Critique: The Fire Within (Chris D’Lacey)

David becomes Liz’s lodger at Wayward Crescent. She makes pottery dragons and her daughter Lucy is obsessed with squirrels (particularly Conker). This is the backdrop to the story of David settling and figuring things out. He has a love-hate relationship with Lucy and their cat Bonnington. Liz creates the pad-and-pencil-carrying dragon Gadzooks for David who ‘helps’ him write.

 

*****SPOILERS (for entire series)*****

 

There’s something weird going on with the pottery dragons. Liz cuts Lucy off whenever Lucy explains something about the dragons. Like why they’re hot or why they’re special.

David jokes that the flapping in Dragons’ Den is from dragon wings. There isn’t a kiln in Dragons’ Den, so how does Liz make the pottery dragons? David hears ‘hurring’ in the night. Liz says it’s the central heating but there are no radiators in the house.

The story David writes about Conker with Gadzooks’ help happens in real time. When David annoys Gruffen, the dragon’s eyes go violet and David ends up with a neck singe.

So the dragons are clearly more than just pottery. Indeed, when the dragon in David room is described, it includes a suggestion of personality and a sense of place in the world. When I first read this book, this description annoyed me (‘Come off it’ was my response) but when combined with the rest of the clues the book gives, it makes sense and creates clarity.

 

A lot of the humour in this book was great for me as a child and as an adult. Such as a squirrel-book author being called ‘A N Utter’.

David’s interactions with others is a great source of funny moments. David turns the bathroom dragon around before he unzips himself. Bonnington starts eating David’s food so the human puts it in the cat’s bowl but Bonnington sniffs then rejects it. Then David bangs his head on the library desk because Henry Bacon (their neighbour who works there) frustrates him.

Sophie, an animal volunteer, is the pre-requisite to humour. Liz gives David the phone from Sophie (an animal volunteer) instead of Lucy ‘Because you’re not a handsome young man’ and Lucy replies, ‘Well, neither is he!’ Later, Liz prepares a lot of food for Sophie so David plans to invite Sophie over a lot more.

Lucy threatens to run away and Liz offers to help Lucy pack.

 

Plenty of positives!

The chapters are the right size for the intended audience.

They bury Conker the squirrel ‘like a nut’. Such a clever, beautiful description.

There are parts that could be removed yet not impact the plot of this novel whatsoever. However, it’s absolutely vital information for the rest of the series. I like that it’s introduced before it’s needed. David’s told never to let a dragon cry, otherwise the tears will put their spark out. It’s as easy as not loving them. Also, David hears a story of how Gwilanna made Guinevere save the dragon Gawain by catching his fire tear. David assumes Liz and Lucy are descendants of Guinevere. This bloodline is important.

 

All mistakes present should have been picked up by the editors. I don’t know why they weren’t.

A very long paragraph describes the dragon in David’s room and this is not the right size for the intended audience.

Lucy loves squirrels and Liz says to David he’d wish, ‘Noah never let them on the arc.’ Should be ‘Arc’.

Chapter titles aren’t in majuscules (which they should be) other than ‘The Wishing Fountain’. There’s no grammatical reason why this gets majuscules when the others don’t.

The first paragraph of ‘The Wishing Fountain’ is longer than a page. This is bad writing, especially as the intended audience is children.

David runs his hand through his ‘mop of hair’. Earlier, Liz’s hair was described in the exact same manner. My first instinct is to call out on the lazy writing. However, it could be foreshadowing their mother-son bond as discovered later in the series. Seeing as the author wrote organically (i.e. no plan), I doubt this would be the case.

David thinks Liz and Lucy are of Guinevere bloodline. That’s a big leap, connecting a myth and potentially fake people with your host family. Much more information would be needed for David to suspect it, to even recognise it as a possibility, before making a decision.

 

Overall this was lovely story that works really well as a children’s novel. It’s a gentle stepping stone into the rest of the story, taking the readers into a world of magic. Whilst the plot is vague here, it thickens up in the following books.

 

Critique: Bitten (TV)

This show is about Elena, the first female werewolf, and her accepting the consequences and practicalities of her identity. In series one, at least. The following two series expands on the world-building which supplements it in an interesting manner.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

There were many good features so here’s a selection.

The wolves and the transformation between a werewolf’s two forms was animated really well. The CGI could’ve been utterly awful but they clearly spent money to get talented people.

The fight scenes weren’t repetitive (usually they bore me relentlessly). Considering there were so many fight scenes, this achievement was especially impressive.

The details of the witch’s rituals was really good. The explanations and visuals, taking the time to go through it rather than rushing it, was very satisfying. Even if they did use smudging, a Native American tradition rather than a witchcraft one. A more appropriate ritual would be saining, a Scottish purifying ceremony of burning a branch, because it was something witches performed.

Elena’s brother Alexei says, ‘I’m so sick of being on the side lines of my own life.’ That cuts deep.

Elena kills Aleister by drowning him. Ruth wanted baby Aleister to be drowned so for him to die by drowning at a later point was good from a plot perspective.

Clay teaches Alexei about people, that you need to keep this in mind, especially when you’re a wolf. Other people, ‘They love. They hurt. They are.’ That’s beautiful.

Series three was the last one. It didn’t feel like it was, like it was wrapping anything up. But when werewolves were revealed to the world, this felt like the concluding note it was missing. This feature didn’t feel tagged into the end, either: it was an organic addition to the story.

 

 

There were issues with creative choices that were questionable.

The sex scenes were completely extra, completely too much. Would the show have suffered without them? Plot-wise, no. But they are in keeping with the style of the books the tv show is based upon.

Zachary turned the life support machine off that was hooked up to his girlfriend. His cry of grief afterwards was so fake. Marston coughing is so badly fake. Like with Zachary’s actor, Marston’s actor is talented yet they have a single point of complete unbelievability. I’m guessing the director’s to blame.

At one point, Sasha (Elena’s father) puts his bloody hand on the window. The entire action, from how long his reach was to how deep his reach was, didn’t seem natural. No one would ever move themselves like that, especially when injured.

Elena’s hair is always too perfect. Yes, this means it looks fantastic for the cameras. But she’s always fighting, doing physical labour and shifting between human and wolf forms. No amount of hairspray would keep your hair perfect through all of that.

Marston is English yet he says ‘albino’ like an American. Also, this ‘albino’ werewolf isn’t actually albino.

 

 

Sometimes the world building astounded me. In a bad way. It was mostly really interesting but there were a few gaping holes.

The witches had a prophesy where a male witch would kill them all. So when baby Aleister was born, his mother Ruth tried to get him killed. If you didn’t try to kill him, he’d have no reason to seek revenge.

A werewolf’s sense of smell is a really important part of series one and two. Yet it seems to go completely out the window in series three. There’re so many scenarios where the werewolves should have smelt something but didn’t.

I highly doubt there’s never been a female werewolf before. That seems unplausible. Especially as we know werewolves can have daughters (Sasha had a daughter other than Elena who isn’t a werewolf and nobody reacts to it like it’s strange). The explanation seems to be that it only happened because Elena has wolf ancestry on both sides. But surely werewolves would prefer to mate with werewolf-descended women because that way they would understand the secret of being a werewolf?

The fact that the werewolves didn’t know witches exist astounded me. I understand not having witches in series one because it introduced the werewolves and how werewolf society operated. So not knowing witches existed seems like the writers’ way of justifying why witches weren’t mentioned in series one. But this is odd: just because witches didn’t have a place in the plot doesn’t mean they don’t have a place in the world.

 

 

Characters on occasion acted in ways that made no sense. There seems to be no justification, whether it be a stressful situation or even just part of an erratic person’s behaviour.

When Elena was fighting Aleister, she should’ve killed him outright rather than take her anger out on him. She had plenty of chances to take him out. That way, Elena wouldn’t have died and then Ruth wouldn’t have swapped her life for Elena’s. Elena not killing Aleister as soon as she could was due to a selfish desire and cost someone’s life. If she shifted into a cat form, playing with her prey would have been normal. But wolves get the job done.

Paige and Nick were developing their relationship from a purely sexual one to one with romance. But when Paige becomes leader of the coven, she says any chance they had was gone. Why? This made no sense. Then Paige gets romantic with someone else in the next season! So what exactly changed?

The werewolves touch loads of things when they murder, steal, and breaking and entering. This means their fingerprints are all over crime scenes. Yet they only have the sense to clear up if it’s murder? This doesn’t seem sensible!

They decide to go public with the existence of werewolves. Fine. But Elena says that means werewolves have to operate under human laws. I don’t see why that is. Humans aren’t going to suddenly notice all these crimes are committed by werewolves. For a real-life example, knowing a gang exists doesn’t suddenly make people see their crimes.

They burnt all the records in the house for the sake of safety. But I don’t understand why this meant the house and all the belongings inside had to be destroyed as well. This seemed overboard and unnecessary.

When Sasha was shot, why didn’t Paige heal him? She could have but she just let him bleed out. That inaction was beyond my comprehension: we’ve seen her act in far more stressful situations.

 

 

Overall, the good aspects of this show kept me engrossed to the point where I could temporarily ignore the bad aspects. The witchcraft in particular was superb. Then again, I’m easy to please and easy to disappoint. If anyone wants a good, sexy werewolf/witchy show, I would definitely recommend this programme.