Ryan

This was just fascinating. Interesting characters, a unique culture (somewhat Persian steampunk influenced by two different alien races), and an ominous prophecy about the end of humanity. Ellie Ann has woven an interesting and fascinating tapestry with this story; it was a pleasure to read.

I've come to really dislike massive, cross-title crossovers as a genre; this one was fun because it mostly sidesteps that to tell a story focusing on Carol, rather than telling a story about a Skrull invasion that Carol just happens to be present for. Reed's version of the character is strong, principled, and unafraid to kick ass. She's a fun character to read about.

The one thing that took away from this was the art. I knew what I was getting in for (Greg Horn on covers with some dude from Witchblade on interiors), but it was hard to take the story seriously at times when it's full of the hero posing like a pin-up model in the middle of a fight scene.

I was disappointed in this, given the bona fides of the creative team involved. Violence and cynicism in the pursuit of telling a story that's nothing but violent and cynical doesn't strike me as being a story worth reading. Because it's Morrison I keep trying to think of some deeper meaning to imbue the story with, but I got nothing.

This book has 416 pages. I was really enjoying it for the first 415. It featured interesting characters, an epic, thematically-interesting threat, and gorgeous visuals. and then, it just ends. Right in the middle of a big, epic fight scene, everything literally fades to white. There's literally no ending to this story. It just stops, whichis incredibly frustrating.

There's an often under-appreciated art to blockbuster action sequences, and Micheline and Lapham are masters of that art. They managed to combine superpowers, sci-fi body mods, an A-Teamesque group of characters, into a thoroughly entertaining series. I'd gladly be reading this every month if they were still making it.

This was a fun, daring work. It manages to reimagine The War of the Ring from Mordor's perspective in a believable way, as well as looking at how the after-effects of the war would have played out in a “realistic” setting. The end result is a book that you would need to be well-versed in Tolkien to appreciate, while also being something that most Tolkien fans would probably dislike as it “ignores the beauty” and “misses the point” of the original. Regardless, I loved the concept of “history is written by the victors” applied to a beloved tale.

I was torn by this because it was just okay. The new additions to the team are two of my favourite modern Marvel characters, but I think their presence makes the team less interesting by making it too human-focused. Beyond their introduction, there wasn't much else going on here - it felt like Bendis resetting the Guardians so he could tell the story he wanted (as opposed to just telling a good story)

If there was one thing this book was missing, it was a chip in it, like greeting cards have, so that it could belt out SOMEBODY SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE MEEEEEEEEEEE every time you opened the book. Aside from that, it's a pitch-perfect extension of the Smallville version of Superman, capturing the thematic tone, unique character voices, and melodrama that made the show so popular.

Dark Horse's foray into superhero comics was a bit of a mess. There were some interesting ideas here - I love the way that the action is broken up into four different locations, each with their own unique feel - and there were some interesting character designs as well.

However, the collection also suffers from being something of a disorganized mess. Dark Horse tried to supercharge a superhero universe in 16 weeks with as much depth and content as Marvel and DC built over decades. As a result, even after 400 pages the characters feel flat and paper-thin.

Didn't read the whole thing - there's a lot here that's reference material for someone actually playing the RPG, and I wasn't interested in that. I just wanted to get an idea for the world of the Centurions before diving into the novels inspired by the game.

Seems like it would be a fun game to play sometime, though, for people with pulpy interests.

Absolutely deserving of the “essential” tag. This one was kind of rough around the edges at times - Lee and Kirby were basically reinventing how superhero stories were told, so it's understandable that they'd take a while to make everything gel properly. It was fascinating to see how certain elements were there from the start, while others took a while to evolve properly.

This was a hilarious, sentimental story of a middle-aged man whose life is in such complete disarray that he figures the only way to make sense of it is to run 26.2 Miles. Like every decision made to run long distances, this ends up being brilliant. As Shulman runs the marathon, and reminisces preparing for it, he undergoes an existential crisis and realizes his life is in shambles.

I've never run a marathon, but I have done distance running, and a lot of Shulman's experience rang true for me. Funny and bittersweet, The Other Shulman would be a good read for anyone who's taken up the sport of running, or who's been through life-changing experiences that left them reminiscent of days gone by.

With Nigh, Bilodeau provides an intriguing and enticing inroduction to a modern fantasy rooted in classic storytelling conventions. For those interested in reading a serialized story, it promises to be an interesting story experience.

For a more detailed review, visit https://northerntomorrows.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/nigh-1-by-marie-bilodeau/

An odd little book about an odd little time in Canadian history.

The Fenian raids were part of the ongoing attempt by Irish republicans to liberate their homeland from the British empire. In 1866, realizing that they couldn't win in open warfare against the British, they decided to try to invade Canada, thinking that they could either ransom a conquered Canada back to Britain in exchange for a free Ireland, or they would just keep it and rename it New Ireland. Their plan might have worked, too, except that it was a horribly poorly thought out plan, carried out by incompetents who completely misunderstood the relationship between the Canadian colonists and Mother England. The fear caused by these raids was apparently one of the motivations behind Confederation, though, so I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before now.

The book itself is oddly structured, too - MacDonald is clearly passionate on the subject of Canadian identity and loyalty to the crown, and doesn't hide that at all. He breaks up the narrative at times, though, with pages and pages of lists of the individual soldiers who fought in different engagements with the Fenians, with special mention of those who were wounded or died. I get that he wanted to show his respect to the fallen, but it created a really uneven reading experience.


PS: Not that John A MacDonald. A different one.

Pretty average, in the way that a lot of Dick's early work tends to be. If you're a fan, it's worth reading to see how far he came by the end of his career, but otherwise it's just a fairly generic mid-century sci-fi story.

This was a nice, short little read that takes several classic elements of Celtic folklore and presents them in a more modern context. It was a highly enjoyable read, and O'Sullivan adds explanations of the traditional legends associated with each story, which makes it a highly accessible one as well.

With Driven, Kelley Armstrong returns to her Women of the Otherworld series for the first time in four years. This entry in the series focuses on Elena, adjusting to her roles both of mother and of Alpha to a werewolf Pack, as she leads an investigation into a serial murderer that's started to attack other lycanthropes. The Elena we see here is a far cry from the reluctant werewolf that Elena was when the series started, and it was really enjoyable to see her slide into these roles and perform them in a way that readers wouldn't have expected from previous characters that have held that role.

Another family-related element of the story that was really striking was the interaction between Clay and Malcolm, the man who in many ways was a father to him. Malcolm's shadow has hung over Clay since the series began, and seeing him come to terms with that made for a very interesting evolution of his character.

Beyond the family elements, the rest of the main plot was a little underwhelming. The Cain clan, the main victims of the killer, have appeared before in the series, but have always been a bit forgettable as antagonists. Ideally, they could have been – they're organized in such a way that they almost form a dark mirror to the Pack, but none of the individuals in the family stand out as being as interesting as the Pack they seem to try to emulate. Because of this, it was a little hard to have regard for them as victims, which in turn made it difficult to see the killer as an actual threat to the Pack members.

Despite this, for fans of Armstrong's long-running Women of the Otherworld series, this book will be an absolute delight – it provides for a chance to check in with their favourite wolf pack, and provides a good luck at how much the Pack has evolved since Bitten was released in 2004. If you're new to the Otherworld book series (even if you've come to the characters through the Bitten TV show), you might be better served by jumping in at an earlier point – a new reader would be able to understand the plot of Driven well enough, but a lot of the interactions between Malcolm, Clay, and Elena would lack a lot of the emotional impact that it deserves. Then, once you have, come back for this one, because you'll love it.

(review originally published at http://northerntomorrows.wordpress.com. Thanks to Subterranean Press for making a copy of this book available for review)

This was a really enjoyable read. The public image/stereotype of Buddhists is usually that they've somehow transcended conflict, and live completely serene lives. Hamilton provides a good counterpoint to that stereotype, and shows that Buddhists are just as likely as any other people to experience conflict in their personal and professional lives. What's different for them, and what she makes a good case for, is the tools Buddhism makes available for dealing with those conflicts. It definitely gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I experience and process conflict in my life.

This was an enjoyable read. Jenning”s depiction of the madness that living in England during The Blitz must have been, but the central crime story didn't draw me in that strongly.

This was really interesting. I'm not someone who knows a whole lot about hip-hop beyond the basics, so seeing how Parker explains the interplay between music, gang violence, and inner-city life was pretty interesting. It was also interesting as a memoir for him as a member of the black community working for NYPD, and some of the challenges he faced while in that role. His writing voice is bombastic and at times braggadocious, but I found it fit the subject material well.

This was a nice continuation of the series. It continued to not really be about Fionn, which is fine, because in Fionn's aunt, Bodhmall, and her lover Liath Luachra, O'Sullivan has created an intruiging warrior women who each provide their own strength to the narrative. I could continue reading a series about just them without any difficulty.

In its simplest description, The Watch That Ends the Night seems like a lighthearted romantic comedy - a man marries the widow of his best friend, and years later their relationship is thrown into chaos when the friend walks back into their life years later. It's so much more than that, though: this novel is an introspective look at the human condition, and of a society that seeks to leave behind the horrors of the Second World War and enter a newer, more modern world.

I read this (and discovered MacLennan as a writer) entirely because of Gord Downie paying homage to him in a song. I mention this not to be self-effacing, but because the material that he drew from is essential to understanding the themes of the book:

“I at least discovered this: that there is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and that the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.”

The Watch That Ends the Night is a breathtakingly beautiful meditation on the process of aging, the ways that our life experiences shape the person we become, and the ways that our understanding of romantic love are impacted by those things.

Another fantastic volume of this series. Superhero comics often build themselves up on an edifice of being concerned with “justice” as a concept, but Ostrander is one of those few who looks critically and analytically at what that means. Should superheroes concern themselves with environmental justice? Where does the line fall between justice and vengeance? What place does justice have in areas where conflict has become multi-generational? (this includes visits to both Northern Ireland and Israel in this volume)

I wanted to love this. Peter and Mary Jane were one of the greatest love stories in comics - I went so far as to stop reading Marvel for years after their marriage was demonically annuled. So seeing them back together (with daughter Annie in tow) was great. The Parker family bits of this were great to read.

However, there's a metaphor here that I'm deeply uncomfortable with. Mary Jane is given superpowers (because comics), and it's eventually revealed that when she uses those powers she's sapping Peter of his strength. The implication being that marriage weakens you, which is an unfortunate metaphor to have (whether it's intentional or not), and which undermines the whole point of having these characters together.

This was a fun thriller. I love the central idea (a city in the wilderness where people can disappear to avoid or escape from negative experiences in their life), and Casey is a strong, likable protagonist (which is pretty much par for the course for one of Armstrong's novels). In comparison to Armstrong's other work it's definitely more like Nadia Stafford than the Otherworld material, while still managing to have its own strong sense of identity.