Read more: Check, Please! - The Queer Hockey Bros Comic You Should Be Reading It might have been more interesting if Shepard had been someone in Micah’s orbit and have either interacted with the group or been tailing them (with a mysterious, withholding-information POV) before he actually saves their lives. The Penelope/Micah section at the start of their trip dragged for me, because their breakup seemed to be broadcast so clearly, long before Penny caught on. Natalie: Now that you mention it, both Shepard and Lamb could have entered the story sooner, which might have helped make the narrative feel less back-heavy. I was surprised that Baz wasn’t more interested in getting information from Lamb. There’s still so much we don’t understand about vampirism, and that is because there is so much Baz still doesn’t understand about vampirism. Wayward Son did not address these questions to my satisfaction-I think we could have gotten more of Baz’s internal thoughts and feelings on these subjects, even if we don’t see him externalizing them to the people in his life-but I think we got the closest with Baz’s conversations with Lamb. This narrative strategy wouldn’t have worked with Shepard, but I would have been OK with having him as a POV character, even before his storyline met up with Team Snow.Īs for Lamb… one of the loose threads from Carry On I was most looking forward to seeing explored in Wayward Son was Baz’s vampirism: how he feels about it, what it could mean for his future, and how it affects his relationships.
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In Carry On, Baz comes in surprisingly late as a POV character, but we hear so much about him before we properly meet him that it feels like he is there throughout the book. I do wish he had come in a little earlier as a POV character, even though I am not sure what that would have looked like. As a Normal American reading this series, he worked particularly well as an audience surrogate character, which is surprising considering he was obviously not in the first book. I loved getting a new POV character in Shepard. Read more: How Red, White, and Royal Blue Hopes For a Kinder America That said, I really liked what he represented to Baz-this notion of someone who came over from the old country and has had such a different branching lifetime(s) of experience. Was his vibe supposed to be some Lestat-esque hottie, or a Downton Abbey dreamboat with a darker side? Also, True Blood kind of cemented for me what a vampire king might look and act like, so when that detail got added it just further muddied the character for me. Lamb I felt like I could never get a handle on. I’m so glad the trio are dragging him with them to England I want to know more about his curse, see if it’s stronger or weaker over continental lines, etcetera. Natalie: Shepard might be my new favorite! His insistence on telling the truth and being forthright about his intentions gave him surprising cachet for a Normal, elevating him from just being the Xander of the group and his curse is a crucial reminder of the consequences of barreling into magickal situations. Shepard as POV character, Lamb) introduced in Wayward Son? Instead, everyone handled their relationships to one another awkwardly, and there were misunderstandings and missteps, and everyone made incremental character progress but not the transformative leaps I had hoped for.Įxpanding the ensemble: What did you think about the new characters (e.g. That qualifier would probably apply to a super escapist story, one where Simon and Baz have worked out an easy relationship banter, and Penny is off following some Hermione-esque plot of becoming their equivalent to the Minister of Magic, and everything’s coming up magicians. Natalie: In retrospect, maybe we should have expected this, since the jacket copy does describe the book as “a second helping of sour cherry scones with an absolutely decadent amount of butter”? But that’s the thing, it didn’t feel decadent. Even though so much happened, plot-wise, it didn’t feel like the characters developed, either individually or collectively, in many noticeable ways. I ended it with a feeling of Not Enoughness. There were elements of the narrative that I really loved and I think it had an amazing, ambitious premise-to explore what it can feel like after you’ve finished The Thing You’ve Always Been Working Towards (this is a particularly good allegory for graduating into the “real world,” a subject I don’t think is explored enough, honestly in our pop culture) but the book never quite fulfilled on its promise. If Carry On was a nutritious and oh-so-delicious meal, then Wayward Son was a snack.