Fiction
Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight: More palace intrigue! Expert eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena (her eyes are turquoise banded with gold) is now working for the king she hates-but she’s only pretending to assassinate his enemies, instead sending them running away. Her romance with the prince’s guard captain intensifies, but she must lie to him because of his loyalty to the king; meanwhile she’s discovering other secrets about the king’s mysterious and evil powers, while hiding a secret of her own that is so perfectly over the top that I had to enjoy it. Maas has absolutely committed to her fantasy character here; the only thing that made me sad was that this book didn’t get me any closer to the prince-assassin-guard captain threesome of my dreams. (Also, there’s a character in here who I mentally cast as Jensen Ackles, because of the descriptions of his his lush lips, beautiful green eyes, and nonetheless deliciously masculine aspect-though apparently Maas prefers Ackles for the captain of the guard, which I can also get behind.)
David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits: Zoe, a barista living in a trailer park, discovers that she’s inherited her multibillionaire father’s criminal/financial empire after the first hitman shows up to kill her. Gore, snark, and improbable technologies ensue, in about equal measure. Wong writes Cracked.com, so if you’re familiar with that you’ll have an idea what you’re getting: cynical about humanity, but forgiving of human frailty, and unable to stop joking about anything (e.g., the villain’s constant rape threats are his Rape Tourette’s). Zoe is a good heroine: directionless, afraid, and untrained, but angry enough and sharp enough on the uptake that she makes a solid protagonist.
Harlan Ellison & Ken Steacy, Night and the Enemy: Based on an Ellison story from 1957 and its sequels telling the story of the Earth-Kyba war with a frame story set millions of years after the war ended. There’s a coward who, left behind by his fellow humans to slow the advance of the Kyba, discovers courage in an ironic and terrible way. There’s a human fighter confronted by a robot gone insane, and so on. This is closer to an illustrated story than to a conventional graphic novel-there’s a lot of text and no lettering, just dialogue inserted into the frame with type. The images differ as between the stories, but are mostly bold rather than detailed. Despite the 2015 production, the stories remain of their time (e.g., the telepathic, humanoid race encountered in one story wears loincloths/necklaces with “teeth” on them, straight out of standard racial stereotypes, and its leader tells the protagonists how another group “burned our jungle and took our women and killed our warriors,” although I guess that’s supposed to be ok because one of the humans to whom they’re saying this is black).
Stephen King, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Story collection from the past few years, with the usual “bad things happening because they can” horror (Mile 51, for example, features an otherworldly car that eats people), stories that gain their punch because they’re about aging and dying (e.g., Batman and Robin Have an Altercation, about a man’s weekly lunch with his Alzheimer’s-stricken father and the road rage incident that makes one week very different). Morality is probably the most vicious, about a proposal to a married woman that’s far more than indecent (no sexual violence).
Mark Waid, Insufferable, vol. 1: OK, I admit it, I was sucked in by the description and the clever play on Waid’s earlier titles-the idea is that a former sidekick has grown up to become a horrific, Bieberesque human being, and his former lead superhero (and also, his father) has to work with him one last time. Boy, do they hate each other, the way family members who worked together for years realistically may hate each other, while also caring. Interesting variation on the Batman/Robin/dead hero’s mother trope, if you can stand one more woman in a refrigerator. Also gives us superheroes in the age of social media, with my takeaway being that there’s no way to win: being in the public eye means taking a lot of unwarranted hate along with whatever’s warranted.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits: Zoe, a barista living in a trailer park, discovers that she’s inherited her multibillionaire father’s criminal/financial empire after the first hitman shows up to kill her. Gore, snark, and improbable technologies ensue, in about equal measure. Wong writes Cracked.com, so if you’re familiar with that you’ll have an idea what you’re getting: cynical about humanity, but forgiving of human frailty, and unable to stop joking about anything (e.g., the villain’s constant rape threats are his Rape Tourette’s). Zoe is a good heroine: directionless, afraid, and untrained, but angry enough and sharp enough on the uptake that she makes a solid protagonist.
Harlan Ellison & Ken Steacy, Night and the Enemy: Based on an Ellison story from 1957 and its sequels telling the story of the Earth-Kyba war with a frame story set millions of years after the war ended. There’s a coward who, left behind by his fellow humans to slow the advance of the Kyba, discovers courage in an ironic and terrible way. There’s a human fighter confronted by a robot gone insane, and so on. This is closer to an illustrated story than to a conventional graphic novel-there’s a lot of text and no lettering, just dialogue inserted into the frame with type. The images differ as between the stories, but are mostly bold rather than detailed. Despite the 2015 production, the stories remain of their time (e.g., the telepathic, humanoid race encountered in one story wears loincloths/necklaces with “teeth” on them, straight out of standard racial stereotypes, and its leader tells the protagonists how another group “burned our jungle and took our women and killed our warriors,” although I guess that’s supposed to be ok because one of the humans to whom they’re saying this is black).
Stephen King, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Story collection from the past few years, with the usual “bad things happening because they can” horror (Mile 51, for example, features an otherworldly car that eats people), stories that gain their punch because they’re about aging and dying (e.g., Batman and Robin Have an Altercation, about a man’s weekly lunch with his Alzheimer’s-stricken father and the road rage incident that makes one week very different). Morality is probably the most vicious, about a proposal to a married woman that’s far more than indecent (no sexual violence).
Mark Waid, Insufferable, vol. 1: OK, I admit it, I was sucked in by the description and the clever play on Waid’s earlier titles-the idea is that a former sidekick has grown up to become a horrific, Bieberesque human being, and his former lead superhero (and also, his father) has to work with him one last time. Boy, do they hate each other, the way family members who worked together for years realistically may hate each other, while also caring. Interesting variation on the Batman/Robin/dead hero’s mother trope, if you can stand one more woman in a refrigerator. Also gives us superheroes in the age of social media, with my takeaway being that there’s no way to win: being in the public eye means taking a lot of unwarranted hate along with whatever’s warranted.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.