Ryan
This was an odd read. I'm glad to see Barclay return to writing political satire! But political satire relies on topicality, and as this came out right before the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems like it was from a million years ago. Topics like getting the police to pay for the premier's new van off the books, or staffers commiting nepotism would normally be a big deal, and Barclay had no way of knowing what was coming, but it all seems like small buck-a-beer compared to our current reality.
I spent the first two years of Discovery hoping that they would introduce Emony Dax. Having her appear here was nice.
I'll be honest - I've never really cared for any Section 31 stories and this affected my enjoyment of this story.
This was a fun little collection of personal essays from a Back to the Future fan on why the trilogy is so important to him, and what he likes most about it. A fine read if you are likewise a fan.
This was an absolutely fantastic weird west adventure. McGrath built a fascinating world that felt both familiar, while full of magic that felt entwined to every part of it. The characters were interesting, and the narrative compelling. What more could you ask for?
Friedrich Nietzsche used to say that that which did not kill you made you stronger. Nietzsche was an optimist. There are things out there that don't kill you, but which twist you, and turn you into something that isn't quite human anymore. Something which might be better, or might be monstrous. It's hard to tell, some times.
Nietzsche also said that looking into the abyss meant that the abyss looked back at you, and also some things about monsters.
I know Starfish isn't a Nietzschean work, but it sure as hell felt like one. Peter Watts takes a group of scarred, emotionally damaged people, runs them through a bunch of post-human surgeries, and deposits them at the bottom of the ocean, in a high-pressure landscape that's as alien and inhospitable as any extraterrestrial planet. They're supposed to be the only living things down there, but quickly find that's not the case, and before long we're faced with the possibility that the sort of life that's forged in the blackness of the ocean might be completely incompatible with our own. And it might be stronger than us.
Starfish is a bleak, raw, gritty work that mostly likely isn't for everyone, but which I absolutely loved. Looking forward to reading the rest of the series once I've decompressed a bit from this one.
Fairest is a spin-off of Willingham's excellent Fables series that takes us away from Fabletown and looks at what's going on in the rest of the Fables' universe while the main narrative drags on.
And for the most part it's a fun read, with Ali Baba finding Briar Rose and awakening her with love's true kiss - and awakening the Adversary's lieutenant, the Snow Queen, that had been trapped under Rose's spell. The lighter pace of the story was enjoyable as a one-off, but I hope future volumes have a bit more meat on them.
An instant classic from Hiassen. The Trump parody elements were kind of inevitable given the Florida association, but if anything it feels like he went a bit easy on him? Aside from that, Angie was a fun protagonist.
Seeing a novel written in 2020 use the term “post pandemic” was a little awkward.
Reading through Goblet of Fire, I got a strong sense that with this book, JK Rowling stopped writing novels that were meant to just be novels, and started writing novels that were meant to become movies. The opening World Cup action, as well as the very visual nature of the tri-wizard challenges, would seem to confirm this. Despite this, though, the book still manages to be somewhat intriguing, and the ending of it sets a very definite tone that remains with the series until it reaches its conclusion.
This wasn't my first read through The Maxx; I read a lot of the issues when they were individually released in the mid-90s, and I had fond memories of the book from what I could remember.[return]It's a superhero book, but superheroes from a completely novel perspective. Kind of like if Camille Paglia, an Australian aborigine, Carl Jung, and Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes) got together to create a superhero. The story follows Julie Winters, a ‘freelance social worker' who looks after The Maxx, a homeless vagrant who thinks that he's a superhero. At the same time, however, it's also the story of The Maxx, the greatest hero of the Australian dreamland Outback, who must protect the Jungle Queen (who looks like she could be a ‘freelance social worker') from evil.[return]Heavily influenced by feminist philosophy (as is all of Keith's independent work), as well as showing influence of Keith's work with Neil Gaiman's Sandman, this is superheroes that require you to pay close attention to what you're reading.
A team of research scientists have been illegally working on isolating the genome of the common ancestor of all mammalian life, with the goal of creating chimera creatures that can grow organs that can be harvested for human use.
As one might expect, all goes horribly wrong, and the research scientists soon find themselves hunted by the creatures, just as the largest storm of the year comes barreling through.
Equal parts Jurassic Park, The Thing, and Repo: the Genetic Opera, you might get a certain sense of familiarity when reading Ancestor, but Sigler's strong characterization and dark sense of humour are on full display here, which makes for a very enjoyable read.
What's more interesting than a story about two generational ships locked in decades-long battle with each other? The same, but in the depths of the ocean!
There's a lot of interesing stuff going on here - a look at generational conflict within a generational ship, the mechanics of a city-sized submarine, and some discussion of the human tendency to fight with outgroups, rather than work with them. There are also, in Thom and Ralla, some very interesting characters.
Unfortunately, the (to me) interesting stuff all takes place on the sidelines, and the main plot, with its cliched madman of a villain and boring love triangle, wasn't as nearly as interesting as the other stuff.
When I was in high school, and started learning about the Greek myths from the source material rather than from adaptations/sanitations, I was always puzzled by the Trojan War. It seemed to be this big, complex mess, and I was confused as to how it was told. How rude of those ancient Greeks, teenaged me thought, to not put the whole story in one easily digested work?
Of course, as I became more familiar with it, I came to understand that this was because they were more interested in telling individual stories of tragedy and heroism rather than just history, and also that we still do that today - dozens of individual stories have been told about World War II, and Vietnam, but there aren't really many plays/films/poems that try to tell the whole story of those conflicts.
Eric Shanower, however, has decided to try to tell all of the Trojan War in one work, a planned 7-volume collection called Age of Bronze. The first volume is really all backstory, starting with Paris first coming to Troy, going through the taking of Helen, and ending with the Acheans first launching their ships against Troy. Taking 200 pages to tell just that part of the story shows how much detail is going into the story here, something that is carried through in the artwork - Shanower has obviously done a lot of research into the archeology, geography, architecture, society, and art of the Mediterranean, and that research is evident in the depth of the story and artwork.
Of course, being well-researched is not a substitute for being a good story, and the adaptation holds up on those grounds as well. He's working from classic material, in every sense of the word, and he tells it well, adding his own interpretations to a couple of things, but expertly combining religion, history, and myth into an Epic story of love, respect, and betrayal.
This was great. Probably the most heart-warming I've ever seen Star Wars be.
An alternate-reality version of Star Wars where Darth has to worry about Luke trying to use the force to lift a cookie jar off a self, and take him for joy rides in his TIE-A, rather than worrying about Rebellions and Death Stars and you have this book. It's full of situations parents will recognize, as well as lots of inside jokes for more dedicated fans of the movies.
This collection is Neil Gaiman's attempt to do a soft reboot on Kirby's Eternals concept from the 1970s, and for the most part it works. Kirby was great at putting forward these grand, madcap sorts of ideas, like alien gods who created not only human civilization, but who also genetically engineered a race of super-powered humans who would protect the Earth (but from what?! FROM WHAT?!) and inspire many of our myths about the gods. Gaiman, on the other hand, is an absolute master of taking grand mythological ideas and bringing them down to the level of the individual. It's a good mix of strengths, and makes for an enjoyable read.The main problem I had with this volume is that there's only the one - it reads like a set up and introduction to the characters, with a fairly straightforward “the world is in peril” plot, and then it ends. Not just the volume, but the series - why bother spending all this time re-introducing characters if you're not going to do anything further with them? The art can be kind of ugly at times as well - JRJR's great at Kirbyesque landscapes and giant Celestials, but his people all look stilted and unattractive. The Eternals should be more magnificent to look at.which, as the introduction of the book states, was a belief put forward by Erich von Daniken shortly before Eternals was first published.
Finally, it ends.
In all seriousness, I've enjoyed the NJO series - I don't want to talk about my feelings on the whole thing here, but I posted a blog entry on it at http://theorangemonkey.livejournal.com/176980.html.
So, anyways, The Unifying Force. In this volume we see an end to the threat of the Yuuzhan Vong; there are lots of big actiony scenes as a result, and because it's the last volume in the series, absolutely every character that's been in the series so far shows up. The result of this is that there isn't much character growth or quiet moments in this book, but as most of the individual character arcs have been wrapped up already, that's not too much of a complaint.
In retrospect, the series ends in the only way that it really could have, but it's done in a satisfying way - a large part of the concluding message is “our enemies are more like us than we ever gave them credit for”, which is the kind of moral that could have easily come across as cheesy, but Luceno does a good job of preventing it from being so.
Another volume of Fables that I found to be entertaining, but underwhelming. I think the series works best when dealing with the idea of fairy tale characters in the real world; for the past while it's been focusing more on their attempts to take back their homelands, which is just not as interesting to me. Willingham also tried to rephrase the series as an allegory for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but for that to work the Adversary and his minions have to fulfill the roles of ancient Rome, Nazi Germany, the British Empire, as well as the various nations surrounding Israel in the Middle East.
It looks like the next volume is a bit larger and more epic in scope; hopefully that will signal a return to form for the series.
This wasn't my first time reading Watchmen, but it had been awhile since I'd last read it (since before 2001 for sure). It's funny how things go through phases of topicality; I know that last time I read it, I thought it was kind of dated, with its plot elements of war in Afghanistan and Russian military aggression. Sadly, the world has recently gotten caught up in such events again, making Watchmen seem all the more current on this reading.
Aside from that, there's not too much to say about Watchmen that hasn't been said a thousand times already - it's clearly the most important superhero comic since Showcase #4, if not Action #1, and has fundamentally altered the way that people think about and write about superheroes. As such, it's easy to lose track of how revolutionary it must have been when it came out - to someone who grew up reading the ‘grim and gritty' heroes of the late 80s and 90s, or has seen films like The Incredibles, the story contained in these pages would seem like just another comic story that's been told time and time again.
Luckily, however, there's more to the story than just the plot; Moore and Gibbons have created an immensely detailed world in this book, and you definitely feel like it's part of a larger world (even though it isn't), and one that has been uniquely affected by the presence of super-heroes in it to a degree that other super-populated worlds never seem to be. Add to that an ongoing debate about human nature and morality, held by shamanistic creatures that are both human and inhuman at the same time, and you're left with something that will stand the test of time as a work of literature, but is also quite firmly a work of comics literature rather than ‘regular' literature.
And, amazingly enough, the villian wins. In doing so, he saves the world, but at the same time, it's quite the accomplishment. :o)
An interesting little fantasy story filled with flying airships, floating cities, and evil family members that hold the power of ultimate destruction within them. It starts out as a fairly standard YA adventure story, kept afloat by Kesel's strong characterizations, and near the end of this first volume starts branching out in some interesting directions.
The more Crossgen titles I read, the sadder I am that the company went bankrupt - they really were creating some interesting, complex books and it would be interesting to see them keep going.
Sawyer usually excels at telling character-driven sci-fi stories that could easily take place in the contemporary world, so it's interesting to see him attempt to tell a story that's a little more space opera-y.
Overall, this was a fun read, with many of Sawyer's characteristic elements, but I thought that the pacing was a little off during the first half of the story, and that there were some parts that were a little too infodumpy. Aside from that, though, it's an engaging, fun little story about wormholes, dark matter, and finding your place in the universe.
On paper, I should have liked this. I mean, I like the idea of planeswalker cards in Magic, and I like the fact that Wizards is trying to make the lore aspect of things more front and centre to the game. I even liked some of the characters - Tezzeret is an interesting character, mafia boss as much as he is wizard, and I spent my youth listening to far too many Cure songs to not like someone like Liliana.
Still, I didn't like this. The protagonist, Jace, alternated between being unlikable and clueless, and really didn't do much of anything that was at all interesting over the course of the book. Add to that a setting that was presented fairly flatly and there isn't much to recommend to people with this book.
Avatar is essentially the pilot episode for the new, post-TV series version of DS9, and as a pilot it works really well. The new additions to the cast are all interesting, a new status quo is established for the station, and drama abounds. Ro and Kira's relationship seems like it'll be really interesting, as well as the new direction for Ezri.
I'm excited to see where things build from here!
I tried to like this book. I really did. And I usually have an aversion to not finishing books, but I had to put this one down after the first hundred pages.
I'm a big fan of Palahniuk's other work, and I know what he was trying to do with the language in this, but I just couldn't overcome it, and I knew that if I tried to finish it, I would just end up hating it.