I'm surprised when comic books are good these days. I'm even surprised when there are actual people instead of characters in comic books, and there's a feeling of story and purpose that goes on between episodes.
So Locke and Key is surprising from where it starts; with children dealing with the loss of their father. With how they interact with their friends and school after having faced a loss like that. And the things that accumulate around Keyhouse, the ancient family house that they move back to, makes it more slow and creepy than shocking.
I really like it. I'm probably going to pick up some more.
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship …
Review of 'Redshirts' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
This is a love letter to bad television -- it's both hilariously funny and touching, as it jumps between the absurdity of television tropes and how great it would be if the universe really did have narrative and purpose "like in the movies."
The codas take the point of view of the people outside the narrative, trying to understand the people on the inside and how they cope with knowing what they've done, even unwittingly.
If you identify as a geek, you should read this book.
The explosive conclusion to the Newsflesh trilogy from New York Times bestseller Mira Grant — …
Review of 'Blackout' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
I wanted to like this, I really did.
But the premise defies all belief. Of all people, the CDC cloned Georgia Mason. Even in a world where zombies walk, this makes absolutely no sense from the CDC's perspective, no matter who is leaning on them.
And given the amount of putative power that the CDC has (spies, government assassins, firebombing Berkeley), Shawn Mason should be flat out dead. Even armed with rich heiress friends, a genius computer hacker, smugglers and people to fake identities, the CDC tracks him down multiple times. At best, journalists spur those in power to do something about the system; they have no direct power themselves. Shaun Mason going up against the CDC is like an fly going up against a semi tanker.
Except oh, they're friends with the Vice President. And the Secret Service. And it makes absolutely no sense that the Vice President or …
I wanted to like this, I really did.
But the premise defies all belief. Of all people, the CDC cloned Georgia Mason. Even in a world where zombies walk, this makes absolutely no sense from the CDC's perspective, no matter who is leaning on them.
And given the amount of putative power that the CDC has (spies, government assassins, firebombing Berkeley), Shawn Mason should be flat out dead. Even armed with rich heiress friends, a genius computer hacker, smugglers and people to fake identities, the CDC tracks him down multiple times. At best, journalists spur those in power to do something about the system; they have no direct power themselves. Shaun Mason going up against the CDC is like an fly going up against a semi tanker.
Except oh, they're friends with the Vice President. And the Secret Service. And it makes absolutely no sense that the Vice President or anyone in the executive branch needs Georgia or Shaun's help for anything, let alone go through such ridiculous machinations.
I just... yeah. Even allowing for artistic license and protagonists smart enough to poke holes in their own plot (Georgia in particular), this just doesn't hold up. Georgia and Shawn are well rounded characters, but the antagonists are too cartoonish and short-sighted to be realistic, and the repeated trope of "meet smart people, get checked for virus, admire tight security and lots of guns, go inside and chat, come outside to chaos and zombies" gets really old.
The artwork is great. The actual plot is... well, hackneyed and trite are overused phrases, but my teeth start grinding together when I hear dialogue like "Only Alec Hammond can save us now!"
And the rest... well, if you've read Swamp Thing at all, you'd recognize that this is the exact same plot. It's Tia, down to the same Flesh Elemental powers. And the Rot instead of the Grey, but...
...yeah. This is by the numbers mad-libs plot. There's nothing original at all in the story here. Buy it for the art if you must.
Unique among his fellow immortals and mortal folk alike, Jant Comet can fly. His talent …
Review of 'Year of Our War' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
It's a mishmash. It reminds me of The Iron Dragon's Daughter in some ways -- there's magic that keeps people alive in the service of an undying emperor who is holding down the fort until "god" returns, but society has advanced to the point where there are t-shirts and some small amount of science... oh, and the protagonist might be crazy and hallucinating some times.
And, given the presence of 50 prima donna immortals (all chosen for being the best in their fields, with immortality conditional in STAYING the best), there's no small amount of drama. In fact, immortality allows the execution of the biggest and most impressive grudge matches that I've ever seen, with moves that are impressive in their execution and patience.
That being said, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It's simply too scattered. There are a number of books that have the same feel to …
It's a mishmash. It reminds me of The Iron Dragon's Daughter in some ways -- there's magic that keeps people alive in the service of an undying emperor who is holding down the fort until "god" returns, but society has advanced to the point where there are t-shirts and some small amount of science... oh, and the protagonist might be crazy and hallucinating some times.
And, given the presence of 50 prima donna immortals (all chosen for being the best in their fields, with immortality conditional in STAYING the best), there's no small amount of drama. In fact, immortality allows the execution of the biggest and most impressive grudge matches that I've ever seen, with moves that are impressive in their execution and patience.
That being said, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It's simply too scattered. There are a number of books that have the same feel to it, and this book is clearly set up for a series that makes the ending somewhat unsatisfying.
This was a hard book for me to read, not just because of the control issues, but also because of the "predestination" and visions -- the book is set up so that you know various horrible things are going to happen... and then they do, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
It has a lot in common with Octavia Butler's Kindred, in that the female protagonist is in a situation where other people have near complete control over her -- and in fact, part of the plot is based around the idea of control, and how subtle it can appear while being utterly brutal behind the scenes. It also felt stylistically similar to A Girl Rides Through in places, although that's more about how the protagonist effaces herself.
It's a good book, and well written, but I still don't understand it.
Throughout her childhood in suburban Ohio, Noelle struggled to gain love and affection from her …
Review of 'Dress Codes' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
An interesting story by an interesting woman, despite the fact that so much of the story is about her reaction to her parents and her grandparents. Noelle's father is the strong silent type of man, whose only passion is acting. Noelle's mother is a no-nonsense, practical woman who doesn't think she's interesting. Noelle's father is strong and silent because his big fear is that people will know he likes dressing up in women's clothing. Then he decides to come out. You'd figure that would make enough of a story, but really the book is about people's idea of themselves, and the grandmother is a perfect example of this. Noelle, Granny and Mom end up playing roles of their own, and find out that they're just as restrictive and self-defeating as the strong man Dad tries to be. Especially interesting is how Noelle's own sexuality and personality is shaped by her …
An interesting story by an interesting woman, despite the fact that so much of the story is about her reaction to her parents and her grandparents. Noelle's father is the strong silent type of man, whose only passion is acting. Noelle's mother is a no-nonsense, practical woman who doesn't think she's interesting. Noelle's father is strong and silent because his big fear is that people will know he likes dressing up in women's clothing. Then he decides to come out. You'd figure that would make enough of a story, but really the book is about people's idea of themselves, and the grandmother is a perfect example of this. Noelle, Granny and Mom end up playing roles of their own, and find out that they're just as restrictive and self-defeating as the strong man Dad tries to be. Especially interesting is how Noelle's own sexuality and personality is shaped by her father, even without him knowing it, as she reflects on her own sexual needs and beliefs while talking to some seriously disturbed pre-op transexuals just after her father's operation.
Review of 'The empire of ice cream' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
Well, I finished it. This book sat on my shelf for more than a year before I picked it up and started reading. It's a book of short stories, mostly fantasy based.
Most of the stories are sad ones. They're about men who sail in a harbor that a child drowned in. A woman who goes from being kept in a cage by a giant until she's fat enough to eat, only to escape to a marriage in the suburbs with a husband and two children that seems even more surreal than the giant did. Two men, tired of their failures, who take a drug that only shows them how clearly they have lost. The recovered diary of a small fairy that lives in a sandcastle, living so fast that it dies 80 years later over the course of a single day. These stories are poignant, never overly sentimental or …
Well, I finished it. This book sat on my shelf for more than a year before I picked it up and started reading. It's a book of short stories, mostly fantasy based.
Most of the stories are sad ones. They're about men who sail in a harbor that a child drowned in. A woman who goes from being kept in a cage by a giant until she's fat enough to eat, only to escape to a marriage in the suburbs with a husband and two children that seems even more surreal than the giant did. Two men, tired of their failures, who take a drug that only shows them how clearly they have lost. The recovered diary of a small fairy that lives in a sandcastle, living so fast that it dies 80 years later over the course of a single day. These stories are poignant, never overly sentimental or precious, with language so well crafted that each sentence rings like a clear bell.
In short, this was one of the most annoying, manipulative reading experiences I've had. Not even having the good grace to be mawkish, instead it aims for your soft and exposed emotional gonads and repeatedly kicks in your sensitive areas while you're still wondering what in God's name you did to deserve this treatment. It's as if someone took The Notebook and Terms of Endearment and then wrapped it in a Saturday Morning Cartoon Show so you're still wide open to the base emotional manipulation this evil fucker is prone to.
You know Twilight Sparkle? Well, I have some bad for you. She has cancer. But she's never looked so beautiful.
It's a very well written book, replete with stories, anecdotes, helpful simple diagrams and interviews. Hundreds of interviews.
It's also a massive dumbing down of cognitive science. There were parts where I was simultaneously impressed and appalled at how much detail he was able to leave out while still keeping the bones of the idea in place.
Reading this book is also a great way to be amazed at the behaviors of some people; the woman who gambled away over 900K in particular doesn't make any sense to me. And yet... it's not hard to see how a series of rewards and failures will draw someone into behavior like that.
It is a solid piece of work (over a third of the book is bibilography and endnotes), but I'm impressed by it, but I can't bring myself to love it.
Decent novella, set in Borneo. It has many of the elements that hold a Shepard novella together: there's a jungle, drugs that alter or manipulate reality, a steady stream of political / colonialist theory combined with some reflexive loathing at the over-intellectualism involved in the theorizing, a hidden world only accessible through a leap of faith, and a question on whether faith and trust can ever be truly be genuine, or another move in the game of self-interest. It's a story of a low level British pawn shop owner who helps an idealistic American live in the jungle with a pharmacutical researcher, and finds that the American is looking for his approval before he remakes the world in his own image, and a witch who thinks that unchecked idealism and hope can be a greater evil than self-interest.
But the language is greater than the story. I have no real …
Decent novella, set in Borneo. It has many of the elements that hold a Shepard novella together: there's a jungle, drugs that alter or manipulate reality, a steady stream of political / colonialist theory combined with some reflexive loathing at the over-intellectualism involved in the theorizing, a hidden world only accessible through a leap of faith, and a question on whether faith and trust can ever be truly be genuine, or another move in the game of self-interest. It's a story of a low level British pawn shop owner who helps an idealistic American live in the jungle with a pharmacutical researcher, and finds that the American is looking for his approval before he remakes the world in his own image, and a witch who thinks that unchecked idealism and hope can be a greater evil than self-interest.
But the language is greater than the story. I have no real hope of reproducing Lucius Shepard's voice -- god knows it's not mine -- but part of me envies his sheer ability to make words read like music, to represent the interplay of skepticism and faith and the internal workings of men as finely as the landscape around them. It's a pleasure to read someone who has "read the text" -- every one of his characters is reading the environment around them and at least somewhat aware of their failings and blind spots.
So yeah. If you've read Viator, if you read Two Trains Running, you know what you're looking at here. If not, it'll be different to almost anything you've ever read.
