Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Mr. Riordan’s 2024 novel, ‘Wrath of the Triple Goddess’, instead. In this novel, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover encounter the titular goddess – Hecate – and she’s… not being very wrathful, in fact. Rather, she wants Percy, (with Annabeth and Grover helping him, for it is a big job, even for Percy), to look over her house and her pets while she goes out of the US to celebrate Halloween all over the rest of the planet (Earth). Pause.
Here is the thing. The first novel of this trilogy,
‘The Chalice of the Gods’, (2023), had Percy, Annabeth and Grover undergo some
pointed personal development; Percy, in particular had to literally wrestle
with (the god of) old age, while earlier in the novel Hebe the goddess of youth
turned the trio into preteens and they had to outmaneuver her to get their
actual ages back. Conversely now, in the ‘Wrath’, while the novel is about the
trio, and they do get transformed – Percy into part octopus, Annabeth into part
(barn) owl, and Grover becomes a human – ‘Wrath’ isn’t as focused on them, and
the readers constantly get glimpses of the stories of Hecuba and Gale, (aside
from the more minor characters too).
On its’ own, it is not really a problem either.
Indeed, since those two characters were mentioned, we might as well discuss who
they were. Hecuba was the queen of Troy, described in the ‘Iliad’, wife of king
Priam. Their children included Paris, who kidnapped Helen and instigated their
entire war, Hector, Troy’s greatest hero, Anchises, the father of Aeneas, who
instigated Rome, and Cassandra the prophet, whom no one believed. After the
fall of Troy and the death of her family, Hecuba went mad, and in some
versions, transformed into a black dog. Mr. Riordan adheres to this version.
Gale is more obscure. Her claim to fame is being a
lascivious witch, (aka sexually active), who turned/transformed into a
weasel/marten for her troubles. More often, she is conflated with Galinctis,
who was the midwife for Hercules (and his twin brother); either Hera or her
daughter, the goddess of childbirth, tried to prevent the birth – literally; an
act that would have killed all three. However, the cunning midwife figured it
out; she confronted the disguised deity and made the latter laugh, breaking her
concentration and allowing Alcmene to give birth. The midwife transformed into
a weasel for her decision and was forgotten by the myths – until now.
Oh, wait, the weasel in ‘Wrath’ is actually Gale the
witch turned polecat. Mr. Riordan gave Gale a brand new backstory (or at least
the rough draft of one), and as for the polecat aspect…
A ‘polecat’ is a layperson’s moniker for the animals
known as ‘ferrets’ in the American English instead. Compared to weasels,
polecats and ferrets are bigger and proportionally more muscular; unlike
martens and fishers, they hunt on the ground and in the burrows rather than in
the trees. Gale, then, can be safely called a ferret, but-
-but this brings us to J-Ro and Hogwarts; Draco
briefly turned into a ferret in book 4. These days, J-Ro is under a cloud for
her politically incorrect statements, but her franchise is still going strong
and may yet return as a TV series of all things, and so Mr. Riordan and his
allies dance around the HP franchise; they don’t call it out directly, but Hecate,
at the end of ‘Wrath’, is going to restart her magic school, because both she
and the demigods need it.
So far so good, but where does it leave Hecate’s own
demigod children? We met a few of them in the novels by now: Alabaster
Torrington, Lou Ellen Blackstone, Lamia etc. Why, we actually meet another one
of them, Pete the ghost in the novel, but still, ‘Wrath’ conveniently downplays
this aspect of PJ-verse, plus what about continuity? ‘The Chalice’ and ‘Wrath’
and their sequel take place before ‘The Trials of Apollo’ series, and the
latter had no mention of a magic school for demigods. Yes, Apollo may not have
known about it – he was in some sort of a time-out before appearing in the
first novel of ‘The Trials’, Percy mentioned it, but the point is that neither
Hecate nor her school played any role in ‘The Trials’; Mr. Riordan and his team
are trying to reset the PJ-verse in mid-stride – with mixed results.
Getting back to Gale… listen. Polecats, ferrets,
weasels, mink and co. are mustelids, true carnivores. Voles, which Percy and
friends mention in association with the polecats, are rodents; they are
relatives of mice, but more closely related to the lemmings and the muskrat;
the polecats actually eat them. To conflate voles with polecats is no more
sensible than conflating the latter with moles (self-explanatory), or dholes,
(Asian wild dogs, look a bit like wolves, but not very). Hell, polecats are
more closely related to dogs than to voles, but that is another story. What is
left?
‘Agatha all along’, (AAA). That MCU show was about
same-sex characters, but also about witches and witchcraft. We have discussed
AAA before, but, again, AAA is superfluous to MCU; the latter tried to make
money off the same-sex community in the U.S., but nothing more: so far, you can
safely exclude AAA from MCU and it will not affect the greater story at all.
Yes, AAA introduced Wiccan into MCU, and now he can join the YA as the
obligatory male character while his sexual orientation will never be mentioned
at all, or he can continue to explore the world as a sexual minority character
with Aggie-poo the ghost witch (or the witch-ghost), while never becoming
involved with the YA instead. Isn’t progressive political correctness fun?
Into the fray comes Mr. Riordan with ‘Wrath’. Unlike
AAA, there’s no same-sex relationships, and the book overall is more for
children than for their parents, but just like AAA, it was custom-made for
Halloween, apparently, as such American Halloween stables as zombies, ghosts
and witches abound on its’ pages. Oh, and there’s Disney (related) product
placement, and references to some of the original PJ novels too. Mr. Riordan,
you should not have!
However, on a more serious note, ‘Wrath’ is better
than AAA is, period. One does not want to rewatch AAA, and no matter how hard
AAA tried to make its’ titular character into a tragic heroine, it never quite
managed to fully do so. Rather, she came across as an unrepentant murderer and
backstabber, Wanda’s attempts to redeem her be damned. (We have talked about it
before). The ninth episode of AAA left some open questions, (why had Jen
survive, when Davis-Hart, Wu-Gulliver, and Lilia did not, for example), but few
people care about the answers for them. AAA is gone, ‘Kraven the Hunter’ film
is coming up, and Marvel is doing its’ best to forget about AAA’s existence, at
least for a while. ‘Wrath’, on the other hand, is not as bad; whatever else it
was supposed to be, it became a PJ-verse Halloween special and should be
treated only as such.
For now then, this is it. See you all soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment