[Normally this is where I'd put the book's cover, but Blogspot kept mangling the image layout, and frankly after so much time spent wrestling this accursèd website's text formatting UI I'd rather not bother – sorry about that!]
Ah, Wallowing in Pessimism's Mire, the little-known companion piece to Burning with Optimism's Flames. What will it take for the Faction Paradox fandom to acknowledge you? You're practically the crown gem of this series, by some people's reckoning – and the absolute nadir of it, according to editor Stuart Douglas. One would think that people would be drawn to discussing this anthology just based on how polemic it is, and yet just for the simple matter of having never been given a proper release, everyone practically forgets the thing ever existed. It's like it's been erased from history or someth
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Let's go over the elephant in the room first. The big thing I need to explain upfront is in regards to how in the world I even got my hands on Wallowing – turns out it's not as hard as you'd think. After Obverse caught wind that I was doing reviews, Stuart Douglas himself had the grace to show up on my doorstep and give me a signed paper copy! (Well, I think it was Douglas, anyway, given context clues... I'm not that good with faces. Sorry if I misidentified you! I know you were having fun getting in-character, but for future reference you might wanna take that mask off more if you want people to be sure they recognize you.)
But the book itself, though. The question of if it's actually any good is hard to answer – there's some of the best Faction Paradox I've seen here, yet some of the most excruciating as well, and the more I think about it the harder it becomes to pin down which is which. It gives off the vibes of being in some kind of quantum superposition of brilliancy and disastrousness, leaving it difficult to come up with an overall conclusion about SORRY TO INTERRUPT. I'M UNDER ORDERS NOT TO LET YOU READ PART OF THIS REVIEW. YOU CAN GET BACK TO IT IN A MOMENT, SHE JUST NEEDS TO SHUT UP ABOUT THIS ONE THING FIRST.
ALRIGHT THANK GOD SHE'S DONE thing you'll notice when leafing through the book's pages is the sheer amount of references to other properties it contains. From Obverse's other book series (Iris Wildthyme, Señor 105) to completely disconnected properties (stories in conversation with The Chronicles of Narnia or Nabokov's Lolita). Granted, the Lolita one was kind of inevitable, but still – Wallowing has a fascination with the larger media landscape and the Faction Paradox franchise's own place in it. It's a cute throughline, and I'm a sucker for meta-commentary – Simon Bucher-Jones's "Love During the Years of Sandpaper" in particular hurt like hell once I realized what it was playing at.
Rachel Redhead's introductory story, "Downside Up and Outside In", is probably the best example of this. A feminist retelling of Susan Pevensie's life post-Narnia seems too disconnected from the Faction mythos to work at first glance, and it kinda drags for a while as a result... until you get to the Cousin Ceol cameo at the end and everything clicks. In retrospect it's full of musings on headcanons, fanfiction, indie publishing, and memetic bonds – absolutely brilliant stuff. Other stories tried similar things to lesser effect – I get what Ian Potter was going for with making Doofenshmirtz a Faction agent in "[Wrong] Side Up, Please", and the time loop thing is clever in theory, but it ends up reading like an edgy "it was dark all along" fanfiction piece rather than something with coherent themes. I don't even know where to start with "Peace of Cake", which HEY AGAIN. SO HOW'S YOUR DAY BEEN? MINE'S BEEN KIND OF SHIT. NOT THAT "A DAY" MEANS MUCH WHEN YOU'RE A SENTIENT SERIES OF MEMETIC CONNECTIONS. AT LEAST THIS MISSION IS QUIETER THAN THE ONE LAST WEEK ON ANATHEMA, I GUESS.
The big downside to the anthology's referential nature is that a lot of it doesn't really parse well without the background knowledge of the media it's discussing. Not having read Narnia myself, I've no doubt that crucial nuances of "Downside Up" were lost on me, OH SHE ABSOLUTELY MISSED THE POINT while "Fridays with Frankenstein", fun as it was, just barely landed thanks to my fuzzy memories of reading the book and watching the movie way back in high school. (Great play on book adaptations, though!) SORRY ABOUT YOUR DAY, BY THE WAY. HOPE IT GETS BETTER. involving Iris Wildthyme, which was plenty fun – everyone say thanks to Aditya Bidikar for the uproarious "The Wildthyme Inheritance" – but it did take me a bit to adjust to, given I haven't gotten around to reading much Iris content yet. But hey, at least the Phineas and Ferb stuff landed – well, kinda – sorta – maybe if I mention I liked it enough, it'll become true!
What else? Well, as I've said, ups and downs. "Random Acts of Compassion "by Philip Purser-Hallard, and "Lolly Eater" by Janea Farris, are the two which tie the deepest into Faction lore, and much as I love the lore, they can get pretty bogged down in it. I lost count of how many times I had to stop reading and take a fifteen-minute detour back to The Book of the War to fully understand what was THIS IS INACCURATE, SHE'S JUST THICK if you can stomach that, you'll be in for a good time. Philip Purser-Hallard delivers a strong tale with interesting implications for the lore – albeit one that's almost unreadably dense AND COINCIDENTALLY PEPPERED WITH INFOHAZARDS oddly so, and as for "Lolly Eater"... uh. Hm. I mean, it meshes well with "Squatter's Rights" from Burning, and it's an incredibly clever reinterpretation of Lolita as she appears in the Faction audio dramas, but it was tough to get through with how the overabundance of references completely overshadowed the plot. And besides, the topics explored made me so deeply uncomfortable that I struggle to fully appreciate it as art. I guess it did its job?
There's one story, though, whose conflicting nature stands out above DAMNIT HERE WE GO who's heard of Wallowing in Pessimism's Mire knows exactly what I'm about to mention: yep, it's Dave Hoskin and Kelly Hale's jointly-written story, "Cleft Morrow". This piece is crazy clever – puts Erasing Sherlock into an all-new context that gives me a new appreciation for it, while serving as a meta-commentary on the same. Sure, it's overly bloody and edgy, but wasn't Erasing Sherlock the same way? That's just part of the commentary on WHAT? DID SHE EVEN READ THE SAME STORY AS ME? it's in conversation with Hoskin's other works for the franchise. The only thing people remember this story for OH BROTHER. HOLD ON, I'VE GOT TO MAKE A CALL TO MY EMPLOYERS reveal that the Enemy's true identity is actually thing people remember this story for is the shocking reveal that the Enemy's true identity is actually remember this story for is the shocking reveal that the Enemy's true identity is actually shocking reveal that the Enemy's true identity is actually identity is actually actually tually ally ly y ,,,,,,,, a an and and that's and that's an and that's an absolute shame in my personal opinion, and that's an absolute shame in my personal opinion, given how there's so and that's an absolute shame in my personal opinion, given how there's so much more and that's an absolute shame in my personal opinion, given how there's so much more to it. People just don't bother to think about this one.
I really wish more people had read this anthology. Not because I think it's uniformly a good book, not even really because it's so historically significant for the franchise – I just want to see what people have to say! Wallowing in Pessimism's Mire is an absolutely fascinating entry into the Faction Paradox franchise, taking ideas explored elsewhere and piecing them together into something never-before-seen in Faction Paradox history. While not all of it works – and I completely understand Douglas's hesitation to publish it – it's respectable in my eyes for what it attempts alone, and I'd kill to see how others view it.
Uh. It's at this point that I'd normally give a few more concluding thoughts, but there's someone at the door, and I think I need to go tell them they're a few days early for Halloween. Or maybe just compliment them on that crazy creative Doctor Who Time Lord cosplay. See you next review, whenever that may be!
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