gregory maguire is a borgia apologist???

i jest, i jest. i did think it was funny, though, how at the end of mirror mirror, he noted that many of the rumors about the borgias were invented by their political rivals and he sent his best wishes to their ghosts or something like that.

it's an interesting premise--snow white set during renaissance italy--but it isn't well executed, i think. the book rockets back and forth between first and third person, sometimes with the same character using both. i don't think the stone dwarf thing was explored enough. also, once vicente came back with the apples, i didn't understand what their magic properties actually were. and that ending was WEIRD. wym primavera's grandson just took bianca and they ran away together? we don't get an onscreen reunion with the father, that the book was trying to build up to for 200 pages?

i also had the pleasure of reading an annotated, secondhand copy of this book. the previous owner called out a number of editing errors as well as fact-checked maguire's italian history, which i greatly enjoyed.

v for vendetta is... fine?

it's not groundbreaking tbh. but maybe that's because i'm a tumblr user and hwc graduate who's familiar with the pros and the cons of anarchism already and whose political ideology is pretty strongly "i do not want a society run by anyone's worst impulses".

like, of COURSE the point of v isn't who he is (although the v is valerie theorists are supported by the text imo). of COURSE v is an idea. spider man voice anyone can wear the mask. i liked evey a great deal and i wish the focus of the book were more solidly on her. was also pretty compelled by rosemary.

i dunno. i looked up a bit about the author, alan moore, when i was done, and i don't think i agree with him about many things. i'm not really inclined towards violence, even as a means to an end. i understand how this book came about as a response to 1980s Britain and i sympathize with a fair amount of the grievances but i suppose i don't agree with v's methods. and like. that's sort of the point, that v is inhuman. because a) v was a victim of concentration camps and experimentation and b) v is an ideology and not a person. but the whole thing where he manipulates evey into thinking she's actually in a concentration camp was a little bit of a turnoff.

like it's an ok book and i'm obviously fairly left-leaning and agree that "fascism is bad" and "people deserve a right to privacy and culture". i just don't think it's the foundational leftist text that People Online (tm) like to say it is.