Rec'd Reading, April 2011
Rec'd Reading, April 2011
I'm deep in the word mines on a book so I haven't read things at quite the length I would want to. Watching the Arabs explode with rage at their decades (centuries?) of cruelty and wretchedness by their leaders have consumed a lot of my time. I'm getting a better handle on international news, even though everything's kind of went bonkers at the same time.
That said, here's what's grabbed my attention since last I did this:
Greg Rucka and Rick Burchett, Huntress: Cry for Blood. I needed some more Rucka soon and took this from the library. It was more more massive than I expected at six issues. I rushed through the end of it, but the Huntress and The Question's interactions, when she goes to exile and he helps her, are worth a read. My bro-from-another-mom Eric said I would like The Question years ago, and he was bloody well right.
Chris Claremont and Alan Davis, Excalibur Volume 2: Two-Edged Sword. On a whim, I plunged headfirst into what someone once described as "the fun side of the X-Men." Mein Bog. He was right. Claremont's bizarre dialogue sometimes drives me nuts, but the crazy adventures, parallel universes, embarrassing naked scenes and Rachel Summers freaking rule.
Mike Carey, Thicker Than Water. The third Felix Castor book rocked my world. This book, fourth in the series, had a lot more introspection and history than the first one. Castor finds his name written in blood at a car accident and finds tons of his past - from his high school crush to his brother Matt, now a priest, to a violently enraged sect of the Catholic Church.
Everyone has a connection to the Salisburg Estate in London, a troubled apartment complex. Turns out a lot of people have died there in similar ways. I feel like I've seen the grimiest, nastiest streets of London and Liverpool and want to visit those cities even more. The ending is a gut punch.
Barbara Kesel and Steve McNiven, Meridian Volume 2: Going to Ground. I love the concept of Crossgen, even if it isn't all that much different from other franchises. It's a setting where different comics fit in a much larger world - and each one, apparently, stands alone fairly well. Meridian does, anyway.
It's about a girl heir to the family business, Sephie, in a world of floating continents. The villain's her uncle, Ilahn, bent on ruling the whole world. The second volume starts with the girl in exile on the surface. Most of the sky dwellers never go there, except for a few people who kept it quiet.
This volume was a lot more fun the first one. There's a lot more adventure and roaming and traveling. There's less of the boring growing up thing and more of the charging forward. The subterranean cities are at least as cool as the floating continents.
Chris Moriarty, Interview with Walter Jon Williams. I read a ton of interviews this month, maybe too many because I should get to reading the books in question. This, an interview with a crazy scifi writer by a crazy scifi writer, got me even more interested in finding more books from Williams.
Joe Lansdale, The Drowned Man. A short essay in Mulholland Books's blog, a noir publisher which has an article and essay nearly every day. Lansdale gives a remembrance of a dead body he found while writing... and it compelled him to do a whole lot more. It does me, too. Time is always running out when you're a human, even if it doesn't feel like it is.
Laurie Penny, In Defense of Squatting. Laurie Penny is reliable in giving me things to think about that I haven't thought of before, and squatting is a fairly new idea to me. As much as it's thought of as a criminal act, it's a counterculture trait all the way back - and that makes it extremely important to me.
An Owomoyela, All That Touches The Air. I read a story by Owomoyela years ago and found a new one! I loved this one, about an alien species named the Vosth who take over humans who come near. Because the aliens take over people, they're forced to live separately, and the humans stay totally confined in their airlocked bubble bases.
The narrator watches someone taken over by the Vosth. It scares her to such a degree she walks around in her containment suit all the time. Because one of the Vosth has an obsession with talking to the narrator, tons of bureaucrats and politicians want to use her to get to him.
Seems that the truce isn't quite a truce and there's no real laws that determine where the Vosth and the humans function. The government wants to change that - and it's going to involve war, however delicately it's said and waged, against the Vosth. Does the narrator go with that? Read it. :D
Charles Schmitz, Who's Really In The Yemeni Opposition, Anyway?. I devour international news, so much so that I have to be careful to get dragged too far, and this one of the sources. I wouldn't imagine a magazine called Foreign Policy would have this much liveliness and energy. This is a good example of why I look at the international news it covers. It doesn't leave a stone unturned and I would love to find out how it works.
Tobias Buckell, The Fall of Alacan. It is surreal to see someone around my same age publishing tons of things, ridiculously prolific and being able to travel. Instead of being envious, reading his blog and feeling bad, I've began to read his work. Turns out Buckell is a lot of fun and writes adventurous fiction.
In this one, a thief named Mynza meets a princess, estranges his thieving guild and finds himself trapped in a city that is slowly dying as a poisonous bramble that inflicts a sleeping disease spreads across the interior. Turns out one of his friends dies and he gets to watch out for his friend's kid. From there, times get hard, he meets the princess again, and finds something he would never have imagined.
I'm deep in the word mines on a book so I haven't read things at quite the length I would want to. Watching the Arabs explode with rage at their decades (centuries?) of cruelty and wretchedness by their leaders have consumed a lot of my time. I'm getting a better handle on international news, even though everything's kind of went bonkers at the same time.
That said, here's what's grabbed my attention since last I did this:
Greg Rucka and Rick Burchett, Huntress: Cry for Blood. I needed some more Rucka soon and took this from the library. It was more more massive than I expected at six issues. I rushed through the end of it, but the Huntress and The Question's interactions, when she goes to exile and he helps her, are worth a read. My bro-from-another-mom Eric said I would like The Question years ago, and he was bloody well right.
Chris Claremont and Alan Davis, Excalibur Volume 2: Two-Edged Sword. On a whim, I plunged headfirst into what someone once described as "the fun side of the X-Men." Mein Bog. He was right. Claremont's bizarre dialogue sometimes drives me nuts, but the crazy adventures, parallel universes, embarrassing naked scenes and Rachel Summers freaking rule.
Mike Carey, Thicker Than Water. The third Felix Castor book rocked my world. This book, fourth in the series, had a lot more introspection and history than the first one. Castor finds his name written in blood at a car accident and finds tons of his past - from his high school crush to his brother Matt, now a priest, to a violently enraged sect of the Catholic Church.
Everyone has a connection to the Salisburg Estate in London, a troubled apartment complex. Turns out a lot of people have died there in similar ways. I feel like I've seen the grimiest, nastiest streets of London and Liverpool and want to visit those cities even more. The ending is a gut punch.
Barbara Kesel and Steve McNiven, Meridian Volume 2: Going to Ground. I love the concept of Crossgen, even if it isn't all that much different from other franchises. It's a setting where different comics fit in a much larger world - and each one, apparently, stands alone fairly well. Meridian does, anyway.
It's about a girl heir to the family business, Sephie, in a world of floating continents. The villain's her uncle, Ilahn, bent on ruling the whole world. The second volume starts with the girl in exile on the surface. Most of the sky dwellers never go there, except for a few people who kept it quiet.
This volume was a lot more fun the first one. There's a lot more adventure and roaming and traveling. There's less of the boring growing up thing and more of the charging forward. The subterranean cities are at least as cool as the floating continents.
Chris Moriarty, Interview with Walter Jon Williams. I read a ton of interviews this month, maybe too many because I should get to reading the books in question. This, an interview with a crazy scifi writer by a crazy scifi writer, got me even more interested in finding more books from Williams.
Joe Lansdale, The Drowned Man. A short essay in Mulholland Books's blog, a noir publisher which has an article and essay nearly every day. Lansdale gives a remembrance of a dead body he found while writing... and it compelled him to do a whole lot more. It does me, too. Time is always running out when you're a human, even if it doesn't feel like it is.
Laurie Penny, In Defense of Squatting. Laurie Penny is reliable in giving me things to think about that I haven't thought of before, and squatting is a fairly new idea to me. As much as it's thought of as a criminal act, it's a counterculture trait all the way back - and that makes it extremely important to me.
An Owomoyela, All That Touches The Air. I read a story by Owomoyela years ago and found a new one! I loved this one, about an alien species named the Vosth who take over humans who come near. Because the aliens take over people, they're forced to live separately, and the humans stay totally confined in their airlocked bubble bases.
The narrator watches someone taken over by the Vosth. It scares her to such a degree she walks around in her containment suit all the time. Because one of the Vosth has an obsession with talking to the narrator, tons of bureaucrats and politicians want to use her to get to him.
Seems that the truce isn't quite a truce and there's no real laws that determine where the Vosth and the humans function. The government wants to change that - and it's going to involve war, however delicately it's said and waged, against the Vosth. Does the narrator go with that? Read it. :D
Charles Schmitz, Who's Really In The Yemeni Opposition, Anyway?. I devour international news, so much so that I have to be careful to get dragged too far, and this one of the sources. I wouldn't imagine a magazine called Foreign Policy would have this much liveliness and energy. This is a good example of why I look at the international news it covers. It doesn't leave a stone unturned and I would love to find out how it works.
Tobias Buckell, The Fall of Alacan. It is surreal to see someone around my same age publishing tons of things, ridiculously prolific and being able to travel. Instead of being envious, reading his blog and feeling bad, I've began to read his work. Turns out Buckell is a lot of fun and writes adventurous fiction.
In this one, a thief named Mynza meets a princess, estranges his thieving guild and finds himself trapped in a city that is slowly dying as a poisonous bramble that inflicts a sleeping disease spreads across the interior. Turns out one of his friends dies and he gets to watch out for his friend's kid. From there, times get hard, he meets the princess again, and finds something he would never have imagined.