Count_Zero

This is a really good re-launch for Batgirl, and I can't wait for the next trade of this series.

The later parts of the story were pretty good, but, boy, the New 52 versions of Hal, Bruce, Diana and Clark are absolute freaking dicks.

I started reading this today, and blitzed through it. This series, thus far, has been absolutely awesome, and I simply cannot wait for volume 6.

That said, I can't help but have one minor little quibble. The Cabal Of Arbitrary Evil - if they already all but rule the world, what purpose do they have in trying to quash humanity's will (which has clearly been their goal since volume 2)?

Wouldn't it be less expensive, in the long run, to more gently shape humanity's will to fit their purposes, then to force it into shape like a Japanese rectangular melon. What purpose does it serve. They're set for cash, and it seems that before they started clenching their fingers too much, their position was secure. However, their counter-attacks against Taylor, and particularly the actions of Pullman, seem to be doing more to screw themselves over, then to save themselves. It's like trying to put out a fire on a burning ship with gunpowder than with water - it probably won't put out the fire, unless you blow a hole in the ship, but then you have a bigger problem.

Well, maybe next volume will answer these questions.

Well done story. I do have one big complaint with it - it's pre-Flashpoint, so it's got the old Damien Wayne, who is an obnoxious prat.

This is a pretty good Christmas story, but making Batman like Scrooge in this fashion just doesn't quite work.

I thought this was okay, but I think that some of the other Batmen could have been used more. In particular, considering all the contraversy that Nightrunner sparked, he was ultimately just a throwaway character, and I think he could have been used more.

This volume doesn't answer all the questions. However, it also doesn't give me the impression of being lead along by the nose that I got from volume 2. My faith is somewhat restored in the series, and I look forward to reading volume 4.

Better than volume 1, though I do find myself wondering which way the writers are going to take their subtext on imagination. Is imagination power and something to be preserved, or something to be quelled - because one thing is clear - the authors' take is definitely black or white - with no grey in sight.

I like some of the new (or new-ish) villains we get here, like Professor Pyg, and Edwardo Flaminco, and I really like Dick Grayson as Batman. However, I don't like Damien Wayne as Robin - his behavior is like that of a super-villain. Admittedly he was raised by super-villains (the League of Assassins) but that doesn't make it better. I also don't exactly like Jason Todd as he's used here. He's an enjoyable villain, and I kind of like him as trying to turn himself into an “alternative brand” for Batman - but the bits where he's concerned about his appearance under the mask are just dumb.

This was a book that, in the beginning, I didn't expect to like. I anticipated this book being a pot shot at Harry Potter and its fandom. A deconstruction of the series (and YA fiction) by someone who doesn't appreciate the genre.

Instead, I enjoyed this volume and definitely am going to read subsequent volumes. My concerns about subsequent books have shifted to something else though. As it stands, I am somewhat concerned that importance the series' universe has on literary convention could end up turning into dueling TV Tropes users.

Hopefully, as with my preconceptions, I'll be wrong.

The Mongolians are written in this book in a way that feels like it's consistent with the Wuxia novels that inspired the author, but also in ways that feels like they are ignoring internalized prejudices from those novels - the writers of those works had their own biases, possibly unexamined, about Mongolians as a people, or at least the history of those people, that put them into some of the same archetypes that white fantasy and science fiction writers are (justifiably) criticized for using when writing “Proud Warrior Race” characters and cultures.

It feels like the the author is reproducing those stereotypes from those works uncritically.

A Master of Djinn is set in an alternative history Egypt where, in the late 1800s, a sorcerer known only as Al-Jahiz, working in Cairo, restored magic to the world, and with it Djinni, and all manner of other supernatural beings. In this process, this also brought Egypt into being a Great Power on the global stage (technically again), and lead to an earlier contraction of several empires.  It's now 1912, and rumblings of various political and military disagreements are pointing towards a potential World War. A peace summit is due to be held in Cairo in the hopes of avoiding that ar, organized by diplomat Sir Alastair Worthington – a British man who is well respected in both Europe and Egypt, and who has adopted Egypt as his home country. Worthington has also founded a secret society dedicated to Al-Jahiz and his works, as part of his, for lack of a better term, Egyptophilia.  So, when a person claiming to be the returned Al-Jahiz murders Worthington and the entirety of his brotherhood, using magical means, not long before the peace summit. the Egyptian government has A Problem on its hands. So, the relevant organization – the Ministry for Alchemy, Enchantment, and Supernatural Entities Agent Fatima el-Sha'arawi to investigate, along with her new (and rookie) partner, Agent Hadia.  Clark uses some of the narrative concepts of the “Buddy Cop” (or just “Buddy Crime”) story for considerable effect, through using twists on a familiar narrative structure to help keep the reader grounded, and also preventing a sense of exoticization. By having the characters react to things that are different from our life experiences as normal through a familiar concept, those things become normal, and we as readers are able to step away from our internal sense of exoticization and just roll with it.  As an example, Fatima starts the story as an agent who works on their own – who doesn't have or want a partner – and eschews traditional Islamic fashion, instead wearing Western-style suits with a bowler hat. She also doesn't talk much about her religious beliefs, particularly since she's also a lesbian. Her partner, Agent Hadia, being fresh out of the academy, has less street smarts, but has some book smarts Fatima lacks (particularly when it comes to religious training) – but also can pull her own weight in a fight and, being a member of the Islamic Feminist League, is in tune with various social movements, meaning that it reduces a degree of tension regarding whether the two are going to end up at odds because of Fatima's sexual identity.  The involvement of the peace summit also really helps to round out the larger world of the setting, both with the various foreign dignitaries, and with the handful of emigre communities that pop up over the course of A Master of Djinn, either directly playing a role in the plot, or as background supporting cast. If I had a gripe at all with this, it's that the Conference's Great Powers are “The European Great Powers + Egypt” – with no presence of any of the contracted former colonies of the Great Powers that might have their own tensions that would make the World War fit that description – such as India, China, and Japan. Japan's conflict with Russia in World War I ended up spreading into further grabs for territory in China and Korea, for example, and the rise of magic could potentially have lead to some degree of a resurgent China (giving it a different global perception than it had pre-WWII), and the Indian Independence movement might have already made a level of headway that it didn't get until post World War II. It all feels like a missed opportunity.  On the other hand, Grey gets into the very ways racial prejudices have and haven't changed in this world – the White European members of Worthington's “Brotherhood of Al-Jahiz” look down on the people of Egypt, Cairo has a population of African-American emigres (particularly demonstrated by the African-American Jazz musicians at the club where Fatima hangs out), much as there were in France. However, darker-skinned Egyptians also face prejudice from their peers, and related to this, the story also gets into the historical president of this with tensions between previous Egyptian pharaohs and the darker-skinned population of Nubia to the south, and the ways that the Nubian population was treated in Egypt in the past.  Now, the mystery that is the heart of the plot is wonderfully well written – feeling like a work that fits in the lineage of other detective stories set in and around World War 1, not as cynical as noir, and not as grim as hard-boiled detective stories, but still with a willingness to get its hands dirty in the telling of the story, without getting into the gentility of a cozy.  I'm tremendously glad I read this book, and I'm going to need to hunt down the other novellas in this universe – and I deeply look forward to Clark's next novel. 

This is a decent enough book, but I don't buy into the Children of the Light. Not that I don't believe a group like that couldn't exist. Indeed, they're clearly modeled after the Spanish Inquisition. However, what allowed the Inquisition to get away with what they did is that they were attached to the larger power structure of the Roman Catholic Church, with all the power and influence that entailed, not only within the inquisitor's countries, but between nations.

Even then, the Inquisition had its limits - if the Inquisition tried to foment a popular revolt against a monarch, no one would tolerate it. The monarch wouldn't stand for it, as it's literally a direct threat to their power, and for that matter neither would rival nations who might be inclined to side with the church otherwise, because someone else could be overthrown by a church sponsored populist revolt, then so could they. Yet, the Children of the Light, which as written in this book has no backing from any organization with the scope and influence (benevolent and malevolent) of the Roman Catholic Church, is shown clearly attempting to start a populist uprising against a monarch, and the monarch is doing nothing about them. I don't buy it. If other monarchs found out about this, lots of members of the Children of the Light would end up being publicly executed for treason (or other convenient offences which might have been ignored otherwise).

Stick with the Disney animated version.

This was a really interestingly done gothic horror novel - I'll have a full review of this later.

The way Angela is brought in to the Marvel universe is interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what's done with the character in the future. I wouldn't mind if she got a more... practical costume though - her outfit is a definite legacy of '90s comics.

Very good Cosmic story, with an ending that I didn't quite anticipate.

Straight up, this is the only good book of Ennis' run on The Punisher. The rest of his Marvel Knights run was spewing bodily fluids from all his orifices on the characters of Wolverine, Spider-Man, and Daredevil - especially, of all characters, Spidey.

Very well written fantasy novel, which uses its Middle East-styled setting incredibly well. The characters in particular are incredibly interesting and well fleshed out.

I listened to this as an audiobook and enjoyed it immensely, and learned some useful information. I do feel that King's advice about plotting (and avoiding it) is not applicable in any way to writing good mystery novels. At best that leads to forgetting threads of the narrative (like the lost murdered chaffeur in “The Big Sleep” and at worst that leads to the wholesale cheating that mars much of Agatha Christie's work.

Technically I listened to the audiobook version put out by Bureau42.com, read by Blaine Dowler.

This is a really well done unabridged audiobook. In particular, the reader does a great job getting the voices to sound like their related actors (with perhaps the sole notable exception of his Harrison Ford impression) - and his Grand Admiral Thrawn sounds exactly like I imagined him. Using a somewhat Hispanic voice for Talon Karrde seems a little off though.

Some of the information in this book is dated (at the time this book was published, Windows XP was still current), but a lot of this information is still incredibly useful, and I'd definitely consider this worth checking out.

Why in the Nine Hells didn't this book get a Hugo Award nomination? This is a fantastic SF novel! The characters are well written, the world is masterfully crafted, and the ideas inside the book are gloriously presented. I'm definitely going to read the next book in the series.

I wouldn't call this exactly a story with a conflict. It's much closer to a travelogue of a group of people's explorations through the interior of Science Fiction's greatest Big Dumb Object.