champsey13's reviews
306 reviews

As a piece of early dystopian literature, it's fascinating to see what London, writing in 1907, thought the trajectory of a socialist revolution might look like. It lacks the futurism of later famous entries in the genre that follow (Brave New World, 1984), but it does the thing Handmaid's Tale does where it purports to be a discovered manuscript that a future enlightened society later unearths and makes academic commentary on. The footnotes are the best part! In fact, the whole thing is very proto-Handmaid's Tale, being also from a woman's POV. 

That being said, there are a wash of random characters identified only by their last names that it was impossible to keep track of, Everhard is annoyingly smarmy and the narrative gushes over him too much, and generally there was really no one I wanted to root for, because the socialists spend the entire book talking about how glorious the revolution will be and then beef it so badly that the Oligarchy takes over for three hundred years before some actually competent socialists pull it off. And I found it depressing to read about a sudden hostile takeover of America by the hyper-rich 1% that eerily read like my real-time Bluesky feed. UGH. 

Another step in my review of the Kingdom Hearts novelizations. I had already read volume 1 of the KH2 novelization a while ago, but realized I hadn't yet read volume 2. 

Kanemaki's writing is still pretty competent for a middle grade novel based on a video game. She really makes the characters pop. It's also clear that the novelization seems based on an earlier or more complete draft of the game's script, as it contains a number of scenes that don't appear in the game but are crucial to explaining the trajectory of the plot behind the scenes, particularly with Axel, Namine, Riku, and DiZ. All that said, the novel as a whole suffers from the fact that KH2 has the weakest plot of all the games in the series (and I stand by this), so the action consists of 1. Sora bouncing around Disney worlds, while 2. a number of characters who aren't Sora do all the actual cool stuff that drives the plot. 

I would give 3 stars but I have to give some quarters because it has the scene where Saix wastes Axel, which is my favorite For Sicko Reasons. 

Another step in my review of the Kingdom Hearts novelizations. I had already read volume 1 of the KH2 novelization a while ago, but realized I hadn't yet read volume 2. 

Kanemaki's writing is still pretty competent for a middle grade novel based on a video game. She really makes the characters pop. It's also clear that the novelization seems based on an earlier or more complete draft of the game's script, as it contains a number of scenes that don't appear in the game but are crucial to explaining the trajectory of the plot behind the scenes, particularly with Axel, Namine, Riku, and DiZ. All that said, the novel as a whole suffers from the fact that KH2 has the weakest plot of all the games in the series (and I stand by this), so the action consists of 1. Sora bouncing around Disney worlds, while 2. a number of characters who aren't Sora do all the actual cool stuff that drives the plot. 

I would give 3 stars but I added some decimal points because it has the scene where Saix wastes Axel, which is my favorite For Sicko Reasons. 

Really fascinating to see where it differs from the movie! Definitely felt sort of darker and sadder. I liked how this continuity's Ballister embraced villainy more explicitly, though I do think the movie making him more of a woobie was a good choice for the screen. The way he loses his arm and how it affects his relationship with Goldenloin was also darker and kind of more complicated, which I liked. Super fun to pick out the details which were offhand mentions in the graphic novel that became cornerstones of the film adaptation.

Kanemaki had a big task on her hands to squash a three-POV nonlinear storyline into a linear narrative. The choice seems to have been to just pick an order for the Disney Worlds to go in, write the POVs of the characters in the order they arrive, and have them mention the world they just came from, even if that hasn't been shown yet. It's a bit of a mess, to be honest. Birth By Sleep really played with POV and chronology, and the book medium doesn't fit it that well. 

That being said, Kanemaki's empathetic and rich character writing make the story enjoyable (even written at a middle grade level). I also notice she gets away with more sensory descriptions of the Keyblade violence than before, which suits BBS's darker and more violent narrative points. Ven "tastes iron" at one point, and I was like "they won't let her say they bleed but I sure do know they're bleeding right now." Vanitas even *pukes* an Unversed at one point, which was metal as FUCK. 

I enjoyed it a lot for my blorbo Terra, but let's be frank: you should not read this book if you didn't play the game, because you will struggle to follow without having played the game.