The Complete Short Stories (1925) by Ernest Hemingway (In-Progress)

The best short stories always seem capable of crafting a meaningful episode populated by interesting characters in such few pages, and this suits Hemingway's trademark style perfectly.

I was awestruck immediately on cracking this one open with a pair of absolute spellbinding examples of short fiction, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and The Snows of Kilimanjaro—both of which I found of high enough quality that they deserved their own reviews, which I've linked.

A young Ernest Hemingway

The Nick Adams stories which follow are often subtle and worthwhile. One particular example of great characterization from Hemingway was in The Battler, which sees the titular Nick Adams character absorb a beating before coming face-to-face with a former prizefighter who's absorbed far too many. The episode is notable for what isn't discussed, as perhaps Adams sees what he could become in the future should he continue on his current path as a vagabond and tramp. Ad Francis is an unstable force—friendly and talkative one moment, brooding and violent the next—and his scarred visage puts Adams off immediately, despite the initially welcoming nature of the man. Perhaps what frightens Adams most is the similarity between this man and himself, rather than the potentially aggressive and violent nature of Francis.

Also notable is the character of Bugs, who's referred to pejoratively with racist epithets through the narrative, but shows himself to be the warm, welcoming, intelligent character that Francis initially appears. Hemingway, a famous fan of Mark Twain's, plays off his contemporary readers' expectations with the character and subverts their expectations as Twain did with his stories.

Note: This review is in-progress. I'll add more thoughts as I continue to read.

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens

I've read most classic writers, whether in school or since, despite my lack of reviews on this website. However I'm ashamed to admit that this is my first exposure—ever—to Charles Dickens. I'm not sure how I managed to avoid all of his novels, novellas, short stories, and the like up to this point, but here we are. And after experiencing his work for the first time I can confidently consider it a failing not only of my own reading choices, but of our education system.

Perhaps most affecting in the story is how much of myself I saw in Scrooge. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that might have been Dickens' intent. We're all curmudgeonly, miserly, and stingy with our affections at times, and Scrooge's initial character represents that quite well. While this novel did a lot to reform the Christmas holiday and popularize it, it's also a general reminder for us to be more kind, generous, and empathetic towards one-another, which, from what I understand, is a common theme in Dickens' work.

The changes Scrooge goes through in subsequent pages, though unsubtle, is touching and doesn't seem cloying, though it very well could have in the hands of a lesser writer. The dialogue and Dickens' imagination in designing the spirits are particular highlights for me.

Though it's equal parts comical and beautifully written, what's most striking is that Dickens prose remains so readable now, nearly 200 years after he began writing. I breezed through A Christmas Carol pretty easily, and I sometimes have troubled getting into Victorian literature.

I went in somewhat cynical, but Dickens changed my mind. This is every bit the influential modern fable it's reputed to be, and I'm looking forward to making up for lost time and reading more Dickens next year. Perhaps The Pickwick Papers next, followed by Oliver Twist?

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) by Ernest Hemingway

It's easy to miss a lot of the more introspective qualities of Hemingway's work. Granted, they are often hidden behind (or perhaps overshadowed by) the bombastic, hyper-masculine chest-thumping he's famous for. But the more self-conscious passages in which he struggles with self-doubt, failures in character, and deeds left undone are present in most of his enduring works for those willing to look beyond the lion-hunting, war-fighting, cocktail-drinking, and womanizing.

Snows differs from some of his other work in that these qualities are much more readily apparent. And though less delicate in their presentation, the honesty with which they're laid bare creates an intriguing, layered main character in just a few dozen pages; one that reveals Hemingway is not lacking the self-awareness that his naysayers seem to conveniently ignore.

Beautifully written in the terse prose that influenced American literature for the remainder of the 20th century, The Snows of Kilimanjaro is quintessential Hemingway and thus not to be missed by anybody with any interest in classic American literature.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936) by Ernest Hemingway

This was originally a short story I wasn't going to review. It was another solid effort from Hemingway, pretty typical of his quality and similar in theme to his other stories I'd read in the past. Worth reading but somewhat unremarkable in the presence of his canon.

I ended up doubling back to write this a month or so after I read it because the story resonated with me more over time. I read many short stories and since this I've dipped into Shirley Jackson, Pynchon, some of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Poe (who's one of my very favorite writers), Lovecraft (who's very much not one of my favorite writers), etc. And still this one seems to occupy a growing amount of brain real estate.

The characters are what most stuck with me. Each of the three main characters has their own voice and their own motivations and the titular Francis Macomber makes a drastic change in a story that involves a lot of introspection on his part. There is great difficulty in being confronted with our own faults. We're either crushed by them or evolve to overcome them, and that's what the story is about for Francis.

The more Hemingway I read, the more easily I'm able to turn aside criticisms of his focus on masculinity as dampening the quality of his work. In stories like this I find Hemingway to be intensely aware of his own weakness rather than thumping his chest and celebrating himself as a pillar of masculine vigor. In turning the spotlight on Francis's cowardice, Hemingway seems to be examining his own. I found it a deeply insecure and personal story for the writer.
The other two characters are equally intriguing. I didn't hate Margot and was surprised to see that other readers did. On the contrary, when considering her situation I actually grew somewhat sympathetic to her. She is certainly not a sympathetic character, but neither did I find her to be shallowly evil. Her marriage with Francis is not a happy one and the two are left in a martial power struggle because of their inability to end their involvement. Margot uses the weapons at her disposal to wound Francis in this martial cold war, and Francis does the same to Margot. I didn't find her to be a shoddily written women-are-evil type character that reviewers seem keen to toss Hemingway under the bus for, and, frankly, I find that critique to be as shallow and dishonest as it paints Margot. There's more here than that.

The only character I couldn't find much sympathy for was Wilson, who himself can't seem to find much sympathy for anyone in the story aside from the lion. Wilson shows little humanity and rationalizes his disinterest and near-sociopathy in childlike ways. He also provides an interesting foil to Macomber and Margot: two people who seem to care too much.

Wilson is the archetypal man's man in this story—the brave and capable hunter—and he's also the least likable fellow of the bunch. I believe Hemingway was aware of this and intended it. I don't think this is a story which says to us that Wilson is the ideal, and that Francis's weakness and cowardice is what dooms him. I believe it's a story that says to us that all men are weak and cowardly, and that examining this weakness, knowing it, coming to terms with, and overcoming it, is what true masculinity—or even humanity—is all about. Wilson is "strong" because he doesn't care. He's a man alone with no family or friends. Francis becomes strong because he does.

But perhaps I'm just projecting all of this onto the story because I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps it was intended to say the exact opposite of the message I took from it and I'm a total nincompoop. Either way, I quite enjoyed The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. I enjoyed the characters, their power dynamic, and I greatly enjoyed the ending, which I found profound. Hemingway definitely has some stinkers, but this short story isn't one of them. It serves as a great companion for the introspective, cerebral, and more well-known The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Iliad (750 BC) by Homer

The Iliad is surprisingly modern in its level, deep treatments of its characters on both sides. Achilles is a particularly interesting study in what a spoiled diva not unlike an '80s glam rock star would have been had they been granted godlike skill at arms and been transported to 13th century BC Anatolia. Its realistic depiction of violence and the horrors of war was surprising to me, the rang genuine when I expected a more romanticized version. I particularly enjoyed the character of Diomedes, someone I had never previously heard of but found quite memorable in action. His duel with Aphrodite stood out as a scene I'll never forget. The hulking figure of Ajax was equally inspirational.

Fagles' translation is often beautiful and I doubt a much better job will ever be done. The caliber of his English "prosetry" was something else that greatly surprised on reading this particular translation:

"Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away."

"Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again." 

"The sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return." 

"The proud heart feels not terror nor turns to run and it is his own courage that kills him." 

"Even a fool may be wise after the event." 

"We are perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our admiration of good." 

Homer

As with all translations, it's difficult to tell where Homer begins and Fagles ends, but regardless, the text is littered with great tidbits such as these that make it worth reading just by themselves. But despite Fagles' best efforts, I can't help feeling like there will forever be something lost in translation to readers not experiencing The Iliad in its native language. In English, Homer's great work unfortunately falls too frequently into a repetitiveness that lacks whatever poetic musicality it must have featured in Homeric Greek to instead become filler-esque bloat that drags down the entire work in its English form and hampers its flow.

Even despite that, this is a stunningly gorgeous read—even in the modern English language so far removed from its original Homeric Greek—and well worth a read for anyone interested in a fantastic, larger-than-life war story. It stands among the best ever penned, and I can't heap enough praise on Fagles' gorgeous English prose.

⭐⭐⭐

The Greek Myths (1955) by Robert Graves

I'm not sure whether to give this a negative review because Graves' delivery is so dry it seems almost intentionally unengaging, or to give it a great review because it's an all-encompassing study of the sources available for us today. Indeed, this belongs on everyone's bookshelf for quick reference. Or at least, it would have before the internet was invented.

Probably my lack of enjoyment of this volume stems from the fact that I thought it was something it was not until I opened it and began reading it. I was expecting a collection of short fiction in which Graves skillfully imparts Greek myths, and I instead got terse blurbs describing them with each followed by a lengthy discussion on the sources and historiography from Graves himself. While this is an invaluable tool to anybody studying or teaching mythology in an academic sense, it makes for very dry pleasure reading, and I ended up putting it down about halfway through and picking up Homer's Iliad instead.

HI am familiar with this type of tome, having studied history as an undergrad. But I can't say I missed the instances of several passages discussing names, births, and progeny, droning on and on ad nauseam. But again, this is counterbalanced by the fact that this is a fantastic collection, including sources, of these myths.

Perhaps I'm just not a fan of Graves' style. I didn't love I, Claudius despite having a keen interest in Roman Civ, and I certainly didn't love this. But I still feel it holds some value due to the quality of its study and its value as a quick reference tome for anybody interested in Greek Mythology.

⭐⭐

The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) (The Lord of the Rings, #1) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Rereading Martin's A Song of Ice And Fire—something written specifically as a counterpoint to Tolkien's work, and the various works in fantasy Tolkien inspired with it—has led me to realize just how off-the-rails HBO's famous (infamous?) television adaptation has gone. While earlier seasons stick closely to Martin's work (to great effect), latter seasons begin to depart, first in minor fashion, then in necessarily major strides as they surpass Martin's books and the weight of wrapping up the series falls on their heads alone. This has had the expected disastrous effect on the show's writing quality; a series once praised for its gray characters, complex machinations, and authentic fantasy world has devolved almost completely into a Marvel-inspired fantasy epic that consistently breaks its own rules and resorts to cheap faked-death cliffhangers where once it was renowned for playing seriously with its characters lives. The show is completely unrecognizable from its source material. Its appeal remains as genre pulp; fan-pleasing mental junk food that's pretty to look at but no longer espouses the qualities that made it so revered.

Imagine my surprise, then, to learn that Peter Jackson's now world-famous Lord of the Rings film adaptations are actually quite adherent to their source material. I was in high school when the film series released and had not yet read Tolkien's legendary masterwork, yet I adored the films for the ethereal, otherworldly sets, make-up, and special effects they provided, bolstered further by the iconic score constructed by Howard Shore; one now so iconic to fantasy films that it rivals comparisons of Ennio Morricone's famous spaghetti western themes.

In stark contrast to the HBO adaptation of Ice and Fire falling far short of Martin's work, I honestly believe that Fellowship works far better as a film than it ever did as a novel, and that Jackson's rendition of Tolkien's work is about as perfect as you can hope for. I'll even go as far as saying I'm shocked that this isn't a more common opinion.

In novel form, perhaps the strongest aspect is Tolkien's grasp of language. Not the English language in specific, but of the history of language: its etymology. Tolkien's background as a linguist allows him to construct the foundation of this world not with long paragraphs of exposition (although he does frequently fall victim to this), but with words; the languages present, names of structures and lands, and even the songs the characters sing. A lot of Middle-Earth feels fantastical because it's built around these languages. It does a lot to impart a feeling of foreignness that so much modern fantasy lacks.

Most disappointing to me was the constant parroted opinion that the characters of the films are much simpler versions of their book counterparts. I can confidently say, at least in this first episode, that this isn't entirely true. Are the characters altered? Sure: Gimli is used a bit too much as comic relief in the films and his people and character lack development, but honestly, he doesn't get much development in this novel, either.

And that's my main problem with Fellowship. Where the film has its fantastic visuals to fall back on, the book has only descriptions. Which is fine, but I wanted something more. I yearned for something like Martin's brilliant, colorful cast of dozens of characters, or Abercrombie's biting sardonic wit to fill these pages. The bulk of Fellowship is filled with our characters moving from place to place, experiencing this wonderful world that Tolkien has created, but we learn very little of them and not enough depth of these locales we're witnessing is provided. Tolkien breezes past description of ruins, rivers, old settlements, etc, with very little time devoted to creating any depth or substance. Sure, those ruins sound great. I like ruins! But then we're onward once again.
Instead it felt too often that Tolkien caved to his indulgence, filling his pages with something like song, which is fine as a display of this world's culture, but I wanted something more substantial to dig into.

I am admittedly not a huge fan of fantasy. I've read quite a bit of it, but very little I've liked, and maybe it's just the fantasy formula in general that turns me off of Fellowship rather than Tolkien himself. After all, this is a beloved novel. But it just wasn't for me. Too much of it was pretty window-dressing; meandering through lovely lands without meaningful history. Contrary to what Tolkien fans espouse, the characters were paper-thin and failed to grow, and the world, though pretty to imagine, never inspired me with its history like Martin's does, even when he's at his most indulgent and taking us on seemingly pointless tours through Essos in A Dance With Dragons.

After finishing, I began to view Martin not so much as the aforementioned "counterpoint" to Tolkien, but rather an evolution of him, as I believe Martin features a lot of what makes Tolkien attractive—an old, interesting world and a compelling narrative with strong themes—but Martin constructs his world and his characters with more care and roots said construction more within reality than fantasy, and provides each with exponentially more depth, thus making them far more intriguing than Tolkien does his.

Yes, yes, I know: Burn the witch. Who doesn't adore LOTR? But I can't help it: This is my second time reading Fellowship, and charming though he can be, Tolkien just doesn't work for me.

⭐⭐

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) by Washington Irving

Irving's talent for description reminds me a bit of Stevenson's, however, the story lacks the depth of something like Jekyll and Hyde and Irving's prose tends to get away from him when compared to the tighter efforts of similar work. Sleepy Hollow began to wear thin near the halfway mark of the story.

The real value here is in the richly colored depiction of early American life in the Tappan Zee area and the Northern European folkloric influences Irving adapts for this story.

⭐⭐⭐

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde

Wilde probably had written so many plays and so much poetry despite having only a single novel and a relatively small amount of short stories because prose doesn't seem to feature his particular talents—describing beautiful things in a witty fashion using beautiful words, and coming up with scandalous scenarios—as much as the other media of writing do. Certainly this novel seems to expose some of his flaws as a writer.

I found I couldn't connect with any of the characters, who felt more like talking heads existing to pass on Wilde's philosophical diatribe than human beings to which interesting things happen. Most glaringly, I couldn't understand the other characters' attachments to Dorian Gray, who, by my estimation, was nothing more than a pretty face. There certainly wasn't anything substantial within his character that drew me or, indeed, would draw anybody else. He's an empty vessel; we're told he's beautiful and he is wealthy, but he displays nothing at all of his own character in the entire first half of the book, never mind anything interesting.

I often felt that the three main characters blended together. They seem to lack many differentiating beliefs and they all speak with an almost identical voice. There was very little separating them whatsoever; especially Lord Henry and Dorian. The three seemed all to be facets of Wilde himself, indeed upon my research of the book I learned that he thought of them as such, too. None have their own unique character, save small differentiating factors: Basil has a sentimentalist streak, Lord Henry is just Dorian, but a bit older and more experienced.

Wilde's prose is littered with the witticisms he's known for and it's beautifully constructed, but I still can't help but think he makes a better poet and playwright than novelist. Dorian Gray reads more like a collection of nicely packaged Oscar Wilde quotes than it does a stand-alone novel. The pacing felt uneven as well; it's front-loaded with a slog of philosophical soliloquy as we're immediately piled on with Wilde's new Hedonism as provided gleefully by Lord Henry. Dorian is immediately taken with it, but from there the story takes a bit too long to get going as Wilde indulges himself in depictions of London's high society at the turn of the century, opera and plays and dinner parties and the like. Subsequent to this is Dorian's years-long slide into debauchery, which, disappointingly, is summarized within one chapter, punctuated by a peculiar set of forgettable paragraphs that drone on while listing all of passions which he indulges over the years. This was disappointing to me since the development of Dorian Gray as a character was what I was most looking forward to in the story. However Wilde recovers himself towards the end and remembers he's writing a damned novel, and eventually does add some characterization and move the plot along through the last 60 pages or so.


If you like Wilde's work, you'll probably like this. He chooses a spectacular premise to build the book around but my dissatisfaction stems from my feeling that he failed in constructing the pillars the story needed to rest upon. His philosophy is interesting as well, but I feel it failed in its application.

There's enough here to recommend a read, as Wilde is particularly well-suited to the description of beautiful things. I certainly came away with a bevy of new highlights. But I found it all ultimately superficial, Wilde's attempt at throwing a gloss over raw philosophical ramblings, something highly ironic considering the subject matter of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

⭐⭐⭐

Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce

James Joyce isn’t scary.

At least, not in Dubliners. I was nervous to read Joyce, as I’m somewhat of a neophyte to classic literature, and Joyce’s reputation is that of a nearly impenetrable etymological, historical, and poetic genius. But, luckily for me, this is no Finnegans Wake (which I once peeked into to see what all the fuss was about and set down almost immediately, feeling like I was reading a different language). It’s no Ulysses, either. Hell, even A Portrait of the Young Man As An Artist is a measurably tougher read than Dubliners. I came to learn after beginning that Joyce purposely wrote it to be the most approachable of his works; the polar opposite of Finnegans Wake, which requires the footnotes and annotations of an almost post-graduate level of study to be rendered even somewhat coherent. No, Dubliners is Joyce at his most consumable, most easily digestible, and still provides as much soulful nourishment as any other work I’ve ever read—which is admittedly not very much, yet.

It’s not altogether correct to describe Joyce’s Dubliners as a short story collection. It may be technically accurate, sure. But while these can be read stand-alone–and indeed, I began reading Dubliners with the goal of reviewing each story individually on Goodreads – they’re better taken in as a singular work as each story elevates the others. It’s far greater than the sum of its parts when approached as a novel rather than a collection of short stories.

There were some chapters I deemed forgettable when I tried to analyze them in a vacuum. But reading Farrington’s despicable character in Counterparts prior to Maria’s sweet, independent loneliness in Clay before finally wading through Duffy’s regretful heartbreak in A Painful Case provides such a rollercoaster of emotions that consuming the three in one sitting is a far different experience than reading one of the trio by itself. Thus I’d recommend against approaching this like a typical short story collection and suggest reading it as a novel instead.

A number of the stories depict the more mundane aspects of Dublin life, but Joyce’s prose elevates everything to a higher level. From Joyce’s pen the mundane springs beautifully and the beautiful emerges jaw-droppingly. Joyce is at his best when he writes about love. I have yet to read any author from any country in any time period who is able to approach depicting the feeling of love as skillfully as Joyce does.

These are not all happy stories, though. This is realist literature, after all. And they’re not always coherent, either—modernist, too. Joyce assumes his readers’ intelligence and often leaves it to them to fill in the blanks. While this can be frustrating when attempted by a sub par writer, it works beautifully when done by Joyce, and adds another facet of quality to the stories rather than detracting from their impact with ambiguity.

Perhaps the only negative (albeit a subjective one) I experienced when reading this was my own lack of consistent understanding regarding the constant references to the city, its social norms, and its religion. This struck me particularly with the story Ivy Day in the Committee Room, which centers upon several men attempting to create a fire of Catholicism in their friend, a converted Protestant, who takes little interest in the religion and only converted in order to marry his Catholic wife. I’m too ignorant of Catholicism to dig deeper than the surface of what they were discussing and initially it seemed nothing more than a relatively dry story of a man’s friends striving to make him more religious. It was only after I referred to some analysis of the story online that I realized these friends, throughout the conversation, were blatantly wrong with many of their assertions and references to the history of the Catholic church. Another reference I missed was that the priest himself was named after a street in Dublin’s old red light district, and was surrounded by motifs of the color red through the entire final scene. With this added context, Ivy Day becomes much deeper; it morphs from a fairly bland story into a subtly scathing criticism of many of Dublin’s denizens in what Joyce depicts as a fair-weather form of Catholicism which saves nary a soul.

The fact that I’m not a Catholic and not from Dublin constantly detracted from my enjoyment of the book throughout, and caused me to regularly refer to the gratuitous endnotes my edition contained, along with exterior internet analysis, to get the most out of Dubliners. This is very much a subjective criticism, of course, but something to note nonetheless.

Perhaps due to this ignorance of so much of its subject matter, when I think of my time reading Dubliners, I think first about emotion: love, melancholy, relief, sorrow, regret. Joyce’s writing left such a specter roaming my brain that I recall the raw emotion I felt while reading Dubliners more than I recall any of its rumination upon Dublin’s character, religion, and politics. I’m not sure I’ve ever had the written word affect me so much as some of these stories have, and the fact that I’m neither from Dublin nor, obviously, a 100+ year old man who lived at the time in which Joyce was writing, is a testament to Joyce’s skill in conveying these ideas. Doing so with such mundane, everyday stories of regular people renders Dubliners even more impressive.

Even apart from their context, his words are powerful:

“One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”

“He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.”

“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”

“I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.” 

“When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street.”

Despite this beauty, reading through Dubliners was up-and-down for me. Joyce's prose is clearly enrapturing and I always feel myself settle into the reverie that comes with reading a really, really good writer each time I sit down to continue reading. While all his short stories in this collection deal with some sort of epiphany or another, I find that not all of these epiphanies have hit me as hard as he probably intended. Perhaps some of this is the fact that I'm reading this 100 years after he had written it. Perhaps it's also due to the fact that I am not Irish, or that I've spent nowhere near long enough in Dublin to grasp its eccentricities. This has left me with the feeling more of reading some good word porn rather than being impacted by a great story, and I'm thankful my paperback copy has a healthy amount of annotations to help me grasp a bit of what Joyce is assuming is colloquial knowledge regarding Dublin's early 20th century neighborhoods, popular restaurants, streets, and buildings.

To add to this difficulty, I often have the feeling when experiencing sparse modernist work like this that the artist, rather than being purposefully ambiguous for greater impact, is being purposefully obtuse in an attempt to obscure the fact that the story is rather threadbare and create a facade of more depth than actually exists. I couldn't shake that feeling while reading the very first story in the collection, The Sisters, despite Joyce's reputation as a literary Titan.

Don't get me wrong; The Sisters is a beautifully atmospheric work by Joyce despite the fact that it leaves the reader to fill in the blanks and place their own suppositions. Though I enjoyed his skill at setting the tone and found some portions of his prose outright gorgeous, Sisters didn't do enough for me. Maybe I'm too old-fashioned, concrete, and objective; too much a philosophical Luddite to really get modernism? But that's unfortunately not a question I'm equipped to answer.

“I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”

As I continued reading I found myself more and more invested in the sheer beauty of Joyce's words, even if I couldn't fully relate to the stories themselves. The third story, titled Araby, is a stunningly beautiful coming-of-age vignette in which a boy becomes aware of his unrealistic idealism. Joyce's style is subtle almost to a fault, but engulfing. He assumes the reader's intelligence and floods his prose with gorgeous personification and simile. Reading this was more like experiencing a painting than it was reading a short story. Wonderful.


However, it wasn't until the eighth story, titled A Little Cloud, that I found the first story I could truly relate to; one not centered upon examining Dublin, Irish Nationalist politics, Catholicism, or alcoholism.

Centered around Little Chandler, a 32-year old timid, introverted, married man with a child who, upon meeting an old friend Galleher, realizes the path his life has taken and begins to yearn for Galleher's more well-traveled, Bohemian lifestyle. Joyce's class as a writer allows him to impact the melancholy of the existential worry Chandler feels, even though as a single, childless, 30-something travel junky my own life is more similar to Galleher's than Chandler's.

A Little Cloud is particularly appealing to me because it explores an internal, subconscious conversation I've had with myself constantly: Am I missing something important by choosing to live this way? Is it a 'grass is always greener' situation? Am I making the right choice? These questions are asked of themselves by more Western adults in 2018 than in the preceding decades, given our economic and political climate—particularly in the United States—and thus I wouldn't be surprised if this story is similarly impactful to other millennials who might choose to break into reading Joyce with Dubliners.

In addition to the story's particular appeal to me, there are the usual nuggets of Joyce's poetic brilliance nestled into the prose that make it a complete joy to read:

"The glow of a late autumn sunset covered the grass plots and walks. It cast a shower of kindly golden dust on the untidy nurses and decrepit old men who drowsed on the benches; it flickered upon all the moving figures — on the children who ran screaming along the gravel paths and on everyone who passed through the gardens."

And then, finally, comes The Dead. Joyce saves his best for last. The Dead is a wonderfully written; a melancholy short story that encapsulates Dubliners very well. It touches on the same subject matter; Irish nationalism, the Catholic church, alcoholism, the city of Dublin. The closing lines are particularly moving and do a fantastic job to end Dubliners as a whole:

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

The Dead is considered a masterpiece of short fiction, and I feel it makes a perfect endcap to Dubliners, being literary while also remaining approachable enough to be easily recommended as the jumping-off point for anyone interested to read Joyce. It's the only story I believe truly works as a stand-alone within this collection.

Dubliners's impeccable craft is impossible to deny, but I couldn’t shake the fact while reading it that it wasn’t written for me. It encapsulates the city of its namesake and will resonate most with its denizens. For the rest of us, though, Dubliners's other strengths do more than enough to suggest a read—and even a re-read if you’ve already walked the streets of Dublin with Joyce once before.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson

Breezily paced and written in concise, direct prose, Hill House establishes many of the haunted house genre's mainstay cliches and tropes that are still replicated today. Jackson keeps the plot moving forward without riddling it with bombastic events. Instead, she feeds us bits of suggestive events, mostly through the narrator's unreliable account and inner thoughts. I grew not to be outright "scared", but had my foundation shaken by something continuously just... Off. It's like sitting in a silent room in the dead of Summer and swearing you can hear a mosquito buzzing around somewhere, but you can't find out where, and you've heard the damn buzzing on-and-off for so long and seen no mosquito that now you're no longer sure it isn't just your imagination.

Eleanor's actions are just out of place enough to tell you that something is seriously wrong with her; she laughs at the wrong times, her judgments of other characters are so inaccurate they make you wonder if you missed something. Later on, she begins to waffle in her feelings between her companions, often veering wildly from cold fury into outright obsession in the very next chapter.

It's a chilling read mostly due to Jackson's deft depiction of mental illness rather than any ghostly paranormal activity, which is mostly left up to the reader's interpretations. There are a few select shared experiences between multiple characters, but the majority of the disturbances in the house are felt by Eleanor, and Eleanor alone, leaving us to question: Is this really happening to her, or is it all in her head?

This may end up disappointing those expecting more of a pulpy horror read. But if you have an appreciation for subtle, character-driven narrative with a perfect ending, then I highly recommend this.

Bonus points for the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition I had, with the ethereal, elegiac artwork of Eleanor on the cover continuously serving to creep me out when I put this down each night to go to bed. This book reads like this cover looks; simple, pretty, but also subtly off-putting. And you're often not quite sure why.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (1967) by Harlan Ellison

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream has an intriguing premise, but that's about all. That and torture porn, I guess.

There's not really any science fiction here beyond the premise of an artificial intelligence hating and torturing the final few remnants of humanity in ways that are viscerally horrifying to a human reader. There's no attempt at an explanation as to how it can do the things it does; materializing various objects, mending injuries through mid-air, and altering the humans genetically. Nothing really happens for any reason because there aren't any rules explained to the reader, which causes the climactic action to have little payoff. The characters are shallow and the unreliable narrator never really amounts to anything, but as I read I found I had most problems with the lack of worldbuilding and wanted some basic framework to what was happening and why.

There are quite a few holes, even for a short story. These people have been stuck in here for a hundred years, yet none have thought to commit suicide? The computer can wirelessly and instantly alter their DNA, can keep them from death... Except it can't at the climax of the story? 

Why? Because Ellison decided so?

I'm pretty disappointed with this read as I expected much more. Is it horrifying? Sure, but it lacks any real impact. It reads more like Ellison came up with an interesting premise but didn't know how to explore it, and resorted to shocking tortureporn in place of an actual, impactful narrative—horrifying or otherwise.

It must have been a unique premise back in 1967, and it certainly features some inventive ways of shocking the audience, but its lack of depth renders its attempt at a shocking conclusion ultimately unsatisfying.

⭐

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

An odd experience reading this considering how great the story is and the intriguing ideas it explores while being an awfully overwritten mess that was a slog to trudge through.

Shelley explores what seems like postpartum depression via the lens of a horror novel and works in ruminations upon free will, human socialization, existentialism, and prejudice. However sandwiched between her exploration of these themes is both a lengthy travelogue an extensive periods of time in which Frankenstein does nothing but describe to the audience how hopelessly miserable he is. I would not be surprised to find that nearly a third of the pages of this novel are one of the two of these. I'd read for pages at a time of Frankenstein describing the layout of Swiss towns and mountains only to have absolutely nothing happen aside from him passing through them without event. I know Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary were all traveling through Switzerland prior to her writing this and she was surely inspired to write about the wonderful vistas they witnessed, but this is sheer, worthless fat; an indulgence on the author's part that doesn't serve the story and bores the reader to the point of forcing skimming or putting the book down. It's also hurt by the chapter-long instances of Frankenstein moaning directly to us just how woefully miserable he is, breaking the cardinal rule of show-don't-tell and causing the reader to shout "Oh just get on with it then, Victor, damn it, we haven't got all day".

I strongly considered putting the book down through the middle portion at the height of Shelley's dithering, put upon reflection it is my opinion that it presents novel questions and, more importantly, ends superbly enough to make it worth a read. I just can't help but suspect a more experienced writer than Shelley was at the time of writing Frankenstein could have turned in a far tighter story and shorn off a fair chunk of this bloated mess into the true masterpiece it's reputed to be.

⭐⭐⭐

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) (Dupin, #1) by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe's Dupin blazes a trail and sets the standard for the mystery genre. The main character is a memorable one and Poe keeps us guessing, but the reveal stretches belief a bit and the story in general lacks some of the refinement we see later in Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes novels that Poe inspires here.

Poe deserves recognition for the pioneering quality of Murders in the Rue Morgue, but the Dupin stories are unfortunately overshadowed by the later, greater works which evolve and refine the genre.

⭐⭐⭐

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe

Contrasting to meandering, overwritten horror classics such as Shelley's Frankenstein, Poe proves with The Tell-Tale Heart that length-requiring plot and character development is unnecessary when you have the capacity to unsettle your audience by atmosphere creation and the building of tension delivered with exceptionally tight and stylized prose. Brilliantly constructed and viscerally unsettling, Heart represents the strength of the short story as a medium and lives on as one of the foremost examples of the unreliable narrator in horror fiction.

One of Poe's best. I'll probably re-read this one each October until I die.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Old Man and the Sea (1951) by Ernest Hemingway

Lots of people say this whole story is symbolic. The used copy I read was marked up with constant indicators of Christ allegory by some Brianna Unger character who apparently had possession of the copy prior to me and marked her name inside the cover.

I didn’t have that reading of the story at all, despite suggestions of the contrary literally staring me in the face on nearly every other page. To my reading, it’s exactly what it appears to be: An old, spent man trying to catch a giant marlin.

I don’t think the story needs anything more to have value. Santiago is not a Christ-like figure. He’s not suffering for the sins of others. He’s not sacrificing himself for anything other than the catch. I was inspired by that by itself and I was preoccupied during my reading with why the story—so simple and tersely written in Hemingway’s trademark style—was so affecting.

It’s a story about human perseverance, determination, and endurance in pursuit of a goal, often in competition with nature itself, a common theme in Hemingway’s work. I can’t help but to scoff at the top review on Goodreads, which reads “just throw the effing fish back,” or some nonsense. The context of the titular Old Man being the one pursuing the catch is important. He’s not trying to feed his family; his family is dead and gone. He’s not trying to make money or garner fame. Throughout his extensive internal monologue—which is sufficiently constructed and interesting enough to carry a narrative that would otherwise have been dreadfully boring—his thoughts are dominated by the task at hand, the wonderful setting in which he finds himself (the Sea), his love for fish, the moon, and everything around him. The Old Man is in constant pain, his will is being tested, and he’s facing death upon failure. Yet he chooses to persevere, not because he has to, or for a reward, but because he’s a fisherman. This is what he does, what he feels he was born to be, and what he enjoys. His wife dead and his only friend a village boy. This is all he has left. And he’s okay with that. In fact, he enjoys it. There's no existential crisis here, just a man who knows his purpose and revels in it. He’s content.

It’s easy to feel the Old Man’s struggle against the fish empathetically and apply our own fears of death and failure to the Old Man like we would do while shouting at somebody in a horror movie who’s fallen down when attempting to evade a murderer. But to do so would be failing to note that the Old Man probably expects to die on the open sea one day very soon. His days are all but spent. He has lived his life and feels he’s lived it well. He’s satisfied. His focus when battling wills with the marlin is so complete that the only thing he wishes for outside of the minutiae of the catch itself is that the boy was there to see the epic struggle, to assist him, and presumably to learn more about their trade in doing so.

I think it’s just a simple novel about a man at the end of his days trying to catch a fish, trying to do what he feels he’s meant to do to the best of his ability, and recognizing and embracing the fact that he will one day die doing it. But it doesn’t lack depth because of it. I think it's inspiring as-is.

It seems to have come into vogue to rail against Hemingway’s work as simplistic, masculine to a fault, or even misogynistic. I suppose I can understand the first two criticisms. But I can’t help but enjoy almost everything he’s written as it agrees so well with my personal tastes in terms of prose, theme, and subject matter.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut

I'm not sure this book is so much about war as it is going with the flow and finding the beauty in your fate, inexorable as it is. Billy Pilgrim embodies this philosophy; he rolls with the punches, liking (or at least not disliking) and wanting to please everyone he comes across, even those who don't deserve such treatment. Billy stoically absorbs the disturbing things he's witnessed until they fester within him and lead to the decay of his mental health. Or perhaps he really was abducted by aliens and traveling through time. Vonnegut leaves it open to our interpretation and humorless, skeptical bore that I am, I choose the more concrete explanation.

Since I'm the personification of a cardboard box, Slaughterhouse-Five is not really my style. Vonnegut's whimsical and zany work is popular with the irony-obsessed hipster crowd of the 21st century, and it's no wonder considering Slaughterhouse-Five is the Wes Anderson version of the anti-war novel. There's a lot of oddballery in these pages despite it being set during the most devastating war in the history of human civilization. The incongruence of its simultaneous focus on zany sci-fi humor and the horrors of total war along with Slaughterhouse-Five's constant shifting of time period and setting could have been a pretty jarring, difficult read if penned by a more uptight writer (cough Pynchon cough), yet this is one of the easier reads I've had this year. I was surprised to realize I hadn't noticed how disjointed the narrative was until after I finished and thought back on the book to write this review. It's pretty impressive.

Classics don't get much more likable or approachable than this. Not really to my taste but appreciable nonetheless.

⭐⭐⭐

Revelation Space (2000) by Alastair Reynolds

Woeful storytelling, glacial pacing, and absent characterization plague a novel otherwise full of intriguing, fresh science fiction ideas.

There were a number of out-of-the-blue character developments that left me scratching my head to the point of wondering if I'd actually skipped a chapter. Sylveste somehow falls in love with and marries his captor, yet we never hear a single smitten thought in his head or see a sole romantic action expressed. It just sort of... Happens. Similarly, Khouri is coerced into a course of action with the potential reward of being reunited with her long lost husband, and throughout the entire rest of the book she thinks about their history, her feelings for him, and how rewarding it will be to be reunited precisely zero times.

These characters almost wholly lack depth, and thus they lack any agency with which to impact the story. They are shuttled along from event to event by Reynolds as if they're cardboard cutouts being placed on stage by his hands. Because of this I found the book dreadfully bland despite some legitimately interesting worldbuilding such as the melding plague, strong transhumanist themes (of which I've been a fan for as long as I can remember), and the simple, satisfying, enticing solution Reynolds provides for the Fermi Paradox.

Suitable for hard science fiction fans, but passable for those interested in even a basic standard of storytelling or mildly interesting characters.

⭐⭐

My Hero Academia (2014) by Kohei Horikoshi

Earlier this year I began experimenting with the medium of weekly Japanese manga. Though Western comics have always seemed a bore to me, I'm a fan of both art, and novels, so why not try some Japanese graphic novels? I ended up exploring a classic of the medium (Berserk), a contemporary favorite (My Hero Academia), and a genre favorite (The Enigma of Amigara Fault by horror savant Junji Ito).

One can't traverse much of the anime-watching and manga-reading corners of the internet without hearing regular mention of My Hero Academia. Aside from the given that is the omnipresent One Piece—a staple of manga for decades—Academia sits atop the throne of most universally popular new series.

I found Horikoshi's characters to be charming, and the setting, premise, and action clearly paying homage to the Western comic book series X-Men. Many of the characters' charm lies in their vulnerability and the determination and effort they exert to overcome them; indeed, the series posterboy, All-Might, would be far less interesting without the context of the ebbing of his powers contrasting with the surging of his desire to be a hero people can rely on.

I'm typically more a fan of dark, cynical, joyless forms of fiction, but I have to say I liked this quite a bit better than Berserk, one of the other long-running series of manga I experimented with this year. Though Berserk does put some care into the construction of its characters, the constant outpouring of effort it made to be edgy and violent wore me down to the point of which I was no longer enjoying myself. This didn't occur with Academia, which stays fresh despite the length the series is beginning to approach.

Charming, funny characters and great artwork make this easily recommendable to manga newbies such as me—especially in today's superhero-dominated popular culture. Though I can't say it did much to change my opinion on the medium as a whole.

⭐⭐

A Feast for Crows (2005) (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4) by George R.R. Martin

I recently completed a re-read of this book and came away with such a hugely differing opinion from my first time through that I thought it important to encapsulate my thoughts here before they fade away with time.

On my first read I was struck with a similar feeling to those critical of the book; namely that I didn't care about these new (or previously secondary) characters, and that the plot moved too slowly and "nothing happens". Clearly, my expectations coming into the book during both of my reads served to enhance my reaction. The first time through I had just finished A Storm Of Swords, in which nearly 1,300 pages flash by in an instant thanks to the plot moving at the speed of light. So much happens in that book. And AFFC is its polar opposite in terms of pacing and what it's focused on. ASOS is hurtling you through the climax of the War of the Five Kings, the instability of the Night's Watch and the Battle at the Wall, and Daenerys's aggressive escapades in the East. Even the more slowly paced chapters, such as the Arya chapters, are highlighted with some great, pulse-pounding moments, such as Sandor Clegane's trial in Hollow Hill. The book is full of climactic moments; I almost consider it to be the conclusion of A Song Of Ice And Fire's first arc. It's fantastic.

A Feast For Crows, then, is not so much Martin beginning to pick up the pieces the first three novels have tossed around and establishing the beginning of the plot arcs for coming books (though he is certainly doing that), but Martin giving us a middle chapter in which we take a breath, look around, and survey all the chaos that has been wrought by the characters we've been following up until this point. Up until now, the focus has remained very deep and detailed; we're watching these characters' actions from the inside of their heads, primarily concerned with how they're going to attempt to accomplish their goals. AFFC sharply changes that.

More than half of this book takes place in the eyes of Brienne (8/46 chapters), Cersei (10/46 chapters), and Jaime (7/46 chapters). Instead of each chapter taking place with characters across the globe from one another, we're now centered in Westeros' very core, with Cersei ruling King's Landing, Jaime spending time in King's Landing and the neighboring Riverlands, and Brienne wandering the Crownlands and the Riverlands. These areas have been hard hit by the war. The common people of the Westerlands, the Riverlands, and the Crownlands bore the brunt of the war, as you might expect. Entire villages are gone, burned lumps of ash sacked and looted, their people executed and raped for no real reason other than a Lannister, Stark, Frey, or whomever patrol had come through. But it's been bad for the "haves" of this society as well. Landed knights, minor lords, and even some great and storied Westerosi noble houses have had their holdings burned around them and their granaries cleaned out by passing armies leaving them to starve in the coming winter. Entire great houses that have been around for thousands of years are extinguished. One of the major points of this novel is that things are bad amongst everyone in Westeros, even the victors. Well, except maybe the crows. Hence the title.

The plot does progress, albeit far more slowly than in any of the previous novels. The war is winding down, the climactic moments have occurred, and the victors are cleaning up what little resistance remains. So why did I enjoy this book so much? What fills the hole that all of these awesome, climactic moments have left?

A Feast For Crows is the most atmospheric of all the novels in the series up to this point. Martin's writing has clearly improved from the initial novel in the series, and he lets it shine here. This series features some of best character and dialogue writing in all genre fiction, and it's on full display in this book. There are several instances in this book in which the dialogue was so excellent, I had to set it down and remark aloud:

• Aemon Targaryen, 102-years old and dying, waking from a fitful sleep to address his long-dead brother; "Egg? I dreamed I was old."

• Septon Meribald's "broken man" speech putting into perspective how hellish the prospect of war actually is for Westeros' serf class.

• Thoros of Myr lamenting upon what war has done to the brotherhood; "We were king’s men, knights, and heroes... but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all."

• Mya Stone describing her memories of Robert Baratheon's love for her prior to his abandonment, and how she was raised by the mountains of the Eyrie after he left.

This book is Martin's rumination upon why war is so terrible, why it's a net-negative for all of those involved. Nobody has come out of the War of the Five Kings in a better place than when they've started. The losers, obviously not. But even the victors. Their granaries are empty. Family members have died in the war or are marrying people they hate to bury the hatchet with previously rival houses. Vast swaths of lands and holdings have been destroyed. And while all of this death and destruction could have made a book like this a bleak slog of a read, Martin's consistently excellent mise en scène alleviates that problem, as does his inclusion of many minor characters who serve to heighten the story past what it could have been. The moments of beauty and hopefulness present in this novel contrast more sharply given their context.

I understand that Martin's decision to split the narrative between this and A Dance With Dragons was a difficult one, but I really enjoy that A Feast For Crows stands on its own as his treatise on why war is such a terrible thing. It's a well-written, atmospheric treat for anyone who's a fan of this world, and coming into this novel a second time while knowing what to expect allowed me to enjoy it far more than I did the first time. The more I read, the more I found myself melting into its world, passively experiencing its characters and its setting, and becoming wholly immersed in what Martin has created. I didn't need the bombastic foolishness of the HBO series, or the climactic battles of the previous novel, or pulse-quickening episodes of single combat. I was too busy being enveloped in the pine trees gently rustling in the wind as Brienne, Pod, and Dick Crabb slowly meandered their way through the woods of Crackclaw Point. I was skipping alongside Arya as she explored the quiet canals of Braavos at night under a full moon. Or with Jaime and his pensiveness in Castle Darry as a fire crackles in the corner and the Autumn wind howls against the shutters. Reading A Feast For Crows is like watching one of those 10-hour long YouTube ambiance videos and sipping on hot wine while thinking about something as profound and serious as what total war says about humanity as a whole and does to humans as individuals, and I love that about it. What it lacks in explosiveness, it makes up for in subtlety and its impeccable craft. If that sounds boring to you, then you probably won't like this. But if you love Westeros as much as I do, you'll probably enjoy this book for what it is.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Berserk (1990) by Kentaro Miura

Earlier this year I began experimenting with the medium of weekly Japanese manga. Though Western comics have always seemed a bore to me, I'm a fan of both art, and novels, so why not graphic novels? I ended up exploring a classic of the medium (Berserk), a contemporary favorite (Boku no Hero Academia), and a genre favorite (a graphic novella by horror savant Junji Ito).

I read almost universal praise for Berserk but was greeted with the first volume, which I promptly hated. It read like a 16-year old boy's etching done while in high school math class. Flat characters, rough artwork, and terrible dialogue. Upon further internet trawling I discovered that, in fact, Miura was no more than a teenager when he had written and illustrated the material in this first volume from the late '80s, and is still working on the series today — Now in his 50s.

His fans suggested I keep reading, and so I obliged them and continued to give the series a shot.

It wasn't until around Volume 15 that I actually put the series down for good, recognizing that it did, in fact, improve drastically; both in the areas of art and characterization. The dialogue remained universally awful, though whether that was due to its original construction or shoddy translation, I'm not sure. The series peaked for me around volume 9, when the characters were further humanized and experienced an emotional, existential breakthrough.

Miura is at his best when he's building his characters and utilizing the plot to challenge them. I once had a creative writing professor suggest cruelty towards your characters as the best way to challenge them and force them to grow and change, and Miura certainly pulls no punches in the Martin-esque way that he punishes the poor souls in Berserk. It leads to unexpected depth in the characterization that I've been referring to, something I was not expecting when I picked up manga for the first time.

The art grows in leaps and bounds through just the volumes that I read, and I've peeked ahead at some of the art in the volume that released just this past year and was blown away. The art Miura is producing currently is genre-defying, in my estimation. He's drawing inspiration from Western artists such as Bosch and Escher, and producing some art completely unique to his medium. It's something that deserves recognition and provides a significant boost to the quality of Berserk in general.

I think a most specific, make-or-break facet in the estimation of whether or not a reader would enjoy Berserk is how well they like camp. Berserk is full of camp. Whether it's intentional, or Miura is just trying to too hard to be edgy is anybody's guess. But this series is chock full of gratuitous, over-the-top nudity and violence. I really can't stress this enough. I'm all for realism (I love Martin's ASOIAF, which toes the line between realism and outright camp fairly well, in my opinion), but the levels of explicit sexual content and violence are so over-the-top in this work that they're impossible to take seriously. I'd be shocked if Miura wasn't inspired by a wave of ultraviolent '80s slasher B-movies. If this is your thing, then you'll probably like Berserk, but too often I felt Miura was overly ham-handed in his presentation of this camp, and it contrasted poorly with some of the more serious character work he was clearly putting full effort into producing. When I think about Berserk, I feel a clash between outright ridiculousness, and earnest exploration of existentialism through well-rounded characters. It's an odd juxtaposition that could have been more interesting had it been balanced more skillfully.

The one objective complaint I have about Berserk is that the dialogue is bad. As I mentioned before, this may be due to the translation, as I don't envy the Japanese-to-English translators job in any circumstance, much less when they're trying to fit kanji-to-English into tiny speech bubbles. I'm sure sacrifices needed to be made to get Miura's ideas across, and they serve Berserk very badly. There are numerous instances of awful dialogue that tear you right out of the experience and pile on top of the already troubled mash of campiness and serious attempts at character development.

The best thing I can say about the series is that, coming from a background of Western fiction, it was almost wholly unique to me. The plotting was a rollercoaster -- each time I suspected what was going to happen next, I was wrong. Similarly, the increase in quality of the character writing and art was unexpected. Fans of the series where definitely correct in urging me to stick with it past the first few volumes, and I'm glad I did. However, this just falls solidly into the category of "not for me": I recognize the special things that the series does within its medium, but as somebody who isn't a fan of the medium, has nary a campy bone in his body, and doesn't care much for fantasy, this falls flatly outside the boxes I typically tick when examining what my favorite pieces of fiction are.

Berserk does some things so well, but its flaws — along with the fact that it's simply not my thing — kept dragging it back down for me.

This is likely much more enjoyable to fans of manga, camp, and dark fantasy. but for people like me coming from outside those realms, much less so. For example, I chuckle to think about my grandmother picking up and reading one of these. But its reputation is, in my layman's opinion, well-deserved among manga fans.

I am certainly not an expert in this subgenre, but hopefully I've nailed a general outline well-enough to help somebody make an informed decision.

⭐