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Two Essays on The Count of Monte Cristo

I love The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I have read the unabridged version more than once, and my most recent reread was in 2023. At that time, I wrote a couple of brief essays which I posted on Tumblr, one of which was about a canonically queer character and the other discussed a character who is often left out of the various adaptations. I present for you these essays with expansion and alteration, because I keep returning to them as pieces of writing and because I don't want them to be limited to those original posts. I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout, as well as new patrons DivineJasper and Sasha Khan. (Quotes are from Robin Buss’ English translation of Alexandre Dumas’ work.) Link to Audio Version. ----- Canonical Queerness in The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas You’d need to change surprisingly little of The Count of Monte Cristo to confirm Eugénie Danglars as a trans man (or a masc-leaning nonbinary person...
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Feed by Mira Grant, aka Seanan McGuire (Newsflesh, #1)

Feed by Mira Grant is a post-apocalyptic book about life/media moving on after the end. Set in 2039 after zombies rose in 2014, it posits a world of dizzying connectedness and loneliness. It’s a political thriller, a monster story, and a wild ride.

Feed’s portrayal of politics and life after the Rising dances on a fine line between world building and info-dumping, and I think it mostly gets it right. The characterization has the right level of attention, given what the narrator would be expected to know. The interstitial passages add insight and depth to the secondary characters, acknowledging a fallible narrator without making her an unreliable one. It sets up preconceptions which are challenged in Feed, shaken in Deadline, and shattered in Blackout. I love these books, I come back to this series about once every two years and it never gets old.

CW for violence, gore, major character death, death.

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