Star Wars Adventures: Tales of Villainy #14 – Comic Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

When the last issue of IDW‘s Star Wars Adventures: Tales of Villainy ended, we’d seen the frightening power of Darth Vader, and we’d left sequel-era hero Rey in a sticky situation as her new ally, Moebin, had been captured by a bounty hunter. This time, we get to find out how Rey will be able to solve this dilemma, as well as getting to see a softer side of one of the newer characters in the Star Wars canon.

The first story in this issue, ‘Repair Stop, Part 2’ by George Mann, picks up where the last issue left off, with the togruta smuggler Moebin tied up and prisoner to the rather large and intimidating bounty hunter, Kief. Having used a variety of gadgets and some clever moves, the man has managed to best Rey, who doesn’t seem to have anything other than her staff with her, and has captured his target. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be the brightest star in the sky, and is easily distracted by Rey, allowing Moebin a chance to try and escape.

This honestly, doesn’t do good things for Kief, and makes him look kind of silly. The bounty hunter who was pulling out weapons and gadgets to get the upper hand in the last issue is now dumb enough to just stand there and chat whilst his prisoner escapes his binds about a foot behind him. It’s not exactly going to get him put up there with the all time greats like Boba Fett or Bossk. The silver lining to this is that it means we get some more shenanigans across the story as he and Rey have a back and forward over who gets to have the upper hand.

Overall, this story began quite promisingly with the first part, but the finale feels kind of rushed. There are times where the characters feel like they’re making silly mistakes, just so that it can lead to the next story beat, and Rey feels like she’s kind of going through the motions as she seems to be doing very little to help with the situation. It’s clear from context clues that this story is taking place between episodes 8 and 9, which means that she can’t just pull out her light saver as she’s probably not fixed it yet, but she still has force powers; yet she never uses the force to try and help stop the bad guy. It just seems like she’s making all the wrong choices so as to drag out the story.

The art, provided by Butch Mapa and Charlie Kirchoff, is pretty decent though. The characters from the movies all look like the actors, and the new characters are pretty distinct looking. Moebin and Kief have some striking designs that makes them easy to spot on the page, and this definitely helps everyone to stand out from the background. Everything has decent detail, and it’s one of the nicer looking stories in the series yet.

The second story this issue is ‘A Very Nihil Interlude’ by Justina Ireland. Straight away I was excited for this story, not just because I love Justina Ireland’s work, but because the variant cover shows that this story will be featuring Deva Lompop; a pretty interesting new characters.

The story begins on Hon-Tallos, a planet already mentioned in a few High Republic stories, where a young Nautolan girl called Vroma is being chased through her village by one of the local bullies. She’s taken a Durga Berry from the berry grove. Despite the grove being open to all, the bullies tell Vrona that she’s not welcome there, and that the berries are theirs. Left alone in the street with her broken berry, Vrona is approached by a woman who watched the whole thing, Deva Lompop. Deva tells the girl that there’s a good way of dealing with bullies, and agrees to help her get even.

This story, though short, was a lot of fun. Having recently first appeared in the comic tie-in War of the Bounty Hunters: Jabba the Hutt, Deva instantly stood out as a character of note. Having been around in the High Republic era, being a formidable bounty hunter, and just looking cool, she’s been an instant stand-out. Here we get to see more of her in her early days, as she works with the Nihil. Not only is it interesting to see more of this younger Deva, but it’s brilliant to see the villains of this era doing something good. It adds more depth to the Nihil as a whole, and suggests that they’re not all villains out to do no good. Whether you’re aware of who Deva is or not, this short story is sure to be a fun experience that will stick out.

The art for the story is provide by Nick Brokenshire, and I’ve found that their particular style works really well with stories that focus on the Nihil. Brokenshire’s art has a wonderful amount of detail to it, and when applied to characters that are a bit more chaotic, like the Nihil, it seems to fit well. They also manage to make Deva look beautiful one moment, and truly frightening the next; which is perfect.

Whilst the first story in this issue feels like a bit of a letdown, the second is perfect, and is a prime example of some of the cool things that the Star Wars Adventures series can do; adding extra detail and context to characters from other stories, whilst being hugely entertaining themselves.

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Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick - Book Review

 

'Cassie Cotton has always been unusual, a bit different - but this only makes her more intriguing to her classmate Fitz.

'Cassie can hear a noise that most people don't notice or recognise, and she believes it's a sound that shows the Earth is in distress, damaged by human activity that is causing climate change.

'When this belief leads to her being ridiculed and bullied at school, Cassie disappears. Fitz is determined to find her, but he has no idea where to start looking, or if he'll be in time to help her...'

Wrath tells the story of Cassie Cotton, a teenage girl who's been struggling during the Covid lock-down, who's been hearing this strange humming noise, and who suddenly goes missing one day. Left behind with no idea what might have happened to her, her best friend Fitz tries desperately to figure out what could have happened to Cassie.

Wrath is the latest children's book release from publisher Barrington Stoke, a publisher that has been producing some excellent children's reads. Normally with their books there's a theme to them, a topic that they're dealing with in some way. Sometimes this is a story about wildfires that help raise awareness of nature and global warming, or stories about a family struggling to get by that teaches young readers about poverty and how hard some people in the UK have it. Often the themes are pretty obvious, and central to the book; but it took me a while to see the central themes in Wrath.

The book begins with Cassie, already being missing. She's just vanished and people are still trying to figure out when she might have disappeared, and where she could have gone. One of these people is Fitz, one of her best friends, her band-mate, and someone who secretly has a crush on her. Over lock-down Cassie had been messaging Fitz, as well as secretly meeting him in the middle of the night, telling him about a strange humming sound that she's been hearing. 

As the days pass, Cassie keeps insisting that she can hear the hum, that it's always there when its quiet, and that she thinks it the sound of the earth itself. Whilst Fitz wants to be a good friend to her, he can't hear the sound, and as the days pass other people hear about Cassie's sound, and start mocking her for it. When Fitz stupidly agrees with one of his friends that Cassie might be crazy she overhears this, and it's the last time that he sees her before she vanishes. 

With the police searching for her, Fitz believes that the sound might be connected with her disappearance somehow, and starts to search through everything she sent him about it. Desperate to find his friend, to tell her he's sorry, and that he loves her, Fitz will go to impossible lengths to get her back.

Wrath tells its story across a series of flashbacks, scattered over the days when Cassie goes missing, showing both how Fitz is dealing with his friend being gone, as well as what led them both to this point. The story unfolds slowly, with small pieces of the puzzle being handed to readers as Fitz starts to piece together what might have happened. Because of this, it's not clear at first what might be going on.

For the longest time I was left wondering if perhaps there would be some kind of supernatural element to the book, that the hum would be something real, something that could have whisked Cassie away from her home. Whilst there's no explanation for the hum by the end of the book, it eventually becomes clear that this is a much more down to earth story; one about relationships and wanting to escape.

You see, Cassie is going through a difficult home life leading up to her disappearance. Yes, she has both parents living with her, and they're pretty rich, a stark contrast to Fitz who lives with his father and struggles to get by, but thanks to her parents relationship going through a rough patch she's living in a house filled with constant arguments. She's being subjected to shouts and screams, the sound of broken things, and is trying to drown that noise out. Her disappearance is as much about escaping her family as it is trying to figure out what the hum is.

The relationship between her and Fitz is also given a lot of weight, and most of the scenes in the book involve the two of them, or at least relate to their connection with each other. Fitz is either spending time with Cassie, thinking about her, searching for her, or wanting to make things better with her. And this huge focus he has on her could have easily come across as creepy, some kind of teen obsession, yet it doesn't. There's another character in the book who is written this way, and there's such a sharp contrast between him and Fitz; you see that Fitz isn't some love-struck teen, desperate to just possess the girl he loves, but an actual decent person with a damn fine heart.

By the end of Wrath its clear that this is a story about love, about relationships, and about escaping the things that bring you pain. It shows how those around you can be hurt by your actions, even if you don't think so. Cassie was hurt by her parents, and her leaving hurt Fitz. But ultimately it's these connections that help save her come the end, that ground Cassie and show her that she doesn't have to face the huge, frightening world all on her own. And because of that, I think the book has a wonderful message behind it.

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A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee - Book Review

 

'Felicity Morrow is back at Dalloway School. Perched in the Catskill mountains, the centuries-old, ivy-covered campus was home until the tragic death of her girlfriend. Now, after a year away, she’s returned to graduate. She even has her old room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumored to be haunted by the spirits of five Dalloway students—girls some say were witches. The Dalloway Five all died mysteriously, one after another, right on Godwin grounds.

'Witchcraft is woven into Dalloway’s history. The school doesn’t talk about it, but the students do. In secret rooms and shadowy corners, girls convene. And before her girlfriend died, Felicity was drawn to the dark. She’s determined to leave that behind her now; all Felicity wants is to focus on her senior thesis and graduate. But it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget.

'It’s Ellis Haley’s first year at Dalloway, and she’s already amassed a loyal following. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is a so-called “method writer.” She’s eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can’t shake the pull she feels to her. So when Ellis asks Felicity for help researching the Dalloway Five for her second book, Felicity can’t say no. Given her history with the arcane, Felicity is the perfect resource. And when history begins to repeat itself, Felicity will have to face the darkness in Dalloway–and in herself.'

I'd only recently heard of the term dark academia, having stumbled across a video essay that explained this fairly new,and popular, genre. As far as I was aware, I'd not actually read any books that were expressly described as being dark academia; though there are definitely a few that skirt close to it. But A Lesson in Vengeance is a book that as soon as I heard about it people were throwing that phrase around; and as such I was really looking forward to finally experiencing this popular genre.

A Lesson in Vengeance begins by introducing us to Felicity Morrow, a young woman who has returned to college following a long break the previous year for so far unspecified reasons. We get hints that it was something bad that happened to her, but not much else at this point. Felicity attends the Dalloway School, and lives in the centuries old Godwin house; a small building dating back to the 1700's that played home to five young women who were accused of being witches, and who died in strange and tragic circumstances. The Dalloway Five.

Expecting to be the only person at Godwin house this early, Felicity is surprised to find another student there, Ellis Haley. Ellis is in her first year at Dalloway, and is a world famous author at only seventeen. Whilst Felicity initially takes a dislike to her, and the way the other girls at Godwin house flock around her, the two of them begin to grow close. Eventually, Ellis asks Felicity for hep writing her next novel, a story about the Dalloway Five. The two of them begin to plan out how someone could have committed these historic murders, making it look like the work of magic. But Felicity begins to unlock suppressed memories of the tragic events that took place the previous year, and begins to think that she may be quite literally haunted by the ghosts of what happened.

A Lesson in Vengeance is a mystery thriller book, with some possible supernatural elements thrown in to have the reader question if something more than ordinary might be going on. You'll spend a lot of time reading this book learning small snippets of information about Felicity's past, trying to piece together what happened to her and her girlfriend, Alex; as well as watching as Felicity and Ellis grow close in the present.

There feels like there's a lot of balls up in the air when reading this book, a lot of things to keep track of and to watch out for as you juggle small clues, vague hints, and outright disinformation. Because of this, I often found it hard to fully invest in what was happening. There were more and a few times where we'd be given a piece of information as fact, and then several pages later we'd be told it was an outright lie. I suspect that this was done both for dramatic effect, and possibly to show the mental health issues that Felicity was dealing with; but I would sometimes feel like a bit of a cheat to me. For example, I don't know what we gained from Felicity giving us a completely fabricated version of events, which was immediately proven to be false. I don't know why we were made to believe something was real before it was quickly revealed to be fake, other than to perhaps make us not believe anything that Felicity was seeing.

If this was, in fact, an attempt to have the reader begin to doubt the sincerity of the narrator, I didn't like this method. It's not someone starting to question if maybe they imagined seeing a ghost, or questioning if maybe their recollection could be slightly off; this was the narrator giving us an openly false narrative that was nothing like reality, which then immediately made me doubt anything that had come before it. I wasn't jut questioning if what was happening now was false, but if anything in the entire book was even real; and this effected how I thought about what I'd already read in a negative way. It's difficult to write about mental health, and certain issues are going to be harder to convey, but I just found that Felicity creating this entirely different version of events made her completely untrustworthy, and broke some of my enjoyment of the book.

The other main protagonist for the book, and only other real character, is Ellis. Ellis is seventeen, a published author who has received a Pulitzer, has been on the cover of Time Magazine, and has more wild stories than someone three times her age. And there's my biggest issue with her right off the bat. Ellis is a character who cannot, should not, be seventeen. I know it might not sound very generous of me, but her level of achievement, her fame and fortune and skill at just seventeen feel completely and utterly unbelievable. These feelings were only compound by the way she acted. She spends long periods locked in her room writing, but when she comes out she's introducing girls older than her to different whiskey drinks, she'd driving around to old antique shops, and she's staring off into the distance with a look of angst on her face. She's a thirty-five-year-old trapped in a teenage body. The fact that we also get this ridiculous horror story like backstory for her doesn't help either, as her entire character began to feel like walking tropes rather than a real human being.

This was something that I found with all of the characters if I'm being honest, they all came across like people twice their age, and none of them felt like teens at all. I know some people complain about how immature protagonists in YA books are because they're kids, but if these characters were stated to be in their thirties but nothing else was changed it wouldn't feel out of place at all. Perhaps its just that each and every one of them was pretentious, attending this old college, dressing in tweeds and plaids that seem to have come off a dark academia mood board, talking about how difficult their privileged lives are, discussing old classics like they should shape the way people view the world. Yes, it might be ticking all the boxes for fans of dark academia, but it resulted in teens who felt like they were trying too hard to be adults, and came across as very false.

In addition to Ellis being this super special 'greatest writer of her generation' at seventeen we had a similar thing with Alex, Felicity's ex. Alex, who I believe was also seventeen at the time of her death, was an Olympic athlete who'd climbed Everest twice already and was the second youngest person in the world to do so. Whilst I know that there are young Olympians, and that the youngest person to climb Everest was thirteen, this just felt like another example of the main characters needing to be super special wonder people. I don't know how she does it, but Felicity seems to only attract the greatest people of her age. Perhaps this is another reason why everyone in this book feels so rich and privileged that I couldn't really connect with them.

The romance between both Felicity and Alex in the past, and Felicity and Ellis in the present both felt super toxic to me too. I know that you don't have to write happy relationships in books, and that there are toxic relationships in the world; but boy does it seem like Felicity can't pick a decent person to give her love to. It just comes across like both of the main f/f relationships in the novel feature abusive elements, and this just gets further compounded in the epilogue section where Felicity casually mentions wanting to leave her loving girlfriend because she doesn't quite fit her vibe. The book ends with her dating this lovely lady, having dinner with her, and pages before she was going 'she's not really the cool kind of girl I want, so I'm just gonna leave her'. It really seems like Felicity is a toxic woman who shouldn't be dating anyone.

Outside of Felicity and Ellis, and talk about Alex, there aren't really any real characters in the book. There are three other housemates that live in Godwin, but I couldn't tell you their names let alone what they're like as they're so forgettable. These other three only seem to appear when the plot needs them to, and do the barest minimum before leaving again. The book could have cut half the scenes they were in and you wouldn't really notice their absence as they bring nothing to the table.

I really wanted to like A Lesson in Vengeance, I wanted to get invested in this story and the characters, but I found so little of either actually in the pages. What was there felt too disconnected, too heavily reliant on exaggerated tropes and 'vibes' to get by, and often came across more like a pastiche. Perhaps I'm simply the wrong audience for this, I'm sure there will be people who will lap up the dark academia theme, who will dig the characters and love the romance and mystery; but I'm not one of them. 

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Power Rangers Wild Force – Throwback 20

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

When Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first hit television screens in 1993 it was a big gamble for Saban. They’d taken footage from a strange Japanese franchise, Super Sentai (Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger to be exact), and cobbled it together with American actors and some awful scripts and hoped that the bright costumes, weird monsters, and giant robot fights would prove to be popular. And boy was it! The show was an instant hit, and over the next three years the series became a global phenomenon.

But when they’d exhausted all of the Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger footage, and tried forcing in footage from the next two Sentai series, it was becoming clear that this method wasn’t working anymore. So the franchise took the bold step of reinventing itself completely with Power Rangers Zeo, which featured all new costumes. This gamble worked once again, and thus the show would start a process whereby it would change dramatically every year, and soon it was even starting afresh with new characters and new stories each time, making a franchise where the show could vary wildly year to year.

Going into its tenth year, the show became Power Rangers Wild Force, coming off the back of the hugely popular Power Rangers Time Force. Where Time Force had been a bit more mature, featuring a story of time travel, a dystopian police state future, and questions of whether people are genetically evil, Wild Force took a much more back to basics approach and chose to tell a much more simple, and dare I say, childish story.

Power Rangers Wild Force tells the story of Turtle Cove, a city that’s being attacked by strange monsters called Orgs. When a young man named Cole (Ricardo Medina Jr.), who was raised in the jungle by a native tribe after his parents died, travels to Turtle Cove to look for answers about his past, he comes across a group of heroes fighting the Orgs. These four tell him that they’re the Wild Force Rangers, and that he’s destined to join them.

Cole is taken to the floating turtle shaped island of the Animarium, a place filled with giant robotic animals and nature. Here he meets a magical princess who tells him that the Orgs are demonic spirits that can possess technology, becoming creatures that will try to destroy the natural world. Knowing that he was destined to join the Rangers, and hoping that it can help him learn about his parents, Cole becomes the Red Wild Force Ranger.

Power Rangers Wild Force takes a very fairy tale approach to its story, with even the idea of the floating Animarium being an actual fairy tale within the universe canon. Complex narratives about if someone is truly evil or not, and whether they have the capacity to change go straight out the window as it’s established early on that the Orgs are soulless monsters that need to be fought. The result of this is a show that definitely works for kids, but feels suddenly jarring for its older viewers.

The series had been getting more mature up to this point. Rangers had gone from teens in high school to young adults, to members of a secret military group, to cops from the future. The Rangers and their worlds had become more complex and layered (as complex and layered as this franchise can be anyway). Then this show comes along and it’s very stripped down. Most of the team act like kids, despite clearly being in their twenties, and it’s never clear if they’re supposed to be young adults or teenagers. The only real exception to this is the Yellow Ranger, Taylor (Alyson Kiperman), who we learn is an Air Force pilot who was leading the team before Cole, and was even a lone Ranger for several months. Where the show about that?!

A few things I can compliment this iteration of Power Rangers for are the monsters and the team-ups. The monsters of the seasons prior to this were flat and boring. Their themes were too broad to be interesting. Demons and mutants from the future sound good on paper, but when that could mean anything it meant pretty weak and uninteresting designs most times. This series, however, does it right by having a very clear brief: monsters made out of technology. The result is a slew of brilliant designs, and fun personalities that result in some of the best monsters in the last ten years.

I cannot talk about Power Rangers Wild Force without also mentioning the team-ups. This season gets two, the first being a two part story that brings back the cast of Power Rangers Time Force for what feels like their real finale. Characters, both hero and villain, get a real resolution this time, and it feels like you can’t watch Time Force without including these great episodes to round it out. There’s also the tenth anniversary special, ‘Forever Red’, which brings together ten Red Rangers from past seasons for one huge, action packed special where they have to save the Earth. Pretty much always included in best of lists for the entire franchise, this episode is one that you’d show people who’ve never seen Power Rangers to show how cool the franchise is.

Power Rangers Wild Force might not be perfect, in a lot of ways. The story is simplistic and silly at times, there are way too many zords, and the acting is pretty terrible; but these are things you expect from this show. But it has a lot of good stuff in it too, and the highs of the season are pretty damn cool. As an anniversary season, and the final season of the original Saban era of the show it’s pretty damn good.

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The Haunting of Las Lágrimas by W.M. Cleese - Book Review

 

'Argentina, winter 1913. Ursula Kelp, a young English gardener, travels to Buenos Aires to take up the role of head gardener at a long-abandoned estate in the Pampas. The current owner wishes to return to the estate with his family and restore the once-famous gardens to their former glory. 

'Travelling deep into the Pampas, the vast grasslands of South America, Ursula arrives to warnings from the locals that the estate is haunted, cursed to bring tragedy to the founding family of Las Lágrimas. And soon Ursula believes that her loneliness is making her imagine things – the sound of footsteps outside her bedroom door, the touch of hands on her shoulders when there’s no one there. Most strangely of all, she keeps hearing the frenzied sound of a man chopping down trees in the nearby forest with an axe, when all her staff are in sight. 

'As the strange occurrences intensify – with tragic consequences – Ursula questions if there’s truth in the rumours about the cursed estate. The family’s return is imminent – are they in danger? And the longer Ursula stays at the estate, the more she realises that she too is in mortal danger.'

I love a good Gothic ghost story, tales with spooky, remote locations, creepy old houses, and buried history that the hero needs to uncover. These kinds of elements are great even on their own, but when a book has all of these things they just feel extra special. And The Haunting of Las Lágrimas has all of this in spades.

Our story begins after the events of Las Lágrimas, with our protagonist, Ursula, writing about her experiences from the safety of The Hotel Bristol in Mar del Plata. Straight away we know that something terrible is to come in this book. Yes, Ursula herself might be alive, she may get in the end, but we meet her as a woman plagued by nightmares, afraid of leaving her hotel room, and dealing with the trauma of what she went through. This instantly builds tension, before we've even begun to get into the true heart of the book; and is a perfect way to start this kind of slow burn horror novel.

Writing down her experiences, in order to put her thought in order and expel some of her demons, Ursula begins to outline her story. We begin with Ursula, a gardener from England who has travelled across the world to Argentina in order to escape her oppressive family and connect more with her lost grandfather, working as one of the staff for the wealthy Houghton family, and whilst the family treats her well, more like a peer than a member of staff, she wants something more challenging. As such, when she overhears a visitor talking to the head gardener about a job opening she approaches him about it.

The man, named Moyano, turns out to be the estate manager for the distant Las Lágrimas, a home built in the wilderness of the pampas, that is in the process of being restored and rebuilt before the owner, Don Paquito Agramonte, and his family move in. He tells Ursula that the estate is extremely remote, and the garden in huge disrepair. It's a task that no other gardener will take on, and that will test her skills and resolve to the limit. Desperate for a chance to prove herself, Ursula jumps at the offer and immediately sets out for Las Lágrimas.

After a two day journey via train and horseback ride, Usrula finally arrives at the remote estate. Moyano, it seems, was underselling the enormity of the work, and Usula finds herself in charge of two young workers, facing a huge walled garden that is full of weeds and brambles. Knowing that clearing the garden alone could take weeks, but that she has to have something worthy of showing Don Agramonte when he arrives, she sets out to do what she can.

However, as the days begin to go by Urusla starts to experience strange things at Las Lágrimas. The old house feels strange and oppressive, and the nights alone in her room are long and frightening. The few staff that are there whisper stories about hauntings, and refuse to divulge their secrets. She feels like she's constantly being watched, and starts to hear the sound of someone chopping down trees in the surrounding woodland. But strangest of all, parts of the garden seem to change on their own, reverting back to their original, restored state overnight, without anyone having done the work.

Despite being determined to make the garden ready, and knowing that it will take all of her tie, Ursula begins to find herself being drawn deeper into the mystery of Las Lágrimas, searching for an explanation for the strange events. But will her efforts stir up further trouble for her from both her living employers, and the spirits that make Las Lágrimas their home?

One of the ways in which The Haunting of Las Lágrimas really excels is in atmosphere. As soon as Ursula sets out for Las Lágrimas things start to take a turn, and you find yourself on edge. On her journey to the estate we learn some of the history of the place, the rumours of the hauntings, and we begin to understand the remoteness of the location. The estate itself seems to sit in the middle of nowhere, days journey from the nearest settlement, surrounded by endless grassland, dark forest, and ominous skies. The way Ursula describes it in her journal really does transport you there, and you can begin to see why it soon starts to prey upon her mind.

The estate itself is as much a character as any of the principal players in this story too, and its dark and draughty halls and overgrown gardens feel both vast and lonely, and overwhelmingly oppressive at the same time. Ursula often finds herself walking through the halls of the estate alone, listening to the silence around her, feeling the cold creeping in. Her one place of solace, her bedroom, often seems to be the focus of a strange, unseen visitor too, with strange noises just outside her door, and a horrible chill trying to get inside. It feels like there's nowhere for Ursula to get away from the dark forces always lying just out of sight.

Even the garden, a place where she can pour all of her focus and energy, a place that should make her feel at peace shifts and changes over time. It seems to slowly turn upon her, with unseen eyes on her back, strange sounds coming from round the corner, and even in the middle of the day it can feel like one of the most frightening places on earth. 

W.M. Cleese seems to know how to build this tension throughout the book, and does so masterfully. Las Lágrimas is unsettling at first, but only because its an old building, a place in disrepair and in a remote location. But as the story progresses it starts to change, to become sinister in its own right. Cleese is able to increase the unease at such a slow rate that you don't even realise that it's being done, until both Ursula and the reader reach such a point that you never feel like you can let your guard down, and that nowhere in Las Lágrimas can provide safe shelter.

The fact that Las Lágrimas is so remote, and that Ursula doesn't know the way back to civilisation, means that this is one of those kinds of stories where you're not left shouting 'why don't you just leave?' at the protagonist. Usula has no choice but to stay and face the haunting. As such, she's forced to call upon wells of personal strength that she doesn't even know she has, forging ahead even when she wants to do the exact opposite. Because of this she comes across as a very strong and capable woman, doubly so due to the time the book's set. This is a time and place where women aren't treated with respect or given positions of authority, and Ursula is used to having to prove herself to others. She has a level of inner strength and confidence that not many others in the book possess.

I had a lot of fun reading The Haunting of Las Lágrimas, times where I couldn't put the book down because I was desperate to find out what would happen next, what piece of the mystery that Urusla was going to uncover; but there were also times where I found myself drawing my blanket in close and casting nervous glances towards the darkened corners of the room because the sense of horror was getting to me so much. I'm sure that there will be some people who will say that the book is a little slow, that there isn't enough 'in-your-face' horror going on to be scary, but the constant building dread, the sense of unease and fear that just went on and on were so much more frightening than I was expecting. If you enjoy scary mysteries, strong female protagonists, remote, Gothic locations, and spooky happenings, this is a book you're definitely going to want to read.

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The Young Woman and the Sea by Catherine Meurisse - Book Review

 

'Catherine Meurisse once again draws upon her memories. Her stay in a far-off, strange-yet-familiar land, at the Japanese villa Kujoyama in 2018, provides the artist another opportunity to pursue her creative quest, this time where the West and Far East meet. In the manner of Lewis Carroll, the young artist lets characters out of legend lead her through pictorial landscapes. Imagination and dialogue are key to penetrating the secrets of this strange territory and discovering why the young explorer finds it so fascinating. This Alice daydreams and wonders, returning every now and then to reality and nature, that dynamic dictator of events and situations. After The Great Outdoors, Catherine Meurisse continues her pursuit of beauty in an unknown land, between mountain and sea, illustrating landscapes that reflect the seasons and the artist's progress. Truly splendid!'

The Young Woman and the Sea tells the story of artist Catherine Meurisse as she journeys to an artists retreat in Japan, and the extraordinary things she saw whilst exploring the Japanese countryside.

The book begins with Catherine arriving at the remote coastal retreat, a beautiful building that sits surrounded by woodland, nestled between the sea and a mountain. There to try and capture the beauty of the land around her, Catherine is unsure where to begin; and being jet-lagged she decides to take take a nap. Upon awaking she sees a tanuki outside her window and decides to follow it.

Climbing up the hill behind the retreat Catherine comes face to face with the animal, who immediately starts talking to her. Listening to her talk about her desire to recapture the beauty of Japan's nature, the tanuki gives her a paintbrush made from its own fur, and teaches her to write something on a piece of paper in Japanese. When she looks away from the creature for but a moment, however, it vanishes. Left alone and unsure where to go to Catherine starts to try to find her way back to the retreat, getting lost in the process.

From here the artist begins to explore the world around her, wandering the countryside, and befriending a local artist who is searching for the perfect woman to paint. Together, the two of them make their way to a bathhouse, where they are able to stay the night and meet the owner, a beautiful woman who the artist wishes to paint as a drowned lady. The next day Catherine is able to explore more of the surrounding land, discovering the beauty in the everyday, as well as small special places tucked out of sight. Throughout it all, she keeps meeting up with the Tanuki, who keeps challenging her as to why she has yet to find her inspiration.

The story of The Young Woman and the Sea is a little odd, and you can very much tell that its semi-autobiographical, as not a huge amount really happens here. For much of the book we follow Charlotte as she walks from place to place, discovering more of the beauty of Japan, and learning about various people's connection to it. She's looking to be inspired by what she finds, yet isn't sure how that will work for her yet. This is where the tanuki seems to come in.

Now, I would be extremely surprised if the real Catherine met a magical talking tanuki, and this is either creative license or a surprise revelation that magic animals are real. However, the creature seems to be trying to coax Charlotte into coming to the realisations she needs in order to make the most of her time in Japan, and begin to create the art she really wants to. But when the book comes to a close there is a question left hanging over whether any of it was even real. The final pages seem to imply that much of what we've just read, and perhaps everything from the moment Charlotte fell asleep, could in fact be a dream; her mind coming up with a scenario by which she's exploring the world.

Alongside the somewhat vague story, the characters feel a little strange too, and I failed to really get a sense of who anyone was really supposed to be. Charlotte spends the entire book lost, unable to find the thing that will kick-start her art, the old artist she meets is strangely obsessed with drowned women and poetry, the hostess they talk to seems to be implied to be ghostly and ancient, though perhaps not; and then there's the magical talking animal who's doing all this for its own amusement I guess. The characters seem to only be there to move events from one location to another, not really having much to do, but simply there to get the reader to new places.

These places are, in fact, the highlight of the book, as Meurisse has done some wonderful landscape art for the book, managing to craft some truly beautiful moments as the characters journey around the Japanese countryside. It really does feel like the artist went and spent some time in the place, and that it became a sauce of inspiration for her. The only thing that lets the art down is that the characters are very simple and cartoonish in comparison. The landscapes are stunning, but the people look like they come out of a newspaper strip comic and the two don't mesh at all. I often found myself being drawn out of things by these two conflicting styles; and that definitely hurt my enjoyment of the book.

Overall, The Young Woman and the Sea was a fairly enjoyable book, though one where I was enjoying looking at the art more than I was reading the story or getting to know any of the characters. It's a shame that I was unable to connect with any of the characters in any real way, but hopefully others will be able to do so. The book is a beautiful examination of the wonder of Japanese landscapes and countryside, yet contains little else to go with it.

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The Locker Room by Timothé Le Boucher - Book Review

 

'It is a place where savagery knows no bounds. A place where foggy glass windows house a ruthless social hierarchy. A place where no one is truly safe. They call this place...the locker room.

'As teen boys discover a renovated locker room at their school, it becomes the nexus of genuinely life-altering events. Body shaming, bullying, and the cruelty of prying eyes are only the tip of the iceberg inside this cauldron of hormones and developing adolescent minds.

'Akin to the horrors of Lord of the Flies, The Locker Room explores a micro-society without boundaries in which only the strongest survive.'

Oh boy, locker rooms. Does any place within school conjure more awful memories? I know that my own experiences were not the best in them, despite nothing truly awful happening there; but that still didn't preclude people from bullying anyone who was overweight, odd, without the right fashion, or just anyone that the bullies decided to go for that day. And don't get me started about all the internalised trauma of having to spend years in the boys locker room as a trans girl who still hadn't figured her shit out yet. Nightmare fuel.

A story that decides to take a look at this weird microcosm of school life, of this place where tensions are always high, and where there a pretty much never school staff to keep things safe, is definitely a bold move. Within just opening the book the author and artist Timothé Le Boucher lets the reader know that the events in the book are inspired by things that he witnessed and lived through; that the depictions of bullying and abuse he's crafted here aren't too far removed from his own past, as well as the lived reality for many others.

The story begins with a group of school boys being let into their newly renovated locker room for the first time. The walls have been repainted, they've got nice new benches, and the showers have been revamped. Whilst they're initially impressed by what they find they do encounter one glaring issue, their old individual showers have been replaced by a communal one. These young, adolescent boys are terrified by the idea that they'll have to get naked around each other and shower. In fact, they outright refuse to use the showers, and spend the next few weeks going without.

However, as time passes the students are sick of feeling dirty and sweaty after their sports, and when the girls start telling them they all stink someone makes the plunge and uses the showers. After this more of the students begin to, and some lines begin to be drawn between those that shower and those that don't. This isn't the only divide we see in this book, and there are some very clear groups that form inside the locker room, each vying not to be the ones that get picked on by those deemed to be 'above' them.

One kid who falls prey to the bullies more than once is Corentin, a boy who doesn't really have any friends, and whose weight makes him a target of ridicule and abuse more than once. One of his chief bullies is the exchange student Gauthier, who makes it his mission to shame the kid. However, when Corentin discovers something 'odd' that Gauthier is doing in one of the toilet stalls and takes a photo the focus of the bullying changes. Now Gauthier is the one being abused and made fun of, whilst Corentin manages to get in with one of the groups when he suggests new ways in which to harass the boy who once bullied him.

The Locker Room is an odd book in that it wants to take a look at bullying in schools, but doesn't do it in a broader context; instead focusing squarely on what happens in this one room once a week. We don't get to see if Corentin gets picked on during lunch, nor do we see if snide comments are made about people during class. Our only context for things is in this one isolated room. This really works in some regards, and I liked how whenever the story showed us anything from outside we were looking out through the frosted windows of the locker room at these indistinct, distorted shapes. However, it often felt like I was only getting small snippets of the whole, and that whilst the important events might be happening in this one location I was still missing details that would have made things make sense.

For example, we see a pretty sharp change in how the students are acting towards Corenti and Gauthier from one week to the next, as Guthier becomes the target for the bullies and Corentin becomes one of them. There are hints in the dialogue as to what's been going on, but you're very much left to try and fill in the gaps yourself and add your own context. A big example of this is what Gauthier was doing in the toilet that got him so hated by the other students. Before this he seemed incredibly self conscious about showering with the other boys, and kept himself covered as much as he could, that coupled with the photo of him in the stall labelling him as 'revolting' leads the reader to make certain conclusions without actually saying they itself.

I don't know if this is being done from a perspective of some kind of plausible deniability, such as if someone comes to the conclusion that Gauthier was caught masturbating in the toilet and that's why he was made fun of the writer can say 'I never said that, that's your own conclusion' if they ever got called out for having that content in the book. It might also be because to a certain degree it doesn't matter what Gauthier was doing. Having lived through school I can say, and I'm sure you'll all agree, that it often didn't matter what someone decided to make the reason for bullying you; if it was going to happen it was going to happen, and reasons why didn't matter.

I think this is the approach the author is going for, and if so, I think it's the better way of doing this. Readers are able to project their own thought and feelings onto this, possibly drawing from their own experiences; which makes the book feel a lot more personal in some way and will help the reader relate it to their own life.

Though the book is good in a lot of ways there are some areas in which I felt it let itself down, or could cause upset to some readers. The first is that this is a book that focuses on teenage boys, and as such features the boys using horrible language. There are the uses of abelist and homophobic slurs more than once across the book, and whilst this might be accurate for how teens talk it was jarring to see, and did lessen my enjoyment of the book. 

The second thing is that whilst there is no male nudity in the book, or at least no full frontal male nudity as most often the boys would be covering their genitals self-consciously, there are repeated scenes where the boys spy into the girls locker room and everything is openly on show. I know that the book is being written from a teen male perspective, and that for most teen males seeing a guys junk is the last thing they want, whilst seeing a girl naked is probably the first, it did feel a little one-sided that naked girls were fine whilst naked boys weren't. The author could have easily conveyed the boys being perverts without showing female nudity.

Overall, I thought that The Locker Room was a well crafted book, one that isn't necessarily heavy on the details, but certainly captures the feel of what its like to experience bullying, and how bullying can sometimes go too far. Bullying is still one of those things that all too often gets brushed aside as not being serious, or is chalked up to 'kids just being kids'. But the simple truth is that bullying is awful, it has long-lasting effects that can stay with a person for decades. It needs to be challenged and called out whenever it happens, and if books like this can help highlight these issues, or encourage people to act differently when it happens, that can only be a good thing.

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Dead and Unburied Vol 1 by Jocelyn Boisvert - Book Review

 

'Yan is on top of the world. School's almost out for summer, he's about to have a new baby sister, and he's going to be spending his vacation making a zombie movie with his best friend Nico. But on his way home from school, he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and before he knows it, his life is slipping away... Things are no longer smelling rosy now that Yan's pushing up daisies. But for some reason, Yan's soul isn't going anywhere: his body may be rotting, but his mind is clear, and once out of his grave, Yan is determined to be reunited with his family. He may be falling apart, but he isn't about to let that happen to them!'

Death doesn't tend to be where many stories start, not least when its the lead character dying; but the new teen zombie story Dead and Unburied does just this, introducing readers to our lead character, Yan, before killing him less than dozen pages in.

Yan Faucher is your average teenage guy. He has a decent home with his mother and father, his older sister, and his younger brother; as well as a baby sister about to be born any day. His best friend Nico and he love movies, and the two of them dream of making a zombie movie together over the summer holidays and making a break into the film industry. Life is good, and Yan is having fun enjoying his teenage years. However, when Yan is walking home from school, heading to the hospital to see his newly born sister for the first time, he comes across a local thug threatening someone. When he sees the thug pull out a knife Yan rushes in to help, but gets stabbed in the stomach.

Despite being found by one of his classmates, Alice, who attempts to perform CPR on him whilst help comes, Yan is beyond saving, and passes away. Except, his spirit doesn't seem to want to leave his body. Yan gets to witness his family saying goodbye to him at his funeral, before he's buried. After what feels like forever Yan discovers that he can move his body again, and discovers that he's somehow come back from the dead. With no way out of his coffin, and nothing better to do, Yan decides to occupy himself with his beloved trumpet, which was buried with him.

On the anniversary of Yan's death Nico visits his friends grave, and hears the sound of a trumpet coming from beneath the soil. Knowing that this means his friends must somehow be alive , Nico sneaks out at night and returns to the cemetery, determined to dig Yan up and be reunited with his friend. Unfortunately, things doesn't quite go as planned.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about Dead and Unburied is how it's not trying to be your typical zombie story. Zombies seem to have gone through a huge boom over the last decade and a half, appearing in all kinds of genres and all manner of situations, and whilst some projects try new things they all seem to be variations of 'zombie plague wiping out humanity'. There's none of this here. There's nothing in the book that hints of awful things to come, or even that there's any other zombie in the world other than Yan. This isn't about how humanity adapts to an extinction event, or how the apocalypse brings out the worst in humans. It's about the loss of a kid, and how that ripples out into the rest of the world.

The book is ore of a study about how much an impact a single person can have on dozens of other lives; even if that person was a completely ordinary and average kid. After he's died and he's laying in his coffin Yan imagines the world without him, how his family adapt and move on, and how the world will be without him. And for the most part he seems to hope for the best. He doesn't wallow in self pity at having died, but hopes that the loss of him can spur his family on to do good things and live a better life. So when he visits his home and finds a father barely holding things together and drinking, a sister who's gone off the rails and involved with criminals, a brother who seems to have regressed and doesn't speak, and a mother barely keeping it together it hurts him. He also learns that in the year since he died Nico went through a mental breakdown and was hospitalised.

Yan wasn't anything special, he was a normal, average kid who had a few close friends and a family. He hadn't changed the world, or created art that would entertain and inspire thousands. He was just a kid; yet still the loss of him from the world had such a huge effect on those left behind. I think this is one of the more accurate depictions of loss that I've seen, though possibly pushed for effect. No one in the world means nothing, everyone touches other lives in some way, often important ways; and the loss of anyone changes the world. 

Outside of the family issues Yan gets into a few scrapes across the town, including getting to frighten the man who killed him, and getting chased by police. He's struggling to adapt to being out of his coffin, and it makes for some fun moments across the book. He's not just back from the dead, he's the living dead, so he looks and smells like a corpse and has to deal with that.

Whilst there's a lot that happens around Yan and his family there's little explanation as to how this has all happened, how he's back from the dead; and I assume that this is something that will be explored in the next volume. Normally such a glaring omission of information, or at least a lack of hints as to a solution, would annoy me in some way; as I'd want something here that I could look at for a possible solution. But I honestly didn't mind it at all. This was mainly due to the rest of the book being so engaging and entertaining that I didn't even notice that there was no solution offered for Yan becoming a zombie; which I think speaks to how well written the book was that this hugely important thing didn't even register to me.

The art for the book is supplied by Pascal Colpron, who does a really good job. The book has this really nice look to it, where everything feels bright and colourful without feeling overly cartoonish. It's a comic where everything feels alive and vibrant, even if the lead himself is not. And this really works. They also do a good job at making Yan not feel too disgusting as a zombie too. It's clear that he's not a regular human, thanks to his dry, sunken face and exaggerated features, but he's not a disgusting, rotting mess. The choice to make him green and wizened looking, rather than having huge chunks of flesh hanging off means that he still feels enough like a real person for you to be able to connect to him. He can still emote with his face, and you can see him as a person rather than just a walking corpse.

Dead and Unburied is a fun zombie story that doesn't focus on the horror of the living dead, but instead takes a look at the impact that people have on the lives of others, how important people can be, and how death can change lives. With so much more left to cover, this feels like the perfect set up for more interesting things to come in future volumes.

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Don’t Go In The House (1979) – Blu-ray Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

There are certain things that we’ve come to expect from slasher movies over the years: masked or costumed killers, the final girl, elaborate kills, chase sequences, and teens being punished for breaking the rules. But before some of the bigger hits in the genre, particularly Friday the 13th in 1980, which was a massive financial success and changed slasher films forever, things were done a bit differently. Don’t Go In The House is a prime example.

The film doesn’t follow a victim. It doesn’t have a final girl. Instead, we begin with Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi), a man in his mid thirties who works at the local incinerator facility, burning trash. Straight away we see that Donny’s isn’t your typical guy; when an accident results in a coworker being engulfed in fire Donny watches on, mesmerised rather than helping.

When he returns home from work that night to help take care of his sick mother, whom he shares a large run down house with, he finds that she has died whilst he was away. At first this devastates him, but his pain soon turns into a revelation; without his overbearing mother around he can do whatever he wants. Donny begins to enjoy his new freedom, playing his music loud and jumping on the furniture, but the disembodied voice of his mother begins to haunt him, trying to punish him for his happiness.

This voice stirs up trauma in Donny, of the times where his mother would punish him as a child by burning the evil out of him. Sure that he can overcome the voices in his head and break away from his mother’s ghost with fire, Donny converts one of the rooms into a fireproof chamber, and starts looking for victims that he can burn alive.

I’d heard of Don’t Go In The House due to it being one of the 72 banned ‘video nasties’ in the UK, and was expecting a gory slasher style movie of Donny going around in his fire-proof suit killing poor unsuspecting women. Instead, I was surprised to find the film that this has most in common with is actually Psycho .

The victims don’t really matter in this film, and whilst we spend a good portion of time seeing Donny select his first victim, and working himself up to perform the act of kidnapping and killing her, the later victims get very little screen time, and I don’t think any but the first is named. Instead, it’s Donny that is the focus, his journey from abused son to fire-obsessed killer. The most obvious comparisons to Psycho would be the relationship between Donny and his mother, and how he keeps hearing her voice after she dies, and how her past actions are driving him to now harm young women. Thankfully the film doesn’t go into the disgusting trope of the cross-dressing villain, and because of that I think it actually makes a lot more sense than Psycho, and works better.

The house of the title also stirs up images of the Hitchcock movie, thanks to it being a large Gothic building standing alone on a hill. It might not be as imposing as the Bates home, but it’s more interesting due to the fact that it’s not a fake, but is actually a real house. The house is itself as much a character as Donny, and the well kept rooms at the entrance to the house that put forward an image of normality, soon give way to a decaying and ill-kept building, reflecting how Donny’s normal appearance is only surface level.

It being not just a killer running around hunting victims, but an actual study of a person’s descent into evil actions, particularly with the themes of how abuse can beget abuse, make this film an interesting watch. It’s hard to see why the film was ever banned, as it is clearly more than some gore-filled horror cash grab like many slasher films of the era.

The new Blu-ray release offers audiences a few different ways of watching the movie. It comes with a 2K restoration of the film from the original negative as either the Theatrical Cut, or the Television Version of the movie, as well as a new cut that combines the two versions together into a longer Extended Cut. There are commentaries for each of the versions of the film, with cast, crew, and film authors offering their insight and expertise to expand the viewing experience. There’s also a Cinema Mode, which presents the film as it would have appeared in theatres in 1979, complete with trailers for other horror films, and cinema adverts; it even has an ad for a local Indian restaurant, and is a good bit of silly fun.

In addition to all these versions of the film there are a number of extras including interviews with cast and crew members, trailers, featurettes about the house where it was filmed, archival interviews, video essays, and documentaries about the film and its place in horror cinema.

Don’t Go In The House is a horror film that was banned in the UK for decades, that received a harsh reputation because of this, and could be thought of as nothing more than gross, slasher gore; but is actually a lot more interesting than that. And this new release offers horror fans the ultimate way to experience this piece of cinematic history. 

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The Woman In Black – Throwback 10

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

The Woman In Black began life as a short Gothic horror novel written by Susan Hill, first published in 1983. The book tells the story of a retired lawyer, who one Christmas Eve is listening to ghost stories around the fire with his second wife and his four step-children. Unwilling to tell them a story of his own, he instead writes down an account of when he was a young man who had to travel to a remote house for work; a house that is home to a dark spirit.

The book was an instant success, and was adapted into a television film six years later for ITV, as well as being produced into a stage play in 1987; a play that would go on to become the second longest running play in West End history. Despite the success, the story existed in this space of doing nothing until it was announced in 2009 that it would become part of the new revival of Hammer Horror, a beloved series of British made horror films.

This new adaptation differs from the book a great deal, and stars Daniel Radcliffe as Arthur Kipps, a young, widowed lawyer who’s sent to the remote Eel Marsh House, the home of a wealthy client locate in a remote marshland. Leaving his young son behind in London, Kipps travels to the small town nearby, where some of the locals try to encourage him to stay away from the place. Arriving at the isolated home, Kipps hears odd noises, finds strange, locked doors, and even sees a spectral figure dressed in black standing in the grounds outside the house.

When he arrives back in the village one of the young children in town dies after drinking lye. The villagers blame Kipps for this, and he learns that the strange woman in black he saw is a local legend, an entity that if seen means a child will die soon after. Determined to get to the bottom of things, Kipps returns to Eel Marsh House to find answers, and confront the dark spirit.

Up to this point the newly released Hammer films, films like Beyond The Rave, Let Me In, and Wake Wood, were more modern horror movies. They were set in contemporary periods, they had more modern concepts, and they often felt very similar to other film studio output. The Woman In Black, in contrast, instantly felt like Hammer Horror returning to its classic roots. Despite being a modern made story, the book is set in the Victorian Era; a time period where many of the biggest Hammer Horror movies were set.

The film leaned into the setting, using it to help with the horror. Kipps couldn’t just illuminate the remote, Gothic mansion by flicking a switch, nor could he grab a torch and explore the darkness. He has to move from room to room holding candles and oil lamps, or sometimes even just a single match. It felt like the darkness was much more oppressive, always closing in around him, and that the small piece of light he had could go out at any moment. The lack of technology also helped with the sense of isolation, as he couldn’t call for help, and no one would be speeding to his rescue in a boat or car equipped to make it through dangerous marshland.

Director James Watkins definitely seems to have tried to make a film that recaptures the glory of Hammer’s older work, and chose to make a film where the atmosphere was as much a character as any of the actors. He had long, slow shots that would linger uncomfortably. You’d find yourself constantly watching the backgrounds of scenes trying to spot where the woman might appear, or other shadowed figures might be moving. The film did have a handful of jump scares scattered throughout, and whilst these were effective at getting a scream or two out of the viewer, it was the ever building tension of watching Arthur alone in this dark and dilapidated house that was the real horror of the film.

And Daniel Radcliffe did a great job at playing against this ever building sense of dread. There were times where he would be the only living character on screen for long periods, and the film was being carried on his ability to make you believe that he was alone and terrified. And for the most part he did it really well, although at just twenty three at the time he seemed quite young for the role. The average age for married men in the 1890s was twenty six, so it’s not impossible that the character could have been married, widowed, and had a four year old son at twenty three, but it does occasionally feel like he’s slightly too young for the part.

The Woman In Black is a film that helped to put Hammer back on the map, that showed that it could still produce dark, brooding Gothic horror that doesn’t rely on gore or big scares to frighten the audience. It showed that its star was more than just a child actor capable of only one role. And it ended up being one of the better book to film adaptations around.

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Blood Omen 2 – Throwback 20

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

The Legacy of Kain series is not an easy one to get into. For example, despite being called Blood Omen 2 this is not the second game in the series, it’s the fourth. Just explaining where this game sits in the timeline and why takes a little doing, so hold onto your hats.

In the original game, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, players follow Kain, a nobleman turned into a vampire who seeks revenge against his killers and a cure for his vampirism. The next game in the series, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, takes players into the a future where Kain rules over a ruined and nightmarish world with his vampire legions. Kain has become the villain, and you play as a wraith-like vampire out to stop him. This led into Soul Reaver 2, a direct sequel, which sees the protagonist travelling through history and messing with time. This leads us to Blood Omen 2, which takes place in a new alternate timeline caused by the events of Soul Reaver 2, but taking place between Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. See, not too hard to understand.

The game once again puts players in the role of Kain, who begins awakening from a two hundred year sleep in the city of Meridian, and remembers little of his past. He remembers that before his long sleep he was engaged in a campaign of conquest of the world, and that a group known as the Sarafan Order opposed him. Kain learns that the Sarafan Order have destroyed his armies, and have taken over the world. Lacking most of his former power, Kain heads out into this new, industrial world in an attempt to take revenge on those who toppled his armies, and to reclaim as much as his former power as he can by fighting his former, traitorous lieutenants and absorbing their abilities.

Despite being a part of the same series as the Soul Reaver games, Blood Omen 2 was not produced by the same crew, and had little involvement with the team from Soul Reaver. This actually worked to the game’s advantage, as the team were able to create a game that fits into the world (in its own strange way) but feels very different to the previous games. The game-play is immediately familiar to anyone who played Soul Reaver, yet lacks some of the more unusual aspects of those games, choosing to take a more traditional action approach.

The game is mainly a hack-and-slash experience, where players are allowed to explore and traverse around the city of Meridian, collecting new powers that enable them to progress from one area to another, working their way through the game’s collection of bosses. You can equip yourself with a variety of weapons to fight your way through the denizens of Meridian, and thanks to the ability to grab your foe and perform some evil attacks Kain dispatches his enemies in some wicked and gruesome ways. But, you’re also a vampire, and you don’t want to waste all of that precious blood, and as such you’re able to telekinetically suck the blood out of your victims, having it fly out of your foe and into Kain’s mouth. Not only does this heal you, but it also gives you experience points that can be used to upgrade and unlock abilities throughout the game.

The game makes no allusions to Kain being any kind of hero, or even anti-hero. You’re a bad guy, and your actions reflect this. You stalk the streets of Meridian, killing anyone you come across. Whilst your quest to fight the leader of the Sarafan Order might end up stopping an invasion of the demonic Hylden it’s not being done out of the goodness of Kain’s heart and is simply part of his plan to usher in the nightmarish future players have already seen in Soul Reaver.

With this being the fourth game in the series it had a lot lore to draw upon, and added some of its own into the series; but where it really excelled was in its expansion of what came before, particularly giving Kain more screen time than other entries in the series. This marked Simon Templeman’s fourth outing in the role of Kain, and he’s an absolute delight to listen to. Having played the character for so long he knows when to ham it up, and when to go all out, and his performance is wonderfully over-the-top, and makes proceedings incredibly enjoyable.

Blood Omen 2 didn’t set the world on fire when it came out, and whilst it received favourable reviews it didn’t top any charts, or receive mass acclaim; but fans of the series found a lot to enjoy, not least getting to spend more time with Kain. Whilst the game might not introduce many new game-play innovations, and builds upon what has come before, its dedication to simply having fun as the bad guy, and of wanting to expand the lore of its setting makes this an enjoyable entry in the Legacy of Kain franchise, and a game that I find myself returning to time and time again.

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