Beyond the Roundels

#31: Read a book that is longer than the previous book.

In the absence of an obvious candidate, I decided this was my opportunity to finally get around to Harley Quinn: Redemption by Rachael Allen, which I've been meaning to read since I finished the previous book of the series last year. Then it took a couple of weeks for the library's copy to come in (during which I read other things, but nothing that fit the prompt), and then another week or so for me to properly get into it -- not because it's not good, but because one of the things it's good at is the sense of dread that pervades the first half, which had me reading a chapter or two and then getting stressed and putting it down again. Once the shoe had dropped and the plot really got going, I finished it in a day.

This was the third and final part of a trilogy, which I read at least partly because I was curious about how Allen was going to manage writing an inspirational young adult trilogy featuring a character whose standard origin story ends with her falling into a murderous cult and becoming a homicidal supervillain. That -- obviously, in retrospect -- doesn't happen in this version, where Harley gets a lucky break that leads to her having a significantly better emotional support network than in the standard version, so she has some wobbles but never loses herself and the darkest she gets is 'vigilante with somewhat questionable methods'. The first two books take an interesting stance that could be summed up as "Harley's standard origin story is what people think they know", so you get to see events that become rumours that resemble the standard origin story, but also see how the rumours are often missing or misrepresenting key details and in some cases are just plain wrong.

The third book has two things to achieve: first, to tell an exciting story about Harley and her allies investigating a series of kidnappings that the police don't seem interested in, which it does effectively, and second, to thread the needle of paying off the story's themes and plot threads while bringing the story to an end suitable for a young adult audience, which I'm not convinced it achieves. The author palms a few cards in order to bring the story to a tidy conclusion, which I found a bit too tidy; it gives up all pretence that this version of Harley is ever going to be a villain, even just in the minds of the public, and lets her settle down and enjoy the rest of her life without any lingering traces of the bad reputation that was gathering around her in the earlier chapters. It feels kind of like it's saying that all Harley's adventures are now over, which feels particularly odd since this version of Harley is still barely out of her teens. I would have appreciated a few loose ends, some indication that although Harley has resolved the main issues she still has adventures ahead of her.

Overall, I did enjoy the trilogy and I'm glad I read it.