Published: October 17th, 2018 Publisher: Europe Comics Genre(s): Science Fiction, Graphic Novel Format: ebook Length: 184 pages
Alt-Life is the story of what happens when two horny French people volunteer as beta testers for an all-encompassing VR experience that lets them escape from the polluted, dying Earth. Once you’re inside the VR devices, which look like giant red eggs full of undulating cilia, the system integrates with your body and you live out the rest of your life on the inside.
For the first year they’re inside the devices, Josiane and René are alone in an infinite world, testing out the system so that the rest of humanity can join them when it’s ready. They explore its limits and discover that there aren’t any as long as your device has enough memory. They also explore every possible sexual fantasy. Josiane sinks into endless hedonism, but René quickly becomes disillusioned with the lack of substance in his imagined encounters and loses his sex drive.
This, then, is where more existential questions come into play. If you can have anything you imagine with the snap of your fingers, does any of it have meaning or value? What does it mean to be rich or powerful in a virtual world? The arrival of other humans in the virtual world brings even more complications because, by that time, Josiane and René have changed in immeasurable ways.
While René and Josiane are inside their virtual world, we also get glimpses of the world outside. It’s obvious that the Earth has become inhabitable, presumably due to some kind of environmental catastrophe (sound familiar?) and humanity has created these bizarre organic VR devices as a way to preserve themselves in some form, even if that means living out the rest of their lives in an imaginary world.
From reading some of the other reviews of this book, it seems like the wall-to-wall sex was a bit much for some readers, but Alt-Life is about more than just sex. Instead, the author explores the nature of humanity and what it could mean to give up on “real life” and retreat into a virtual refuge. It just happens to be a particularly horny refuge.
I especially enjoyed the art style. At first, everything is minimalist, all solid colors and simple lines, but once Josiane and René start letting loose and playing with their abilities, there are huge panels full of bright colors and meticulous detail. It’s a beautiful book. My only criticism is that the dialog is lettered in a tight cursive, which makes it difficult to read.
Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.
Published: July 17th 2018 Publisher: Del Rey Genre(s): Fantasy, Humor, Satire Format: ebook Length: 384 pages
Kill the Farm Boy is a silly book that sends up and undermines some well-worn clichés of the fantasy genre’s hero narrative. It asks questions like “What does it mean to be the Chosen One?” and “Who deserves to be a protagonist?” and then unloads goat poop on them. This succeeds with varying results.
I read most of the book on a three-hour plane ride, and at first I did enjoy it. Somewhere in the middle, though, it started to drag a bit, and I still hadn’t finished it by the time my trip was over. Instead, I switched gears and finished Meddling Kids, which I read at a snail’s pace over the last few months.
I think part of the reason that I lost momentum was that the book started feeling a bit muddled, as though the story underlying the jokes and satire wasn’t as robust as it needed to be. Also, I was no longer trapped inside a metal tube hurtling through the sky, so I had more things to distract me.
The main twist to Kill the Farm Boy is that the protagonist isn’t who you think it’s going to be after the first chapter. When the book opens, we meet an unremarkable farm boy named Worstley anointed as Chosen One by a sketchy-seeming fairy who also gives Worstley’s goat the power of speech. Worstley and Gustave, the goat, set off on a quest to do something or other involving destiny and then the story takes a decisive left turn that I won’t spoil here.
As the adventure continues, the cast of characters grows and we meet an oddball assortment of misfits and outcasts. Each one gets some time in the spotlight, but it’s sometimes hard to tell which character is driving the story, and I quickly forgot the aim of their quest after putting the book down for a few days.
The general silly tone also means that the stakes feel non-existent, even when characters suddenly and unexpectedly die. Every death plays as comedy. Also, there are several moments where it feels like the authors are summarizing something tedious to save time and jump ahead even though the book still feels like an overlong joke.
I definitely laughed or chuckled several times while reading this book, so it was an enjoyable read. I just wish there was something more interesting underneath all the silliness. Not every comic fantasy author can be Terry Pratchett, though they might try.
Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.
Written by: Lewis Trondheim (Zep) Illustrations by: Dominique Bertail
Published: July 10, 2018 Publisher: Lion Forge Comics Genre(s): Graphic Novel, Science Fiction Format: Digital Length: 105 pages
If I didn’t already know that Infinity 8 is a French comic, reading it would make that crystal clear. It has a French feel about it, from the art reminiscent of Moebius, to the laconic dialogue scenes, to (most tellingly) the glimpse of casual nudity and the protagonist who wears a skin-tight spacesuit straight out of 1950s pinup illustrations.
It isn’t a very complex book, but I did enjoy it well enough. The main character, Yoko Keren, is an agent tasked with saving everyone on her ship from certain catastrophe. The captain of her ship is a massive alien who can roll back time eight hours to give them another chance to survive, but it needs her help to know what to expect. This means that Keren can fail up to a certain point, but she has to prevent the ship and captain from being destroyed before they can roll back time.
When Keren goes outside the ship to investigate an anomaly, she discovers a debris field full of dead bodies – a veritable floating space necropolis. Shortly thereafter, she is followed outside by a species of aliens who can’t resist eating the dead, and hijinks ensue. This mostly involves dead things exploding in chunks of gore and aliens chasing her because they want to kill and eat her. She handles all of this with aplomb and never seems particularly ruffled, even when coated with blood and gore or fending off the attentions of an amorous alien.
For some reason Keren is also obsessed with having a baby, constantly scanning everyone around her for their genetic suitability. Mostly this involves scanning aliens and telling them that they wouldn’t work. It’s a very odd detail to include.
I think mostly I enjoyed the art style and the deadpan conversations Keren has with the aliens she meets in space in the middle of a field of corpses. It’s all so very macabre and charming.
The series does continue after this volume, but it feels like it could wrap up here. This volume reads like a fairly self-contained story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. To be honest, I’m not sure if I would be interested in reading the rest of the series.
Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.
The ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood has a miniature bookstore in their lobby curated by One Grand Books. They ask actors, artists, writers and other creatives to pick their ten “desert island reads” and explain their choices.
Browsing through these selections is a great way to kill time while you wait for your movie to start. Some of the lists are better than others, though. It’s clear that some curators chose books designed to impress, where others actually selected books they loved and wanted to share.
Of course, that isn’t really surprising. Picking your all-time top-ten favorites has always been catnip for pretentious pop-culture know-it-alls, especially when they can share them in mixed company. Knowing that everyone will see that you picked Infinite Jest is irresistible to a certain kind of person.
Even still, it sounded like a fun challenge, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I tried to approach it as though these might be the only books I could read for years, or possibly the rest of my life. Hopefully I avoided picking anything too pretentious.
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. I think I could be happy with nothing but Discworld books on my imaginary desert island, but if I could pick only one from the series, it would be this book about Sam Vimes and the Night Watch. Pratchett was one of the most humane, hilarious and incisive authors I’ve ever read, and Night Watch is one of his masterpieces.
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. This is another case where I’d probably be happy with nothing but an entire series of books. Barring that, I’d settle for this, the first Culture novel, which sets the tone for the series and kicks things off with a widescreen action-adventure that still has something to say about the universe and the people in it.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Mitchell is a genre chameleon of the highest order, and this, his most well-known book, is ambitious and showy in all the right ways. He completely switches styles for the half-dozen nesting stories that form this stunning novel, but that doesn’t detract from the amazing storytelling and characters throughout.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Epic, exciting and hilarious, this book jumps back and forth in time from World War II to the present-day. It explores the thesis that nerds and hackers have been around for a very long time, and that they’ve always changed the world, sometimes in very strange and unexpected ways.
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. This is a great, very weird, very funny book, overstuffed with fantastic characters, killer ninjas, a surrealist apocalypse, and a mind-bending twist. Harkaway reads a bit like Douglas Adams’s comic sensibilities crossed with William Gibson’s future-shock.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I read this series so many times when I was a kid. It’s a foundational work for me, and nobody does that particular brand of madcap satire nearly as well. I’m well past overdue for a re-read.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman. This rambling shaggy-dog story about an ex-con who gets mixed up in the world of forgotten gods was one of the first Gaiman books I read, and it still stands up after all that time. I love spending time in this world with these characters.
Middlemarch by George Eliot. I loved this sprawling story about small-town British life. I read it after watching the first season of Downton Abbey because I was looking for something that scratched that same itch. It probably helped that I listened to an amazing audiobook version, but I definitely fell in love with the characters.
The Dead Zone by Stephen King. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, and this is the book that I always recommend to people who’ve never read his stuff. At heart, it’s a thriller with a vein of dark fantasy running through it. Although the horror elements are there, they’re fairly low-key, so it’s a good entry point for the squeamish. Really, though, it’s actually a character study about a good man put in an impossible situation (a theme common to King’s works).
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. When I finished this book, I sat there stunned for a solid few minutes. Bester builds a mind-bending sci-fi adventure on top of the loose outlines of The Count of Monte Cristo. Reading this made me sit up at attention more than once.
Published: October 18, 2016 Publisher: Hachette Audio Genre(s): Crime, Thriller, Mystery Format: Audiobook Length: 9 hours and 8 minutes
Joe Ide’s debut novel, IQ, won’t revolutionize the detective genre, but it does tell an entertaining story about well-drawn and complex characters. It wasn’t the most exciting crime novel I’ve ever read, but I’d be happy to follow the future exploits of Isaiah Quintabe wherever they lead.
Isaiah – IQ for short – is a smart, talented guy whose life changed tragically when a hit-and-run driver killed his brother, Marcus, right in front of his eyes. Before his brother’s death, Isaiah might have gone on to college and great things, but that all fell apart in an instant.
After the accident, Isaiah withdrew into himself, living alone in the apartment he’d once shared with his brother and hoping that social services wouldn’t come for him. When his money ran out and it reached the point that he might lose the apartment, he offered a room for rent to a kid named Dodson in a moment of desperation. Their uneasy friendship would soon have wide-reaching affects on both of their lives.
IQ jumps back and forth between 2005, when Isaiah and Dodson take up a life of crime that escalates with deadly results, and 2013, when Dodson brings Isaiah a case to solve the attempted murder of a dissolute rapper by a hitman with an enormous pit bull.
The best parts of IQ are the characters and the world they live in. Isaiah and Dodson are friends first by necessity, but as they try to solve a case together as adults, it becomes clear that their friendship runs deeper than their youthful robbery spree.
The actual case feels a bit low-stakes because the potential victim is an asshole burnout rapper doing his best to alienate everyone he knows. It’s hard to have much sympathy for a millionaire too doped out of his mind to think straight. That said, the villain is definitely creepy, and the unique detail of having him breed and train pit bulls is off-kilter in a particularly LA way.
Isaiah is a bit of a DIY detective, almost entirely self-taught after he dropped out of high school. When he solves a mystery, it doesn’t feel like another example of the Smartest Guy in the Room throwing his weight around. Instead, he uses inductive reasoning and makes his best guesses at likely outcomes, not always with perfect results.
IQ is a quick, entertaining read, and the audiobook has an excellent narrator. I enjoyed the book, and I’ll probably pick up the sequel, but it isn’t at the top of my list.
Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley, but I listened to the audiobook from Audible.
Written by: Anthony Del Col Art by: Werther Dell’Edera Published: November 28th 2017 Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Genre(s): Crime, Graphic Novel Format: Digital Length: 162 pages
Maybe Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Big Lie would have resonated for me a bit more if I’d ever read Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys. Instead, I’ve only ever seen their cover illustrations and imagined the sort of squeaky-clean peril they might get themselves into. I think, though, that I still wouldn’t have gotten much from this too-serious gritty reimagining of the classic teen mysteries.
The introduction to The Big Lie admits that it takes inspiration from the revelatory Afterlife With Archie, a series that thrillingly juxtaposes familiar Archie characters with zombie horror to great effect. The problem is that The Big Lie only suffers by comparison.
Where Archie subverts familiar characters and tropes without losing the essence of the originals, The Big Lie tells a dour modern-day noir that slaps Hardy and Drew names on bland, interchangeable characters. It isn’t subversive because there isn’t enough substance there to subvert.
Instead, it confuses a grim, serious tone with maturity, suffers from some serious holes in logic, and hangs it all on a boilerplate storyline about corrupt cops, drug dealers, and unexpected murderers. I didn’t care about or relate to any of the characters, and I also didn’t much like the art.
If I was going to write a modern noir update of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy mysteries, I think I would ground it in story where they’re all still crime-solving kids, but the mystery has higher stakes. You could still flash-forward and show them as adults, but the core has to be about something that happened when they were kids.
Although I do like the idea of rebooting classic stories from a fresh new angle, I can’t recommend The Big Lie. It misses the mark in so many ways and delivers something both bland and uninteresting.
Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.
I originally picked up The Readymade Thief by Augustus Rose because the cover caught my eye, but the summary and a few blurbs from some of my favorite authors finished the sale. I started reading it soon after I bought it, and loved the first half so much that I enthusiastically recommended it to several people. Unfortunately, the latter half of the book feels messy, and the ending is a bit unsatisfying. I would still recommend it, but not without a few caveats.
The main character, Lee, is an intelligent and resourceful girl who finds herself backed into a life on the run after a series of mistakes and personal betrayals. Lee is the main reason the book works as well as it does for as long as it does; she’s a sympathetic and compelling character trying to find her way in the world under impossible circumstances. It also helps that I love stories about secret societies and histories that exist just out of view, and a character forced into the margins of society is the perfect person to explore that kind of world.
Like most high schoolers, Lee dreams of going to college, but she builds her funds by shoplifting and selling her classmates the goods. When the school finds her best friend’s drugs in Lee’s locker, she takes the fall and ends up in juvie. After a few excruciating months of bullying and stress, Lee escapes, and that’s when things get interesting.
Now homeless and friendless, Lee falls on the mercy of a strange organization called the Société Anonomie. They’re mostly known for throwing wild parties and dressing up in antiquated clothing, but they also run a house for homeless runaways where Lee winds up when she needs somewhere to sleep. It isn’t long before she discovers something more sinister going on at the SA house. In her haste to escape, she steals an object precious to the SA, and spends the rest of the book trying to decide what to do next. Should she run, fight, or give back what she stole in the hope that they’ll leave her alone?
There are a lot of things I loved about The Readymade Thief, which is why I’m sad that it doesn’t stick the landing. My favorite parts are when Lee is living in the houses of people on vacation, going on night-time excursions to abandoned places with her new friend Tomi and trying to figure out why the SA wants a stolen Duchamp readymade. Trying to solve a mystery is almost always the most engaging part.
I started having problems with the book when it became obvious that Lee could probably give back the Duchamp and the SA would leave her alone, but the story kept manufacturing reasons for her to stay invested. The real problem is that Lee doesn’t have a driving, personal reason to stop the SA. All she wants is for everyone to leave her alone so that she can live her life. She’s an interesting character, but she isn’t a crusading hero-type. The best she can manage is a quest for vengeance, but her plans all fall apart because she keeps doing stupid things without thinking.
The hoariest cliché arrives during the climax, when Lee finally confronts the villain. He monologues for pages, helpfully connecting the dots and explaining his organization’s true motivations. That device rarely works without feeling heavy-handed, and here it just misses the mark.
The best parts of The Readymade Thief help make up for its flaws, but the one downside of a shaky ending is that it’s the last thing you remember about a book. That’s probably why my criticisms are still so fresh in my mind. Even so, The Readymade Thief is worth a read, and I’ll definitely keep an eye out for future books by Augustus Rose.
I read a lot of books in 2017, but most of them were graphic novels.
That does feel a bit like cheating, but I made up for it by reading them in high volumes and by tackling a few massive books over the course of the year.
The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher — Audiobook, 21 hrs and 46 mins, 2015 — I’m a fan of Butcher’s Dresden Files series, which is especially good in audio form, but I’ve been a little hesitant to try his other books because epic fantasy isn’t my bag. The Aeronaut’s Windlass might have convinced me to give the rest of his stuff a try, though. It definitely has an epic length, but it also has steampunk trappings and talking warrior cats. It helps that it doesn’t fall prey to the clichés of epic fantasy that I remember turning me off when I read The Wheel of Time and The Sword of Truth back in the day. The early chapters were a little slow going, but after I dug deeper into the world, it had me hooked. It also helps that it reads like a standalone even though it’s the start of a series.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells — Digital, 156 pages, 2017 — This novella has easily one of the best and most compelling narrators I’ve come across in a long time. Murderbot, as they secretly call themself, is a corporate security android who hacked their own governor module so that they could watch endless soap operas and ignore stupid orders from humans. All they want is for the humans to leave them alone, but when danger arises, they decide to help despite their scorn for humanity and general social anxiety. Hijinks ensue, and the humans learn the shocking truth that their security robot is a thinking and feeling being.
American Gods (Tenth Anniversary Edition) by Neil Gaiman — Audiobook, 19 hrs and 39 mins, 2011 — I first read American Gods back in 2001 in hardcover. I loved it then, and I’d thought about re-reading it over the years, but it wasn’t until I watched the Starz adaptation that I finally decided to take the plunge. The show is fantastic, but it made me realize that I’d forgotten everything that happened in the book aside from one or two scenes. The show is a pretty faithful adaptation – surreal and rambling and sometimes plotless, just like the book – but it only covers about a fourth of the story. The best parts of the book are still to come on the show, and I loved listening to those parts of the audiobook. I’ve been a little disappointed by the last few Gaiman books I’ve read, but American Gods has only gotten better with age, and the excellent audiobook adaptation elevates it into a masterpiece.
Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido — Digital, 256 pages, 2014 (first published 1982) — A young British girl comes of age, surrounded by the cleverest family of sarcastic hooligans and ne’er-do-wells ever put to page. They bring her into their orbit for a time when she is young, but after an inevitable heartbreak, she leaves and takes her lumps from the world. A funny, touching slice-of-life that still resonates. I don’t remember where I first heard about this book, but something drew me to it, and I’m glad I read it. Trapido has a flair for characterization and can definitely turn a phrase.
Countdown City by Ben H. Winters — Audiobook, 8 hrs and 18 mins, 2013 — I loved The Last Policeman and can’t recommend it enough, but for some reason it took me years to get around to reading the second book in the trilogy. In this sequel, Hank Palace is still stubbornly upright in the face of the continuing degeneration of the pre-apocalyptic world and still trying to solve crimes despite the consternation of everyone around him. I couldn’t help but root for him to make right some small part of his doomed universe. An end-times noir that is both tragically funny and absurdly sad.
Extreme Makeover by Dan Wells — Paperback, 416 pages, 2016 — I’ve listened to the Writing Excuses podcast on and off for years, but this is the first Dan Wells book I’ve picked up and read, and holy shit is it a doozy. Let’s suppose that a cosmetics company accidentally invented an anti-aging crème that has the unintended side effect of overwriting your DNA with the DNA of the last person who touched the crème. Then let’s suppose that the executives at this company decide that DNA-rewriting crème could make them filthy rich, and imagine the worst possible things that could happen as a result of their greed. And then keep reading, because Wells runs through every possible horrible outcome, one after another, with a kind of insane glee. The result is both darkly hilarious and terrifying.
The Flintstones, Vol 1 by Mark Russell and Steve Pugh — Digital, 170 pages, 2017 — Someone had the genius idea to write a Flintstones comic that takes the characters seriously within the framework of a dark-but-funny social satire, and it works better than it has any right to do. Fred suffers from PTSD after his war service, household objects have existential crises, and consumerism is a newly invented scourge. The art is also fantastic, and it’s amazing seeing the characters drawn in a more realistic style.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt — Audiobook/Digital, 32 hrs and 29 mins, 2013 — What if Harry Potter was an accidental art thief who never recovered from the trauma of his mother’s death? The protagonist of The Goldfinch goes to live with his shit-head father in the wastelands of suburban Las Vegas and finds himself lost among scam artists and gangsters. The lingering effects of drug use and dissipation from that time haunt him well into his adult years, along with the guilt and paranoia from stealing a priceless artwork. The Goldfinch is a sprawling, tragic, hilarious coming-of-age tale that ends with a white-knuckle heist. I loved the characters, and I loved every minute I spent with them. Although I mostly listened to this one in audio, I did jump back and forth between the Kindle and audio versions so that I could keep reading even when I didn’t have the time to listen. This combination of audiobook and e-book is definitely the best way to read a massive book.
IT by Stephen King — Audiobook, 44 hrs and 57 mins, 2016 (first published 1986) — IT is another book I decided to read after watching an excellent adaptation. In this case, it was the 2017 movie version, which covers about half of the story, give or take. King is one of those authors that I read voraciously back in high school, but I haven’t kept up with the habit in recent years. IT was worth reading, though. The book has an imposing length, but every page adds up to an indisputable masterpiece. King is writing at the top of his form here, and it’s obvious he knows it. One of the most skillful scenes occurs early in the book, and involves a shift in perspective from one character to another when the power balance changes. I listened to the audiobook version, read by Steven Weber, and it was a pitch-perfect reading. Those 45 hours sped by in a flash, although I did read the last few chapters on Kindle because I was so caught up in it.
The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman — Audiobook, 16 hrs and 27 mins, 2014 — The Magicians was a great but flawed book; The Magician King built on that foundation to create something stunning, and this, the last book in the trilogy, brings it all home in excellent form. Quentin does what he can to learn and grow, even if everything he does still doesn’t work out. The Magician’s Land is about coming to terms with adulthood and reality, even if that reality still offers the ability to cast world-changing spells. I loved spending time with these characters and in this world, and the only reason I took so long to read this book is because I wanted to savor it.
The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie — Paperback, 448 pages, 2016 — I will be the first to admit that I picked up this book because it has a squirrel on the cover. That drew me in, but the synopsis sold me. Veblen and Paul are a young engaged couple. Veblen spends her free time as an amateur translator of Norwegian texts and Paul is an engineer working on a medical hole-punch for combat-ready craniotomies. They might be in love, but they’ll have to deal with Veblen’s neurotic mother, Paul’s ethically challenging work and Veblen’s obsession with a squirrel that she thinks she is falling in love with. It’s light, it’s funny, and it’s just a little weird.
Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory — Audiobook, 14 hrs and 2 mins, 2017 — A multi-generational story about the family of a con artist, Teddy, and a psychic, Maureen, who fell in love. When they were young, The Amazing Telemachus Family travelled the talk show circuit to show off their amazing feats, but after a skeptic debunked them on live TV and Maureen died of cancer, the family never recovered. Imagine a family dramedy crossed with con artists and supernatural abilities, and you’ll get the basic idea of this hilarious, wonderful book. As soon as I finished reading it, I wanted a sequel and a TV adaptation. I loved the hell out of the book, which surprised me since I thought Harrison Squared, one of his earlier novels, was a bit disappointing.
Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski — Audiobook, 12 hrs and 47 mins, 2015 — I’ve played bits and pieces of The Witcher games, but I’ve never finished one. Even still, I played just enough for the world and the characters to intrigue me, so I decided to pick up some of the original books that inspired the games. The series starts off with two short story collections before getting into the meat of the “saga” that inspired the games. The first collection, The Last Wish, consists mostly of fairytale retellings, but this, the second collection, is where the world of The Witcher starts getting deeper and more interesting. Characters that will become significant later are first introduced here, and we begin to understand more about what drives Geralt. I definitely enjoyed reading this collection, and the audiobook version is especially good. It’s narrated by Peter Kenny, who also reads most of the Iain M. Banks Culture novels.
Version Control by Dexter Palmer — Audiobook, 18 hrs and 52 mins, 2016 — This one was a slow burn, but that was also true about The Dream of Perpetual Motion, Palmer’s début. At first, Version Control feels like a near-future family drama about grief and marital intimacy, but as you keep reading, you start getting hints about something far deeper and stranger going on. This book does take a bit of patience, but that patience is more than rewarded by the end. It helps that the characters are sharply drawn, and they live in a chilling, believable semi-dystopia with just an edge of satirical social commentary.
The Vision, Volume 2: Little Better than a Beast by Tom King — Digital, 136 pages, 2016 — Holy shit, The Vision is so good. Amid all the endless reboots and event series (which I have done my best to ignore), Marvel has still managed to produce some groundbreaking comics over the past few years. Volume 1 was on my list for 2016, and Volume 2 more than delivers on that promise. The entire series is a perfect stand-alone story arc even if you don’t know much about the greater Marvel universe. It’s also incredibly brutal, bleak and thought-provoking.
Wisp of a Thing by Alex Bledsoe — Audiobook, 9 hrs and 14 mins, 2013 — I love the feel of this series about magic and the secret power of music made by country folk living in the Appalachian region. So far, every book in this series is essentially standalone, although there are recurring characters throughout. I think the best way to describe the Tufa books are as grounded fairy stories told through the lens of magical realism. It helps that Bledsoe is a talented, evocative writer, and the audiobook versions have one of the best narrators in the business thanks to Stefan Rudnicki.
The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde — Audiobook, 10 hrs and 58 mins, 2012 — I’d forgotten how much I loved and missed this series until I finally listened to this, the most recent Thursday Next novel. Fforde fills these books to the brim with weirdness and satire. Most authors would stop after setting up a main character who travels inside novels to solve crimes, but he throws in lifelike humanoid doubles, genetically engineered dodos, time travel, contraband cheeses, authoritarian mega-corporations and much, much more. The sixth book, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, was a bit of an unfortunate misstep, but The Woman Who Died a Lot puts the series back on track. That said, it came out in 2012, and I’m starting to wonder if Fforde will ever return to the series. It doesn’t help that the end of this book definitely sets up a potential sequel. I may just have to re-read these books from the beginning, especially since I finally read Jane Eyre and might understand those references this time around.
I love stories about people with mundane jobs who exist in the orbit of someone extraordinary – like a personal assistant to a superhero, for example. It’s a fun mental exercise to think about what that might actually be like, what you’d have to deal with when your job function includes placating a petulant heroine when she isn’t out saving lives and stopping evil.
Evie Tanaka is in that exact position when Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn begins. She’s the mousy, reserved personal assistant to Aveda Jupiter, San Francisco’s Favorite Superhero – previously known as Evie’s childhood friend, Annie.
Evie has no social life outside of work and tries to keep her feelings on clampdown because of a tragedy in her past. It doesn’t help that her mom died a few years back and her father subsequently disappeared on walkabout, so Evie is also responsible for taking care of her bratty teenage sister, Bea.
Evie is just barely holding her life together until Aveda is injured and needs someone to take her place in public appearances. See, Aveda’s superhero powers come from a failed demon invasion that turned into an ongoing demon problem, and she isn’t the only person who was granted powers. Their friend Scott can perform little magic spells, including a glamour that will let Evie impersonate Aveda.
As soon as Evie goes out in public as Aveda, things go off the rails. Demons attack, and Evie is forced to use her own powers – flames that come out of her hands when she is upset or angry. She’d tried to keep them inside like her emotions because she was afraid of what she might do, but as soon as she lets them out, she finds it much harder to keep anything inside.
Heroine Complex is ultimately a story about a closed-off, repressed young woman learning to trust her own emotions and believe in herself. It’s also funny, full of well-drawn characters, and genuinely entertaining.
When I first picked it up and started reading, I assumed that it was a young adult novel, partially because of the cover, but also because of the writing style, which made the characters seem young. However, as I kept reading, it became obvious that the characters were all in their late twenties. Then there was the first of several fairly hot sex scenes, which made me realize that I’d been reading an urban fantasy all along.
This genre confusion didn’t negatively impact my enjoyment of the book, but it did make me wonder why I immediately assumed it was a young adult novel. I really like the cover design, but maybe the cartoony style made me jump to conclusions.
In any case, I’d definitely recommend Heroine Complex. It’s the first book in a trilogy, each of which focuses on a different girl in the group – Evie, then Aveda, and then finally Bea. I’ll probably pick up the next two sometime soon.
Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.
Written by: Neil Gibson and Dan Watters Art by: Casper Wijngaard Colors by: Jan Wijngaard Letters by: Jim Campbell Layouts by: Eric Irving
Published: September 22nd 2015 Publisher: T Pub Genre(s): Graphic Novel, Horror Format: Paperback Length: 164 pages
Tortured Life reads like a hack novelization of a gore-drenched heavy metal concept album, and it’s about as well-plotted as your average double-LP. In fact, the art wouldn’t look out-of-place on a metal band poster, especially when the skull-faced villain shows up and starts killing people.
Rich seems like a nice, normal young man. He has a good job and a beautiful girlfriend, but then one day he starts having visions of how everything and everyone around him is going to die. When the visions don’t go away, his life quickly falls apart and he is left friendless and alone. The book opens on the day he decides to commit suicide because he saw his own death in the mirror.
However, unbeknownst to Rich, his nearness to death opens a door to the underworld, letting through both a helpful ghost girl and the murderous Bloodyman – that aforementioned skull-faced killer.
The ghost girl, Alice, sticks around just long enough to point Rich at some exposition before disappearing from the story until the end. The explanation for her absence is that crossing over to the world of the living is difficult and dangerous, so she can’t keep going back and forth, but it makes her feel even more like a lazy plot device.
When the explanation for Rich’s visions arrives, it is both incredibly convoluted and completely nonsensical. The revelation doesn’t tie in thematically to his visions of death, and Rich and Alice respond to the explanation by as much as throwing up their hands and moving on. The ending is ultimately both anticlimactic and dour.
To be honest, I also really wasn’t a fan of the art style. The book’s cover is eye-catching enough that it drew me in, but the interior art just didn’t do it for me. It’s slightly similar to the cartoony style of the Chew books, but seems ill-suited to Tortured Life’s bleak tone.
However, I think I would have forgiven the art if I’d liked the story and characters more. Tortured Life was an underwhelming read, and I can’t recommend it.
Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.
Alt-Life by Thomas Cadène
Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
IQ by Joe Ide
Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Big Lie
The Readymade Thief by Augustus Rose
Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn
Tortured Life