MERLIN

I mentioned in a post (that was, admittedly, quite a while ago) that I'd started watching BBC's Merlin. Well, I am proud to announce that after a whirlwind couple months spent huddled in front of watchseries and trying to avoid seeing too many spoilers on my tumblr dash I have finally finished Merlin! It was announced shortly after I started watching that the current series airing (series 5) would be the last. This almost made me stop watching because I knew that when/if I ever caught up the show would be over completely. I'm slightly heartbroken, but I'm glad I continued watching til the end regardless.

Excuse me for a moment.

Okay. I'm ready.

There will be NO SPOILERS in this blog post. At least not anything from the last season, but I consider the others fair game, though I'm going try and be very general about it all because it aired so recently and I know people may only now be starting to watch.

Merlin is a show about a young warlock--you guessed it--Merlin. Merlin is the same Merlin you're thinking of, though much younger, sassier, and ganglier than you probably had in mind. He leaves his mother and small village life to go to Camelot and apprentice for his mother's friend, Gaius, the court physician, despite magic being outlawed there by King Uther Pendragon. Almost immediately upon arriving, Merlin saves Gaius' life but reveals his magic in the process. Lucky for him, Gaius used to dabble in magic as well and promises not only not to hand him over for execution, but to guide him magically.

Merlin then accidentally gets on Prince Arthur's badside (the handsome prat) and then even more accidentally becomes his manservant, which is both the best and worst thing that ever happens to him. You might ask why he doesn't just leave, but a great dragon living under the castle told him it was his destiny to be by Arthur's side to protect him and help Arthur bring about the glorious days of Albion united. Seriously, I can't make this stuff up.

From there on out Merlin and Arthur gradually develop from mutual hatred to tolerance to friendship to full out bromance--which could be seen as less BRO and more just ROMANCE if you look closely (and by that I mean if you look at all). Seriously, browse the merthur tag on tumblr and you'll have gay feels comin out the wazoo.

Anyway. The show covers five series in which we follow Arthur on his journey to kinghood and Merlin on his journey of saving Arthur from every magical beast, spell, and ailment known to mankind. We meet several characters that you might recognize from the original legends including Morgana, Morderd, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Gwaine, though they are all adaptations. 

My favorite is Gwaine.

I don't remember why. Maybe it has something to do with how he's such a good friend to Merlin, or how he doesn't fit into the nobility stereotype, or how he is very brave and courageous--no, no, that's not it. I'm sure it'll come to me later.

In all seriousness, I've really enjoyed watching Merlin. It is in turns hilarious, touching, and soul-wrenching. My absolute favorite aspect of the show is just watching the friendship between Arthur and Merlin, and watching them grow up. The show covers a good deal of time with them, and we see them struggle each in their own turns. Merlin struggles with the obvious problem of needing to hide his magic, but also with the guilt he feels lying to his friends and the conflict over whether he should reveal himself to them or not--whether he'll ever be able to. Arthur too struggles to redefine what it means to be a king through his friendship with Merlin, marriage to Guinevere, relationship with the commoners (especially in regards to the knights), and his stance on magic. Laughs and Guinevere's heaving breasts are all well and good, but as a reader I can't love anything more than seeing characters develop, and Merlin provided me with that.

If you needed any more encouragement to watch the show, there's always this:

If that doesn't convince you, nothing will.

In other news:

• I'm back in America. More specifically, I'm back in Clemson, SC getting ready to start school on the 9th. I've moved into my house, which is fantastic because I have my own bedroom and bathroom. yessssss
• I told y'all that I was doing Nanowrimo this year, but I neglected to mention that I WON! I completed 50,000 words on my WIP novel The Island. The book is nowhere near done yet (I would say I'm about 1/3 of the way through) and I haven't touched it since then, but my new year's resolution is to finish it, so there should be more to come. 
• I'm currently reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Practchett, which is delightfully naughty. My other new year's resolution is to complete a challenge my mother has been doing for several years now to read one book for each letter of the alphabet. Of course I'll read more than that, naturally, but I wouldn't normally seek out books that start with the letter X, so it should be a nice challenge.
• Tumblr convinced me to watch Teen Wolf, so I'm in the second season of that now. I can't say I'm too thrilled (I want to shave Allison's hair off and make Scott eat it) but there's only two seasons so nbd
• ONCE UPON A TIME COMES BACK ON TONIGHT AND I'LL GET TO SEE MORE OF HOOK MY BABYYY!!! He and Emma totes belong together. OTP don't bash it.

The Millennium Trilogy

I recently read the Millennium Trilogy and would like to inform y'all that I very much enjoyed all three books and would highly recommend them. Seriously, five stars. Go to your nearest library or bookstore or neighbor's house and find these books, because they are captivating and oh so good. I know I'm a bit late to the boat as far as this trilogy is concerned. My mother read the series when they first came out and loved them, but I have some problems with reading books that my mother read first. Especially if sex is mentioned AT ALL. It's just...icky. But I finally caved and I'm so glad I did!

I'm going to try and do this review Spoiler-Free in part because it's hard for me to wrap my head around the scope of these novels at the moment (who needs sleep?) and also because I know there are still plenty of people out there who are planning on reading them, and I don't want to ruin the surprise.

I would like to start off by saying how surprising it is that I like these books, because Larsson has a...unique, style of writing. Let's call it unique. For some reason, he feels the need to be super detail-oriented, going as far as to name what kind of cell-phone people have and mentioning every time someone has a cigarette. I was able to look past it.

So, book one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm not going to lie to you, the book starts out slowly. One of the hardest parts of the first book for me was that Larrsson introduced me to Lisbeth Salander, gave me just enough of her quirky-yet-lovable personality to get me hooked, and then focused on this Blomkvist character a lot. And I hadn't developed any warm fuzzy feelings towards Blomkvist yet. To be honest, he's still not my favorite character, but I've grown to tolerate him more, you could say. It took me until literally half-way through the book until I started enjoying it. I usually don't persevere that much, but I just kept thinking that a book this famous, a book that my voracious-reader mother had recommended, just had to get better. And it did. The suspense (and presence of Lisbeth Salander) in the second half of the novel really brought the book to life for me.

The Girl who Played with Fire was my favorite of the series. In this book, Lisbeth is accused of murder. While there is plenty of evidence against her, Blomkvist is unconvinced and starts his own investigation to prove her innocence. What made me enjoy this book so much was how fast-paced it was--I literally read it in a day. Also--no spoilers--but the ending was freaking fantastic.

I thought The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest was interesting because, rather than having a completely different plot as in the first two books, the third installment deals with the aftereffects of book two. I've never read a John Grisham novel, but Hornet's Nest is what I imagine one reads like. It was essentially a courtroom drama--but a courtroom drama with super-hacker Lisbeth Salander kicking ass and taking names. This book is the main reason I've felt the desire to spy on everyone recently. I want to learn how to hack computers and tap phones and find out shit about people and you have no idea how much I want to tail somebody. Anybody, just give me someone to follow around sneakily. I had a similar desire after reading Harriet the Spy, but that's a story for another time.

I also found this book a little odd, because we already knew so much. Some characters would be completely confused about why something happened or how and I'd be sitting in my bed screaming "No! Talk to Bublanski! He found out about that last chapter!" There is a marked lack of communication between the characters in the book, marked by the fact that everybody feels the need to turn their cellphones off all the fucking time. By the time the trial rolls around at the end of the book, we already know everything both sides are going to present and can deduce how it'll all play out. Strange, yeah? I guess that's just an example of how these novels are so character driven as well as having engaging plots. It's Lisbeth I was reading for.

Lisbeth really is a fantastic character. She is a kick-ass girl who should be frightening but instead manages to be endearing. Despite her prickly personality, Lisbeth has managed to make many loyal friends--some of them in ridiculously high places, like Paolo Roberto, a famous boxer. Normally a character with multiple tattoos and a promiscuous sex life would make me uncomfortable, but it works for her. The sex life doesn't work for Michael Blomkvist. For some reason he just rubbed me the wrong way--probably because I was having protective feelings toward Lisbeth and her poor, broken heart.

Unfortunately, Stieg Larsson passed away shortly after the publication of the third book. This is especially disappointing because--get this--he was planning to write TEN BOOKS!!! Can you believe that? So much more was going to happen and we will never know what! I've had some time to cool down, but when I first found this out minutes after finished Hornet's Nest I was in a rage. But, big picture, the books are surprisingly well rounded off since there were more planned. The books left the characters in a good place, and all the strings from the 2nd and 3rd book story arc were tied up nicely--but not too nicely, as my English teachers would say.

It's harder to do this without spoilers than I thought, but I hope I was able to at least give you the impression that I loved them and think you should read them for yourself. That's what I was mainly going for.

In other news, I start my internship Monday. Wish me luck. I went to a pathetically small used book sale at a library today (a different library from my usual) and only came away with one book, which compelled me to buy more expensive books at a Books-A-Million later in the day. I can't wait until I'm making money.