Ryan
A bit of personal perspective on this: I grew up in a fairly politically aware family, and while I was alive while Trudeau was prime minister, I was too young to really have any personal memories about that time. So all of my knowledge of Trudeau comes second hand.
Growing up, there were two basic truisms about Trudeau that I was taught: my Albertan family taught me that he was a traitor to Canada for selling out the West to benefit Quebec; after I moved to Ontario, I was taught that people in Quebec thought he was a traitor to Quebec for the October Crisis. An interesting mix of perspectives.
Federalism and the French Canadians comes before all of that, but context is key to understanding the writing here, I think. Trudeau's later actions stand in stark contrast to his decentralizing, “provinces first” attitude displayed here, and it's also necessary to remember that he was writing before both the Quiet Revolution and Reaganism/Thatcherism, which make some of his ideas seem a bit outdated.
While some of the ideas might seem outdated, a lot of them are depressingly current - the sections on Quebecois alienation and on the provincial government there seem like they could be applied today to most provinces, for example.
This was great. Probably the most heart-warming I've ever seen Star Wars be.
An alternate-reality version of Star Wars where Darth has to worry about Luke trying to use the force to lift a cookie jar off a self, and take him for joy rides in his TIE-A, rather than worrying about Rebellions and Death Stars and you have this book. It's full of situations parents will recognize, as well as lots of inside jokes for more dedicated fans of the movies.
Everything I said about the first book, in terms of quality, still applies here. It's very similar to the first book; enough so that I'm really not surprised that the two of them were released in a single volume.
What this one explores a bit more than the first one does is that looks more at the alien species that share in the Confederation with humanity. I remember years ago hearing a sci-fi author opine that it was curious that while humanity could produce both Gandhi and Hitler within a generation of each other, depictions of extraterrestrial species could often be as simplistic as “all Klingons are feirce warriors” or “all Twi'lek are sexy dancers”. It's a trap that many writers fall into, but one that Huff manages to avoid here, and her work is stronger for it. The Krai, di'Tayken, and other alien species feel fleshed out as alien species, with plenty of variety in their outlook, personality, and interpersonal relations.
In terms of plot, this one is fairly straightforward - Torin and a group of Marines are sent to investigate a ship belonging to a previously-uncontacted alien intelligence, which proceeds to challenge them by presenting them with scenes from their past, and a group of the Others that they're at war with. Fairly straightforward mil-SF stuff, made special by the stong characterization of Torin and the rest of the Marines she works with, as well as Huff's sparse yet mellifluous prose.
On the surface, Young Junius seems like a fairly simple story - 14-year-old Junius Ponds has his brother die, and vows revenge against the drug dealer that murdered him. It's a dark, abrasive coming of age story that is almost like a YA version of Scarface.
At the same time, though, Harwood uses that story to make a larger point about the karmic circle of violence - or, rather, the downward spiral of violence, rather than a circle. Junius' brother Temple is killed, which spurs Junius to action. The acts of violence that Junius commits spur others to violence of their own, and at the end of the story, what do we get? A bunch of dead people and an apartment building being torn down from the inside. It's not just Junius, either - we see the same thing being perpetuated with Rock, Marlene, and C-Dub.
Harwood has a very cinematic style to his writing here, much as in his Jack novels. There's still a Tarantino element, but it feels like he watched some John Singleton movies as well when preparing for this. That's not a criticism, but I feel it does provide a good description of the style he uses here.
I'm not overly fond of apples. It's not that I don't like them - they're a perfectly fine snack, they're good for you, and they're fairly inexpensive as far as foodstuffs go. I can see the arguments in favour of apples; I'm just not someone that would consider myself an apple fan.
This changes every year, around the end of September/early October. Because that, my friends, is apple picking season. The apples have spent the summer ripening, and you go and fill a big bag full of fresh off-the-branch apples. And they are the Most Delicious Thing Ever. They're tasty, they're crisp, and they're so juicy that it feels almost like you're biting into an orange, the apple juice running out of your mouth and into your beard. My wife and I usually go and get a bunch, and it's a one-month ticket to Flavourtown. Population: Apple.
So, if military sci-fi is fruit, Valor's Choice is most definitely apple-picking season. It's funny, it's exciting, it's got intriguing and diverse alien cultures, and it's got Torin Kerr, an interesting and witty main character. The story seems to be about introducing her as much as it is about the actual plot, and successfully makes you interested in seeing how the rest of the series goes.
Moxie Mezcal styles herself as a purveyor of “postmodern pulp fiction” - I'm not well-versed enough on postmodernism to discuss that side of it, but this really is pulp fiction in a classic sense. Murder, obsession, and amateur pornography: this one has the same chilling and thrilling elements that some of the classic pulps did, but updated for a modern audience and told through a slick, punk-rock style.
An absolutely beautiful piece of art. It's dark, it's bloody, it's dark, but it's also one of the oldest tales out there, one that is presented in an interesting way and which has a lot to say about the seductive, but ultimately destructive, power of anger and aggression.
The stories in this collection are all well-written, but the real star is the artwork. Wagner managed to collaborate with some of the greatest artists in the medium, and allow them to tell stories that not only allow them to display their unique talents, but to tell stories that are interesting beyond that, and which all still feel like uniquely Grendel stories. Wagner and his collaborators use not only sequential art, but also prose and poetry to explore the unique possibilities of the comic page, and it felt like a pleasure to get to read along with that exploration.
A man can admire a brick wall - the craftsmanship and effort that goes into building it, the quality of the brickwork, the shelter and privacy it provides once it's built.
It's hard to admire a brick wall when you're about to careen into it, though, and that's what Wizard and Glass felt like. The beginning was excellent, the ending fantastic, and by itself the flashback part, telling the story of teenaged Roland and his beloved Susan, was interesting. But dropping a 500-page flashback into the middle of your novel - one that even the other characters interrupt and complain about the length of - completely kills the momentum of the story. Here's to hoping the next book gets back on track.
The more I read about him, the more convinced I am that Jace Beleren is the Poochie of the Magic universe. He's the main face/mascot of the game now, the same way Urza was in the early years, but he feels forced into the storyline, rather than seeming like he belongs there. And there's enough going on here - between the mental vampire Mirko Vosk, the mad scientist planewalker Ral Zarek and his goblin assistant, and the tripartite dryad mind of Trostani - that Jace's presence really isn't needed, and takes up precious space that could have been spent on the Ravnican story.
This was a pretty fun read - I've been getting pretty interested in Magic in the past year, finding the Return to Ravnica block interesting from a gameplay and world-building perspective. This serial does a fairly good job of representing that, not only in the specific named characters, like Trostani or Niv-Mizzet, that show up, but in the overall feel of the different guilds as well.
The one downside is that the book really requires you to be bought in to the world to be interesting. There's no effort to explain Jace, or the guild structure of Ravnica, so I could see people that aren't already fans getting easily confused by the content.
Zombies and superheroes are two of the dominant myths of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and it feels like it should be one of those “chocolate and peanut butter” things, but it really isn't. The heroes don't really get a chance to be ‘heroic', in the way that superhero stories usually define the term, and a lot of the body horror and survivalist threat of the zombies ends up being stripped away as a result.
In addition, the book felt crowded, with characters that seemed interesting but whom we never really got to meet, and the plot made it feel at times like you were reading a report of someone's RPG campaign, rather than a novel.
The Dark Tower series is getting more interesting the further we get into it, which is a good sign. Our group of travellers continue on their quest for the Dark Tower, and along the way we learn a lot more about the world that has moved on, as well as some about where it was before it did. This includes making connections to some of my favourite King books - The Stand and Hearts in Atlantis - which only served to intrigue me a lot more. The story elements unique to TWL, like the city of Lud and Blaine the monorail, are equally intriguing, and left me wanting more despite the book's length.
There are only two things that bothered me about this book. First was the cliffhanger ending (people had to wait five years after that? Must have been killer). Second was, as Victoria mentioned in her review, the characterization of Susannah. She's an interesting, complex character, but King doesn't bother to explore her in as much detail as he does the others - and given that she's the only woman and only person of colour in the story, it's disappointing to see her kept at a distance like that.
The Empire State is at war, and has been for a long time. So long that most people, including private eye Rad Bradley, can't remember a time when it wasn't Wartime. Certainly as long as the city's science hero, The Skyguard, has been protecting it. This isn't really a novel about the Skyguard, though. It's a novel about a murder, one that Rad is hired to solve and which itself might threaten the very existence of the Empire State.
This was an incredibly fun novel. I'm as much a sucker for noirish detective stories as I am for parallel words and superheroes, so this was right up my alley to begin with. Beyond that, though, Adam Christopher does an incredible job of setting the mood of Empire State, a place where nothing quite feels right but you can't put your finger on why. Add in an apocalyptic-scale threat, steampunk superheroes, and gangsters, and you've got a great story.
Now this is a little more like it. Far more intriguing, cohesive, and epic than The Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three continues to follow Roland on his quest to the Dark Tower - only now he's discovered worlds other than his own, and companions to help him locate the Tower. Those companions help us better understand the scale of what Roland's undertaking, the same way birds or structures are added to fantasy art to show something is at a much larger scale than otherwise assumed.
Also, the relevation of the identity of the man in black brought a big smile to my face; I knew going in that The Dark Tower had connections to a lot of the other King books I've read (Hearts in Atlantis being the one that always first comes to mind), but I assumed that that was just a one-way relationship. It will be interesting to see how that develops further in this series.
I've always thought of Stephen King as a master craftsman of writing, and the opening line of the Gunslinger is a good example of that. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.” In that one line, we're introduced to our protagonist, antagonist, and setting, in a way that still allows action to be conveyed rather than being just exposition.
On the whole, though, I think the book suffers from feeling like an extended prologue, rather than the story proper, and from being split into three disjointed novellas. There are stories that can be told that way, but I don't think The Dark Tower is one of them.
Aliens in science fiction are a tricky business; they're often little more than metaphors for specific aspects of human society, like the Klingons in Star Trek, or they're a faceless menace with no goal other than destruction and domination, like Wells' Martians or Card's insect horde. Rarely are extraterrestrials given a full, rounded culture and a motivation equal to that of the human characters.
With Triptych, JM Frey has created a work that fully acknowledges the culture of science fiction that came before it, but steps outside of that tradition to create a species of alien refugees with a unique culture and physiology, and a protagonist who represents that culture, but is still able to stand as a fully-formed, three dimensional figure.
Kalp, the alien protagonist in question, really is the heart and soul of the novel - we spend a lot of time with his human partners, Gwen and Basil, but Kalp is the heart and soul of the novel. I'd describe him further, but I think Kalp is the sort of character that needs to be experienced firsthand, so all I will say is that “Of all the souls I've encountered in my travels, his was the most ... human.”
Science fiction is often called “the literature of ideas”, and in some ways Triptych could be used as an example of that, with its representation of polyamory, and its look at how accepting the alien refugees not only changes them, but also the human society that welcomes them - but it feels like expressing those concerns were secondary to Frey, and that she just wanted to tell a heartwarming, humanistic tale of love and loss. Which is, I think, how it should be.
City by Night is a wonderful novella that looks at the complexities of the relationships between people and the media they consume, the psychology of fandom, and sexy vampires. Frey begins the story with a fannish professional, Mary, who gets what many a young nerd would consider a dream job - PA on her favourite TV series. Even better, she ends up being transported into the world of the show, meeting the characters and becoming an integral part of their world. This story might sound familiar, especially to anyone that's read any amount of fanfiction, and that's intentional. Frey reveals in the intro that she wrote this story with the intention of analyzing the tropes of fanfiction and fan culture, and she accomplishes that fully.
For readers that don't interact with those elements of culture, this is still a worthwhile read. Frey's interweaves also works well as a parable about the perils of getting what you want in life, and how underwhelming that can be. Mary's coming to terms with her fandom and the limitations of fictional worlds are something that all readers should be able to connect to.
The cover proclaims this to be “The Sixth Sense speed-written by Chuck Palahniuck”, which gives it some pretty big shoes to fill.
Lawrence Pearce manages to fill them. Hikikomori is a Japanese term for people who are extremely reclusive and isolate themselves from society, rarely if ever leaving the house, and Pearce tells the story of a British Hikomori; Jared, a young man who is despondent after his fiancee Sarah is killed in a mugging, and who retreats from the world to find an imaginary girlfriend in his apartment. Someone that he can be with without being hurt.
As the same time, Hikikomori is the story of Melissa, a young woman with a history of Disassociative disorder who moves to a furnished flat in London, only to find it haunted by a ghost, who pines for his lost fiancee Sarah.
These two realities are introduced separately, but overlap, with only one of them being real - and the deftfully-told story keeps it ambiguous, so you're not sure who is real, or who is alive.
Hikikomori is a ghost story, but also a story about loneliness, and isolation, and how easy it would be, in the modern world, to become a ghost - you don't even need to die to become one.
And so it ends, with the archaeologists of the impossible attempting to achieve the impossible.
It became clear to me, in a way that it hadn't before, that Planetary is in many ways like X-Files; not only does it deal with the transnormal, and looking at the secrets hidden away under the surface of reality, but it's also primarily about information, and power, and how both the hiding away and the sharing of information can be displays of power.
At the same time, in the current volume it becomes difficult to avoid the metastoryline that has been running through Planetary, which is that Ellis is using the series to talk about the state of the comic book industry. The Four, the villains of the series, are quite obviously homages to Marvel's Fantastic Four (four adventures who are the first humans into space, and who come back with powers of elasticity, invisibility, energy projection, and inhuman strength), but it goes deeper than that, with the characters realizing that their universe is a two-dimensional plane composed of information.
I suppose in that regard it's like X-Files, as well, in that it began by servicing two relatively distinct groups of fans - those who watched for the “monster of the week” stories, and those that were interested in the larger mythos of the planned alien invasion and the government's role in it. In both cases, I think people who weren't there for the larger story left disappointed, but in both cases I think those are the most important bits.
All told, Planetary remains an amazing series - by far Ellis' best work, and essential reading for anyone who's interested in pulp fiction, comic books as an art form, or in keeping the world weird.
Catch-22 is one of those books that people tend to “know” without having read, which is a bit of a shame, because it's actually rather delightful to read. That walk the case with me:I knew what a catch-22 was, and as such never bothered reading it before now.
I've seen reviews of Catch-22 that refer to it as a book about war; that's true on one level, obviously, but it's true in the same sense as SunTzu's Art of War is, where it's about war, but it's also about politics, business, and any other large-scale social institution. Heller's not just saying war doesn't make sense, but rather that life itself is a absurdist farce - even though the book predates it, the t ext kept reminding me of that WoodyAllen line about god being a comedian playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
My one complaint is that the book drags a bit in the middle; at 350 pages this book would have been perfection; at 450 it has to settle only for excellence.c
For a planet that's never had a human being step foot on it, Mars is an incredibly well-trod planet.
Khan of Mars acknowledges that history, especially the ERB, John Carter side of it, as you would expect a pulp novel set in the early part of the 20th century to. It goes beyond that, though, to tell an interesting and fairly original story that remains thrilling and enjoyable throughout. Professor Khan's evolution from a bookishly intellectual giant talking ape into a swashbuckling adventurer is a fun one, and Blackmoore elevates the story out of being just a John Carter pastiche, or a DInocalypse spinoff, and turns it into something that stands on its own
Note: I got to read this book early as a reward for a Kickstarter project I backed; the book won't be out until August or later of this year.
The best summary I can think of for this graphic novel is (with apologies to Shakespeare) “From forth the fatal loins of two foes, A pair of star-cross'd lovers make a life”. You flip through the pages and it looks like a space opera, and it is, but it in this first chapter of the series it focuses on the opera as much, if not moreso, than on the space. Which, I think, sets it above and beyond a lot of the other entries in the same genre.
At the heart of this tale of interstellar war, creepy alien bounty hunters, and royalty with televisions for heads is a surprisingly touching story about newleyweds struggling to discover themselves and their new roles as parents. Parenthood is something that mainstream comics usually handle quite poorly, so it's nice to see something in the medium that is actually respectful of the challenges and fears that parents face. Alana and Marko aren't perfect parents, but they want to be, and watching them struggle to keep their heads above water reminded me of my own experience of becoming a parent (even if my experience was without rocketship forests and lasergun battles).
Lastly, given that this is a graphic novel, it would be a shame to finish talking about it without mentioning the art. Fiona Staples does a masterful job here, portraying weird, alien things in ways that make them incredibly familiar and intimate. I'd never heard of her before this, but I'm definitely going to be checking out more of her work in the future.
Weber's not a bad writer, but overall this gave me a very strong ‘meh' feeling. There wasn't much in terms of interesting character stuff, just people and warships being moved around into different battles. If anything, it felt like having someone describe to you the wargame that they've spent the last two months playing.