Books 94-96
Helen Hath No Fury - by Gillian Roberts
This Amanda Pepper mystery was a quarter library sale purchase and that quarter was paying too much. I guess we’re supposed to know these characters but I didn’t figure out Amanda’s live-in lover was a cop until almost the end. Mostly this is because they are so flat and dull I didn’t care to know. In the second to the last chapter someone asks why Amanda’s book club are so mean to each other which was what I was wondering through this whole thing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. With a ‘pun’-ishing title like that you’d think this would at least be amusing but it isn’t. Amanda, school teacher by trade, is involved in a book club and the story opens there with a fiery debate over suicide and women having out of wedlock babies in the Victorian era. The next day the club member, Helen, most upset by the suicide ends up jumping off her roof to her death. But was it really suicide? By the end you won’t really care.
As Amanda rather unwillingly unravels the mystery (so much so that you’re wondering why is she bothering), we see Helen’s husband wasn’t where he was supposed to be, that he used to be lovers in college with their next door neighbor, a best friend in business is spreading rumors of embezzling, a therapist saying Helen was depressed and another friend with whom the business when up. The only two who seem to have no motive are Amanda and Denise, wife of a far right wing politician.
The characters are so flat I can hardly recall more. There’s a weak subplot about one of Amanda’s students being pregnant, threatening suicide and goes missing. All this does is to show how not so bright and callous Amanda is. She not only doesn’t tell the police about the pregnancy, the suicide threats or that the father is a college student who is less than thrilled by it all, she makes sure the girls’ friends don’t either. Later after another club member is savagely beaten and her jaw broken, she brings lollipops and ice cream as a gift (I mentioned this to mom who was wondering if she’d like to read the book and her word for it was ‘cruel’). This comes from an award winning author too…doesn’t make me ever want to look up another of her books. Grade D.
Fullmetal Alchemist #19 by Hiromu Arakawa
Outstanding as always, this volume is packed with action. It opens up with Kimbley against the soldiers of Briggs. Miles is quick to point out to Ed that he is too softhearted for his own good, let’s call that a theme for this issue.
But the most interesting part is this contains the whole history of Hohenheim. I disliked him in the first anime and up to this point wasn’t thrilled with him in the manga since all we’ve seen is a runaway deadbeat dad. Now we know why. His history is amazing and the lynchpin of the whole series.
Ed and Kimbley go toe to toe and Ed’s kindness comes back to bite him in the butt. In the meantime, Al is faltering and the odd company of Scar, Mei, Marcoah, Al and Winry continue onward. Roy is clued in, via Riza as to Selim’s true nature and Hohenheim meets Izumi and later promises to bring the fight to Father. Obviously this isn’t a volume you start this series at but it’s one you don’t want to miss if you’ve been following along. Grade A
It Takes a Wizard: The complete saga by Thomas R. Hart (art by Sean Lam)
There is actually no author info in this so I’m assuming it’s American manga yet done in the Japanese layout. Don’t let the title put you off (yeah silly riffs of it takes a thief to catch a thief do nothing for me), while it takes a wizard to catch a wizard is the theme, it does it well.
Three years ago Isaac Silverberg, former apprentice to Everett Winterthorn, helped to kill 200,000 people in NYC turning Manhattan into a magical wasteland where trolls, goblins and other horrific things exist and Winterthorn has set himself up as the Midnight King. Isaac is only days away from being put to death for this when they haul the boy out of isolation. He’s given a task, go in and rescue the daughter of an important man who is being held on the island of Manhattan. In return, the man will force the military to release the videotape proving Isaac was a mere dupe in all of this and the real killer is Winterthorn.
Inside the magical bubble, almost no humans are left alive. Even the less dangerous faeries creatures are in danger of being eaten. In this wasteland, Hope lives with her little friendly imp, Lars. Hope has been trained by a Catholic priest after the incident to fight (how he knew, who knows). She would put Buffy to shame. Naturally she and Isaac cross paths and she does manage to keep from killing him. However, he’s about the only one she doesn’t kill and that becomes a sticking point for them. You quickly get the idea that Isaac is a gentle young man with all this amazing power locked up in him.
Without giving anything away, let’s just say this has more layers than an onion and no one is what they really seem. It must be a good 500 pages long (even though there’s a table of contents with page number, none exist in the manga…) My one complaint is that occasionally you feel like a scene or two ended up on the cutting room floor but overall the story is engaging. You don’t get to know Isaac and Hope quite as well as I’d have liked but the art is lovely. Grade A-
This Amanda Pepper mystery was a quarter library sale purchase and that quarter was paying too much. I guess we’re supposed to know these characters but I didn’t figure out Amanda’s live-in lover was a cop until almost the end. Mostly this is because they are so flat and dull I didn’t care to know. In the second to the last chapter someone asks why Amanda’s book club are so mean to each other which was what I was wondering through this whole thing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. With a ‘pun’-ishing title like that you’d think this would at least be amusing but it isn’t. Amanda, school teacher by trade, is involved in a book club and the story opens there with a fiery debate over suicide and women having out of wedlock babies in the Victorian era. The next day the club member, Helen, most upset by the suicide ends up jumping off her roof to her death. But was it really suicide? By the end you won’t really care.
As Amanda rather unwillingly unravels the mystery (so much so that you’re wondering why is she bothering), we see Helen’s husband wasn’t where he was supposed to be, that he used to be lovers in college with their next door neighbor, a best friend in business is spreading rumors of embezzling, a therapist saying Helen was depressed and another friend with whom the business when up. The only two who seem to have no motive are Amanda and Denise, wife of a far right wing politician.
The characters are so flat I can hardly recall more. There’s a weak subplot about one of Amanda’s students being pregnant, threatening suicide and goes missing. All this does is to show how not so bright and callous Amanda is. She not only doesn’t tell the police about the pregnancy, the suicide threats or that the father is a college student who is less than thrilled by it all, she makes sure the girls’ friends don’t either. Later after another club member is savagely beaten and her jaw broken, she brings lollipops and ice cream as a gift (I mentioned this to mom who was wondering if she’d like to read the book and her word for it was ‘cruel’). This comes from an award winning author too…doesn’t make me ever want to look up another of her books. Grade D.
Fullmetal Alchemist #19 by Hiromu Arakawa
Outstanding as always, this volume is packed with action. It opens up with Kimbley against the soldiers of Briggs. Miles is quick to point out to Ed that he is too softhearted for his own good, let’s call that a theme for this issue.
But the most interesting part is this contains the whole history of Hohenheim. I disliked him in the first anime and up to this point wasn’t thrilled with him in the manga since all we’ve seen is a runaway deadbeat dad. Now we know why. His history is amazing and the lynchpin of the whole series.
Ed and Kimbley go toe to toe and Ed’s kindness comes back to bite him in the butt. In the meantime, Al is faltering and the odd company of Scar, Mei, Marcoah, Al and Winry continue onward. Roy is clued in, via Riza as to Selim’s true nature and Hohenheim meets Izumi and later promises to bring the fight to Father. Obviously this isn’t a volume you start this series at but it’s one you don’t want to miss if you’ve been following along. Grade A
It Takes a Wizard: The complete saga by Thomas R. Hart (art by Sean Lam)
There is actually no author info in this so I’m assuming it’s American manga yet done in the Japanese layout. Don’t let the title put you off (yeah silly riffs of it takes a thief to catch a thief do nothing for me), while it takes a wizard to catch a wizard is the theme, it does it well.
Three years ago Isaac Silverberg, former apprentice to Everett Winterthorn, helped to kill 200,000 people in NYC turning Manhattan into a magical wasteland where trolls, goblins and other horrific things exist and Winterthorn has set himself up as the Midnight King. Isaac is only days away from being put to death for this when they haul the boy out of isolation. He’s given a task, go in and rescue the daughter of an important man who is being held on the island of Manhattan. In return, the man will force the military to release the videotape proving Isaac was a mere dupe in all of this and the real killer is Winterthorn.
Inside the magical bubble, almost no humans are left alive. Even the less dangerous faeries creatures are in danger of being eaten. In this wasteland, Hope lives with her little friendly imp, Lars. Hope has been trained by a Catholic priest after the incident to fight (how he knew, who knows). She would put Buffy to shame. Naturally she and Isaac cross paths and she does manage to keep from killing him. However, he’s about the only one she doesn’t kill and that becomes a sticking point for them. You quickly get the idea that Isaac is a gentle young man with all this amazing power locked up in him.
Without giving anything away, let’s just say this has more layers than an onion and no one is what they really seem. It must be a good 500 pages long (even though there’s a table of contents with page number, none exist in the manga…) My one complaint is that occasionally you feel like a scene or two ended up on the cutting room floor but overall the story is engaging. You don’t get to know Isaac and Hope quite as well as I’d have liked but the art is lovely. Grade A-