Reviewed by thepunktheory on
Normally, I try to sit down and write my posts in a timely manner after watching the movie/TV show and/or reading the book. However, I just really didn't know what to do with Cursed. It took me forever and 15 days to finally sit down to write this, but here we are!
Overall, I wasn't too impressed with either the book or the Netflix adaptation. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The novel first. This was a weird read and I think I know why. Tom Wheeler, the author, usually writes for TV and film. That shows! Several times throughout the book and especially during the final chapters this felt like a weird in-between of a novel and a script. Neither here nor there. Oftentimes, descriptions or scenes in the chapters were not fleshed out enough and seemed shallow and pale. Something was missing.
On top of that, most of the characters were downright annoying and I just kept rolling my eyes. I wouldn't want to be lead by any of them, especially not Nimue who at times seemed as dense as a brick. Merlin is always drunk and disgusting, and somewhat of a deadbeat. Then we have Uther who is a petulant stupid child. I just wanted to smack him straight across his face. You can see, none of this bodes well for the novel.
I was really looking forward to Frank Miller's art. He provided illustrations for the book but even those were mostly irritating. All in all, things were hard to decipher in his drawings, and every single time I was confused about who he's actually depicting. I could swear the same character looked rather different in each picture.
Long story short, I was very annoyed with the book. I could see a lot of potential but the execution was flawed. However, since the author is a TV writer and many of the chapters felt script-adjacent, I hoped that the adaptation would be better.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 27 October, 2020: Finished reading
- 27 October, 2020: Reviewed