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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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Bruja Born by Zoraida Córdova (Brooklyn Brujas, #2)

Lula must let go of the ghosts of her past to face the actual living dead of her present.

Lula Mortiz feels like an outsider. Her sister's newfound Encantrix powers have wounded her in ways that Lula's bruja healing powers can't fix, and she longs for the comfort her family once brought her. Thank the Deos for Maks, her sweet, steady boyfriend who sees the beauty within her and brings light to her life. Then a bus crash turns Lula's world upside down. Her classmates are all dead, including Maks. But Lula was born to heal, to fix. She can bring Maks back, even if it means seeking help from her sisters and defying Death herself. But magic that defies the laws of the deos is dangerous. Unpredictable. And when the dust settles, Maks isn't the only one who's been brought back...

TITLE: Bruja Born
AUTHOR: Zoraida Córdova
PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Fire
YEAR: 2018
LENGTH: 352 pages
AGE: Young Adult
GENRE: Fantasy
RECOMMENDED: Highly

Bruja Born is about clinging to love gone sour, plans gone rotten, and the strength required to accept new realities and move on. The young brujas are fierce, brave, and naive in ways that make them feel like the children they are. A good sequel.

The sibling dynamic between Lula, Alex, and Rose feels complex and genuine. Even though Rose hasn't been a pov character yet, she feels like a full character in context with Alex and Lula, which can be tricky to pull off.

I get stressed out by stories which have extended sequences where someone is lying about something huge, and that's a driving factor in most of this book, so it was difficult for me to read. It's a common trope, so that's mostly a thing I had to adjust to, and not a fault with the story. Given that, I still like this one and I was satisfied by the ending.

My one concern is that when reading this book, it feels like I'm missing information, like there's more I should have known coming in. After finishing the book, the supplemental material indicated that a group encountered there, the Thorne Hill Alliance first appears in The Vicious Deep, also by this author, so I'll skip over to that series and see if that addresses this feeling. If it feels like something was said elsewhere because it literally was in a different, earlier book, that's fine. If it's because this book vaguely gestures at world-building without putting enough detail in, that would be a negative for me.

I must say, Zoraida knows how to write a cliffhanger, I'm itching to read the next book.

CW for ableist language, vomit (graphic), fire, blood (graphic), gore (graphic), violence (graphic), pregnancy (not depicted), medical content, medical trauma (graphic), cannibalism, child death, death.

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