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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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Azura Ghost by Essa Hansen (The Graven #2)

​Caiden has been on the run for ten years with his unique starship in order to keep his adversary, Threi, imprisoned. But when an old friend he'd once thought dead reappears, he is lured into a game of cat and mouse with the one person whose powers rival Threi's: Threi's sister Abriss. Now with both siblings on the hunt for Caiden and his ship, Caiden must rescue his long-lost friend from their clutches and uncover the source of both his ship's power and his own origins in order to stop Abriss's plan to collapse the multiverse.

But his old friend has changed far more than Caiden could have ever imagined, and if he wants to save her, he's going to have to call on his old crew to help him get her back. But what if she doesn't want to be saved?

TITLE: Azura Ghost
AUTHOR: Essa Hansen
PUBLISHER: Orbit
YEAR: 2022
LENGTH: 528 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Science Fiction
RECOMMENDED: N/A

Queer Rep Summary: Trans Secondary Character(s), Ace/Aro Main Character(s).

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.

DNF 38% in.

I tried to get into this, but it just didn’t happen. I liked the first one, but something about this just didn’t work for me.

A big part of the issue is that I can’t form mental images of things I haven’t seen, and as the locations and action became more strange and more focused on technically-not-magic space power battles and pocket universe stuff it creates long stretches when the only thing I could focus on is Caiden’s thoughts about things. You may recall from the last book’s review that I don’t really like Caiden, and I didn’t like him any better here.

Partial CWs for grief, alcohol, blood (graphic), violence (graphic), gun violence, medical content, medical trauma, suicidal thoughts, suicide (backstory), death.

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A large silvery ship with glowing engines flies directly towards the viewer


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