![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
May. 8th, 2014 07:07 pmThe "Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein" novels could basically be subtitled "Hello, I am Victor Frankenstein, and welcome to Jackass." I hope Kenneth Oppel writes A MILLION of them.
This Dark Endeavor, the first book in the series, was about how Teenaged Victor Frankenstein, accompanied by his chums Henry Clerval and Elizabeth Lavenza, made a series of alchemy-related poor life decisions trying save his IDENTICAL TWIN BROTHER from a TERRIBLE DISEASE. This resulted in ( spoilers, but, like, three guesses )
Such Wicked Intent opens with Victor burning all his books and vowing to forswear alchemy forever.
LITERALLY TEN SECONDS LATER:
VICTOR: Hey, one of these books didn't burn! AWESOME.
MYSTERIOUS BOOK: If you go to a mysterious secret room, you will find a mysterious liquid. Swallow the mysterious liquid!
HENRY AND ELIZABETH: Why would you POSSIBLY think it's a good idea to put hundred-year-old liquids in your mouth --
VICTOR: IT'S FOR SCIENCE!!!! *puts the liquid in his mouth*
Meanwhile, Elizabeth is thinking about joining a convent, which means Victor takes every opportunity to make douchey "get thee to a nunnery!" jokes, because at least 50% of Victor's role in these books is "be a dick to EVERYONE." The other 50% is "do stupid things in the name of SCIENCE. BAD SCIENCE." The thing is, this would render any other book really unappealing to me, but in this case it just fills me with joy because this is exactly how I have always figured teenaged Victor Frankenstein would behave. OF COURSE Victor is the sort of person to spend three weeks telling his friends that growing a creepy sharp-toothed blood-drinking clay baby out of blood and addictive spirit butterflies in order to raise the dead is a BRILLIANT IDEA until they go along with it just to shut him up, and then, just when everyone has at last become really invested in his plan and emotionally attached to the prospective outcome, go "WAIT SHIT NO GUYS I'M KINDA FREAKED OUT BY THIS NOW I'M GONNA SMASH THE WHOLE THING."
(Victor's friends: "Literally you just spent three weeks telling us how amazing this plan was and how we were idiots to have doubts about it." Victor: "...well me now is telling you you are idiots to have doubts about the fact that I"m telling you to have doubts!")
(Elizabeth thinks the creepy sharp-toothed blood-drinking clay baby is ADORABLE.)
In between making increasingly bad choices related to supernatural shenanigans, the kids find time to expand last book's love triangle into a complex polygon in which Victor is in love with Elizabeth, Henry Clerval is writing Elizabeth "She Walks In Beauty Like the Night" because I guess in this universe Henry Clerval is actually just replacement Byron, Elizabeth is still in love with Victor's Good Twin Konrad when she's not thinking about running off to a convent, and Konrad is having some side flirtations with a nice young lady who ( hilarious spoilers ) This last plot twist destroyed my ability to be annoyed by the rest of the love polygon; now all I have is laughter. Bless you, Kenneth Oppel.
This Dark Endeavor, the first book in the series, was about how Teenaged Victor Frankenstein, accompanied by his chums Henry Clerval and Elizabeth Lavenza, made a series of alchemy-related poor life decisions trying save his IDENTICAL TWIN BROTHER from a TERRIBLE DISEASE. This resulted in ( spoilers, but, like, three guesses )
Such Wicked Intent opens with Victor burning all his books and vowing to forswear alchemy forever.
LITERALLY TEN SECONDS LATER:
VICTOR: Hey, one of these books didn't burn! AWESOME.
MYSTERIOUS BOOK: If you go to a mysterious secret room, you will find a mysterious liquid. Swallow the mysterious liquid!
HENRY AND ELIZABETH: Why would you POSSIBLY think it's a good idea to put hundred-year-old liquids in your mouth --
VICTOR: IT'S FOR SCIENCE!!!! *puts the liquid in his mouth*
Meanwhile, Elizabeth is thinking about joining a convent, which means Victor takes every opportunity to make douchey "get thee to a nunnery!" jokes, because at least 50% of Victor's role in these books is "be a dick to EVERYONE." The other 50% is "do stupid things in the name of SCIENCE. BAD SCIENCE." The thing is, this would render any other book really unappealing to me, but in this case it just fills me with joy because this is exactly how I have always figured teenaged Victor Frankenstein would behave. OF COURSE Victor is the sort of person to spend three weeks telling his friends that growing a creepy sharp-toothed blood-drinking clay baby out of blood and addictive spirit butterflies in order to raise the dead is a BRILLIANT IDEA until they go along with it just to shut him up, and then, just when everyone has at last become really invested in his plan and emotionally attached to the prospective outcome, go "WAIT SHIT NO GUYS I'M KINDA FREAKED OUT BY THIS NOW I'M GONNA SMASH THE WHOLE THING."
(Victor's friends: "Literally you just spent three weeks telling us how amazing this plan was and how we were idiots to have doubts about it." Victor: "...well me now is telling you you are idiots to have doubts about the fact that I"m telling you to have doubts!")
(Elizabeth thinks the creepy sharp-toothed blood-drinking clay baby is ADORABLE.)
In between making increasingly bad choices related to supernatural shenanigans, the kids find time to expand last book's love triangle into a complex polygon in which Victor is in love with Elizabeth, Henry Clerval is writing Elizabeth "She Walks In Beauty Like the Night" because I guess in this universe Henry Clerval is actually just replacement Byron, Elizabeth is still in love with Victor's Good Twin Konrad when she's not thinking about running off to a convent, and Konrad is having some side flirtations with a nice young lady who ( hilarious spoilers ) This last plot twist destroyed my ability to be annoyed by the rest of the love polygon; now all I have is laughter. Bless you, Kenneth Oppel.
