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Midweek Novella Review: Opium Tales: The Staff

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

I’m continuing to review the novellas adapted from Roman and Anna Riva’s planned animated series, Opium Tales (which doubles as Roman’s Substack moniker and publication). I’ve followed Roman’s work for years, and he has grown an impressive and active presence on Substack. When I found out he and his wife had a series of short novellas in print—and that they are all, save one, under $8—I snapped them up and decided to review them one-by-one.

Last week, I reviewed the second book in the series, A Pirate’s Tale (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link—more of them below—so I receive a portion of any purchase made through that link, at no additional cost to you). As I wrote last week, the novella is “a full-on swashbuckling adventure in the vein of (as the Rivas point out in their introduction) the Pirates of the Caribbean films.”

According to the introduction of each volume, Roman and Anna sought, but failed to procure, funding for an animated series called Opium Tales. They hoped to call it Dark Tales, but the name was taken, so they leaned into the opium habits of early eighteenth-century Romantics and landed on Opium Tales. Since they still had all the rights to their stories, they decided to publish them as a series of novellas.

Here is the series—or, at least the volumes I purchased (the following are Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of any purchase made through these links, at no additional cost to you):

The entire series is (as of the time of writing) $46.94 before tax, so these are easy to scoop up in one fell swoop.

I was unclear which novella came third in the sequence, so I went to the source and asked Roman himself. He told me to read The Staff next. I’ve been on the road a ton lately with some SCISA work and to pick up our new puppy, and was worried I might not have a chance to read The Staff in time of this Wednesday, but Tuesday afternoon presented an opportunity with both dogs napping on the couch—and yours portly cracking open a book starring a clever thief with a heart as golden as the afternoon sunlight streaming into our sunroom.

So far, A Pirate’s Tale remains my favorite, but I’m a sucker for a pirate setting. The Staff is a close second, though, as I’m also a sucker for a skilled rogue who is experienced as a second-story man or cat burglar, the kind of guy who can get into impossible places with seeming ease. The Staff presents us with such a protagonist, the unnamed “thief,” who must retrieve a powerful staff as ransom for his lovely new bride, Katherine.

The novella opens with Katherine and the thief enjoying their honeymoon, and the thief explaining how a local “haunted” castle is really the home of one of the last four dragons in the kingdom. In the midst of their the thief’s former partner, James, rudely interrupts and takes Katherine hostage. It’s soon established that the thief is not great at combat, which explains his willingness to go along with James’s scheme. James needs the staff for his own nefarious purposes, and it’s currently in the possession of James and the thief’s other former partner, simply called “the Ogre” (it’s not just a clever nickname; he’s actually an ogre).

What follows is a daring burglary of the Ogre’s castle, and the thief’s intriguing side quest to uncover the true power of the staff—it’s connection to the dragons.

The Staff follows the classic formula now familiar to readers of these reviews: the stories are clearly drawn from the original scripts, and dialogue (such as the opening exchange between the thief and Katherine) often looks like it’s drawn from a script. Descriptions are drawn broadly, giving readers plenty of room to imagine what characters and places look like. For example, upon entering the Ogre’s castle, the thief removes his cloak, revealing a “slick” thieving outfit. There’s no description of the outfit, but there doesn’t need to be; the context—a thief, a castle, a fantasy world with medieval-ish vibes—fills in the blanks.

The only time I found this approach troublesome was when the Ogre and his wife (the characters only ever called her “ma’am”) are presented, as I immediately thought of Shrek and Fiona. The wife is described as a “sweetheart,” though, which made me stop to ponder what a sweethearted ogre would be like.

My main critique of the story, one that applies to the series as a whole so far, is that there is a good deal of modern euphemisms or phrasings tossed into the mouths of characters that exist in a quasi-medieval fantasy Europe. Again, I suspect part of this stems from the origin of this series, as it was intended for much to be translated into animation. For example, the opening dialogue between the thief and Katherine, which sets up the story nicely, also reads something like a twenty-first-century husband explaining to his wife the way things really work. It seems so casual that it doesn’t quite fit the dark fairy tale vibe.

Conversely, it does read like a husband explaining to his wife how the world really is—that kind of matter-of-fact, straight-shooting manner that conveys masculine confidence, even a little cockiness.

Those quibbles aside, I really enjoyed The Staff. The thief is a great representative for his archetype—the lovable rogue who wants out of the life but has to do “just one more job” before he can retire for good—and his relationships with James and the Ogre play into how each of the characters interact with (and steal from and/or exploit) each other. The Ogre is a bit underdeveloped, but the Rivas give us a good sense for the kind of creature he is. James is clearly a menacing figure, one whose presence immediately creates real problems for the thief. The thief’s solution to his dilemma late in the novella is obvious in retrospect, but I the way the Rivas set it up, I totally overlooked the obvious solution! That’s clever writing, and it’s indicative of how invested in the thief I was.

The ending is a twist, one I was sad to read. I won’t reveal it here, of course. You’ll have to buy your own copy!