More Whyborne and Griffin

[got_quiet]

Work has been wrecking me lately. I've started studying tea again but I barely have any time for classes. My goal is to get the damn fukusa folded correctly and consistently all the time and just to remember the order of operations for the ryakubon temae without my teacher needing to prompt me. Years ago I had this all fully memorized, but my memory is a sieve so now with the passage of time I need to basically start from 0. I haven't had much time or space to practice at home. It's one of those things where if feel like in order to do Z, I need to get Y done, but to do that I need to do X and then I get tired just thinking about it. But luckily a lot of my busy work obligations are now pretty much done for the year so I'm not putting in so much overtime and my evenings are more free.

Even though I've been kind of feeling pressed for time, I did check Libby a bit ago to see if any of the Whyborne and Griffin books had become newly available, and they had! So I abandoned all responsibilities and read Bloodlines, Hoarfrost, Maelstrom, Fallow and Drackenwood all in very quick succession, to the point where trying to remember what happened in which book is actually mildly difficult. My understanding is that there are two more main books that I haven't gotten to, and unfortunately Libby still doesn't have any of the shorts besides carousel so I'm missing those still. 

Finally, Whyborne's fishiness is exposed! I was thinking that just being a fish man was more modest than I expected his origin to be, but then by the time I got through Maelstrom I was like, ah yes, this makes more sense.

At this point the themes of the series are really solidifying. I mean, they were sort of there in previous books but before the eldritch horrors were clearly Big Bads, whereas now the evil is starting to shift, and the humans are taking up the mantle of most awful, terrible beings. And their terribleness is often indicated by their bigotry. The twins seem to be cool and I got a little more of Whyborne dancing with megalomania which I always enjoy. In fact he actually crosses the line a little Bloodline, which I enjoyed even more. It's good that he still has these weaknesses. Of course things quickly go to shit when the Twins turn out to be completely unrelenting in their philosophy of All Monsters Must Die, which serves as a pretty easy English 101 parallel with all sorts of dogmatic mindsets. Stanford is just terrible from top to bottom, as is the sorcerer bad guy in Hoarfrost whose name I can't remember. Thank goodness Griffin doesn't lose absolutely everyone in his life and his brother turns out to be ok.

I thought the way the series used Ma and Niles as sort of foils of each other was well done. Griffin loves his Ma and wants her to love him, and she gave him a loving home for so long, but in the end she's not only a homophobe but a homophobe who drove someone to suicide. She is, ultimately, someone who hurts people, including her own son. And Niles starts the series as a rather flat sort of evil guy, working to summon bad shit through human sacrifice, abusing his one son and failing to properly discipline his other, etc., but by the end of Drackenwood it's clear he has some deep regrets about his previous approach to the world and is actually actively trying to do a better job. It's also nice that Whyborne isn't just smiling and going along with it as if it would be that easy, but is instead still digesting a lifetime of trauma and can't just accept or trust Niles at all. The parts in Maelstrom where he was actually getting paranoid about his father exploiting his friends and husband felt very real to me, as someone who has no relationship with my father for a multitude of reasons. I also just enjoy the fact that every time Niles tries to do something good Whyborne is like, remember that time when you tried to sacrifice my husband to concentrated evil? Even Griffin doesn't resent him for that so much lol.

By the way it's just the best that Whyborne and Griffin are constantly referring to each other internally as "My Husband." Considering the setting it's an act of fierce affirmation and every time they think it I smile inside.

So far the series has gone from strength to strength. It hasn't lingered to much on conflicts that would get tiresome if never settled (Griffin finally has accepted Whyborne's magic flinging for example) and has opened the universe up into an interesting larger plot. The constant wild shit that happens in Widdershins has been more directly addressed so it's not like, well yes, a massive sentient vortex destroyed a bridge but really life is perfectly normal here. The stakes continue to increase, but the adventures themselves have so far been character and relationship centered. And the Librarians are great. I also enjoyed very much the moment in Drackenwood when the police have to arrest Whyborne and one of them nervously tells him, "Please, I have a wife and child." The narrow first person does a great job of creating opportunities for those little bits of humor because Whyborne is just the most oblivious little bookworm. I love him.

I know there's an f/f novel out there between Ms. Parkhurst and Whyborne's sister, and while I'm sort of curious about it I'm also not super into f/f and given the horniness of these books I don't know how much of it will be me skimming.