Which lokifan asked me. Which reminded me, I've been meaning for quite a while to write my review for the last novel in this epic five volulme series by Roz Kaveney, Raphsody of Blood: Revelations, which brought it to a close. A quick general recap of the saga, for those who are unfamiliar: it starts by following two main plot threads. On the one hand, in the present (the near then-present from when the books started to be published), there's our heroine Emma Jones who has just fallen in love (with Caroline) when she comes to rescue a faun from two angels, and things go increasingly more fantastical from there (in third person narration). On the other hand, there's the first person narration of Mara the Huntress, which leads us, not in chronological order, through the seven thousand years Mara has been alive, covering an enormous amount at myths from all cultures and historical events in which she pops up. Her personal mission is always the same: prevent anyone trying to make themselves (or others) into Gods via blood rituals, or if not prevent, take them out. She's also intermittently looking for the reincarnations of her two sisters (and lovers), Sof and Lillit, and is one of those stoic hero types who insist they're a loner but has managed to collected dozens of friends (and foes, naturally) through the millennia.

By the time volume 5 opens, though, past and present have caught up with each other, which I was a bit wary about, because while I've hugely enjoyed the Emma-and-Caroline present day tales with their clever banter, the history and myths lover in me had a slight preferene for Mara's adventures through space and time. However, something else that happened by the time the fifth volume opens is that Emma is in, err, a mythological position, to put it as unspoilery as possible, allowing her to interact with people (and myths) from millennia ago as well (I was thrilled when one of my favourite historical ladies showed up, the Empress Theophanu, here called Theophania), plus we get one more long Mara flashback (Apollo focused this time) before the big showdown we've been gearing towards for several volumes really kicks in, and is suitably epic but also humane, in lack of a better term, at the same time. Now part of the charm of the entire series is that while it's chock full of flippancy and one liners (at one point, Mara says re: the internet that it's just a better version of the Library of Alexandria, easier to search and less prone to burn), you also get some true heartbreak, the occasional Lovecraftian horror raising its head, and some growing anger at rl events. Where the previous volume included a Tony Blair diss (via one of Mara's immortal friends, Polly - of Three Penny Opera/Beggar's Opera origin, who went from queen of the underworld to eternal leader of Torchwood a secret service in the Spooks vein; where other PMs and monarchs, no matter how well or little they liked her, kept her on, Blair fires her), the fifth one has some choice things to say re: 2016, Brexit and US elections alike. And of course the growing power of Evangelicals is a plot point. But here's what's truly amazing: this story also finds the humanity in some genuine monsters. A relatively new character does one of the best and most biting "no, we're not doing the *spoiler*, we need to do better, check out all you've done before, supposed good guys!" speechs I've seen in recent fiction. And the overall conclusion satisfies my inner Star Trek fan. (No, space ships aren't involved.)

With all this explained, here are some thoughts to the actual question. First of all, these books have a gigantic cast, so inevitably some would not make it or would be merged with other characters. Though I would magically wish the 22 episodes per season format back, then we really could do a five season adaption for all five novels. Secondly, while the early novels have lengthy Emma sections and lengthy Mara sections, a tv adaption I think should intermingle the two from the start. (You know, like Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring instead of holding back on what happened to Gandalf after he said goodbye to Frodo until the Council of Elrond, the way the novel does, keeps cutting between the Shire and Frodo on the one hand and Gandalf on the other.) Now I'm a Highlander: The Series and Lost fan, so having present day stories with historical flashback sections is nothng new to me, though in the case of Raphsody in Blood, it's trickier in that the connection between the two storylines isn't always immediately apparant but unfolds bit by bit. But I think you could trust the audience to be curious and intrigued enough for some patience. (I'm thinking of the 2019 Watchmen tv series where we didn't find out just what the connection between the Adrian-on-Europa scenes each episode and the rest of the storylines was until the last but one episode, and that absolutely worked for me.)

Another important thing would be that there is commitment to filming all five novels from the start, and that the filming is done in a row, because with a good part of the recurring ensemble of characters immortal, there's the human aging factor to consider. And I would encourage some filmic experimentation - animated sequences, or black and white, why not? Casting: tricky in that while Emma and Caroline are adult women, Mara became immortal when she looked like a sixteen years old. Plus given where and when she's from, she should be small (but athletic enough that her being a lethal fighter is believable). Of course, casting (supposed) teenagers with twenty somethings has a long tradition. So - Zendaya for Mara? Given Chani, she should have practice with fight scenes, she has presence, and I could see her as a stoic character with often boiling rage or fervent longing under the surface. My alternative candidate would be Madeleine Madden, who really impressed me in the second season of Wheel of Time (where she plays Egwene). As for Emma, there's an in-novel joke that she got played by Charlize Theron (some years back). I could see that, but I think Emma is still in her early twenties when the story kicks off, and she's one of the few main characters who can age along with her actress, so I'd cast Charlize as another character, Heccat/Morgan instead, and give Emma to another Emma, Emma Stone. Caroline: Anya Taylor-Joy. (BTW, I would not cast Spoiler and Spoiler with Emma Stone and Anya Taylor-Joy as well, the novels make it clear they don't look identical. Instead: Lily Gladstone as ( Spoiler ), and Zoe Robins as ( Spoiler ).

Despite her having played not Polly, but Jenny in the original Three Penny Opera production, I couldn't help but imagine a young English version of Lotte Lenya for Polly. Able to speak Cockney without getting in Dick van Dyke territory. But there's no one English and Lenya-esque who comes to mind right now, so abandoning all thoughts of Lotte L., him - Billie Piper? (I'm thinking of her being different enough from Rose as "The Moment" in the DW anniversary special a good wile ago that I could accept her as a very much not human character, and also her dual roles in Penny Dreadful, as Brona and Lily. All of which makes me think she could play Polly through the ages - someone who is both very much an Earthy Georgian character and an immortal occasionally showing her age. Though given how much older Mara is, Polly will always be young in comparison.)

Other ideas: Young Josh aka Spoiler: Jamie Clayton (Nomi in Sense 8) Nameless aka Spoiler: Michael Sheen. (Just for the record, fellow readers of these novels, I'm thinking less of Sheen as Aziraphale and more of Sheen as both Tony Blair and Sheen as Roland Blum.) And Iman Vellani should definitely play someone, though I'm still wavering as to whom.

The other days

17. Future classic.

The Raphsody of Blood series by Roz Kaveney. To steal the description I gave in one of my previous reviews of it: this is a brilliant series of fantasy novels with a cast almost exclusively consisting of LGTB characters, which somehow manages to walk the tightrope between mythic/epic and intimate/modern. There are two distinct narrative threads through the entire story: one set in present day, told in third person, with Emma Jones and her girlfriend and partner Caroline as the main characters, as they become embroiled in supernatural shenanigans ranging from having to play bodyguard at an annoying elf/vampire wedding to full scale battles between deities and master the challenge with an ongoing refusal to be impressed and a tendency to quip, not to mention compassion for the victims of all these events. (Of whom Caroline is one; she dies at the start and is a ghost from then onwards. This makes her love life with Emma somewhat tricky, but not impossible.)

The other narrative thread is told in first person by Mara, aka the Huntress, and moves through the millennia, not in chronological but in thematic order. Mara, as opposed to Emma and Caroline, doesn't have much of a sense of humor, but what she has is dedication to one specific goal: hunting down and making short work of any being who made themselves into a deity by using "the rituals", blood sacrifices, and protecting the people suffering from the fallout, but note she's called "Huntress" not "Protector". Quite how the two narrative threads are intertwined (beyond the fact that at the start of the saga, Mara shows up in the present a bit too late to save Caroline, dispatches the entity who killed her, kisses a distinctly unimpressed Emma and disappears again) becomes more and more clear as the story goes on, and here we get into the trickiness of spoiler territory and not wanting to ruin the careful build up. I'll try my best.

Mara is such a force of nature that one of the most impressive feats is that our author manages to keep her sections suspenseful because she's more or less undefeatable in combat. But she can be tricked and incapacitated (something Robespierre manages in volume 2, for example), she can make errors of judgment (happens several times, with the most long term consequences happening in vol.1. and vol.3.), and above all, the people she cares for through the millennia are vulnerable. Moreover, some of the opponents the story gives her are truly impressive (every hero needs some good villains), and the friends she makes very endearing, so one desperately fears for them and is incredibly relieved about those who end up well (not all do).
In conclusion: read it now, be able to say you were a reader of the first hour later!


( The other days )

The third volume of a fantasy saga is fiendishly difficult to review without giving away spoilers. And in this particular case, being unspoiled really pays off, as Resurrections delivers on a number of mysteries built up through the previous volumes. I reviewed the beginning of the saga here, if you missed it. Short version: this is a brilliant series of fantasy novels with a cast almost exclusively consisting of LGTB characters, which somehow manages to walk the tightrope between mythic/epic and intimate/modern. There are two distinct narrative threads through the entire story: one set in present day, told in third person, with Emma Jones and her girlfriend and partner Caroline as the main characters, as they become embroiled in supernatural shenanigans ranging from having to play bodyguard at an annoying elf/vampire wedding to full scale battles between deities and master the challenge with an ongoing refusal to be impressed and a tendency to quip, not to mention compassion for the victims of all these events. (Of whom Caroline is one; she dies at the start and is a ghost from then onwards. This makes her love life with Emma somewhat tricky, but not impossible.)

The other narrative thread is told in first person by Mara, aka the Huntress, and moves through the millennia, not in chronological but in thematic order. Mara, as opposed to Emma and Caroline, doesn't have much of a sense of humor, but what she has is dedication to one specific goal: hunting down and making short work of any being who made themselves into a deity by using "the rituals", blood sacrifices, and protecting the people suffering from the fallout, but note she's called "Huntress" not "Protector". Quite how the two narrative threads are intertwined (beyond the fact that at the start of the saga, Mara shows up in the present a bit too late to save Caroline, dispatches the entity who killed her, kisses a distinctly unimpressed Emma and disappears again) becomes more and more clear as the story goes on, and here we get into the trickiness of spoiler territory and not wanting to ruin the careful build up. I'll try my best.

Mara is such a force of nature that one of the most impressive feats is that our author manages to keep her sections suspenseful because she's more or less undefeatable in combat. But she can be tricked and incapacitated (something Robespierre manages in volume 2, for example), she can make errors of judgment (happens several times, with the most long term consequences happening in vol.1. and vol.3.), and above all, the people she cares for through the millennia are vulnerable. Moreover, some of the opponents the story gives her are truly impressive (every hero needs some good villains), and the friends she makes very endearing, so one desperately fears for them and is incredibly relieved about those who end up well (not all do).

In Resurrections, the Mara parts of the novel focus on Alexandria, with a dash of Jerusalem and a last section set in Paris. Alexandria is irresistable if you're writing about the ancient world, and our author gives us not one but two different eras of that most multicultural and magical of cities: Alexandria shortly after the Romans have taken over, only a few years after the defeat of Cleopatra, and Alexandria at the time of Hypatia centuries later. En route to Alexandria the first time around Mara battles a leviathan, because of course she does (the method is one of those Chekovian guns which are important in later sections both in the Mara and the Emma parts of the novel) and befriends two young Jews who are on their way to learn. These two will also be her allies when she fights with one of the most gruesome villains of the saga, Simon the Magus, who specializes in rebuilding himself with stolen bodyparts (and trying that out on slaves first) and is after aquiring the most prominent dead body residing in Alexandria at that point (and the knowledge of same, because if you're a megalomaniac in the ancient world, you definitely want to be the next Alexander the Great; see also various Romans who had that idea in rl).

Meanwhile, in the present Emma has finally met her and Caroline's mysterious employer, who is the most prominent new character in this volume and one on whose believability in characterisation depends a lot, so I'm happy to say this person won me over immediately, and not just because she gets introduced in very Sarah-Connor-esque fashion: "Come with me if you want to live." Not that Emma at this point isn't already an old hand at survival herself, mind you. Which is useful because the narrative, among other things, throws a lot of non-Caroline ghosts at her (my favourite is her duel with Cesare Borgia). And the challenge which a lot of epics usually forego or leave to others (as do, ahem, many current day politicians) - the clean-up operation once you've deposed a power, requiring, because this is a saga which for all its gruesome parts has a lot of heart, above all compassion and wisdom and the belief despite all, that the majority of people won't, given more than one choice and opportunity, go for the hurting-others-option.

While a lot of events come to a head in this volume, and a lot of mysteries, as I said, are revealed (from the major to the minor, such as where the Faun whom Emma and Carollne rescue early in volume 1 came from) , there are at least two still waiting to happpen. One of them is lead into by the ending, which had me biting my nails and very worried indeed for one of our heroines. Never mind G.R.R. Martin: this is the mullti volume fantasy saga which has me on tethers between books! As I require fellow sufferers, I can only reccommend aquiring all three existing volumes and reading them at once. Then we'll talk further. :)