A Jungle of Tales

              This series is a creative and emotional dark fantasy featuring a post-apocalypse world and a war between humans and vampires. Episode 1 drops you right into the drama, as a sudden plague devastates the adult human population. Vampires immediately move in and put the children of Tokyo, including 8-year old Yuichiro (‘Yu’) and Mikaela (‘Mika’), under their “protection”. A time-jump of four years reveals that the children serve as living blood banks within the vampire city of Sanguinem. Yu and Mika’s bond and their differing attitudes to their situation are immediately apparent, with Yu being more openly belligerent and defiant, while Mika is a gentle pragmatist, willing to bend as necessary to keep Yu and the rest of their adoptive orphan family safe. But Mika’s been secretly planning an escape plan…which goes badly wrong at the last moment, leading to Yu reaching the human world alone. We meet u...

It is a sad commentary on our times that if you type “Umberto Eco” into a search engine, one of the first suggestions will be “ …Ur-fascism ” , his essay on identifying the essential features of that ideology. It is an excellent article 1 , but Eco was primarily a professor of semiotics (communication of meaning) and a writer of historical fiction. “The Name of the Rose” is probably best known, since it got a movie adaptation starring Sean Connery. But I would argue that as a novel “Baudolino” is a more accessible option, being a fanciful adventure with a charismatic protagonist as well as an exploration of how we find meaning in our own story and those of others – with less of an assumption that the reader speaks 3 or 4 languages!   1. In describing his qualifications for writing it, Eco notes: “I spent two of my early years among the SS, Fascists, Republicans, and partisans shooting at one another, and I learned how to dodge bullets. It was good exercise.” ...

  This blog seems to be turning into “books and anime reviews”, which was not my initial plan. But, then again, until “Yuri on Ice” I’d never felt the urge to read or watch a sports story 2.5 times in rapid succession! Of course, as the image above probably suggests, the ice skating part of the plot isn’t the only draw. So let’s talk about it.   *Note: There are a few minor spoilers below, but nothing that would actually ruin the viewing experience, I think. The series can be watched here *               “Yuri on Ice” follows Yuri Katsuki, a 23-year old professional skater who’s had a rough season and what he considers to be a lackluster career 1 . He’s thinking about retiring when his idol, multiple world-champ Victor Nikiforov, unexpectedly turns up in his family’s hot springs resort and announces that he’s going to be Yuri’s coach. This annoys Yuri ...

              I wasn’t sure where to start writing this review, since transcribing a string of delighted squeaking would probably not be helpful! Long story short, this shook me out of a bit of a reading slump 1 and left me feeling all warm and fuzzy. Part of that may be due to the fact that I kept being reminded of one of my long-time favorite authors: Terry Pratchett. It isn’t that the style or the story or the world feels like a copy – far from it! But there are certain characters that do feel a bit like alternate-universe versions of Discworld or Good Omens ones. There is a phoenix who isn’t always phoenix-shaped and whose wings burn things selectively. There is a girl gnome with a beard. There is a six-year-old Antichrist who likes leading other kids on imaginary adventures. And, most notably, we have the two adult leads: a plump, fussy, rather anxious man who works for a bureaucracy he’s really t...