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Graphic Novel Review: Pretty Deadly Volume 3: The Rat by Kelly Sue DeConnick, art by Emma Rios

Cover art for Pretty Deadly volume 3: The Rat

Pretty Deadly Volume 3: The Rat by Kelly Sue DeConnick, art by Emma Rios

Image Comics, 2020

ISBN-13: 9781534315198

Available: Kindle, paperback

Buy:  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

 

DeConnick and Rios’ Pretty Deadly Volume 3 : The Rat launches us forward in time from World War I to 1930s Hollywood. The late Sara Fields’ granddaughter Clara has been found murdered. Her Uncle Frank, known as “Conjure-Man” to some, is desperate to find her killer. He tracks her path through Los Angeles, where the Reapers of Hunger, Thirst, and Obsession have each attempted to lure Clara to their way of life in some way. Frank calls out, loud enough for the Reaper of Vengeance to hear his pleas to help him find out what happened to Clara. Deathface Ginny appears to aid her old acquaintance.

 

As per volumes 1 and 2, volume 3 presents a compelling story with familiar characters, and a few new ones. I could read an entire series on Deathface Ginny alone. Getting a few more glimpses of the Immortal Reapers is interesting as well. I wish we had more of them. Art by Emma Rios and colours by Jordie Bellaire are, as usual, well rendered. I’m hoping there will be more Pretty Deadly in the future by this team, especially knowing that Image released Pretty Deadly: The Shrike Vault Editionon April 30, 2024.

 

The long gap in years between  the publication of volumes 2 and 3 was unfortunate. Luckily, I was able to access all volumes through interlibrary loan to reread the first two and finally read the third.

 

Pretty Deadly Volume 3: The Rat collects issues 1-5. At the end of the trade paperback is a collected discussion guide created by Dr. Jeremy Stoll, which makes this a book that could find use in the classroom. Recommended.

 

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Book Review: Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

cover art for Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

 

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

Tor.com, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250788832

Available: Hardcover, paperback, library binding, KIndle edition, audiobook

Buy:    Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com

 

 

This is not so much a horror novel as it is an homage to classic monster movies and a critique of golden-age Hollywood. Readers looking for blood and gore will not find it here. What they will find is a dark, beautifully written warning about the dangers of ambition. Told in first person by the protagonist, the story reads like a memoir.

 

CK is a Chinese-American girl obsessed with acting in the movies, at the beginnings of the talkies. She is working bit parts for children off the books for a director at Wolfe Studios, who wants to present her as his new discovery once she turns 18. CK is impatient and tracks down a retired actress who gives her information that will get her an audience, and a contract, with Oberlin Wolfe, using blackmail photos. Due to this leverage she is able to demand that she not be cast in stereotypical roles for Asian women (an issue faced by real-life Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong in this time period).. She takes the stage name Luli Wei, a name that happens to also be her sister’s.

 

Getting a studio contract is similar to making a bargain with faeries. In exchange for fame and fortune, the studio owner controls your life (this is a fairly accurate description of the Hollywood studio system at the time, even without faeries’ involvement). There’s even a version of Tam Lin that takes place within the story.

 

Directors don’t know how to cast CK since she can’t be cast in stereotypical roles, but finally she is cast as a monster, the Siren Queen, and the movie and its sequels are blockbuster hits. Despite her ability to cause scandal and her defiance, the studio can’t get rid of her. CK has a lesbian romance with rising star Emmaline Sauvignon which the studio ends because it interferes with their narrative of the kind of person Emmaline is supposed to be. Later, she gets involved with a scriptwriter hired to do edits on the script of the last Siren Queen movie.

 

Despite knowing her contract would eventually have negative consequences for her, I couldn’t help loving CK for her ambition and refusal to let studio officials and directors walk on her, and for her own love of playing the role of a vengeful monster and loving it. The classic monster movies are clearly an inspiration to the author, and the critique of racist stereotypes and queer erasure in casting at that time is something I am glad to see brought to the attention of modern readers. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth illustrated by Sara Lautman

Cover of Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth illustrated by Sara Lautman

William Morrow & Company, 2020

ISBN-13: 978-0062942852

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audibook, audio CD ( Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

 

 

Emily M. Danforth, author of the YA novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post, stretches her boundaries in this unsettling, haunted novel that reveals a buried history of queer romance and horror and some seriously creepy hornets.

The story moves smoothly from events in 1902 that led to the deaths of three students at the Brookhants School for Girs, tied to an uninhibited and shocking memoir by openly bisexual feminist Mary McLane, to a present day where author Merritt Emmons has written a book about the deaths that is about to be made into a sapphic “Blair Witch” style horror movie.

Two of the girls who died were co-founders of a club called The Plain Bad Heroines, which admires Mary’s unapologetic attitude, are found dead in the woods with a copy of the book,  attacked by a swarm of hornets in an orchard of rotting fruit. The third acquires it after their deaths and is literally poisoned by reading it near a plant in the campus greenhouse where she is caretaker. The headmistress confiscates it, convinced that it is cursed. As the students abandon the school, both the headmistress and her relationships begin to disintegrate, and trapped almost alone in a snowstorm, it’s hard to tell how much of a grip on reality she has left.  She’s also left remembering her college days, where a love affair led to her eventual inheritance of Brookhants, chosen by her husband because of its reputation as a spiritually important location, in a very strange manner.

The horror movie based on Merritt’s book will star the popular actress Harper Harper and the less well-known actress Audrey Wood. Merritt initially is starstruck by Harper and they hit it off; her interactions with Audrey are more negative. The movie will be filmed at the actual Brookhants School and on the grounds, adding atmospheric creepiness.  Once the filming starts, it seems nothing can go right– it’s almost like the production is cursed. This leaves Harper, Audrey, and Merritt, a lot of time for exploration on the Brookhants estate. Black apples, rotting vegetation, and ominous swarms of hornets in the woods ratchet up the tension, and eventually the story behind the Brookhants curse is revealed.

This is a doorstop of a book. After its tense begining, it slows down for some time and, had I not known there would be a payoff, I might have set it down. I think a large chunk of the Hollywood segment could have been easily eliminated  to slim it down. This is where a lot of the present day characters’ personalities are established, and Merritt’s romantic interests start to develop, but it is just too drawn out.

Danforth isn’t subtle about centering lesbian and bisexual characters. It is even a point of contention in the casting of the movie, where Merritt objects to Audrey playing a lesbian role, assuming she must be straight, to have Audrey come out and say she’s bisexual. The headmistress’ memories of inheriting the school are all related to the romantic love she and her partner had for each other. even as she turns on her.

Plain Bad Heroines is also about as metafictional as you can get; it’s a fictional story inspired by a book by a real person, containing illustrations and images of what I’m pretty sure are news articles about the book, that a fictional author has written a fictional nonfiction book about, that is being made into a fictional movie being filmed found-footage style, as if it is nonfiction. Both the director and Harper Harper use social media to affect the narrative, so Harper’s Instagram posts document the movie shoot and all of its “cursed” problems for her followers, creating a Blair Witch effect of convincing the audience for the movie that the haunting is real. Even the people around Audrey and Merritt are in on the gaslighting, so that none of them know whether they can trust each other or reality. It’s clever, and the unreliability of the people around them and the way the reader knows the three women are being manipulated is distracting, but it doesn’t detract from the sense of atmospheric creepiness, dread, and tension, with hornets and rotting vegetation always around. You will never feel the same about hornets after reading this book.

Danforth actually has an author’s note where she discusses her discovery of Mary Maclane in researching hidden sapphic history, and that she wanted to bring that to light through Plain Bad Heroines. I never had heard of her and I found this fascinating. Unlike The Miseducation of Cameron Post this is not a YA novel, although it might be appreciated by some older YA readers, but certainly it is an original book with plenty of dread and some well-drawn lesbian and bisexual characters that will draw in readers of historical and metafictional horror, Hollywood, and haunted houses. It won’t be for everyone, but this book will certainly find its audience. Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, murder, body horror, sexual situations, insects