Rogues vs villains

All right, so this is a bit of a cheat. I haven't written about Victorian fiction in simply ages (although surely adaptations and not-really-adaptations somehow count?), and then when I finally get round to reading a story by one of my favourite Victorian novelists it's not even a full-length novel, but a novella of 125 pages. Still, I'm sure I can find something to say about it.

The novella in question is A Rogue's Life, by the - almost - always readable Wilkie Collins. It is really enjoyable after a somewhat irritating start - I'll get back to that - but it made me ponder why I don't feel the same degree of warmth towards rogues as I do towards villains.

I think it's fair to say that the words rogue and villain aren't entirely the same, but can I really claim that there's that much of a difference? "Villain" shows up as an alternative when you search for synonyms for "rogue", and they have other synonyms such as "rascal" and "scoundrel" in common. Isn't rogue essentially a sub-category of villain? Maybe, but in that case it's a sub-category I have problems with. What I appreciate in a villain, apart from brains, is drive and strength of will. Rogues, like villains, act selfishly and immorally, but they also tend to be lazy. They don't expect to have to make an effort to achieve their goal: they want success to be handed to them on a plate. Fiyero's song "Dancing Through Life" ("life is fraughtless, when you're thoughtless") from Wicked comes to mind when I try to pinpoint a rogue's outlook. Now, there are loveable rogues to be sure, mostly of the mildly criminal but humorous kind. But to my mind, it's hard for a fictional character to pull off the blithe and laid-back opportunism of a rogue without becoming annoying.

Frank Softly, the protagonist of A Rogue's Life, is a case in point. When he is revealed to have made money out of drawing caricatures, his father (a hard-working doctor, a profession Frank has tried but detests) orders him to stop for the sake of the family honour: "I answered dutifully that I was quite ready to obey, on the condition that he should reimburse me by a treble allowance [...] or that Lady Malkinshaw should confer upon me the appointment of physician-in-waiting on her, with a handsome salary attached". Frank's father refuses his "extremely moderate stipulations". There is more in the same self-congratulatory vein. When Frank later tries his hand at portrait painting, he finds it quite beyond him to paint a flattering portrait of his brother-in-law Mr Batterbury (who's hilarious: Collins can be relied on to make the most of his side characters). He follows up the painting with a self-portrait, "making my own likeness quite a pleasant relief to the ugliness of my brother-in-law's". To sum up, far from finding Frank charming, I found him smug and conceited, and didn't particularly wish him well. With rogueishness so often comes a kind of "aren't I a bad lad" preening which can be hard to bear.

The story improves immensely, however, when Frank becomes embroiled in the mysterious doings of the father of a girl with whom he has fallen in love. For one thing, Frank's feelings for the fair Alicia are genuine: for a rogue, he is remarkably steadfast in the relationship department. More importantly, however, the plot becomes thrilling enough for the reader to better put up with its protagonist. It's a page-turning adventure story full of chases, near-escapes and cunning strategies in order to avoid the law. The narrative is wrapped up rather hastily, but for the latter part of the novella I was hooked.

The story also contains one of those neat legal conceits that you often find in Collins: the reason Mr Batterbury is concerned for Frank's welfare at all is that Frank's scornful sister Arabella will be left a legacy of three thousand pounds, providing Frank outlives the aforementioned Lady Malkinshaw, his marvellously robust grandmother. It's an amusing situation, though not quite as amusing as Frank finds it. I was firmly Team Batterbury here: no-one can say he doesn't put some solid work into getting that legacy (I'll not reveal whether he's successful).

A Rogue's Life is a good read. But if you're looking for a loveable rogue, I don't think that you'll find him here.    

Am I not geeky enough for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - or too geeky?

One thing audiobooks can be good for is when you want to try out those famous books you've always thought you ought to read but haven't really felt like buying. I know that this function should be filled by library books, but I'm not a very tidy reader (and often read while I'm eating) and library books make me nervous. Audiobooks could be the answer.

True, I still haven't put this pretty theory into practice that much, but one I-really-ought-to-read-this book, or rather set of books, I have started listening to: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The title usually refers to a series of sci-fi novels chronicling the adventures of hapless human Arthur Dent after Earth is blown up in book one (which is the one actually called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). I've suspected that this book series ought to be up my alley for quite some time. Douglas Adams worked as a script editor on Doctor Who back in the Classic era and penned some adventures himself, and the Hitchhiker's Guide books sounded like a cross between Doctor Who and P.G. Wodehouse - geeky concepts meet witty comedy. Some of my favourite things, then.

So, by now I've listened to the two first novels in the series, and started on number three and - well. It's not that they're not entertaining. They're funny and an easy listen. But I confess I feel a little disappointed. Seeing as this is the Great Text of Geekdom, I expected more.

Perhaps great expectations are part of the problem. Way back, I read a Donald Duck comic, clearly modelled on Adams's books, where Donald had to hitch through the galaxy. He ended up on all sorts of colourful alien worlds, and I remember finding the story a delight. This was the kind of thing I thought the originals would explore too. But a goodish stretch into book one, Arthur hasn't come farther than a spaceship comparatively close to Earth (or where Earth used to be before the spaceship blew it up). Then he is saved from certain death by another spaceship. Lastly, he ends up on a planet where other planets are manufactured, and that's the only alien civilisation he properly gets to in the first book. One of these manufactured worlds was Earth, which turns out to have been a vast computer controlled by interdimensional beings (undercover as white mice) trying to find out the right question to ask concerning life, the Universe and everything (they already know the answer - 42).

Whether The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is for you depends, I'd say, on your reaction to the previous sentence. If you think "what absolute drivel", Hitchhiker's Guide is not for you. If you think "wow, that sounds really inventive and funny", it definitely is. I'm somewhere inbetween. Most of the scenarios Adams dreams up, while enjoyably outlandish, seem to exist mainly as the set-up for jokes. The encounter with alien worlds doesn't create any real sense of wonder. They're mostly there so the author can gently - or sometimes not-so-gently - make fun of phenomena familiar to us Earthlings. A lot of the satire could have worked equally well if the stories were set in a London suburb. 

This is where being too geeky comes in. A few years ago I'd never even heard of "world building", and as I'm not generally one for local colour in books - stop describing smelly slums or magnificent vistas of nature and get on with the story! - I didn't think it meant a lot to me. But I'm actually missing the "world building" component, which is usually an important part of sci-fi, in the Hitchhiker's Guide books. I was expecting them to seek out new life and new civilisations in true Star Trek style (only funnier), but there hasn't been much of that so far.

Let's face it, though - the main reason I'm not as sucked into the Hitchhiker's Guide saga as I thought I would be is probably that I'm not geeky enough. When you don't find jokes as funny as is clearly intended, you usually don't imagine your sense of humour to be at fault, but rather the jokes. Leastways, that's how it is for me. Some of Adams's skits don't land for me at all. The whole subplot (in the second novel) where a third of a planet's population with "useless" jobs are suckered into leaving their home, and then make a very poor show of colonising another world, I found vaguely insulting. With that kind of outlook, where does Adams suppose authors fit in? The more utilitarian the society, the higher the suspicion tends to be towards the Arts - a society without hairdressers could easily also be one without storytellers.

Mostly, however, I do find the jokes funny, but think that they are hammered home too incessantly. There are a lot of conversations were someone says something quirky, and then someone else (usually Arthur) indignantly asks "What do you mean [repeats quirky phrase]?" It sometimes takes ages for Arthur's friend Ford Prefect, an alien in disguise who saves him when Earth is doomed, to get a point across to the dense Arthur, which becomes wearying. I find myself longing for Ford to explain clearly from the beginning and for Arthur simply to accept the mind-bending concepts thrown at him. There are also a lot of whimsical asides about how certain things were invented, the thoughts of a sperm whale accidentally  created in space etc. Meanwhile the plot meanders and the characters, while amiable, aren't really fleshed out. The flamboyant Zaphod Beeblebrox (I'm relying on IMDB's spelling here) is the only one who can be called colourful.

But almost all of my gripes could boil down to me not being on the right geeky wavelength. Probably, I should stop complaining about plotlessness and embrace the quirkiness and the whimsy. That I'm not quite able to do that (while, as I said, having a good enough time with these audiobooks) may be proof that, Doctor Who and Star Wars interests notwithstanding, I'm really a square.    

Which wouldn't come as a surprise to Adams. In the Hitchhiker's Guide universe I, as someone working (broadly speaking) within the civil service, most closely resemble the unspeakable Vogons - mean-spirited, venal creatures who write absolutely appalling poetry. And I'm fine with that.                         

The irregular use of a great detective's name

I didn't think it could be done, but the Netflix series The Irregulars managed it. In the category "most spurious use of the Sherlock Holmes brand", it snatches the prize from Enola Holmes. Yes, believe it or not, The Irregulars has even less to do with Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective and his world than Enola Holmes did.

Funnily enough, I still kinda liked it. I certainly preferred it vastly to the awful Enola film. The Irregulars has likeable young leads, a solid supporting cast (with guest star turns from the likes of Rory McCann aka The Hound and Anna Maxwell Martin) and a script that is a great deal tighter and funnier than Enola's. True, said script is shamelessly modern. Also, Victorian London is depicted as a multicultural haven where people of every skin colour are prettily represented in every echelon of society. (I won't pretend I like being lectured on historical racism, but why is it suddenly politically correct to make believe it never existed?) But this is a show of supernatural happenings, so I can - once again - reach for the "alternate reality" explanation and give it a pass when it comes to historical accuracy. It doesn't matter much that Victorian London is nothing like Victorian London. But when it comes to what the series does to Holmes and co., I have to be severe on it, because this is no way to treat a franchise.

The series is clearly inspired by the "Baker Street Irregulars", boys living on the street who, in the original Conan Doyle stories, helped Holmes and Watson get information which respectable gentlemen couldn't easily get hold of. It is also based on graphic novels - graphic novels seem to have some form when it comes to playing fast and loose with legendary characters. Anyway, the Irregulars here aren't just boys, don't you believe it. There are two boys and two girls, and the leader of the group - tough and chippy Bea - is one of the girls. Her sister, Jessie, gradually reveals special powers, like being able to dive into peoples' minds when touching them. It's not much fun for Jessie being special, as she is increasingly troubled by nightmares and afraid of going mad. When a very strange bout of kidnappings takes place in London, Doctor Watson enlists an unwilling Bea to look into them along with her gang. The cases only get weirder from there, but Watson makes it clear that opting out is not an option. So the quartet struggles on, with the help of a handsome, if frail, prince in disguise who has taken a shine to Bea.

Wait a bit, you may ask. How come Holmes and Watson (not that we see Holmes for the first half of the series) are looking into supernatural events and trying out all kinds of hocus pocus? Isn't Sherlock Holmes a champion of cold rationality, and the last person to get mixed up in mystic stuff? (I could see Conan Doyle himself getting into this, but Sherlock - no.) Well may you wonder. Let me just briefly summarise how some famous Conan Doyle characters are presented in this series:

Doctor John Watson: Cold, arrogant and shifty for the most part of the series (he does soften towards the end).

Mycroft Holmes:  Polite and rather timid. He still works for the Government, though, so there's that.

Inspector Lestrade: A religious fanatic, horrible to Jessie.

Mrs Hudson: A hard-bitten slum landlady, not better acquainted with Holmes and Watson than with her other tenants. I bet you'd never thought you'd hear a Mrs Hudson suggest to a young male tenant that there were "alternative ways" for him to pay his rent (I'm afraid this made me smile rather than tut-tut).

Sherlock Holmes: The man himself is a wreck when we meet him - nothing unusual in that, many Holmeses we've seen over the years have been wrecks. In his heyday, though, he was something of a flamboyant swashbuckler - more Brigadier Gerard than Holmes. Most of his actions are motivated by romantic love for Bea's and Jessie's mother, who was lost in "the Rip" between this world and another one years ago.

I know, right?

While nothing, in my view, could have saved Enola Holmes, this series would have gained so much if it had dropped any link with the Holmes franchise and just settled for being an entertaining slice of Gothic mystery primarily aimed at teens. The characters mentioned above aren't uninteresting. The doctor turns out to be more complex than one would initially have guessed and even rather touching. But Watson he ain't, so why call him that? Why do films and shows keep doing this - attaching themselves to famous stories with which they have nothing in common, when they would have been better off going it alone and using freely invented characters?

The answer (apart from following their source material, be it graphic novels or YA novels) is sadly all too apparent. It's to gain viewers. Would I have given a series simply labelled "Teen adventure with a taste of mild Gothic Horror set in a fantasy version of Victorian London" a try? Probably not. But put in a link to Sherlock Holmes, and I'm suckered to try it - and then watch it to the end for its own sake, even after I realise I've been tricked. It's not a pretty strategy, and I'm not sure it will work indefinitely. The next time Netflix tries something like this, I for my part will be wary, and check out reviews before I dive in. If they're awful, I'll suspect another Cursed and quite possibly stay away. Which means I'd risk missing out on having an enjoyable time with another The Irregulars.   

Will Cruella get the Maleficent treatment? Probably not - but the film could still be really bad

Depressingly enough, politics tend to seep into our appreciation of culture and popular entertainment a lot more than one would have thought or wished. Therefore, it's heartwarming when there's a meeting of minds across the political divide. The other week, two YouTubers in my feed who are on completely different sides ideologically had just about the same reaction to the trailers for the upcoming (live-action) Disney film Cruella. Which was: have Disney completely lost it? Are they seriously expecting us to root for a woman who wanted to skin puppies to make a fur coat??

The comments beneath the trailers are often in the same vein. What the heck - are they really turning Cruella de Vil into a "girl boss"? Cruella, who is generally considered both irredeemable and unforgivable? There is a musical parody called Twisted, where apparently - in a clear dig at Wicked - Jafar from Aladdin is shown to be a good chap, really, who's only been maligned. I haven't seen it, but I've heard one of the songs from it, where Jafar meets a bunch of other Disney villains who give their - more or less - credible takes on their tales. The sob stories are well under way, when Cruella suddenly appears exclaiming: "I only wished to have a coat made out of puppies!" "You're not helping", Scar growls. "Disregard that". 

Even Once Upon A Time, normally a fictional villain's best friend, went with the "Yeah, no, she's just a psycho" explanation in Cruella's case - evil, in this particular instance, was born, not made. (Cruella shouldn't really be in the Once universe in my opinion, seeing as she's not a fairy-tale character, but she was fun and one of the more bearable things about Problematic Season Four, so I'll not complain too much.) If you can't catch a break in Once, you can't catch a break anywhere. Public opinion is, not unreasonably, fixed: no sympathy for the potential dog-skinner.

While agreeing that it would be a disaster to try and prettify Cruella's misdeeds, I was interested to see that people draw the line here, because I don't remember there being much of an outcry over Maleficent when it appeared. But she's just as bad, surely? I mean, she cursed an innocent baby to die -  not right away, granted, but on her sixteenth birthday! Even if you change the story so that Maleficent herself softens the curse to eternal sleep which can only be lifted by True Love's Kiss, she doesn't come out of it smelling of roses (especially if she doesn't believe there is such a thing as TLK). And yet Disney, disastrously, didn't settle for the Once recipe of adding nuance and complexity to a villain by telling their back story (which I would have been totally on board for): they tried to more or less exonerate Maleficent. Yes, they grudgingly seemed to admit, the baby-cursing was perhaps not the greatest thing she ever did, but couldn't we see her point? (Er... no?) Didn't she make up for it afterwards by protecting Aurora? (Again... no?) Most of the time, good old Mal was just a kick-ass protector of the Moors, and the mean king who stole her wings was the real villain. People seemed pretty much to accept this head-scratching take on the bad fairy, but when it comes to giving Cruella the same treatment, they rebel. So... cursing babies is OK, but killing puppies is not OK?

To be fair, though, I think much of the negative reaction to the Cruella trailers might be a delayed response to what Disney did with Maleficent. The trailers themselves don't really seem to be in an exonerating vein. The Cruella we see appears pretty cracked from the start and not likely to turn out to be someone we will sympathise a whole lot with. So what if she has trouble with her boss? So what if she starts out scrubbing floors? It doesn't follow that we are meant to feel sorry for her. My guess is, she'll be a bad lot from the beginning, and the unfortunate quote "I am woman. Hear me roar" in the trailer is not to be whole-heartedly embraced. Nevertheless, because Disney messed up so badly with the Maleficent back story, commentators are on their guard and prepared for another botched villain make-over. I don't think we need worry that the film will go down the "poor little mistreated Cruella" path, though - I can't see it becoming a thing.

However, even if Disney steer away from a Maleficent disaster, it doesn't mean that the film will be good. The trailers hint at a rags to riches story, but wasn't Cruella rich to begin with? I remember watching a YouTube video on the "which Disney villain are you based on your star sign" theme, as you do. Being a Leo, I was hoping to get Scar, but instead I got Cruella. I was miffed, but when I saw the scene they'd chosen - where she sweeps into her old school friend's house as if she owns the place, drawling "Anita, daaarling", displaying massive condescension towards Anita and contempt for the decent but in worldly terms unsuccessful Roger - I had to admit it was sort of a fair cop. That sense of entitlement struck a chord. A "sharpening of villainy through hardship" back story seems a very poor fit for this fur-wearing diva. It might conceivably work as a prequel to the live-action 101 Dalmatians where Glenn Close's Cruella was more of a nut case than anything else - but do we really need an explanation of her? Although I basically never think a villain back story is a bad idea, I may have to concede that in Cruella's case, the less you dig beneath the surface, the better. 

Will I watch the film, though? You can bet on it, darling.

Historical fiction and fairy tale - how well do they gel?

I've been wanting to try Gregory Maguire's books for a while. His trademark seems to be to offer new takes on old stories, which is a genre I'm interested in; he wrote the novel Wicked on which the hit musical about the Wicked Witch of the West is based (I've seen the musical and very much enjoyed it, though not so much for the story as for the great songs). However, not having read The Wizard of Oz (yet - I will get to it), I was more curious about Maguire's version of famous fairy tales, such as Cinderella and Snow White. In the end I bought Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, but as I was not immediately hooked by the first pages, it has been standing in my bookcase for quite some time. Now I've finally read it, and I'm glad I did - it's well-written, and the narrative flows at a pleasant pace, making it a good "lunch read". To my mind, though, it works better as historical fiction than as a version of the Cinderella story.

The book opens with an old woman encountering children in the street telling each other the tale of Cinderella and her ugly stepsisters. This stirs memories in the old woman of her own past, and she wonders whether her family's story can have inspired the tale. Here's the thing, though: this set-up makes the ugly stepsisters part of a folksy tradition, and I'm not so sure they are. Neither in the Perrault version nor in the Grimm version of Cinderella are the stepsisters ugly, though Perrault points out that Cinderella is prettier. The brothers Grimm even contrast the sisters' good looks with their cold and nasty hearts. Though Disney didn't invent the ugly stepsister-part of the story - they are ugly, say, in British pantomime, and mostly played by men in drag -  the animated film certainly popularised the notion. It's ironic that Disney then ditched the concept in the live-action remake and bragged about how poking fun at ugliness didn't seem appropriate "in this day and age".

Anyway, ugly stepsisters abound in other fairy tales, and Cinderella is one of the most popular fairy tales around, so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine a Disney-esque version making the rounds in the 17th century. Just thought I'd point out that if you want to make an argument against the whole "ugly - bad, beautiful - good" notion, Cinderella may not be the best starting point.

After this prologue, the novel tells the story of the old woman's past and that of her family. It's seen mainly through the eyes of Iris, the younger of two sisters who, along with their mother, arrive in 17th-century Haarlem after having been driven out of their village in England when a flood, which their dead father was supposed to be able to prevent, ruined the crops. Iris is plain, her older sister Ruth is seemingly simple and their mother Margarethe unscrupulous. They are destitute, and Margarethe's grandfather (she is of Dutch origin), to whom they wanted to turn for help, turns out to be dead. Luckily, they find work at the studio of a painter, Schoonmaker, whose picture of Iris drives home how plain she is and undermines her confidence. In time, they are taken on as servants in the home of a wealthy merchant, whose daughter Clara is in need of companionship. Clara is shy in company and never leaves the house, sheltered as she is by her anxious mother.

For the longest time, the story hardly resembles Cinderella at all. Clara, who is the Cinderella character, has the upper hand at first - she is the spoilt brat rather than Iris and Ruth. When she eventually retreats into the kitchen she does so voluntarily, and it is she who jokingly starts calling herself Cinderling and Cinderella, though Margarethe isn't slow to adopt the usage in a suitably spiteful way. It isn't until there is talk of a ball, held in honour of Marie de Medici no less and a godson of hers, that the references to the Cinderella story start popping up. Until then, the novel is more focused on the girls' lives in a time of great painting - Iris has a painter's eye and is fascinated by Schoonmaker's art - and tulip speculation. It is interesting in its own right, but I did feel slightly cheated. It was as if Maguire really wanted to write a novel about 17th-century Haarlem and forced some resemblance of Cinderella onto the story because his readers have come to expect that kind of thing from him.     

But then the family are financially hit by the tulip crash, in no small part through the fault of Margarethe, and hope to have their fortune miraculously restored by the ball. That is, Margarethe hopes - the rest of the household just humours her. Iris is convinced that she has no earthly chance of catching any princeling's eye (and anyway she's in love with another man, believing her love to be unrequited), and therefore persuades the luminously beautiful Clara to attend the ball secretly. From then on, things get properly Cinderella-like, with slippers (though not in glass) and all.

Some of my concerns did disappear, at least partly, by the end of the book, not least because of a clever twist that made sense of the novel's title. But I'm not entirely convinced that historical fiction and fairy tale mix well, at least not in this instance. The stepmother and stepsisters are (unsurprisingly) the characters that interest me most in the original story, and on paper it seems a good idea to explore their motives further in a more "realistic" setting than a made-up fairy-land. But Maguire's versions of the characters didn't quite satisfy me. Margarethe is consistently wicked, but she's not clever enough to become a fascinating monster, and she doesn't care for her own daughters in the way I, at least, imagine Cinderella's stepmother should (seeing as jealousy on behalf of her daughters furnishes the fairy-tale version with a solid motive for hating her stepdaughter). I've always liked that there are two stepsisters, but only one prince, which can lead to all kinds of possible family dynamics, from downright rivalry and squabbling to a calmly thought-out plan A - plan B strategy, where perhaps one of the sisters cares for the Prince a great deal while the other doesn't care a button and is prepared to support her sister's prior claim. By sidelining Ruth I thought Maguire had opted for a cop-out solution, but Ruth plays an important part of the story in the end, so I guess I can't complain. Iris is a strong protagonist, a generally good egg without being too perfect - it would be unnatural if she didn't resent Clara from time to time.

My main problem with the novel is Clara. Maguire hasn't just flipped the coin and made her bad and Iris good, for which I'm thankful - I get irritated when revisionist takes on fairy tales go down that road. Clara is capable of acting nobly when push comes to shove and cares about her stepsisters in her way. But consciously or unconsciously, she's a pain. I think we're meant to feel sorry for her and the hardships she has to face by being so beautiful she attracts every man's eye. Maybe I'm just catty, but I have a hard time buying the whole "beauty can be a curse" argument. I'm sure it's not always easy to be breathtakingly beautiful, but I believe most of us would be prepared to take the problems on board along with all the privileges a stunning face (and figure) ensure. Clara's self-pity grates, and it's a mystery to me why Iris, who suffers a great deal from her (partly imagined) ugliness, doesn't punch the girl in the face.

The original Cinderella can be perceived as a bit of a ninny, but for us as readers (or audience) to root for a Cinders she does need to be good. Disney's live-action version of Cinderella may have been completely unnecessary, but they did make the right choice, in my opinion, when they hammered in the "have courage and be kind" message. Kindness and endurance are Cinderella's trump cards, and if she doesn't display enough of these characteristics she risks coming across as either a sly piece, unpleasantly abrasive or, as in Clara's case, someone in love with her own victim status. 

All the same, I liked the novel, and I'll be checking out Maguire's Mirror, Mirror. However, I'll try to get more into the historical novel-vibe with that one, and not expect to find anything approaching my favourite versions of Snow White or the Evil Queen in it.

Disney plays it safe with Raya - but it's a good game

The first thing people seem to ask in reviews of Disney's latest animated film, Raya and the Last Dragon, is "Is it worth paying extra for?". The deal is that if you pay for "premier access" to the film, you can watch it now on Disney + (providing you have a subscription, that is). If, however, you wait until June, all you need is the Disney + subscription in order to watch it for free as part of the package. The US price for premier access is 30 dollars: here in Sweden, it's 250 Swedish crowns, which is about the same, and approximately what you pay in Sweden for two cinema tickets (admittedly expensive ones, probably with 3D thrown in). So, yes, it's pricey, but from our point of view not that pricey.

As you can guess, I paid, feeling a right mug for not being able to wait for the "free" release. But - somewhat to my surprise - to me it ended up being worth it. After the film, I didn't feel like I'd wasted my money. Instead I thought "Yeah, this was good, and I needed it now". So yes, providing you're not short of cash, and providing you love Disney films, I'd say it's worth paying extra.

That's not to say I thought the film was perfect. Though it was better than I expected from some of the trailers, it didn't live up to my most fervid hopes. The positives first: this film felt like there was a lot of thought and feeling put into it. Frozen 2 and Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks the Internet seem very lazy in comparison. Whereas the world of the enchanted forest in Frozen 2 felt incoherent and cobbled together ("giants are cool, that water horse thingy is cool, Samis-or-something-like-them are cool, a fire lizard isn't really a thing in Scandinavian folklore but who cares"), the world of the five kingdoms that used to be Kumandra hangs together and is really quite fascinating. Hopefully the films gains enough of a following to spark a spinoff animated TV series like, for instance, Tangled and Big Hero 6, because these settings have a lot of potential for further adventures. 

The animation is gorgeous. The story is effective. The message isn't only the old one of "we should overcome our prejudices and get along with each other blah blah" but delves a little deeper into the matter of trust - it makes a case for daring to trust your fellow men, while also acknowledging that it isn't always a good idea. I can get behind that. The side characters are charming (I was not wholly convinced by the over-capable "con baby", but she has an important plot function) and the comic relief the dragon Sisu provided didn't grate on me. Also, she had some real insight to contribute, which was nice.

On the flip side, I didn't care that much about Raya, the heroine. In fairness, she is given a plausible motivation and isn't just "kick-ass". Her goal is to reassemble the Dragon Gem, a magic artefact which was broken six years before in a tussle between the five tribes, releasing an age-old menacing force called the Druun in the process, which turns people - including Raya's father - into stone. The good news is that if the Druun can be defeated, everyone turned into stone will come back to life. Raya partly blames herself for the catastrophe, because she trusted a girl from a different tribe who betrayed her, so it's understandable she's glum and hard to come close to, but it also makes her less fun to be around than, say, Rapunzel.

Once she's teamed up with Sisu, Raya only has to get all the pieces of the broken gem, but that's easier said than done. Each enemy tribe/land - Tail, Talon, Spine and Fang (the lands are named after a river in the shape of a dragon - Raya is from Heart) - have a piece of it and guard it fiercely. In each place Raya goes, she and Sisu more or less inadvertently pick up a companion: a business-savvy young boy, the aforementioned baby and her band of trained thieving monkeys and a fearsome warrior with a soft heart. They have all lost their families to the Druun. I appreciated that there wasn't any time wasted with Raya feeling bad about having had prejudices against Tail, Talon and Spine people - she and the side cast just got on with bonding without much fuss. Then they come to Fang, and things become a little more complicated.

I've slid back into mainly positives, so let me come to my major gripe: the new formula for Disney animated films has, regrettably, stuck, and each time it's reiterated it gets harder to get out of. This means, firstly, that there's no romance. Disney's line when it comes to animated films is not so much politically correct as politically safe. They do not want to offend anyone. By setting their film in an East-Asian fantasy world, they've got the diversity thing sorted. (Though mark my words, people will try to be offended nevertheless and find something they can call "disrespectful" - good luck with that.) By making Raya - and her antagonist Namaari - women with warrior skills, Disney can beat the "girl power" drum a bit. Raya isn't allowed a male love interest, because it would (or so Disney thinks) annoy feminists to see her go weak at the knees over some man. And she can't fall for Namaari either, because that would be too bold (there were apparently people who boycotted Onward because a female side character made a passing reference to her girlfriend). Honestly, why aren't Disney heroines allowed any love lives anymore? (Except in the case of Anna and Kristoff, and let's face it - was he a pushover in Frozen 2 or what?) This is supposed to be escapism!

And finally, the new Disney formula means that there is no interesting villain. I'm not sure why it would be so contentious to reintroduce a Disney villain in the classic mould. Is it because if he's a man and too elegant and silky, some bright spark will think he's "queer-coded"? (This has actually happened with Scar and Jafar - Jafar's bid for Jasmine and the deleted scene where Scar hits on Nala notwithstanding.) But maybe I shouldn't see political motives behind every corner. For whatever reason, the whole concept of the Druun is almost an affront to a villain-loving heart. I mean, a mindless, soulless, faceless force, taking the form of vaguely animal-shaped ominous clouds? Are they kidding?

Raya and the Last Dragon is a very good film. In a way, it's a return to form for Disney animation. But I can't help thinking that Disney sets itself rather narrow parameters within which to work the company magic. The Dream Factory isn't out of the woods yet.

Who cares about the post-apocalypse? Gimme a love triangle

I very nearly didn't read The Second Sleep by Robert Harris at all. Once I started, I nearly gave up at the 100-page mark, but decided to continue for just a bit longer. And it's a good thing I did, because it's thereabouts this book turns into a really good read with the Harris trademarks of gripping writing and colourful side characters (the hero is seldom the main attraction in Harris books).

Seeing as I've mostly had good experiences with Harris's novels, with the odd exception - I hugely enjoyed the Cicero trilogy Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator, was gripped by An Officer and a Spy and had a good time with The Ghost, Conclave and Archangel, though the latter was pretty silly - one could wonder why I was so reluctant to try The Second Sleep. The answer is mainly its genre, or sub-genre rather: the Post-Apocalyptic Tale. Novels (and films/TV series) of this type usually contain two of my least favourite things in fiction: extreme bleakness and moralising. Readable though Harris is, he hasn't been above lecturing in the past, so I had grave misgivings.

The Post-Apocalyptic Tale usually sets out to do two things: one, to show you how dark the future could be if we're unlucky, and two, to tell you in a cautionary-tale-way how the world could risk ending up in that state. There are PATs that are more interested in how human beings act in times of extreme crisis and how far we are prepared to go for survival, but although that's better than pontificating about how The Evil Of Mankind will lead us to dire straits, it's still not really my kind of thing. As for causes for the catastrophe, it's usually greed, or hubris (i.e. scientists getting carried away), or a combination of both. Mad scientists come up with, say, grade A Artificial Intelligence, unscrupulous (of course) corporations find unethical ways to market it, and wham: it's the rise of the machines. Oh, and sometimes we get an anti-war message worked in somewhere.

The Second Sleep does put a somewhat different spin on the PAT from the start. The beginning of the novel reads as if it's set in the Middle Ages, with maybe a puzzling early-modern touch or two. Christopher Fairfax, the hero, is a cleric sent out to the middle of nowhere by his bishop in order to conduct the funeral service for a reclusive parish priest who has died in what appears to be a tragic accident. At the dead priest's house, Fairfax finds proof of the "heresy" of diving too deep into the past. Father Lacy turns out to have been an "antiquarian". Only, the artefacts he uncovered - including an iPhone - are clearly from our age.

Look, I'm sorry if this is a spoiler, but the revelation takes place on page 29, so it's not that much of a rug pull. Besides, you will probably already have heard (if not, you have now) that the novel isn't an ordinary Medieval Mystery. I didn't find the conceit that fascinating - why would the post-apocalyptic world take on a Medieval pattern when most of the knowledge of the "real" Middle Ages has been lost for centuries? - but it does enable Harris to write an almost-historical novel without having to bother about involuntary anachronisms. Still, the problem remained that I wasn't too fussed about finding out what had happened to our modern world. Props to Harris for not setting the book in a too-bleak future; after a long period of misery, things settled down, and people are poor but they get by. However, the mystery set up - how did we get from iPhones to this? - looked all too much like the excuse for a lecture on our modern ways.

The thing about Harris's novels, though, is that it's seldom the grand solution to a mystery that makes them enjoyable: the end revelations are often something of an anti-climax. It's the hero's journey towards finding answers that is thrilling, especially if he meets interesting characters along the way. In this instance, the Quest for the Truth proves to be a bigger MacGuffin than ever. What makes the plot pick up pace is instead Fairfax getting mixed up with the local gentry - well, sort of. While digging for clues about Father Lacy's death, he becomes friendly with the widowed and attractive Lady Durston who, while appearing very genteel, is actually a woman of modest background who has married into rank and (comparative, but diminishing) wealth. She is now reluctantly contemplating another marriage, to rough self-made man Captain Hancock who is a most insistent suitor. When Fairfax shows up as a third wheel, Hancock is none to pleased. Fairfax, on the other hand, though he's meant to be celibate (he's already had a hard time keeping his distance from the parsonage housekeeper's pretty niece), can't help thinking Hancock a very poor match for Lady Durston.

It's this love triangle that kept me interested, not the speculations about what happened to the "ancients" (us). What's more, when Lady Durston and Fairfax are obliged to confide in Hancock, he becomes a surprising ally, as he's all too eager to find out the secrets of the "ancients" and has zero problem with the "heresy" angle. From this moment on, the novel takes on the Captain's own energy and canters along at a cracking pace.

So though the beginning was slow and the novel felt like it fizzled out at the end, the middle was good enough to make it a pleasant read overall. Post-Apocalyptic Wisdom-wise, though... I don't know. Harris makes some neat points about how much of our modern-day stuff isn't built to last - one reason the Church got such an edge in his post-apocalyptic world was that the stone churches stood firm and became a refuge while modern office towers crumbled. The whole depiction of the Church, however, makes it hard to take Harris's vision of a possible future seriously. Why would it revert to its Medieval form with some early-modern add-ons? Why suddenly strive to be a power factor, and re-impose celibacy on its clergymen? It's not a very likely scenario. There are other movements in our modern-day society that I would have thought would be more obvious candidates to be depicted as enemies of progress and technology. I could easily imagine them being interested in keeping the kind of society Harris describes undeveloped for, as they believe, the greater good of mankind. But I guess wily bishops make more interesting villains.