Well that’s a crazy story. Mr. Dark is on the move and the Fables have decided that in order to fight him… they have to become Superheroes? You know, honestly, given that they’ve been proven to be more powerful based on how many people know their stories, it kind of works.
And hey, it gives you bizarre scenes like this:
How to Be an Antiracist is a hard book to read, really in two different ways.
For the first, we live in a deeply screwed up world, where people (white, black, and everything else) are people, for better or for worse. People are racist, both patently and obviously and subconsciously. And it’s not enough to just ignore it and be ‘colorblind’, you have to be actively anti-racist. Thus the title on the book. There are a pile of fascinating thoughts in here and ideas for how to be better.
A man who wears the crown of a king can’t wear the jade of a warrior. Gold and jade, never together.
Take a mix of Chinese/Japanese culture, an almost modern setting (it sometimes feels like the 20s and sometimes like the straight modern day), magic based on how much Jade you’re wearing (but only if you’re from a bloodline that can use it–or have taken drugs that let you pretend you are), and throw in a country controlled by a pair of rival equivalents to the Mafia/Yakuza and you have Jade City.
Another side story (there are only a few of these), digging a bit deeper into Bigby’s past, specifically during World War II (which we’d already seen) and some of the unforseen fallout from that.
I just finished reading The Boxcar Children (the first 19) to my children, so now it’s off to Narnia with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (in publication order). Oh man, we’re in for a ride.
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.
Totenkinder (now Bellflower) has a plan, but she’s not going to let anyone else in. So instead, we’re going to deal with the fall of Rose Red after the death of Boy Blue and a shock from her past strong enough to shake her out of it.
It’s worth reading just for that, a bit of exploration into depression and loss from the framework of the Fables universe. And man has Red been through a lot–even before Boy Blue died.
Back to Fables and back to the problem of Mr. Dark! Originally I had no idea where Fables could go after the Adversary was defeated, but this works. A power vaccuum, filled by all sorts of big bads. It turns out that as dark as Geppetto went, he still arguably did some good (as all evil empires seem to do on some level). Fun times.
A solid story. It’s interesting getting more insight into some of the more magical folks in Fabletown. They’re a lot less straight forward than the Fables, which I approve of.
Sooo… meet the new Jack, better* than the old Jack?
Jack’s son (by way of the Winter Queen, many books ago) is now the Jack of the Fables and old Jack has managed to convince him that the way to great power and fulfullmet is through quests and adventures. Which… sure. In this world it might even be the right way to go.
And now we return you to our regularly scheduled Jack of the Fables, where things are getting increasinly weirdly meta.
