But Not Too Bold
Mar. 21st, 2025 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hebethen posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fffridayNot quite romance, nor quite horror -- I would say H. Pueyo's new novella But Not Too Bold is sort of a dark fairytale that runs on the logic of dreams transformed to mythology and then again rendered through a single artist's lens.
As the name suggests, a primary inspiration is the Bluebeard tale and its relatives, with the titular character here reimagined as an undeniably inhuman supernatural being with her own very particular predilections and obsessions. I enjoyed both the folklorically eccentric specificity of the worldbuilding and setting details and the painterly touches of equally eccentric character cameos. When it comes to the main character -- a high-ranking servant in the mansion of the "Bluebeard" analogue -- I am of two minds. On the one hand, her own eccentricity, of which she seems little aware, feels simultaneously natural and supernatural in a very tonally suitable way; on the other hand, perhaps it is a little too abstracted into the realm of fairytale to strike my heart beyond that. I would be curious as to how she came off to other readers!
(Note: arachnophobes and arachnophiles will both have reason to wince at some scenes. Spiders are, of course, a recurring element, including as cooked food [the latter in a mundane, true-to-life way and not sensationalized, but perhaps uncomfortable to tender-hearted keepers out there]. My one informational comment is that if you plan to keep a tarantula as a pet rather than as a food source, and you do not live inside a magical mansion that constantly generates tarantulas and poppy-flowers from nowhere, you should not let them perch on your shoulder -- they are delicate creatures and can't recover from a bad fall.)
((Oh, and, TGIF! :P))
As the name suggests, a primary inspiration is the Bluebeard tale and its relatives, with the titular character here reimagined as an undeniably inhuman supernatural being with her own very particular predilections and obsessions. I enjoyed both the folklorically eccentric specificity of the worldbuilding and setting details and the painterly touches of equally eccentric character cameos. When it comes to the main character -- a high-ranking servant in the mansion of the "Bluebeard" analogue -- I am of two minds. On the one hand, her own eccentricity, of which she seems little aware, feels simultaneously natural and supernatural in a very tonally suitable way; on the other hand, perhaps it is a little too abstracted into the realm of fairytale to strike my heart beyond that. I would be curious as to how she came off to other readers!
(Note: arachnophobes and arachnophiles will both have reason to wince at some scenes. Spiders are, of course, a recurring element, including as cooked food [the latter in a mundane, true-to-life way and not sensationalized, but perhaps uncomfortable to tender-hearted keepers out there]. My one informational comment is that if you plan to keep a tarantula as a pet rather than as a food source, and you do not live inside a magical mansion that constantly generates tarantulas and poppy-flowers from nowhere, you should not let them perch on your shoulder -- they are delicate creatures and can't recover from a bad fall.)
((Oh, and, TGIF! :P))
