miss them, basically. A lot.

Some of the themes really got to me, too, with the part of life I'm navigating at the moment. Finishing up university, moving into the big scary world, while reading about these kids trying to grow up in a world that isn't built for them, that'll tear them apart. I relate a lot to these characters - oh, on that note, actually: Wildbow writes Sy as an unreliable narrator in particularly the way that he has a bad memory, and forgets the names of people and places. So the narration might say something like "in whatever that town was called". I also have a subpar memory, though, and would forget things at about the same rate as Sy did, so, uh, in that respect I was quite immersed haha.

I dunno, it's hard to sum up how I feel about such a big book that's been part of my life for so long, other than, I really really liked it, and I recommend it, and maybe in a couple years I'll read it again! ;)

This Used to be About Dungeons: Vol 2

I needed a palate cleanser after the beast that was Twig, so I picked this one up and blitzed it in a little under a week! Conscious that there are two more volumes to come, maybe one per year, I'm trying to space out my reading of this gorgeous little series, so I've not forgotten everything by the release of the fifth volume.

Gosh, it's just so sweet and homey. There's a part in here where Alfric tells Mizuki her cooking tastes "homey", which she takes as a very low compliment until he clarifies how much it means to him, that her food and her house feel so much like a home even after so short a short time together. That's how I feel about this book! It's a couple of fast-forming friends finding their place in a utopian fantasy world, that sometimes feels like a vessel for the author's wacky magic item and world-building ideas, but other times has me hooked on the slow-burn romances and lovely characters.

This volume seemed to have quite a helping of the budding romance, which I enjoyed! (I am ALWAYS cheering for Alfric and Mizuki, my GOSH the undone day.) Alfric's family (and Dondrian) were lovely, Isra is perfect, I like Verity well enough and didn't find Hannah nearly as annoying in this volume (she seems to be learning to stick her nose not so far into others' business). Excited to read more... but I shall stay my hand for a few months, until I again need my palate cleansed.

When Women Were Dragons

I didn't love this one! (And I guess spoilers abound, because the ending is part of why.) The premise is it's 50s America and women are turning into dragons, which challenges that housewife-flavoured patriarchy. This is a delightful and exciting premise, which is why I picked up the book. I think it's trying to say that this isn't some fantastical far-off concept, though! Women (and other marginalised groups) already can (and should and do) become bright and beautiful and dangerous and fierce, in the real world.

However, for the first, like, three quarters of the book, all this dragoning doesn't have the positive effect you'd expect. The women who become dragons just leave, never to be seen again, and people treat it as incredibly impolite to speak about such matters. It's too personal, and private, and feminine. Men turn red and stammer when the topic is brought up, as they would at discussion of menstruation or stillbirth. All this taboo upholds the wicked patriarchy by limiting the spread of information. I think that all of this is very clever!

As a result, the first three quarters of the book are about a poor girl having a miserable time because all of her maternal figures have died or abandoned her (in dragon form), and she's forced to support her younger sister in a sort of 50s teenage single mother type role. It's all really tragic, generational trauma themes etc, throughout which the protagonist doesn't really have a single good thing happen to her.

At the end, though, all the dragons suddenly come back, hooray! They stop being taboo and the dragon rights movement makes great strides! A lesbian polycule of four dragons show up to look after the protagonist's sister-daughter so the protagonist can pursue a higher education!

But when the opening sad terrible misery is real and gritty, and then there's a surprise magical fairytale ending, it doesn't come across as particularly uplifting, to me. It's like, in order for this poor girl to get her happy ending, her story needed to get magically transplanted into a different genre, which made me feel like if her story had been as real as it initially felt, there would have been no opportunity for a happy ending. And hey, maybe the book wasn't trying to be uplifting, but I got the impression that it was, so it's a shame it didn't have that effect on me. Deus ex draco.

And That's It!

Fingers crossed I'll have more to share, soon. Chat to you at the end of November!