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bellisk 's review for:
Black Widow: Forever Red
by Margaret Stohl
Black Widow: Forever Red had been sitting on my embarrassingly large started-but-not-finished pile for some time until I picked it up yesterday, in search of a quick, fun read while I was sick in bed. It filled that niche well - this is a fast-paced book with an action-filled plot, congenial characters and some fun interactions between Natasha Romanov and Tony Stark, which might have been the best part. The science bits of the plot were entirely the reverse of those in [b:The Martian|18007564|The Martian|Andy Weir|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1413706054s/18007564.jpg|21825181] - which is to say, not even trying for realism - but it's all right, I think the parts of my brain that complain about that in Marvel stories were permanently burnt out after the horror that was Iron Man 2. ("I created a new element in my basement! And it's a triangle!" I'm not going to shut up about that flipping triangle any time soon, sorry.)
I was also turned off initially by the mysterious dreams plotline, because I dislike mixing paranormal elements into non-fantasy stories. I know there are psi-powered/magical heroes in the Marvel Universe, but Black Widow isn't one of them so I wasn't expecting that kind of thing here. Pseudoscientific though it was, the explanation behind Ava's dreams relieved me of that annoyance, and it was used well to gradually reveal the hidden backstory.
As far as that goes, I was disappointed by the reveal that Alexei was Natasha's long-lost brother. I'm very tired of the trope that blood ties and bloodlines trump everything else, and of stories where new characters have to be related to older ones to have legitimacy. Natasha's constant references, after the relationship was discovered, to her and Alexei being Romanovs felt forced and out of character. Given that she learnt all her skills in the Red Room programme (and he acquired his somewhere similar), their blood relationship was pretty irrelevant in that regard. Also, the introduction and then sudden death of this new brother made the whole thing feel rushed.
My biggest irritation with Forever Red, however, was the idea that as soon as the narrative steps behind the Iron Curtain, the calendar flips backwards several decades. In what feels like an increasing number of films and books, including this one, we're supposed to believe that the Cold War never stopped - at least in the (former?) USSR. In the current MCU timeline, Natasha Romanov was born in 1984. I'm not sure what soldiers would have been marching, and shooting, through the streets of Stalingrad in the early 1990s when she was a child. (Stalingrad has been called Volgograd since 1961, anyway, though there is apparently still some fondness for the old name among citizens there.) Still more baffling are the photographs that Ava finds in the hidden facility by the Odessa docks. This story presumably takes place in the 2010s and she is 17 years old, so why are her childhood pictures, taken ten years before, all in black and white? This confused timeline is partly the result of Marvel having to tailor 70 years of comics history to its current offerings, which is a tough job, but when it means messing with real-world history I find it very annoying.
Apart from the few issues mentioned above, I enjoyed >Forever Red and came to really like Ava and her relationship with Natasha. It would still have been nice to spend more time with the Black Widow herself, with less "babysitting" (Tony Stark's word). As an origin story for, though, this is great.
Spoiler
Still, there were other parts of this book that didn't go down quite as easily. Some of my complaints, I think, come down to the fact that this is a YA novel, like the focus on the two teenage characters, Ava and Alexei. That made the first part of the book drag a bit for me and is the reason I let it sit for a while. I also wasn't much into the romance aspect to the plot. It didn't bother me as much as some of the other reviewers here, who considered it instalove: I thought Ava falling quickly for Alexei made some sense, given her many dreams about him, and both of them were swept off into a strange and dangerous situation, which amped up their feelings for one another. (I don't read much YA or romance, though, so I can't compare this with similar novels.)I was also turned off initially by the mysterious dreams plotline, because I dislike mixing paranormal elements into non-fantasy stories. I know there are psi-powered/magical heroes in the Marvel Universe, but Black Widow isn't one of them so I wasn't expecting that kind of thing here. Pseudoscientific though it was, the explanation behind Ava's dreams relieved me of that annoyance, and it was used well to gradually reveal the hidden backstory.
As far as that goes, I was disappointed by the reveal that Alexei was Natasha's long-lost brother. I'm very tired of the trope that blood ties and bloodlines trump everything else, and of stories where new characters have to be related to older ones to have legitimacy. Natasha's constant references, after the relationship was discovered, to her and Alexei being Romanovs felt forced and out of character. Given that she learnt all her skills in the Red Room programme (and he acquired his somewhere similar), their blood relationship was pretty irrelevant in that regard. Also, the introduction and then sudden death of this new brother made the whole thing feel rushed.
My biggest irritation with Forever Red, however, was the idea that as soon as the narrative steps behind the Iron Curtain, the calendar flips backwards several decades. In what feels like an increasing number of films and books, including this one, we're supposed to believe that the Cold War never stopped - at least in the (former?) USSR. In the current MCU timeline, Natasha Romanov was born in 1984. I'm not sure what soldiers would have been marching, and shooting, through the streets of Stalingrad in the early 1990s when she was a child. (Stalingrad has been called Volgograd since 1961, anyway, though there is apparently still some fondness for the old name among citizens there.) Still more baffling are the photographs that Ava finds in the hidden facility by the Odessa docks. This story presumably takes place in the 2010s and she is 17 years old, so why are her childhood pictures, taken ten years before, all in black and white? This confused timeline is partly the result of Marvel having to tailor 70 years of comics history to its current offerings, which is a tough job, but when it means messing with real-world history I find it very annoying.
Apart from the few issues mentioned above, I enjoyed >Forever Red and came to really like Ava and her relationship with Natasha. It would still have been nice to spend more time with the Black Widow herself, with less "babysitting" (Tony Stark's word). As an origin story for