Ryan

The thing I like about Selznick's stories is that they're not actually stories of magic, or superpowers; they're instead stories about people that feature magic and superpowers in them. It's a subtle difference, but an important one, and it's one that's often easily overlooked when people read stories of the fantastic.

This was my first real exposure to Harwood's work in audio form - despite his making his name for himself as a podcaster, I read the first book in print before checking out the podcast of this one.

It was an interesting experience, going from print to audio - Harwood uses a distinctive first-person-present voice throughout the Palms books, and it felt a little awkward at first due to it. I got over it eventually - Harwoods sense of humour and great story pacing skills overcome it easily, but for the first little bit it feels like wearing shoes on the wrong foot.

Plotwise, this book deals with the fallout of the first book: Jack comes back to San Fransisco and has to deal with the Russian mobsters that he crossed in the first book, and the sex slave ring they've established in SF.

This is what happens when comic book writers learn about the many worlds theory of quantum physics: two Earths, one with DC's golden age characters and another with their silver age characters (there are others as well, but they don't factor in here). So, once a year, travel between the worlds becomes possible for some reason, and they team up to fight a menace that's too big for either group of heroes (these uber-menaces never attacked at any other point, for some reason).

I've been trying to read more silver age DC stuff, as the gang currently in charge of DC have an obvious desire to revert the company's output to the silver age in as many ways as possible, and I wanted to see what the appeal was.

I don't see it. Even comparing to what was being produced at Marvel at the time, rather than modern comics, this stuff is juvenile, simplistic, lacking in characterization, and boring. I could accept getting rid of the modern stuff if it were being replaced with something more or equally interesting, but knowing that this is what they're aiming for is just depressing.

When they're done right, tie-in novels can be really enjoyable - they can expand the universe of the original story, and create nuance and variety where some might have been lacking.

Accomplishing this would be difficult in a M:tG novel. Especially in the early days, the metanarrative of the game was minimal, so there wouldn't be much to hang a plot on, aside from working in game mechanics. It feels like the author of this didn't even try, though - it feels like he just dusted off and unused manuscript, changed a couple of names here and there, and called it a Magic story.

As far as the story itself goes, the characters are flat, we're dropped in media res into a world that isn't adequately developed, and the ending kind of just comes out of nowhere.

I can see what they were attempting with this - a marriage of indie comic sensibilities with traditional superhero type stuff. Theoretically, the type of thing that's right up my alley, but in practice I found it kind of joyless - the problem with giving a character who's a bit of an ass superpowers is that, well, he's still a bit of an ass.

One thing I absolutely loved about this, though, was the colour palette they used throughout the series.

I really need to just stop reading Geoff Johns' work, I think (if I had known this was him before I grabbed it in the library, I probably wouldn't have picked it up, to be honest).

The story's a bit of a mess. The JSA is a huge group - twenty-odd superheroes, some of whom have been heroing for over 70 years (in-story, not just in terms of publication history). There's so many of them here, in fact, that you don't really end up caring about any individual character, because there isn't enough time spent on them. These two dozen heroes spend the bulk of the book fighting this guy named Gog, who's going around killing supervillains who claim to be divine, because they're an affront to his god, also named Gog, who wakes from a centuries-long slumber and starts actually doing things to make the world a better place. The JSA distrusts him, though, for reasons that are never quite made clear.

There's also travel to two different alternate Earths, which is treated in enough of a matter-of-fact way that it almost seems boring, and doesn't really add anything to the plot (which ends on a cliffhanger that will only hold your interest if you've also read Kingdom Come, published 15 years earlier, but even then it doesn't really because they've established that that story didn't take place in the future, but rather an alternate Earth, so the “ooooh foreshadowing” falls flat).

Suicide is a tricky subject to write about. This is true when you're writing a novel, and also true when you're like Mason, the protagonist of this novel, and your job is to write about suicide. To write people's suicide notes for them.

Ghosted starts off in a Chuck Palahniuk sort of area, as you can kind of guess with the synopsis - a little misanthropic, a little nihilistic, and strung together with enough dark humour and adrenaline that you keep reading. Then, around half-way through the book, it takes a left turn and gets REALLY dark. The answer to the question “What kind of person writes suicide notes for other people?” is revealed to be “One with serious psychological and self-destructive issues”, and we also are reminded that no matter how messed up you may be, you need to be careful, because there are others who are way more dangerously messed up than you are.

I wasn't quite sure what Bishop-Stall was trying to say through the whole thing, though; it's clear from the subject material and the way that he writes about it that he isn't just out for entertainment, but wants something more. I left the novel not sure what that “something more” was, though.

Basically, I ran out and picked this book up as quickly as I could after watching the excellent film by Christopher Nolan. Of course, having seen the film spoiled the ending for me a bit, although knowing the ending allowed me to enjoy the ride for what it was, rather than trying to figure out what the secret of the film was.[return:]The basic plot: two Victorian-era magicians from differing backgrounds feud, and become obsessed with being better than each other, regardless of the personal cost. It's a terribly harrowing story, watching what depths the two men will sink to in order to achieve greatness, and seeing how terribly obsession can destroy one's life.

One of the most fascinating thing about the story is the structure of it - the entire story is told through a succession of memoirs and journal entries, which allow us to see greatly differing interpretations of the events of the story.

If you had to choose between reading the book and seeing the film, I would recommend the film; however, I would definitely recommend experiencing both to get the ‘full experience'.

This was enjoyable enough, but really nothing special. The ‘plot', such as it was, resolves around an all-girl group called Led Salad as they take part in a bunch of battles of the bands with other bands. Not ‘performing music' battles of the bands, but actual physical battles, with rocket launchers and samurai swords and the like.

Basically, though, the plot is an excuse to hang together a bunch of action scenes, sight gags, and cheesy T&A shots. It's done in a way that's over-the-top and tongue-in-cheek, so it's tolerable, but not anything special.

If you're looking to read comics with rock and roll, you'd be much better served with other titles like Scott Pilgrim or Hopeless Savages. I gave this one 3 stars, but it's really more a 2.5/5 than a true 3.

I was born in Edmonton at the tail end of the 1970s, so I always had a general awareness of the World Hockey Association, but I didn't really know much about it beyond a bunch of the teams ended up in the NHL, and that Gordie Howe played on the same team with his kids at one point. This book was clearly an education, then.

The WHA story is an interesting one - it was started by people who seemed to not know much about hockey or business, and kept itself together with little more than duct tape and prayers at times before ultimately collapsing. In doing so, though, it completely changed the business of hockey and the way it's played in North America, so it's an important history to be aware of if you're a fan of the game.

In some ways, it felt like I'd heard this story before: the rise and fall of the WHA mirrors what I've seen in a lot of other places - there are parallels here to ECW wrestling, Valiant comics, Miramax films, and the “grunge movement” in rock and roll. It's interesting to see history repeat itself that way, but kind of sad as well.

I was excited to hear Valiant comics was going to begin publishing again; not only because I was a fan of a lot of the original series, but also because I think that it's good for the comics industry to have people other than the “big two” creating within the superhero genre. So I was predisposed to liking this series, but I wasn't expecting how much I would like it.

Robert Venditti and Cary Nord tell a simplified version of X-O's origin - aliens kidnap a group of Visigoth warriors to work as slaves, and one of them steals an advanced suit of armor and escapes in it, unaware that relativistic speeds and space travel means he returns to an Earth 1600 years apart from the one he left. It's a story that contains a lot of standard pulp/superhero tropes, but it doesn't really feel like a superhero story at all; rather, it's a sci-fi story that just happens to be set in a larger world that contains people with superheroic abilities, if that makes any sense.

There's still some superhero-type content here; I mean, when Aric begins to fight the Vine aliens that have infiltrated MI-5, they send their best ninja (~!) after him in response. It's a minor element, and it keeps the story from getting too “grim and gritty”. I'm looking forward to seeing what Aric does next.

Recommended to me by a friend after she learned I was doing the Couch to 5K program to try to turn myself into a runner.

There's a lot of info here, and I didn't read all of it - some of the sections, like the one on running a marathon, don't apply to me (for now, at least), and some of them, like women's issues when running, never will. But what I read was really informative, really helpful, and really encouraging. Definitely recommended for anyone who wants to run.

Professional wrestling is a form of entertainment as fascinating as it is misunderstood. Baum understands it, though - it interests people as much for what goes on outside the ring as inside, and for the stories being told as for the action and athleticism. It's a timeless, unique form of drama, and at its best its damned entertaining.

One Fall takes place during one of the most interesting times in pro wrestling - the “Monday Night Wars” of the early 2000s, with the Global Wrestling Alliance and Revolution Wrestling taking the place of WCW and the WWF. It's not a straight analogue, though - Baum is a better storyteller than that, so he takes the elements of reality that make for a great story, twists them together, and adds fiction where appropriate. The result is a story that's a must-read for fans of pro wrestling, although I'm not sure how appealing it would be to others.

I was doing some Arthurian-based board gaming a while ago with some friends, and realized that most of my actual knowledge of the Arthur myth comes from tertiary sources, which is a little pathetic. So Iread this as part of a larger attempt to become more knowledgeable about the Arthur story.

Ironically, then, Arthur's hardly in this! He's there at the beginning, when Gawain makes his wager with the Green Knight during a Christmas celebration, but is nowhere to be seen when Gawain goes on his quest to confront the Green Knight, and faces trials and tribulations along the way to prove that he is a knight worthy of his station.

Overall, I'd say I guess I kind of liked this one? It was full of knights, adventure, and a bit of intrigue, but at the same time it didn't reall have a lot of depth to it and I can't say I connected to it in any meaningful way.

One thing I found especially interesting while reading this was in looking at where some of the storytelling priorities lay, and how different they were from modern sensibility. Gawain's decision to either betray his host or break his vow to the lady, for example, is given only a quick thought – because of course he's not going to break his word – while the hunting practices of British royalty earns several pages. I can't see something like that happening in a more modern piece.

I'd say this is a must-read for people who are really into Arthurian legend, but a pass for just about anyone else – it provdes great background to our understanding of Arthur, but doesn't really succeed as a compelling story in its own right.

A good beginning resource for all of your tiling needs.

This was something a little off the beaten path for a Buffy novel, as Buffy and most of the rest of the cast from the show doesn't really appear in the main story at all. The novel springs off of a brief story element from one episode of season five (later picked up in one episode of season seven) about Spike fighting an African-American slayer named Nikki Wood in New York in 1977.

Being a book taking place in New York in the late 1970s, and featuring a main character who is black, the book is very heavily influenced by blaxploitation cinema (Shaft and Cleopatra Jones and whatnot). There's plenty of talk about how The Fuzz is nothing but a bunch of jive turkeys, and most of the vampires in the city seem to double as gangsters and pimps. Basically, if you like that type of film, and have any interest in the Buffy ‘universe', you should be able to get a huge kick out of reading it - DeCandido really seems to relish in being able to tell this type of story. I also appreciate the fleshing out of slayers other than Buffy herself - there's this grand fantasy universe that's been created by Whedon, and it annoys me sometimes that it focuses too much on a single blonde girl in California.

I went into this thinking it was a book about the Beatles, and that's not really true - it's more a book about Jerry Levitan that discusses the role the Beatles played in his life, and how one experience can become the defining moment of a person's childhood. True to that, the book's presented as a multi-media scrapbook, with the text being supplemented by photos from the time and a DVD, as well as some funky drawings and font choices. It's a very well put together book.

The main body of the book is taken up with young Jerry's interview with John Lennon, and how as a fourteen-year-old he managed to bluff his way into Lennon's hotel room to conduct the interview. That's an amazing story in itself, before you even worry about the content of the interview, which is pure Lennon - it's naive yet jaded, hopeful and energetic yet tinged with the sadness of realism.

Also enjoyable, for me at least, was the fact that the entire thing's set in Toronto - hearing Jerry recount taking the TTC to Sam's to buy records, and things like that, give it a personal touch that I felt made it easier to connect to.

One quibble I had, though? The title. Everybody knows the walrus was Paul.

The first in a series of novels spun off of the Red Panda podcast at Decoder Ring Theatre. The podcast is an effort to recreate the feel and sound of audio dramas from the Golden Age of Radio (the Shadow, Batman, the Green Hornet, etc), and it does that well, adding enough of a modern sensibility that prevents it from feeling dated.

If you haven't listened to the podcast, I would recommend starting with that, as it serves as a better introduction. If you're a fan of the show, this is a good way to enjoy it in the off-season.

I got this out of the library. I was never a big Cyberforce reader when I was younger, despite reading a lot of early Image.

Wow, was this bad. I don't know if it's fair to call it a cheap copy of the X-Men; after all, Silvestri did draw the book for three years. The feel of it definitely is “Wouldn't it be cool if the X-Men were also cyborgs?”, though, and has enough connections of Silvestri's old book that you could almost consider it parody if you didn't know it was earnest. It doesn't do anything interesting with the idea, though - there's just one group of cyborg mutants, fighting another group of cyborg mutants, while one mutant tries to take over ... New York City, I guess? It's not really clear.

Three Day Road is three intertwined stories: The framing story of a Cree woman who has traveled to the city to collect her nephew, Xavier, who has returned home from the battlefields of the first world war missing a leg and with a new addiction to morphine. As they paddle their canoe home, Niska (the aunt) relates the story of her life to Xavier, and he narrates the story of his experience as a sniper in the trenches of France* to the reader as he slips in and out of morphine-fueled dreams. The three stories being told together help strengthen one another, providing insight into each other and deepening the emotional links between them.

This was a very powerful, although dense, read. It takes a perspective on war that isn't entirely unique (“War is tragedy not only for what soldiers do to their enemy, but also because of the type of person it changes them into”), but it's a perspective that's told very strongly and, because of the Native background of the protagonists, it does have something of a unique spin on it.

*Apparently there's a factual basis to this part of the story: due to their experience as hunters, Native soldiers made for some of the top snipers in the Canadian and British forces during WWI.

I need to break myself of the habit of guessing the ending of mystery novels, because when I can do so early on it leaves me with a possibly unfair feeling of dissatisfaction regarding a book. I think that's what happened with this one - I guess the ending with a wild “Wow, imagine if...” kind of air by around chapter two, and ended up with the actual ending. Which isn't to say that it's telegraphed, just that I was reading a mystery with little mystery to it.

I was a little confused by the behaviour of the characters at times as well - people seemed at times to go back and forth between not trusting each other and then telling each other stuff that struck me as fairly private. Overall, though, this was a fun, quick read.

Near the end of the second world war, the angels came, drawn to places of great suffering and bloodshed. They've remained on Earth since then; some of them, like Metatron, silently watching over us, while others, like Azrael, getting involved in organized crime. That's the setup, but that's not the interesting part of this novella.

The interesting part is that someone's starting killing angels.

The killing isn't what interests our protagonist, MI6 agent Killarney, at first. After all, she starts the story by attempting to assassinate Raphael. What concerns her is the systematic way in which they're being eliminated, and how that will affect the power balance of the Cold War.

This was a really enjoyable, fast-paced read. The espionage elements reminded me of the Bourne stories at their best, and the fantasy elements took what's becoming a very common story element (angels) and presented them in a way that seemed fresh and exciting, but also stayed true to the mythology of Judaism and Christianity, if not to the theology of them.

A short space opera novel about a woman who's been impregnated by a star, and whose living spaceship has become infested with a “linguistic virus eats through the minds of a group of scavengers”. I'm not entirely sure how I felt about this one.

On the one hand, it's brilliant. There are some passages here that sing with how sublime and fantastic they are (especially the first page, which had me hooked into reading the whole thing once I was done it). At the same time, it's complex and demanding. And in some ways that's a commendable quality to it - it trusts the reader enough to assume that they'll be able to follow along, and doesn't pander to them. I appreciate that. At times, though it was difficult to fully become engaged with the story, because of those same “commendable qualities”. This might just be the result of my reading habits - I read on the bus a lot, and that doesn't always allow for the deepest of interaction with a book, especially one that's working on a level like this. Regardless of how engaged I was, however, I'm really glad I read it.The opening paragraph in particular: Her lover was a supernova. She smiled when he came, his bright burning light rocking her body, impregnating her with the essence of stars. Through the metal bones of her ship she felt the gasses enter her, felt the compound light exploding inside her. Her hands clawed at the cracked vinyl of the chair, her legs spread to either side with toes stretched out, her mouth in piercing screams of ecstasy.

I'd gotten away from this series for awhile, but when I heard there was going to be a Savannah-centric book I knew I would be jumping back in, as the witches were always my favourite part of the Otherworld series.

Balance is the key to this book - Armstrong tries to balance between writing urban fantasy and writing a mystery, and Savannah tries to balance the influence of her mother, Eve, and Paige, the woman who raised her for half her life. Savannah phrases that balancing in a series of negatives - several times she mentions being “not like Paige” or “not like my mom” which leads me to believe that for all her bravado she's not really quite sure who she herself is. And it's clear from what we know about those other women that she is like them, in many ways.

Despite the supernatural trappings and characters, the story really does read like a mystery - enough that I was a little upset at first when that mystery ended up having a supernatural explanation. It makes sense when you think about it, but at first it seems kind of deus ex machina.

Speaking of the ending - I don't want to spoil it (even with the “spoiler” tag on), but well played, Armstrong, well played.

Anthology of short zombie comics from Boom! Comics.

There's a couple of really fun stories in here (the one about the flim-flam man, for example), but most of them are pretty mediocre. Putting them all together kind of highlights that, as well - there's a lot of stories with little to distinguish between them.