#Reviews Flight | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thegayhimbo · 5 months

Text

Stranger Things Flight of Icarus Review

If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out my other Stranger Things Reviews. Like, Reblog, and let me know what your thoughts are regarding the show or the upcoming season! :)

Stranger Things Comics/Graphic Novels:

Stranger Things Six

Stranger Things Halloween Special

Stranger Things The Other Side

Stranger Things Zombie Boys

Stranger Things The Bully

Stranger Things Winter Special

Stranger Things Tomb of Ybwen

Stranger Things Into The Fire

Stranger Things Science Camp

Stranger Things “The Game Master” and “Erica’s Quest”

Stranger Things and Dungeons and Dragons

Stranger Things Kamchatka

Stranger Things Erica The Great

Stranger Things “Creature Feature” and “Summer Special”

Stranger Things Tie-In Books:

Stranger Things Suspicious Minds

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 1 of 3)

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 2 of 3)

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 3 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 1 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 2 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 3 of 3)

Stranger Things Rebel Robin Book and Podcast (Part 1 of 2)

Stranger Things Rebel Robin Book and Podcast (Part 2 of 2)

Stranger Things Hawkins Horrors Review

Stranger Things Episode Reviews:

The Vanishing of Will Byers (Part 1 of 2)

The Vanishing of Will Byers (Part 2 of 2)

Synopsis: Hawkins, Indiana: For most, it’s simply another idyllic, manicured all-American town. But for Eddie Munson, it’s like living in a perpetual Tomb of Horrors. Luckily, he has only a few more months to survive at Hawkins High. And what is senior year, really, but killing time between Dungeons & Dragons sessions with the Hellfire Club and gigs with his band, Corroded Coffin? At the worst dive bar in town, Eddie meets Paige, someone who has pulled off a freaking miracle. She escaped Hawkins and built a wickedly cool life for herself working for a record producer in Los Angeles. Not only is she the definition of a badass—with killer taste in music—but she might also be the only person who actually appreciates Eddie as the bard he is instead of as the devil incarnate. But the best thing? She’s offering him a chance to make something of himself, and all he needs to do is get her a demo tape of Corroded Coffin’s best songs. Just one problem: Recording costs money. Money Eddie doesn’t have. But he’s willing to do whatever it takes, even if that means relying on his dad. Al Munson has just stumbled back into Eddie’s life with another dubious scheme up his sleeve, and yet Eddie knows this is his only option to make enough dough in enough time. It’s a risk, but if it pays off he will finally have a one-way ticket out of Hawkins. Eddie can feel it: 1984 is going to be his year.

Observations:

Ordinarily, when I do these reviews, I sum up the synopsis in my own words to convey my experience reading it. This time, I took the synopsis word-for-word from the book cover because I found it unintentionally hilarious and teeth-grinding that the publishers at Random House Worlds would try to bait Stranger Things fans like this. They had to have known most people who bought this book already saw the fourth season and were aware of Eddie's eventual fate. Even if they hadn't seen it, a.) It's pretty much an open spoiler at this point, and b.) You can figure out real quickly from the title (Flight of Icarus) and your basic knowledge of Greek Mythology exactly how this story is going to go. Giving both the audience and Eddie a Hope Spot in thinking things might improve for him was a cruel joke.

I know that prior to this books release, there were fans accusing Netflix of trying to milk Eddie's popularity with the audience despite his eventual fate in season 4. Having finally read the book myself.................it's a little more complicated than that.

Yes, the book does bait the audience with the idea of things getting better for Eddie when we already know that's not going to happen. At the same time though, it wasn't a book devoid of substance. There were themes and character interactions that left a lot to chew on, and might even play an upcoming role in season 5. Just like with Rebel Robin, there were aspects of the book that struck a personal nerve with me because of how they related to what's gone on in my life and what's currently going on in the world right now.

I'll discuss the book in detail here (Spoilers Ahead!) and let you decide for yourselves if this is a book you want to read.

Part 1: Eddie's relationships to other characters

The synopsis covers the majority of the plot. Eddie's in senior year, failing school, and coasting by on the Hellfire Club, his band, and his dead-end job at a bar. Unlike his friend Ronnie, he has no future prospects ahead of him until he encounters a girl from Los Angeles named Paige, who overhears Eddie playing one night and invites him (and Corroded Coffin) to record their music for a studio called WR Records. The hopes are that her boss, Davey, will be impressed enough that he'll invite Eddie and the band to later fly out to Los Angeles for an audition with the executives. Following them recording for Davey, Paige reveals to Eddie that Davey's more impressed with him than his band and only wants him to come out to LA to become a rockstar. However, Eddie still needs the money to make this dream a reality. So when his dad shows up with an illegal job that involves stealing weed from a Kingpin's truck so they can sell it for money, he reluctantly agrees despite knowing things could go wrong.

And just based on where Eddie is by the time season 4 starts, you already know how this is going to turn out.

Eddie on the show was already established as being an outcast who gets blamed for the murders committed by Vecna, but this book further explores that he was the town scapegoat way before any of this happened. Part of it has to do with his low socioeconomic status, part of it has to do with the bad reputation the Munson family has in Hawkins as crooks and lowlifes thanks to the behavior of Eddie's father (who is a loser and a sorry excuse for a dad), part of it has to do with the Hellfire Club and all the pearl-clutching parents did in the 80s about D&D being linked to Satanism (which, as Erica puts it in season 4, was bullshit), and the rest are people in Hawkins projecting their issues onto Eddie. They want to believe the worst in Eddie, and don't care about creating a self-fulfilling prophecy with they way they treat him.

Wayne Munson also gets fleshed-out more in this book, which I appreciate because he's one of the few adult characters on the show that I like. Unlike Al, who is constantly absent from Eddie's life unless he needs something from him, Wayne is a parental figure to Eddie who made sure he was being fed and taken care of when he needed it.

He's also one of the only people who treats Eddie like a person and believes in him when no one else does.

On top of that, Wayne is shrewd and able to put the pieces together just by reading a situation. He's the kind of person who can look at someone and figure out if they're being honest or not. When Al comes back into Eddie's life, he knows Al is up to no good, and he puts together pretty quickly that Eddie is going along with Al's con to get money. He allows Eddie to make his own choices, but he also warns Eddie that he's lying to himself if he thinks this is going to go well for him.

On a semi-related note, the way Wayne is depicted here gives more context behind why he was willing to let Nancy interview him when Eddie went missing after Chrissy's death: Unlike other reporters , who were either gearing up to paint Eddie as the villain before anything was confirmed, or else were trying to get their big break with this story, Wayne could tell Nancy wasn't just there to advance her career. She genuinely had an interest in what happened, and Wayne likely suspected something else (i.e. the death of Barb) was motivating Nancy to look into this case.

Another relationship that gets more context as well is the one between Jason and Eddie. There were hints in the fourth season that these two had a history with one another before Jason wrongly suspected Eddie of killing Chrissy and led the basketball team in hunting him down. This book confirms that history. I will admit I had a headcanon for a while that Jason and Eddie used to be friends before falling out (which is also something Mason Dye joked about), but this book blows that out of the water by revealing they've been enemies since they knew each other. Jason was a part of a jock group led by Tommy Hagan (Steve's former best friend) who bullied students like Gareth who were either outcasts or part of the Hellfire Club. But because Tommy and Jason were valued basketball players at the high school, they were able to get away with their behavior whereas Eddie would get punished simply for trying to help out his friends.

This puts the cafeteria scene between Eddie and Jason in a whole different light: Eddie's disdain for Jason in that moment wasn't because Jason did basketball, but because he knew Jason as a bully and had nothing but contempt for him:

Just like with Lucas on the Line, this book doesn't paint Jason in a good light. Not only is he associating with Tommy (who is just as loathsome as he was in season 1), but the book also hints at the darker, zealot side of his personality that's going to be on display in two years following the events of this book:

Chrissy also makes an appearance, and she's just as nice of a person as she was on the show. She actually intervenes (unsuccessfully) on Gareth's behalf to stop Tommy and Jason from bullying him, and we get to witness the flashback to the talent show when Eddie first encountered Chrissy and she showed him empathy and compassion in a moment when Eddie was feeling vulnerable after his dad didn't show up to watch him perform.

While I'm not an Edissy/Hellcheer shipper, I understand the appeal of that relationship, as well as why the Duffer Brothers later regretted killing off Chrissy when there was more that could have been explored with her character. I'm also deeply sorry Grace Van Dien was harassed by immature Stranger Things fans because she liked the Eddie/Chrissy ship (to the point Joseph Quinn had to speak up in her defense). No actor or actress should ever have to put up with disgusting behavior like that. I wish people in this fandom would grow the hell up already, and stop treating the actors as if they're props to project themselves onto. 😒

We also get to know more about Eddie's parents in this book. Eddie's mom is dead by this point (though her love for music is a big reason why Eddie was inspired to take up guitar) and Eddie's dad is a contender for one of the worst fathers in the series. He isn't as awful as Neil Hargrove, but he makes little to no effort to raise Eddie (to the point Eddie is often fending for himself), is constantly engaging in illegal activities and ending up in trouble with the law, only comes back for Eddie when he needs something from him (something that Eddie is painfully aware of), and straight-up abandons his son to the cops the moment his heist plan lands both of them in trouble and results in a police officer getting shot. He's a selfish man who's good at lying to everyone around him, and even to himself. The sad thing is, because Eddie is so desperate to get out of Hawkins, he willingly believes his dad's plan to get them rich so they can move to LA and fulfill his dream, which makes it more of a gut punch when everything eventually goes downhill.

Given Eddie's death in season 4, I seriously question if his dad is going to show up at all if he ever hears about what happened to his son. Somehow, I doubt it.

The final character with any real significance is Gareth. In this book, he's a freshman who's up-and-coming in the Hellfire Club, and there's a whole subplot dedicated to Eddie helping him to craft a perfect D&D character that resembles who Gareth is rather than having him borrow someone else's character. Also, as noted before, Eddie is one of the few people who defends Gareth from high school bullies, which is why Gareth has a lot of loyalty towards Eddie. I know Gareth became an Ensemble Dark Horse for many fans when Season 4 premiered, and I would be thrilled if he, along with the rest of the Hellfire Club and Corroded Coffin, got significant roles in season 5. Maybe they could team up with the Party to defeat Vecna.

The rest of the new characters are by-the-numbers. Ronnie is Eddie's lifelong friend who has a future at NYU, and they both have a falling out due to disagreements with Eddie's choices. Paige gets into a romantic relationship with Eddie for a while (which also falls apart later), but she isn't really memorable and doesn't stick out the same way that other characters from tie-in materials do (i.e. Mr Hauser from Rebel Robin, Joey Kim from Zombie Boys, etc). Mr. Higgins, the principal who has it out for Eddie, is the embodiment of Mr. Vernon from The Breakfast Club, and his interactions with Eddie are pretty similar to the ones Vernon has with Judd Nelson's character (John Benson) in the movie. Officer Moore is a stereotypical asshole cop who harasses Eddie because he sees him as a future criminal who will grow up to be just like his dad.

There are a few brief cameo's from the main characters: Hopper appears towards the end when Eddie is arrested, and is one of the few people sympathetic to Eddie's plight. Will and Jonathan also make an appearance when Eddie defends Will from jocks who make fun of Will for being "Zombie Boy," gives Will some encouragement about being who he is and embracing his love for D&D, and even offers to sell Jonathan some weed (which is cheeky foreshadowing for Jonathan's drug habit that develops in season 4).

Out of all the interactions with the main characters, the one between Will and Eddie was my favorite. Even though Will never joined Hellfire Club due to moving to Lenora, it's nice seeing these two get to interact and bond over something they love.

So that sums it up for the characters and main story. Let's talk about the main themes:

Part 2: Eddie and "Forced Conformity"

Just like with El in season 4, and even Steve, there's always been this stigma that because Eddie did badly in school, it meant he was dumb. However, unlike El, who struggles to catch up with her peers because of the way Brenner raised her (but is keenly aware of concepts even if she doesn't have the words for them at the time), or Steve who was more interested in chasing popularity at the expense of his grades (but has demonstrated his intelligence and ability to make connections that other people miss), Eddie doesn't put effort into school because he doesn't care to. School and homework doesn't interest him. D&D, Corroded Coffin, playing songs on his guitar, and even the works of J.R.R Tolkien do, which is why he invests more time into those things:

There was a GIF set last year with bits of trivia about Eddie, and something that was noted in it is that Metallica's album Master of Puppets was released on March 3, 1986. Given the night Eddie performs their song "Master of Puppets" in the Upside Down was on March 27, 1986, this means he had less than 3 weeks to learn how to master the song on his guitar. Some fans will probably dismiss this as "lazy writing" (which I notice gets thrown around a lot these days when people don't want to think critically), but I beg to differ. Eddie is invested in music. It speaks to him. That investment, combined with doing something he loves, means he's going to put time and effort into learning the song. I can buy he learned "Master of Puppets" in less than 3 weeks because he's that good of a guitarist, and he was passionate about the song in the same way he's passionate about D&D and Tolkien.

The problem though is those kind of interests aren't considered "acceptable" by the school system, which is more interested in churning out "productive members of society" and punishing those who don't get on board with the program (This is a theme that's also explored in both Rebel Robin and Lucas on the Line). It doesn't help that Hellfire Club, D&D, and the music Eddie loves to play constantly come under fire due to the Satanic Panic at the time, which only causes Eddie's resentment towards Hawkins and his school to fester.

You'd think things would have changed in the 4 decades since this series took place, but given how we're still living in an era of "concerned parents" wanting to ban specific books from being read by kids, or else enforce a conservative viewpoint in schools that prevents any kind of critical thinking, it's fair to say we haven't. In fact, there's an argument that things have gotten worse in recent years.

We can talk all day about the problems with the education system and school curriculum in the United States until the cows come home, but the point is Eddie is aware of the "forced conformity" schools impose on students, and is having none of it. As a result, he's punished for rebelling against the system.

It doesn't help that none of the teachers, nor Mr. Higgins, are remotely interested in trying to reach out to Eddie. They have decided in their minds that Eddie is a waste of space, and are either condescending or dismissive towards him. Even Robin, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will had teachers like Mr. Clarke or Mr. Hauser who were interested in bringing the best out of their students. Eddie has been written off as a lost cause, and aside from his uncle Wayne (who's limited in what he can do for Eddie), no other adults believe in him. That just makes his eventual death later on harder to stomach.

I hate teachers and school authorities like Mr. Higgins. I get they have to put up with a lot of crap, both from kids and from the stress their jobs can bring, but I have no respect for teachers who either go to the lengths of bullying their students, or come up with preconceived notions about a student and then unfairly project that onto them so they can feel justified in treating them with contempt.

I had two teachers like this when I was growing up: One of them was from fifth grade. The second was my English Teacher from my senior year of High School.

The former was a straight-up bully who had a reputation for making kids cry (I was one of them) and was a Bitch in every sense of the word. I do not have good memories of her class, and I know several students who had their lives impacted by her for the worst: One of them was someone I went to the same church with whose mom later pulled him out to be home-schooled because he was frequently targeted by that teacher. The second was a former friend who had a rough time in her class, and later forfeited going to college entirely (and now works in retail) because of the impact she left on her. I make no secret that I DON'T miss her, and I hope she's no longer teaching.

As for my English Teacher, she was a condescending twat. She presented herself as an expert in literature, but I later found out that A LOT of her so-called "discussions" and "lessons" were taken straight from SparkNotes. I remember her going out of her way to publicly humiliate me in front of the class because I did a presentation that she didn't like, and then she later got patronizing with me over a different assignment several months later, saying she could see how I was struggling and then said "Allow me to give you some advice: Try harder." This was when I was also juggling 4 other AP classes and a Spanish class, along with my extracurricular activities, so this wasn't like I was half-assing my work. Once again, I was not the only person she treated like is. Multiple students despised her, and there was even a rumor for a while that she was a misandrist, which is why she treated the girls better than the boys. I can't confirm if this was true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. My brother (who's one of the smartest people I know) was fully aware of her reputation prior to his senior year, and specifically took a different English class just to avoid her. I still maintain that was the best decision he ever made.

I should briefly mention that, despite the two examples I just listed, I had some wonderful teachers growing up. Ones that not only encouraged me, but made their classes engaging to the point that I took an interest in topics I hadn't before. The entire reason I later pursued a degree in History is BECAUSE of my teachers in High School.

Regardless of whether people want to admit it, teachers are some of the most important people next to parents in a kid's life. They can either be the ones to elevate a student and set them on a good path, or they can be the ones to tear them down and dismiss them as a lost cause. It's a big reason I feel strongly about who teaches in schools and how our education system is structured, and why I get angry whenever teachers or school authorities either abuse their power, are apathetic about their jobs and their students, or else project their issues onto kids. I'm not saying there aren't kids out there without major behavioral problems that need to be dealt with (I literally had one such kid yell "Fuck You" at me two weeks ago from a speeding truck for no discernible reason, so I'm not advocating that all kids are sweet angels), but it infuriates me to see characters like Mr. Higgins who are smug in their belief that they have teens like Eddie figured out, and don't want to hear anything that contradicts that. People like that shouldn't be teaching in schools, period.

Part 3: The Evils of Society

Back in 2005, there was a horror movie called Chaos that was released, which got negative reviews and a scathing response from film critic Roger Ebert, who proceeded to call the movie "ugly, nihilistic, and cruel." The film's writer and director didn't take this well, and posted a letter to the Chicago-Sun Times where he condescendingly told Ebert that the movie was supposed to be ugly, nihilistic, and cruel as a way of conveying what evil was like in the 21st century, and smugly asked Ebert if he preferred the movie was sanitized of violence. Ebert later responded in a very classy and intelligent manner, where he not only called out the director for his sanctimoniousness, but also deconstructed his whole argument of depicting evil in a movie with no meaningful point or catharsis:

"I believe evil can win in fiction, as it often does in real life. But I prefer that the artist express an attitude toward that evil. It is not enough to record it; what do you think and feel about it? Your attitude is as detached as your hero's."

"Your real purpose in making "Chaos," I suspect, was not to educate, but to create a scandal that would draw an audience. There's always money to be made by going further and being more shocking. Sometimes there is also art to be found in that direction, but not this time. That's because your film creates a closed system in which any alternative outcome is excluded; it is like a movie of a man falling to his death, which can have no developments except that he continues to fall, and no ending except that he dies. Pre-destination may be useful in theology, but as a narrative strategy, it is self-defeating."

I've seen fans who've complained about the direction season 4 took in its tone and it's depiction of bullying and the Satanic Panic, with people complaining about it being "trauma/torture porn," which............I strongly disagree with. Trauma/Torture porn is (as Ebert points out) the kind of thing that has no point beyond indulging in meaningless suffering. Season 4 was dark (probably the darkest season they've done so far), but there was a message the Duffer Brothers were making with it; Not just in depicting how and why bullying becomes a pervasive problem, or how Vecna acts as a metaphor for depression and trauma driving people into despair, but also how the current social systems and attempts to force people to be "normal" cause long-term problems.

Bullies like Angela and Jason didn't suddenly decide to become awful overnight. Their behavior was enabled, not just by their peers, but by the adults around them who did little to nothing to stop the way they acted. Look at when El gets publicly humiliated at Rink-O-Mania by Angela and her friends, and how the adults there either participated with the other bystanders in it, or did absolutely nothing to stop what was happening to El (yet were conveniently available for Angela's benefit when El smashed Angela's face in with a roller-skate). Look at how Jason was able to turn a room of adults into a lynch mob to go after kids who were a part of the Hellfire Club by appealing to their fear of the Satanic Panic, as well as their fear of all the terrible things that had been happening in Hawkins.

Adults play a major role in whether kids become spoiled, entitled brats, and that was absolutely the case with Angela. As for Jason, he was a star basketball player who made Hawkins High look good, which is why Mr. Higgins and other teachers always looked the other way at his behavior (as depicted in both this book and Lucas on the Line). It's also why both Angela and Jason felt justified in their awful behavior: Angela was able to convince herself that El had snitched when she hadn't, and therefore deserved to be punished for it. And when El finally had enough and lashed out, Angela twisted the narrative in her head to make it out like she was the innocent victim and El was the bully. Same thing with Jason in regards to how he treats Eddie: Jason sees himself as the perfect "All American Boy" and Eddie as the freak who may one day become a criminal and gives Hawkins a bad name. And while the deaths of Chrissy and Patrick (combined with witnessing how Patrick died which he chalked up to Eddie being in league with Satan) played a major role in Jason's actions, he already had preconceived notions about Eddie without truly getting to know him first. There's an argument to be had that, even without Chrissy's death, he would have looked for any reason to go after Eddie if he felt justified in doing so.

Even isolated areas like Hawkins Lab weren't exempt from this: Dr. Brenner specifically fostered a culture among the special kids where he would put them at odds with one another to fight for his approval, and allowed El to be viciously bullied by Two and the others in the hopes it would unlock her potential and get him the results he wanted. Brenner established the institution where El grew up in, and was the main person who benefited from it. Two was a vicious bully similar to Angela, but the reason he became that is because Brenner and his cronies enabled his behavior (only punishing him as a means of building up resentment among the other kids towards El and making her more of an outcast as part of his plans).

Likewise, there's an interesting parallel between Eddie and Vecna: Both are "outcasts" whom society tried to force to be "normal." However, while Eddie still maintained compassion and empathy for others, as well as making it his mission to look out for other outcasts like Mike, Dustin, and Lucas so their lives wouldn't be miserable, Vecna internalized the rage and resentment of "performing in a silly terrible play, day after day" until it consumed him and turned him into the monster everyone feared. Now he intends to destroy everything and everyone so he can create the world he wants.

It's the Harvey Dent quote from The Dark Knight:

Eddie, despite being treated badly for most of his life, died as a hero, protecting those he cared about. Vecna lived to become the villain, and has abandoned his humanity in pursuit of his goals.

Tying this all back to Roger Ebert's letter: While Season 4 may have been dark, there was meaning to be found in the darkness: The season hit on the theme that, in spite of how Hawkins looks like a perfect suburban neighborhood, there's a lot of rot underneath, and NOT just from the Upside Down. There's an inherent bigotry in the town (and others like it, such as Lenora), of institutions trying to mold students and teachers into "productive members of society" at the cost of their happiness and well being, of punishing anything that's considered abnormal or against the status quo, of how ostracizing "outcasts" can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy where the person either becomes the monster (Vecna) or is scapegoated and can never escape those stigmas no matter how hard they try (Eddie).

The Duffer Brothers aren't apathetic in their attitude about how they depict characters and themes on the show. If anything, they care deeply. It's why they wrote the character of Eddie in the first place, and based him off of Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three who was wrongfully convicted in 1994 of the murder of three boys in Arkansas, with a lot of bias directed at them due to the three of them being "delinquents" (as well as how the police pressured them into giving false confessions), which resulted in their lives getting ruined. Likewise on the show, Eddie is accused of killing Chrissy when he didn't (simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time), and his life got destroyed because of it. Even if he was a delinquent with his own personal issues, he didn't deserve what happened to him. Neither did Damien Echols. Society failed both of them, and allowed the true killers to go unpunished.

There are a lot of problems in our society today that have carried over from the 80s: From cultures that enable bullies and punish their victims, to attempts to control what kids learn in schools and how they should act, to bigotry and biases that aren't just rooted in people but in the institutions and laws that uphold the social structure, to people like Jason who take the law into their own hands regardless of the collateral damage it will cause, to government corruption, to people dehumanizing others because it's more important for them to be right over being nice, and so on. Stranger Things may be a love letter to the 80s, but it does not shy away from deconstructing the uglier aspects of that decade, and conveying how some of those issues had carried over into today's culture.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, this book is a mixed bag. It gives interesting details about Eddie and his life, and provides better context for certain scenes in season 4. Given that Caitlin Schneiderhan (the author of the book) had talks with the Duffer Brothers and other Stranger Things writers prior to penning this, it's likely this book can be considered canon. It's also a book that inspires discussion (as you can tell from what I've written), which is always a plus.

However, if you're a fan of Eddie, and you were upset over his death, this book isn't going to give you any catharsis. Unlike others, I'm not going to claim it's milking off of Eddie's popularity. At the same time though, it is hard to read when it teases that things might get better for Eddie and you already know what Eddie's fate is going to be.

In other words, you have to decide for yourself if this is a book you want to read. I hope my synopsis and this review gives some idea of what to expect.

46 notes · View notes

e-adlirez · 16 days

Text

Treasure Seekers 2 go brrrrr

So this sequel... exists :D

Welcome to the second entry in the Treasure Seekers trilogy that I'm gonna ramble about for the next six hours (in me time, in you time it's probably gonna be like thirty minutes or less), if you wanna read it yourself before reading this ramble, here's an Archive copy. Otherwise, enjoy the ride :D

So our story begins with the Thea Sisters locked in a basement in the dark, with Russia's penchant for matches (and the basement's lack of a smoke alarm) coming in clutch. Seems like another vacation's gone awry for them :3 How could it have possibly turned out this way?

Flashback: so the girls are vibing in Moscow, visiting all the cool sights and all that, Pam is wanting to try some Russian cuisine, when they spot this girl that's wearing what appears to be a barrette that used to belong to Aurora's sister Hannah Lane. They follow her a bit, find a THUG JUMPSCARE, follow the girl, Cassidy and co into the building they're heading into, and oh dear door with passcode is in the way. They find this dood Sergei, explain to him the situation, deal with him being like "who is u, and wth are you on about mate" until they hear a scream and oh dear turns out that girl with the barrette is Sergei's sister Irina and she's in trouble.

Sergei opens the door, they go in, walk in on Cassidy, Stan and Max (who I will from now call SM for simplicity) doing their whole thug jumpscare thing and kidnapping Irina in 4K. SM somehow rolls a high enough strength roll (or the girls roll a low enough initiative) that two roughly intimidating guys successfully trap six people into a basement without breaking a sweat get yourself some self-defense classes girls oml, and that's the end of that.

Luke's up to his shenanigans again, and it seems that he's targeted Irina Lenenko for the same reason the girls double-taked at the sight of her barrette: Irina (and Sergei in conjunction) is a descendant of Hannah Lane, and Hannah Lane may or may not have known a thing or two about one of the seven treasures. It's such a shame tho that Irina doesn't wanna spill any of the tea. What's this about a "queen's jewel"?

Oh also Luke has Aurora's third diary. I would like you to pay attention to this detail in particular. Oh and he's keeping Irina ratgrabbed until she tells them what he wants to know from her. Oh naur

Meanwhile the girls infodump all of the TS 1 LANE LOORRREEEE to Sergei in one whole sitting and finally manage to get around to "what the hell does this have to do with my sister". Sergei thinks it's not really possible for Irina to know anything about great-grandma Hannah's involvement with Aurora, but Irina's still in trouble soooo time to solve this nerdy-ass science trivia keypad puzzle to get outa the basement. Irina's nowhere to be found in the lab itself, so they regroup at Sergei's place to use his phone tracker app on his computer.

Bad news, SM dumped Irina's phone somewhere in the lab so the tracker app is useless; good news, while looking for some Lane Lore™ to get some context about the situation, the girls find some Lane Lore™ :D

Turns out Aurora was looking for one of the seven treasures again, y'know just updating her sister on that, who'd moved to Saint Petersburg with her husband Ivan.

Seems like Aurora's quest at the time involved "the queen's jewel", which Aurora said she was 1000% down to ramble about to Hannah, maybe when she's done finding all seven treasures and hiding them from Jan.

I would like to take this moment to remind you that Aurora is a British Amelia Earhart, and if you dunno what that means, look up what Earhart was famous for and then look at this with that given context :']

With that lead, the girls plus Sergei take a ride on presumably the Krasnaya Strela night train to Saint Petersburg, read some Lane Lore on the way, Peter-Griffin upon realizing that they spent the whole night reading AO3 fanfics Aurora's diaries and it's like 2AM now, land in Saint Petersburg, stop by Nevsky Prospekt Street to have some breakfast (I think they went to Venezia?), and discussion.

(For the rest of this review, please assume when I say "the girls", I'm including Sergei because Sergei tags along with them and helps them out in their entire journey. It's okay, Sergei may be biologically male but he is an honorary female in our hearts /j)

Aurora mentioned the queen's jewel in her diary, and when you're in Russia, the first queen that comes to mind is Catherine II, so maybe something relating to her? Some Lane Lore of Aurora taking interest in Catherine II's Amber Room in her palace specifically confirms their theories, sooooooooo it's time to go to the Amber Room to see if Aurora left any clu--

The girls are about to walk out of the Catherine Palace to Peter Griffin in private when SM JUMPSCARE--

So SM is stalkin' around the Catherine Palace looking for something, so the girls stalk them back and follow them out of the palace, into a car (the girls called a separate taxi to follow them), and to a little gray building in the outskirts of the city. They don't follow SM into the building because it might be dangerous, but Irina's scarf lying around near the premises confirms that Irina was in fact there and possibly being held hostage in the building.

The girls do a little tactic I like to call "the Ding Dong Ditch": Pam and Nicky knock on the door, SM answers it, do a little Metal Gear exclamation point "HOW DID YOU GET HERE", Nicky and Pam book it so SM chases them, and that's literally how the other girls plus Sergei sneak into the building to get Irina out. (You dunno how badly I wanted to make a videogame reference for this but I couldn't find anything so here we are--)

With that, the girls plus the Lenenko siblings book it outa there without SM being none the wiser (seriously it doesn't even cross their mind that there are more than two Thea Sisters, that's how dum they are). Irina books a hotel room at a friend's place and gives them some extra Lane Lore that she never told Klawitz despite the interrogations:

Hannah Lane was once visited by Aurora unexpectedly, a little after Hannah and her husband moved to a house near the Ob River, in Siberia. Possible lead :3c? The girls think maybe, so they decide to head on over to the exact address in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

In Siberia, the girls cross the frozen Ob River in Novosibirsk to this abandoned little house, where they find this little note with a riddle that talks about Cleopatra and an emerald she had at one point, and CASSIDY JUMPSCARE--

Cassidy busts in, snatches the note and books it away on her snowmobile before the girls can even react. You may be wondering, how the hell did Cassidy get there and know where they were? The answer is the same as the reason behind the SM jumpscares in Russia and in book 1, and that is Luke.

Luke Von Klawitz is doing a little segment that I like to call: Luke Touch Grass, where it becomes increasingly clear that Luke's spent way too much time on 4Chan (/j but you'll see what I mean). Luke hears about SM's failure and facepalms. Then he calls his friend Petrovski, who has access to the database of all of Russia's airports, for help tracking down "six mice leaving Saint Petersburg". Petrovski gives him results in minutes: the girls and Sergei are leaving Saint Petersburg and heading for Novosibirsk, Siberia (most likely Tolmachevo Airport). With that intel, Klawitz looks into his own database of Aurora Beatrix Lane, finds a picture of Hannah and Aurora together, and uses his own version of Google Lens to figure out the exact coordinates where the picture was taken, which happens to be in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

No this man does not in fact canonically touch grass on the regular, who's asking

Anyway so he sent Cassidy the coords, instructions and Aurora's diary to go, and that's how Cassidy walked in on the girls in that little abandoned hut next to Ob River. Only thing is uh, she dropped her purse on the way out. A purse that just so happened to contain Aurora's diary that Luke gave her.

So the girls scoop that puppy up and assume that the treasure is Cleopatra's emerald, thus they think it's in Egypt.

So the girls go to Egypt :D (29 and a half hour flight there good god no wonder they conked out in the plane--)

The girls read some Lane Lore, something about Aurora finding the treasure and hiding it somewhere in a desert, in an "expanse pure and white" that a star compass will lead to. First thing the girls think of at the desert bit is the White Desert (Sahara el Beyda), specifically a spot near Cleopatra's pool, so they leave the airport (not realizing Cassidy is following them now) and head over to a market to buy some supplies because might I remind you, they initially went to Moscow, Russia for vacation.

While in the market, Pam meets a guy named Omar. Pam tells him a little bit about them going to Cleopatra's pool in Sahara el Beyda, and she finds out that Omar just so happens to be an Archaeology major in Oxford University who's here on his summer vacation and works as a guide for Sahara el Beyda, and is more than down to give the girls a tour. Talk about lucky :D

The next day the girls take the scenic route and after a while make it to Siwa, where Omar books a room in a hotel for them, and the girls find this interesting myth there about Cleopatra that I will summarize here:

Cleopatra was once given a jewel that maxes out the owner's rizz and the effect is supposedly indefinite. Cleopatra liked the jewel so much that she wore it on her crown at all times... until she grew a bit self-conscious about the gem's maxxed rizz effect and how everyone kept eyeing the emerald a second too long for comfort, so she decided to hide away said rizz in a spot where none of her rivals could get to it. Oh and uh Cleopatra wrote up a dedication to Ra that's hella cryptic too.

One long rest later, the girls go to Cleopatra's pool on a donkey cart. Yes, a donkey cart. It was Omar's idea. Speaking of Omar, prepare yourself buddy because the girls have dubiously decided to give you some Lane Lore to chew on. O-oh you like it a lot. A lot a lot. Well okay cool, maybe you can help out, cool.

The girls manage to figure out the riddle in Cleopatra's dedication, find a little stone coffer that has the queen's treasure and-- SM JUMPSCARE

With a donkey as the girls' only escape method and Omar having suddenly disappeared, a scuffle ensues where the girls play hot potato with the box until SM gets their hands on it and opens it, and here we get a very accurate depiction of what SM and the girls found in the box once it was actually opened.

Description: a hand made of salt shaped in an upside-down "ok" symbol, circa 1920s-30s.

The sheer whiplash of this leaves both sides of the conflict losing enough HP that they're all on red-- SM is blaming the girls for this (how dare >:[) and dip. Omar is gone, and all the girls get as compensation is the empty box and a letter from Aurora telling them that they'll know to read the hidden clues. The girls head back feeling very hollow and dead inside, and this is the one time one of the girls questions how the hell did SM know they were at Siwa. I mean they never get any answer to this (kinda), but it is a milestone! They're aware of it now!

Once they get back to Cairo, they ask around and find that Omar's completely up and vanished, and they decide they'll just head back to Moscow since their investigation has come to a dead end. On the way, Pam comments about the falafel she bought being hella salty, which leads Violet to an epiphany that hey, the Sahara isn't the only desert that exists, let alone the only desert known for how white it is (like how Boracay Beach is known for how white and fine its sand is, but it's not the only white sand beach that exists). A quick Google search (and a long flight (35 HOURS CAIRO TO SUCRE???)) leads them to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.

Nicky reserves a room for them at Hotel Luna Salada (a real place you can book a stay at actually :D), and they make a friend by the name of Adriana, a local waitress in the hotel restaurant. Adriana helps them pick out a dessert, fills them in on some stuff about the Salar since the girls came here 100% out of impulse, and talks about possible itinerary locations to go to, like the Isla de Pescado, Tiwanaku (the "Gate of the Sun"), Lake Titiaca, and Laguna Colorada. Y'know, typical tourist stuff, and Adriana was so kind to show them pictures she took when she visited said places herself! :D

Anyway so while the girls long rest, Luke is mulling about in his base waiting for updates. Someone calls him about the whole Egypt thing, and Luke calls the girls incompetent? Rude, oh and something about the caller being Luke's "secret weapon". Cassidy calls him on a theory she has about the gemstone being in Cleopatra's palace, and since the girls are currently long-resting (which means they aren't doing anything), Luke figures that a little diving trip in Alexandria to search for the gem with Cassidy won't hurt. Besides, he still has his secret weapon.

Oh yeah and he knows the girls are long resting because he has a drone in Bolivia spying on them and showing him their every move. Touch grass, Luke. No, going on a diving trip in Alexandria doesn't count, there's barely any grass there /j

Morning comes in Bolivia, and the girls head out early to search the Salar as much as they can. They look around the flat white desert, eat some late breakfast, toy around with forced perspective camera shenanigans for a bit, and read up on some LANE LOOORREEEEE

So Aurora's been to Pumapunku and Tiwanaku which is cool, she paid a visit to the archaeological site probably and that's really cool. She says something about hiding the queen's treasure in a fish's stomach covered in very fine thorns. Sergei ends up having an epiphany, and that leads the girls to Isla de Pescado, which just so happens to be "Fish Island" in Spanish, and has cacti on it, it's all coming together :D

Oh and the fish drawing Aurora made is coords to the treasure seemingly so that's cool-- OMAR JUMPSCARE

The girls are very surprised to find Omar joining them, and Omar explains that he booked it when SM came over and lost his cellphone as a result. However, he managed to figure out that Aurora's riddle was about salt and not sand, and decided to head on over to Bolivia since he assumed that's where the girls are going. How did he find them? It was just out of pure coincidence, and also the fact that the girls are extremely recognizable. Hm.

Anyway, Paulina plugs the coordinates into her GPS and leads the girls plus Omar to a little cave at the bottom of a little embankment. The girls find that, lo and behold, there's an old tin box containing a bright green emerald!

Meanwhile Luke is not finding anything in Alexandria haha L, LVK L get dunked on Luke, Cassidy girlie that's not a man to simp for find someone else gurl-- oh dear Luke is alerted that the treasure has been found and now he's planning on heading over to Bolivia? Now how could he possibly know that?

In the meantime, I dunno what's up in the air or if it's the Archaeology major speaking in him but Omar's really invested in this treasure, even more so than the girls to the degree that the girls are a little freaked out by it-- RHEA JUMPSCARE-- Paulina calms the big bord down and gets it to not trample Omar please, he's still a friend of theirs. Colette picks up this blue notebook Omar seems to have dropped.

The girls plus Omar head back to the SUVs, and Omar is really trying to persuade the girls that he should bring it back to Cairo. The girls are not jazzed at the idea because Omar bringing it back alone will be too unsafe, y'know with Luke and Cassidy and SM and all. They gotta think about this rationally-- WHOA OKAY OMAR calm your man tits buddy why are you demanding they trust you like you automatically deserve your trust-- ohh that's how Klawitz has known about the girls' whereabouts, Omar was working as a double agent.

So yeah Omar snatches the box from Colette and drives off in his SUV, leaving the girls in the dust. The girls freak out and are feeling that EMOTIONAL DAMAGE, but Colette for some reason is very calm about Omar booking it with the emerald. And that's because SHE HAS IT :D she did a lil' switcheroo so now the emerald's with her while the box is with Omar.

For context about how Colette knew about this, remember the blue notebook Omar dropped? Yeah that notebook was a company LVK notebook, straight from Luke himself. Then after Colette saw it, everything about Omar became incredibly sus, so she performed this precautionary measure.

So now the girls talk to the local authorities about how the whole thing with the emerald is gonna go down, and soon the girls are waiting for a plane back to Moscow.

As for Omar, well, he goes over to Luke's super-fancy hotel in La Paz, Bolivia, and he hands the box to Luke, explicitly stating that he decided he'd let Luke open it before he himself can appreciate it.

Luke opens the box, and here we see an accurate depiction of what Luke sees.

Description: an upside-down "ok" symbol drawn in strawberry pink lip balm, signed Colette [insert last name], circa 2018.

Luke punts the box (prolly with the lip balm still inside it) into the swimming pool, tells Omar to get out, and that's the end of that. Haha Omar L Luke L

The girls head back to Moscow to drop Sergei off when SURPRISE PARTY BY IRINA'S SQUAD :DDD

Then the girls are about to return to Whale Island to presumably Peter Griffin in their dorms, when Colette suggests they make a journal a la Aurora Beatrix Lane, and they do. In a pink notebook because it was Colette's idea so we might as well give her that

And they take a black-and-white group picture of them wearing adventurer clothes like Aurora would've done. The brainrot is real, these girls are mentally ill /j

And that's the book :D

... Honestly it's the most meh out of the trilogy besides the big-brain bits in the middle and the end imo

The writing was so much more stilted in this one, even for Scholastic standards, and everything feels pretty..... kid's book. Even more so than the usual in the book's English translations. I do readings for the books in some of my Discords, and this book did not read well at aaallll. And I haven't even mentioned the typos in the book (they're not a lot, but they exist, and they're kinda egregious :D) and some grammar errors if I'm remembering things correctly. It might just be a translation thing-- I worry a bit for the translator who had to put this together.

Luke's character here is also kinda wonk? For one we see him directly contradict his anti-friendship spiel in TS 1 since he literally greets Petrovski like a friend (maybe it's a "friendship doesn't exist except in 4Chan" thing, I dunno). Then in the middle of the book, he gets... very Disney villain-y. The most egregious example here is the chapter "Lurking in the Shadows", where as you can see

I am confusion?? Luke has been described as a to-the-point brat who hardly cares for the means to his end (unless it will impact his ability to achieve the end) and is so fixated on his goal that he doesn't touch grass. Is this not-touching-grass behavior? Yeah, definitely, but this??? This is too Disney villain???? Why does the man break into an evil cackle in front of Cassidy???? I understood it in book 1 because man thinks he's doing a "You may think you have outsmarted me but I have OUTSMARTED YOUR OUTSMARTING", but this one?? Maybe it's my personal taste, but it's too cartoonish and too... deviated from what we know of him up to this point.

ALSO TWIRLING HIS MUSTACHE? WHAT MUSTACHE IS HE TWIRLING THAT THING IS NOT TWIRL-ABLE

Also time to address the one big plot hole in this book: Aurora's diary.

So in this book there's only one diary, which is infinitely simpler than the two we got in the first book. This diary supposedly contains Aurora's records of her mission in hiding Cleopatra's Rizzmerald, and the details are supposedly vague enough that Luke felt the need to kidnap and interrogate Irina, a Hannah Lane descendant, to fill in the blanks. However, when you look at the contents of the diary itself (which lord knows how many times Luke himself has looked through it), there's hardly any blanks that need to be filled, at least if you're Luke.

The diary itself is mostly in the background-- like I said, not as much Lane Lore here as the previous book, the girls mostly rely on Aurora's letters to Hannah here-- but there's one specific entry the girls read in the latter half of the book that explicitly mentions Pumapunku and Tiwanaku, and how Aurora is there for her mission to hide the emerald. Complete with coordinates hidden in a little drawing! My one question I have for Luke is, why didn't he go straight to Bolivia and started searching there? Why did he go through all the effort of kidnapping Irina, tailing the girls around Sahara el Beyda, letting SM fall for the salt replica gambit, left his base to touch grass and go on a dive with Cassidy in Egypt; all if he could've just gone straight to Bolivia to look for the treasure there? Sure, Aurora did a good job hiding the coordinates in the fish doodle, but someone as observant and as obsessed about the outcome instead of the journey like Luke would rather have sidestepped all the Aurora shenanigans and beelined straight to the goal if he was able to.

Luke hardly has an excuse here because he owned the diary at the start of the book, and most definitely read through it many times (and we know he's the type to do this, see TS 1). The plot hole is plot hole-ing, it seems :/

Maybe it was just an excuse for the girls to get a giant glowing arrow pointing in the direction of the treasure? It certainly feels like it.

Anyway, the things that carry this book and made it memorable when I first read it (and allowed me to ignore the iffy bits) are the gottems and Omar as a character. Aurora setting up a salt replica of the Rizzmerald as a gottem in a time capsule, only to be opened almost a hundred years later to still be as potent as intended when it was made so long ago? That is amazing, like c'mon, pure comedy material.

Even funnier is Colette doing the exact same thing, only with her lip balm. Luke is quaking in his bougie-ass leather boots.

Now for Omar. This may be a hot take of mine here, but Omar's sus-ness is actually at a decent level compared to the girls and what they usually deal with. On one hand, Omar is incredibly suspicious with how incredibly lucky the girls are to find an Archaeology Oxford major working as a Sahara el Beyda tour guide; but on the other hand, the girls had almost the exact same situation with Diego in Mexico (I didn't mention him in the first review, but he came in clutch in TS 1).

The girls met Diego in Merida, Mexico, and he helped them with their research into "the invisible place", which happened to be Uxmal, along the Puuc Route. Diego also just so happened to be a tour-guide-in-training for the Puuc Route, which was the place the girls just so happened to need to go to find Aurora's second journal.

In comparison, the girls meet Omar in Khan El-Khalili while they were looking for supplies for their trip to the Siwa Oasis. It comes up in conversation that the girls are headed to Siwa, and Omar just so happened to be a tour guide for Sahara el Beyda, which was where the Siwa Oasis is, and it just so happened to be where the girls needed to go. When you stack them up together, it made perfect sense that the girls thought they could trust him-- Diego didn't know much about their trip and helped them the best he could (which was a lot), so why wouldn't Omar do the same? He's an Oxford Archaeology major, too, for crying out loud, the girls struck gold in the end!

Gold that was too shiny and too good to be true. Gold that was, in the end, nothing more than pyrite, fool's gold.

Omar is a good case for why you should be careful with who you trust, and when you should start thinking a little bit when you're getting a little too lucky with the people you meet. When the girls got to know him a little more and decided to trust him and tell him the deal with their trip, he got way invested in the gem-- too invested to not be a little bit suspicious. Maybe the girls mistook it for his passion for his archaeology major, maybe they mistook it for something else-- but whatever the case, Omar pulled the cheesecloth over the girls' eyes and really only fell apart near the end, when his alibis and behavior started becoming more and more suspicious; and by then, Omar didn't need to be as inconspicuous, and the girls had gotten to know him too much to readily say to him "okay buddy can you kindly f%ck off, your vibes are not vibing here".

The girls probably should've been suspicious when Omar reappeared in Bolivia out of nowhere, but I guess his alibi was just good enough (and the girls at this point were probably running on adrenaline, caffeine and a brain on 70% capacity at most) to pass the Deception check.

Fr tho there were some bits where the girls should've found him sus but they didn't (him accidentally saying "I did it" when they uncovered the emerald, and also him handling the emerald the way he did), so shrugs. It could be a translation thing, but it could also be something else.

Anyway, kinda meh for a sequel, but it does have its standouts that allow it to somewhat stand on the same level as the first and third books. Kinda.

Hey, at least it's not as bad as Crystal Fairies-- that's the bar of bad-ness I'm setting. It's not as bad as Crystal Fairies and that's what matters--

Also special thanks to @ishmeowwow (it won't let me ping you for some reason bestie <:[) for making the lil' artworks haha

#geronimo stilton #thea sisters #thea stilton #book review #book rambles #book rant #thank you ishmeow for making the gottems for me :D #you came in clutch while my ipad is still dieded thank you bestie <3 #in the book it's just the lip balm but ishmeow decided to go all-out with the gottem gag and i can't be more grateful lmao #same goes with the gemstone in aurora's gottem (it's just the fake tiara plus fake gem) but hey the more salt the merrier :D #book 2 luke is so jarringly different from his other depictions but at the same time #he does not in fact touch grass and he does crack an evil cackle at least once a book so #i dunno how i feel about it . .#on one hand it adds to him not touching grass #but on the other hand it doesn't connect with his “this villain is supposed to make you shnit your pants at how intimidating he is”#he's intimidating because of his connections his ability to basically spy on the entire world and control everything from his base #and y'know he can tell his goons to do whatever and they'll literally wreak havoc to fulfill said requests #he was so intimidating in concept that they had to nerf him with incompetent goons lmao #after doing last minute research i am deeply concerned for the girls' wallets and their mental and physical health :D #like good god i thought a ten hour flight was unbearable and made your body stiff but holy damn #i'm not complaining too much about the timeline tho because this is hilarious and makes the girls look so neurodivergent #“what do you mean we flew a total of 64 hours by plane feels like it's only been a day to m--”#*dies*

11 notes · View notes