Angela Ambroz

They should probably only have been told once.

Also, the wymyn in this book were the lamest ever and kept dying and being stupid. SIGH!

Devastating. Should be required reading. Some of the incidents described made me feel sick. And the chapter on the “great forgetting” - and the fact that, indeed, I had almost no idea about the extent of colonial cruelty in the Congo; that, indeed, I was another American high school student who read Conrad's “Heart of Darkness” as if it was ahistorical... Really horrible stuff. Indeed, the post-colonial stuff - the murder of Patrice Lumumba by CIA-funded agents, the subsequent Leopold-esque reign of Mobutu - it's just miserable. I guess I knew this stuff in a very peripheral, superficial way; I had never thought about it or investigated it. Now that I have... damn. As I said, should be required reading.

Edited to add: On a somewhat lighter note, this book is begging to be made into a film. Michael Sheen was BORN to play Stanley, in all his insecure exuberance and cruelty. They're both even Welsh! Perhaps Clive Owen as E.D. Morel? Stephen Fry as Sir Roger Casement? Denzel Washington as William Henry Sheppard? Ian McKellan as Leopold? I'm only half-joking - cinema is one of the most powerful ways to tell history, and the fact that this book is, yes, a bestseller, but not part of high school history curricula is something that HAS to change.

Well, I'm glad I read this AFTER my major surgery, yuk yuk yuk.

V good. V early 2000s non-fiction. About the human fallibility of doctors, and how we turn a blind eye to that when we think of medicine. Everyone wants expertise, no one wants a doctor still learning the ropes.

Favorite chapter was maybe on gastric bypass surgery? Also that flesh-eating bacteria, wow. I felt unsatisfied by the chapter on “bad” doctors - aka, when doctors just... get burnt out? Tired? Overwhelmed? It felt too mushy. Maybe that was the point.

Anyway, def fun. What is Atul Gawande up to these days?????

Oh, poor Pooh. This was fine. It was just terrible to hear as an audiobook. Despite the reader (Simon Vance) being a known good reader, and despite his impressive voice talents (his Pooh was so good!).

Basically: Taoism as interpreted by the Pooh gang. It intersperses Pooh adventures with old Taoist fables, and occasional breaking-the-fourth-wall interjections. It spends a lot of time (and builds a convincing case) against intellectualism and scientism (two things I usually say they will have to tear from my cold, dead hands - but I was convinced this time).

BUT. Yo, I know Taoist stuff can be presented - like Buddhist stuff - in this super “inscrutable Eastern teachings” way, this whole “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” way. But there is some merit to being understandable. And I actually found The Path by Michael Pruett and Christine Gross-Loh to be a much more understandable, deeper, richer introduction to Taoism. Even the Kindle sample of Everyday Tao resonated more. So, yeah.

This was fine.

A YA graphic novel about a tween struggling in that twilight between being a kid and being a AAGH IT'S PUBERTYYYYY. This girl just wants to hold onto her childhood: what with its simplicity, its purity, its fantastical imagination. She reaches out to her former invisible friend who - surprise - is a ghost of a dead girl, caught in her own limbo (only much more existential).

There is lots of very specific nerding out about being a goth. There are some accurate portrayals of that time in your life: when the high schoolers seem like MAJESTIC GIANTS that one cowers before. At the same time, I found the voice a little tinny? I struggled to connect with it; there was something a little bit “tell” more than “show”, which kept me at a distance.

I love LOOOVEEEDDDD the craftsmanship notes at the end: how the character design came together, all that.

Wordless, imaginative, gorgeously rendered perfection. I loved this. More than perfect.

A corporate partnership attempting to right the wrongs of Lego's previous generation of gendered marketing. I mean, basically. LEGO is all-caps blasted on page 1, followed by Disney Princesses (not just any princesses). Man, get that brand loyalty early!

A strange narrative form: an unseen “girl” loves LEGO (!) and Disney Princesses, and plays make-believe with them. Relatable. In the make-believe story, Jasmine (of Aladdin) has lost her gold vase. There are many gold items. Also, what does a Lego vase look like? Eventually, it is recovered. The end.

My kid was mostly unsettled and maddened by the unseen girl. WHO is telling the story, they kept demanding me to answer. I had no answer.

Warm, funny, delightful. This made me want to move to Minnesota just so I could be represented by Franken and Amy Klobuchar. Also, an amazingly detailed and human look into the everyday life of Congress. Gave me hope. Gave me hope?! President Franken?!

Bah. Putting this onto the bookshelf for recent mainstream sci-fi books that are topical and ham-fisted and irritate me. i.e. American War, Underground Airlines, to some extent Exit West. Oof.

This one bothered me as much as the others - maybe even more so. It takes the raw anger and challenging discussion from our current renegotiation of gender norms (to quote Howard Dean from this) - that is, #MeToo - and reduces it to a gimmicky, reductive fantasy. The gimmick is that, one morning, women wake up with Sith lightning at their fingertips, and men must fear walking alone at night, etc. This necessarily (!?) leads to a civil war in Moldova, the founding of a new woman-centric version of Christianity, and a sudden and un-subtle reversal of many gender stereotypes: the “bimbo” news host (now a man), the corrupt and lecherous politician (now a woman), the organized crime boss (now a woman) defending the honor of her maligned/assaulted family member (now a man). Yep, the patriarchy gets supplanted by an equally oppressive matriarchy in about 5 years.

The thing that bothered me so much about this was how unbelievable the mutation's fall-out was, how caricatured the characters and their problems felt, and how heavy-handed the message was (power corrupts!). Throughout my reading, I compared it unfavorably to Y: The Last Man, which ALSO explores gender norms via a fantastical mutation (in that case, all Y-chromosome-havers except one suddenly die one day), but does so with a much defter hand. Where Y: The Last Man felt clever and enlightening, this felt ham-fisted and even patronizing. Remember when 1970s feminism was happening, and there were lots of “battles of the sexes”, like that tennis one, etc. Yeah, this book is a literal battle of the sexes. I kept googling “Manichean worldview” to try to articulate why I found this so reductive.

Also, wtffff the “barbaric Moldovan hill people” stuff?!? As a fellow East European hill person, I was like, OH COME ON.

The author, Alderman, name-drops a few titans of gender-aware spec fic in the afterword's first para: Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin (RIP), and Karen Joy Fowler. And how they personally/in personal exchanges helped make the book better etc etc. As a hill person, I must protest again, COME OONNNNNN.

Fabulous. One of the best graphic novel biographies I've read, period.

This graphic novel does something a lot of other comix bios don't do (to their detriment): it leverages the medium of art! I've read several comix bios lately where it's basically giant text infodumps accompanied by not-so-great drawings, almost like marginalia. They rarely have a “plot” or narrative flow, and we spend a lot of time, instead, getting long explanations of why Biographized Person Is Important. This really bogs the reader down.

Audobon (who I knew as “the guy that birders like” and “the bird society guy”) was, of course, an artist - and so it makes sense that this comix elevates that. But the author and illustrator also just do a good job of NOT explaining everything in text, but rather showing us this guy's life: in all its problematic (!) glory (!?). First, 19th century naturalism and Romantical connexions with Nature (as I like to call it) is super interesting; I am super into learning about this right now. (Hence the Darwin comix bio I just read.) And Audobon was very much part of that tradition: he was obsessed with documenting nature, as he saw it, as it shifted underneath him. To the point that (like the Buddha?!), he left his wife to raise their four children (!) alone for, seemingly, decades. This, of course, earns him little sympathy from a modern female reader (srsly dude?). Similarly, I didn't realize that the way he achieved his meticulous masterpieces was: travel around America using super onerous 19th century methods (years passing), kill rare bird, stuff rare bird, and then, finally, draw and paint rare bird. So he killed a lot of birds. For love!

So it's super interesting. And this comix's aesthetic was evocative, even grim. Like, he has the way of a crazy prophet about him. He did not seem pleasant. His wife is, wow, VERY SUPPORTIVE (she's basically like, “that's fine, honey, go draw your birds - good luck!”). I also didn't realize he was French. And such a schemer/hustler about his background/ambitions, but it feels like tons of 19th century, early America dudes were into that (see Hamilton, the musical).

Anyway. I learned loads. I was totally fascinated. I had SO MANY THOUGHTS. And wow, those birds are gorgeous. AND WE KILLED THE PASSENGER PIGEON TO EXTINCTION!? A wonderful book, really.

Hm, maybe 3.5? A warm, affectionate 3.5.

So MUCH IS MADE of Philip Pullman, and I admit that I get swept along by the fansquee. I was excited when I heard this was coming out. I was excited reading it. I've finished it and I'm still pretty pumped.

Even though, lo these 12+ years ago, I remember being disappointed and sort of annoyed by His Dark Materials. I guess I found it all sorts of pedantic, like Richard Dawkins wrapped up in a YA novel? Please, I can only handle one obnoxious Oxford New Atheist preaching to me. Pullman came dangerously close. But, hey, I do think these books are definitely more interesting and better for young readers than boring ol' Harry Potter, what with his Big Bad and blah blah. So maybe I'm just the wrong age for it.

For those that haven't yet read any of the Pullmanverse, I recommend those books (despite what I said above) and I recommend this. This can be read as an intro to it, honestly. This book, like His Dark Materials, takes place in Pullman's vivid visions of a weirdo alt universe Oxford, which has all the charm and romance of THIS universe's Oxford (OH BODLEIAN LIBRARY, KISS KISS) coupled with some pretty awesome fantasy elements like daemons (your spirit animal/externalized soul) and a creepy theocratic church-state of England. It's a little steampunk. There are zeppelins. Finding all the ways the alt Oxford matches this-Oxford, as well as placing its time (I think it's the early 1960s?), was fun. Like His Dark Materials, there are edgy elements of danger and threat and moral uncertainty; it doesn't have squeaky plastic Hollywood Morality, but rather presents a complicated, complex world full of many unresolved tensions. By the end, you have SOME sense of who to avoid (definitely the crazy guy whose cackling hyena daemon has a stump for a leg, that guy's trouble), but you also aren't totally sure of who everyone works for, and what their aims are. Which is good. I liked that very much.

The protagonist of this book is Malcolm, a young (11 years old?) kid who's repeatedly described as stolid and good, and is shown to be resilient, resourceful and intelligent. He works at the bar/inn in (alt) Oxford that his parents own, and lovingly polishes, paints and punts his boat, La Belle Sauvage, on the rivers Cherwell and Thames. At one point, he learns that his nun friends at the nearby nunnery are (secretly?) housing a mysterious infant named Lyra. This is not a spoiler, but Lyra is the protagonist of His Dark Materials, so you know this is important. Thus beginneth the plot. As I said, this can be read as a standalone/beginner to the previous series.

There is a LOT going on in this book; some stuff I loved, some stuff I was just like, “hey huh what now”. Which is fine. There's an extended sequence about Malcolm's school getting coopted into a Stasi state of awful fascist children who report on their parents. This wasn't explored enough! There's a veeery weird bit where we run into a, uh, druid witch of Albion or somesuch. So things swerve from Das Leben Der Anderen to the Grimm Bros!? I forgot how psychedelic Pullman can get (remember God in a box?! gosh, that was weird). There's gore. I forgot about that too! Watch out for that! And there's some uncomfortable bits. Like His Dark Materials, kids are put into real danger - which can be very distressing to read.

A note: I listened to the audiobook, and Michael Sheen - my beloved Michael Sheen! - does a GREAT job. He inhabits all the characters; his accents range credibly from American to Russian to northern English to west country English to posh English to etc. He reads with gusto and passion and, honestly, it brought a tear to my eye at times. I feel like Michael Sheen is horribly under-appreciated, so please (1) watch The Damned United, and (2) can someone please make my SPQR/Boudica idea into a movie and have Michael Sheen play the reluctant Roman general!? Because I'm tellin' ya, it'd be a hit.

Anyway, I rate this 3.5 New Colleges out of 5 Magdalens.

A wise, agnostic little book that offers a hyper-relevant application of “Eastern wisdom” (i.e. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism) to our busy, stupid Western lives.

Touched on ALLLLL the things I worry about: our society-wide attention deficit disorder (thanks, peripheral-vision push notifications); the hamster wheel of materialism and lifestyle performance via social media; the mediation of our entire careers, social networks, lives by screens designed by profit-seeking platforms; MAN, I COULD GO ON AND ON AND ON. And it spoke to my deep hunger for an escape from all this: a digital sabbath, an alternative way of to be, Deep Shit and so forth.

This book would probably be valuable to anyone, and I guess a few people will be turned off by anything that smells like self-help or religion. But the basic ideas are:
- We should focus on the process, not the product, of anything: building a career, learning an instrument, building a life, being a good person. This reminded me of Confucius's “as if” rituals, and my ol' motto, fake it til you make it.
- Keep it simple, short, and slow.

Much is made of mindfulness, or flow, or mono-focus, or whatever. Indeed, maybe this book had one of the better descriptions of this concept. But the author also reminded me of how INCREDIBLY DOOMED being mindful 100% of the time is, given the way our human brains have evolved. He gave a(n excellent) description of Zen's “beginner's mind” concept: remember when you were learning to drive, and - while driving - you were effortlessly hyper-focused on it, tuning everything else out? And now, you drive + talk + listen to the radio without exerting almost any mental effort? While your brain jumps around, looking for something else to think think think? Yeah, of course, that's our brain getting bored! Learning! Getting good at shit, making patterns. It's what our brain does. It's very valuable! But that un-patterned beginner's mind is also sacred indeed, and if we could bring it to the rest of our lives, we would be much better for it: less anxious, less obsessed with fantastical futures, and so on. Anyway, it seems impossible. It also seemed like his encouragement to essentially engage in walking meditation, washing-dishes meditation, learning-piano meditation and so on was just Advanced Buddhism and thus doomed to failure for we plain dharma noobs and mortals. But maybe I speak only for my anxious, restless self!

Anyway, of course my lens was super explicitly Buddhist, but if that turns you off, there is NO MENTION of it throughout the book - you can take it as it is, as a secular philosophy for slowing down and enjoying the ride, a la Ferris Bueller. Ah yes! One more thing! I did enjoy the author's excellent koan-ish non-koan, “When is a flower perfect?” WE ARE ALL FLOWERS, ahem.

Even though the plot kinda went off the rails in the final 25%, I simply had to rate this a FULL 5 STARS. Also, thank you, Claude.ai, for this recommendation. You know me too well.

So this is a speculative fic/scifi novel set in near future China, as it struggles with the (inevitable...) demographic madness of its One Child Policy + sexist self-selection (when you could only have 1 kid, most people chose a boy). This has long been known to be a big problem - see this legendary Amartya Sen article from 1990, this wiki page, and this WaPo article from 2018. There is a GLUT of men right now in China.

So this book speculates on how that could play out in a couple generations. Without giving too much away (since I do think the book is masterful at revealing the layers to its story), in this near future China, polyandry is legally and socially encouraged. We begin with a young, handsome himbo named Lee Wei-Guo and his two dads - Big Dad and Dad - meeting with a matchmaker and a potential match: an existing marriage of two men and a younger woman. Lee Wei-Guo is proposing to join their marriage, since the government has recently upped the “max” that marriages can accommodate: now THREE men can marry one woman!

I won't spoil anymore of the story, but... from this delightful social scifi setup, I was stunned by how humane and touching it was. It really is an open-hearted and wise portrayal of what marriage is, what family is, and... what neurodiversity is?!!

Anyway, if you loved Y: The Last Man and that one fantastic Ursula LeGuin novelette, then you will love this one too.

A nice, passionate screed about humans' ego problems vis-a-vis animal behavior studies. It should really be called “Are We Too Fragile To Understand How Smart Animals Are?” Lots of fun anecdotes and summarized research studies, mostly chimp-centric but some good appearances by other species. I particularly enjoyed:
- Crows can recognize people and hold grudges FOR YEARS.
- Chimps have politics, e.g. no grooming session among males is ever neutral, it is heavily LOADED WITH POLITICAL MACHINATIONS and allegiance forming.
- Octopuses/octopi have brains in their arms wtf.
- Dolphins (or was it orcas? something) have special trills that are used as their own names (think Captain Von Trapp's whistling) - they call each other by their trills/whistles.

Basically, this book is a giant take-down of all our human-centric Medieval hang-ups that have permeated scientific research: all the contortions scientists do to keep redefining “what makes us human”, since apparently concluding that we are JUST ANIMALS is not an acceptable answer. I had a severe eco-conversion experience in the Serengeti a couple years ago, and suddenly the scales fell from my eyes and I looked upon my human siblings as animals, JUST ANIMALS, and it was a freeing/weird Maslowian peak experience. But you soon forget about it, once you're mixing around in urban environments again. This book was a hint of a reminder of that feeling: you stare at these bipedal hairless apes walking around with their fancy tools (i.e. nice headphones) and marveling at the fact that they/we think they're/we're so special. Or, as Frans de Waal would say, evolution didn't stop from the neck up - our cognitive abilities, our SELVES and egos, share many many things with animals. They are our brothers!!!

AAAAAAAAAAGHHHH
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
SCREW YOU, BRIAN K. VAUGHAN, HOW COULD YOUUUUUUUU
I'VE BEEN LOVING THESE CHARACTERS SINCE 2013
WHYYYYYYYY OH GOD NOOOOOOOOOOO

FIONA STAPLES YOU'RE FINE, THE ART IS ALWAYS GORGEOUS
EVEN IF THE STORY TAKES A TURN
AAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Fwiw, I read issues 49-54, which will become Vol. 9 (this), which comes out in Oct 2018?

Anyway. GODDAMNNNNNN.

I've been reading Saga since 2013. Sometimes with months- or even year-long gaps in between issues and volumes. Sometimes the plot meanders. It's always gorgeous and inventive and the dialogue is always fun. I LOLed in these issues (until I was wracked by gasps and sobs). But sometimes the plot wanders. Sometimes, though (especially in the beginning), my dudes, it is a FREIGHT TRAIN.

AND BOYO TODAY I GOT SLAMMED BY THE FREIGHT TRAIN
DFSGHJFDHGDSJKVNCL FDMCKLFDMKLJDLKJGDSLAKGJ

A pretty fun, inspiring survey of progressive economics. Not sure if this would land much with non-economists, but - if you've ever swum around econ departments - this was quite fun.

Some things I want to keep in mind and dig deeper into:
- The economics of open source software
- Coops (especially software coops)
- Any post-capitalist stuff
- Any degrowth stuff
- That new Acemoglu book
- Those people 3D printing stuff in sub-Saharan Africa; and the general idea of 3D printing as a leapfrog similar to mPesa?

I enjoyed the cultural histories of economics, as a field. e.g. The eventual caricature of “homo economicus”. The constant criticisms/caveats that kinda get forgotten or caricatured away (especially by libertarians, DO NOT GET ME STARTED - I feel so much pain when Republicans/libertarians mansplain economics to me when they clearly didn't get past Econ 102).

Also enjoyed the emphasis on the power of images. This aligns with this great course I took on data visualization. The visual cortex!! IT IS A VERY POWERFUL SHORTCUT TO THE BRAIN.

Stuff I didn't care for:
- This felt quite fluffy (and Oxfamy!) and, ahem, not super rigorous. It was mostly a cri de ceour/impassioned blog post. That's fine, of course, but it did make me miss mainstream econ academia, if only for its stuffy Lagrangians and econometrics.
- I was pretty turned off by the self-promoting vibe, e.g. “I was talking to [random person] about my great idea, Doughnut Economics, and everybody clapped”. It's like... okay.

Ya know, Bill Watterson could be very pedantic and heavy-handed with his moralizing. Woof. Some of those panels, eh.

But such is the way with geniuses! And the clarity and craftsmanship and purity of his art/vision is really remarkable. I read this now, after reading it in childhood, and found myself LOLing at maybe 50% of the strips. I was compelled to take pictures and send them to my loved ones. LOOK. LOOK AT HOW FUNNY AND TRUE THIS IS. I wish we all had a Hobbes! I also wish I had the fluid perfection of Watterson's pen. extreme artistic jealousy

A quiet, meditative look into the terror and ruthlessness of the natural world. Mom Rabbit leads her litter of Mini Rabbits along to hop. listen. graze. But then it's time to FREEZE. because a fox has appeared. That fox doesn't seem so cute now, eh! A predator! The circle of life - not so cute!

This follows in the usual genre of “children's lit that uses rabbits as an allegory for the existential despair we feel when acknowledging the randomness of suffering” - in other words, this can be used as a prelude to Watership Down. A rabbit's life is one of idyllic, green pastures, Cornish hills, and, occasionally, ABSOLUTE TERROR.

This is one of my parenting agenda books, like the anti-racist baby one and the “how to be a good Buddha baby” one. This is basically Buddhist. It's basically Plato's cave. Or Rashomon. It's telling a VERY IMPORTANT LESSON. Aka reality is in the eye of the beholder.

Anyway, my kid finds it completely boring. I will keep trying!! You will learn this lesson, child!!!

I'm trying to be ruthless in my DNFing these days, and I must cut this one off. It just feels like your usual ye olde feministe scifi tale.

It features a magical Earth Mother type (she's a healer! in touch with nature! healing with snakes!), much wearied by toiling under the patriarchy (aren't we all). There is a strong female gaze introduction of Sexy Dude, what with his dark hair with streaks of gray and long lithe hands and so on. I was rolling my eyes here, SO INCREDIBLY BORED. Yo, and I say this as someone who, had I read this 20 years ago - 10 years ago - nay, maybe even 5 years ago - I would have totally been into it. Yeah, man, give me that salt and pepper-haired catnip. But now: blegh.

In this world of rapidly changing gender norms, with MeToo and trans visibility and corporate Pride Parades, a loooot of stuff - books, TV shows, movies - has aged REALLY fast. While Ursula Le Guin's 1970s fem sf books hang on, still feeling fresh and relevant and progressive, this one I found just ugh. I feel like we've moved past it.

DNFing this super early (3%!). But it is already rubbing me the wrong way, here, now, in 2025. I don't feel like I'll learn anything? I hate to be so damning. It's a highly-rated book! But, my thoughts so far:
- It feels so very dated.
- It feels like a guide for the anxious white liberal, post-Trump's 2016 election, to understand the (anxious?) white conservative.
- She calls Black people “blacks”. This is maybe just euphemism treadmilling, but that kept jarring me. I started hunting to see if she called white people “whites”.
- She doesn't contextualize the “irrational” political behaviors as existing within white supremacist institutions. For example, she mentions how very poorly Louisiana does on a bunch of indicators - and the relationship of, presumably, poor Louisianans to the social welfare state. But she doesn't immediately (and it should be immediate!) cut these indicators by race. I immediately thought of, e.g. Dying of Whiteness.

Anyway, given all this, I'm DNFing this. It's an artifact! Immediately outdated! Sob.

I feel bad saying this, but I found this book kind of a slog.

The good
The plot is brilliantly structured: our (first person) narrator is a secret agent of the Communist northern Vietnamese forces, embedded with a general in the southern army, during the last days of the Vietnam War. We open with the fall of Saigon, follow the fleeing southern forces to LA, where they continue fighting the war in the diaspora, assisted (and manipulated?) by American CIA operatives, with assassinations, plots and guerilla intrigues.

There's a clever meta-commentary woven throughout the book: the duplicity and dualism of Orientalism's take on “the East” vs. “the West”, of subjugation and racism and power, of capitalism vs. communism, coupled with a mixed race protagonist who's playing both sides. At the same time, as this book makes points about the lack of Vietnamese representation in the narrative of the Vietnam War (e.g. in a brilliant sequence when the protagonist assists a Francis Ford Coppola-stand-in directing his Apocalypse Now), this book itself is one of the few (only?) books about the Vietnam War written by a Vietnamese-American author for an American audience. Just like the protagonist tries (and fails) to shape the narrative to include more Vietnamese voices in the fictional film, so is Viet Thanh Nguyen clearly writing with that in mind with this book.

There's even more duality and layers which I admired: when the play-within-the-play film features (further) meta-meditations on duality and representation (with surviving southern soldiers, now refugees, are cast as extras portraying dying Viet Cong), we have the same events happening later in the ‘real life' of the book (and our fiction). There's even a bit towards the end, when the narrator has fully embraced his split/dual nature, when the writing becomes full of groan-inducing double entendres: so meta!

So why slog?

The bad
Alas, I just found the writing really ugh. Using ‘voiceover narration'-style storytelling, whether in movies or in books, always risks becoming just one long exposition, where the narrator explains the story, rather than letting it happen. Here I felt like I was told, rather than shown, things and the voice was often over-written, even purple at times, with a snarky, overly self-aware quality. I never, ever forgot about the author, and that meant I never really suspended my disbelief.

I'm sorry. This is just fine. Really pedestrian. Yeah, it's relatable. But it's also super basic. I dunno. It's fine.

A brief, spare comix about some young people doing the Japanese English teacher program (where you spend a year or two in Japan teaching English in schools). I loved the art, and really appreciated the change in perspective - from the Guy That Arrived This Year, to (zooming back) the Guy That Just Left. That made me do a double-take, and I appreciated it. Interesting storytelling!

But, as others have noted, the guy we spend a lot of time with (the Guy That Just Left) is really a gratingly passive sad sack. The comix feels both sympathetic and critical of his behavior - I mean, he's just a shy kid, basically, fresh out of college and paralyzed by culture shock - but it does wear on you, the reader. He is juxtaposed against the fellow English teacher girl from the neighboring town, who seems to be a social butterfly. I kinda just wanted to shake him. But, then again, that can happen when you're an expat: you don't get over the culture shock hump, but just kinda wallow in alienation and loneliness.

Meh, not bad, not great. A hodgepodge of existing sf/space fantasy stuff, like:
- Robots turning evil and attempting large-scale genocide of humans (as in Battlestar Galactica)
- Their disappearance, the uneasy waiting for their return (as in Attack on Titan)
- A big, bulky comic relief rock man (as in Guardians of the Galaxy)
- The fashion and design of The Fifth Element
- A “I'm not a [x], I'm a doctor!” moment, a la olde Star Trek- A little boy bot who misses his lost, human family (a la AI)And so on.I mean, it's fine. Whatever. The art is delicate and gorgeous. I'll probably read Vol. 2.