Ryan
I started reading LW&C a few years ago, and read the first nine volumes in a very short period of time. As a result, I ended up getting bored with the series, and found it kind of repetitive and lacking any larger story.
Thankfully, having read volume 10 in isolation, I found myself enjoying this volume a lot more. Yes, it's still ultraviolent, and yes, it's still overflowing with machismo, but there's still a fairly interesting story contained within.
Infected is the story of Perry Dawsy, a former college football star who's left working in tech support after a knee injury leaves him unable to play. Perry's the kind of guy who's got a lot of anger stored up inside him, and when he gets infected with a new disease that threatens to drive him insane and take control of his body, that anger threatens to come out. At the same time, a group of scientists and special agents are trying to find out the links between several mass killings throughout the US, in which the killers keep babbling about triangles before they themselves die.
I really liked this story - Sigler has a great ability to tell an engaging story, and manages to do a good job of tying the personal story of Dawsy in with the larger reality that the scientists are dealing with. He also manages to tell a story that is gory, and full of horrific scenes, but in a way that provides added emphasis for what's happening to the characters, rather than just being horrific for the sake of being horrific.
Now, having said that, there are a couple of caveats I should add:
1) This is not a story for everyone. There are a lot of very violent scenes in it, and a few points that just freaked me out, so if you don't like that kind of thing, you might want to skip it.
2) If you listen to the ‘podiobook' version, be aware that there's a promo at the start of the very first episode that spoils the whole damn story. I can understand Sigler and the publishers wanting to promote his newest work, but it really annoyed me.
3) Also relevant to just the audio version: Sigler's not the best at doing accents. His ‘normal' voice is great for audio, but not so much when he has to do hispanic voices.
www.scottsigler.com
On an ill-fated mission to Mars, Adam Archer met alien forces beyond our comprehension and became the next step in humanity's cosmic evolution! Now he has become humanity's first line of defence against both human and cosmic super-villainous threats.
Casey's said that with Godland he was trying to view Kirby as a genre unto himself, rather than just a singular creator. It's an interesting idea, and he definitely accomplished that while at the same time retaining his own voice. Recommended for fans of Casey and fans of Kirby, but if you don't like or aren't familiar with either of them, I don't think this would be the book for you.
I went through a bit of a Victorian period in my early teens, and Holmes was a major part of that. I don't think I ever read this one, though, oddly enough? A fairly quick read; the solution to the mystery comes across a little deus ex machina, and there's this weird interlude of 6 chapters or so focusing on the Mormons of Utah, and their “exotic culture” that is textbook Victorian literature. Still, an interesting introduction to Holmes and Watson, and their relationship.
This was a fun, but short read that follows the lives of two maintenance workers at Terrormax, a think tank for mad scientists, and the kooky adventures they get in to. It's a fun read, with a lot of ideas kind of just tossed out there and not explored, like a terrestrial manshark who gained all his knowledge of human society from watching Porky's II ad nauseum. That's the only thing that I think held the book back at all - things like that are treated kind of as throwaway gags when I think they could sustain over a longer period. Definitely recommended, however.
I thought this was an excellent book for several reasons:
First was Obama's writing style. I think that most who have seen him will agree that he's a gifted orator (even if they disagree with his policies), and his speaking style translates into his writing style rather well. He's good at capturing his own voice.
Second was the way in which he seamlessly blends the personal with the universal, telling stories about his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, and of his relationship with his family, and using them to illustrate larger truths about society and American polity. For a book that could have been little more than the first step in Obama's election campaign, it reads a lot better than that.
Lastly, there's the actual content of the book. Obama distills his thoughts on most major policy issues that a US president would face, and does so in a way that illustrates why his policies would be beneficial from a standpoint that tries to speak to both Republicans and Deomcrats. It's in keeping with his general attitude about bipartisanship, and it's the type of attitude that's really needed if the US is going to adopt more liberal social policies.
Will Eisner is an interesting figure for me. He's one of those names that always turns up whenever people talk about the most influential and important storytellers in the medium of graphic fiction, but at the same time, he's someone who I've never been able to understand the hype about, having read only his Spirit work.
Now I get it. This book was a complete revelation for me - the way Eisner uses the simplest of pen strokes to create emotive environments, the way he can craft scenes that are both sparse and rich at the same time. The way he can tell four stories that are completely different from each other, but which are really all the same story. Beautiful and brilliant.
This was an interesting read. I picked it up because I saw it on sale for $2 on a remaindered table at my local bookstore; I'd recognized Haldeman's name although I hadn't read anything by him previously, and thought I would give him a shot.
It was an interesting read because there's a lot of potential buried in here; a lot of the concepts used are ones that I like (multiple narratives, storytelling through “found” documents, the idea of humanity moving beyond Earth, and the political frictions that would develop therein), but it's all stuff that I've seen done better elsewhere.
I read this this morning in one sitting. Volume 5 of Scott Pilgrim finds Scott getting “old” (24), and reaching awkwardly adult moments with his bandmates, his girlfriend, and her league of evil ex-boyfriends that he has to fight to win her heart. In short, it's just another Scott Pilgrim book :o)
The further I get into this series, the more I realize that Kim Pine is my favourite character in the series. She's snarky when she needs to be, emotionally mature when others require it of her, and hopelessly, madly in love with a boy that doesn't deserve her.
The only drawback of this volume, I thought, was that it was paced a little oddly - it seems to be a setup for the upcoming volume 6 as much as it is an actual novel in its own rite, but aside from that, it was a lot of fun. Definitely recommended for fans of the series.
I loved the idea of this book - a collection of personal essays by authors about the role that comic books have played in their personal and professional development.
The main roadblock I had with this book is that I wasn't familiar with a lot of the authors, so their anecdotes lack any strong connection for me. I love hearing people talk about why they love the works of art they do, though, so it was very interesting on that level. It also made me nostalgic for 70s cosmic superheroes - I want to go read some of Starlin's Warlock and Kirby's New Gods.
An interesting little fantasy story filled with flying airships, floating cities, and evil family members that hold the power of ultimate destruction within them. It starts out as a fairly standard YA adventure story, kept afloat by Kesel's strong characterizations, and near the end of this first volume starts branching out in some interesting directions.
The more Crossgen titles I read, the sadder I am that the company went bankrupt - they really were creating some interesting, complex books and it would be interesting to see them keep going.
On the surface, this seemed like it was going to be a fairly standard adventure hero sort of plot. His friends dead and injured, our protagonist leaves the Evangelion project, returning only after the city is attacked again and he realizes that he alone can save it.
Of course, this being Evangelion, there is a lot more than just that going on. We learn the real reason that all these monsters keep attacking Tokyo, and the relationship that the NERV organization has with the tragedies that have killed half of Earth's population. Most shockingly, we also learn that the giant robots aren't actually giant robots, but living things, and we see our hero get broken down on a quantum level until only his disembodied spirit exists within the hulking frame that he used to pilot.
Annja Creed is a Raider of Tombs with a heart of gold - and, luckily, the Blade of that Witch, Joan of Arc, that she can mystically call upon to help her save the relics of history from the clutches of unscrupulous archaeologists.
This was a fun book to read. There's not really necessarily anything new or intriguing here (the opening sequence, especially, seemed to be lifted almost entirely from Raiders of the Lost Ark), but it was a lot of fun to read in a trashy, pulpy kind of way.
An alternate history novel set in a Jewish settlement, Sitka, in southern Alaska, The Yiddish Policemen's Union tells the story of a down-on-his-luck detective named Landsman who has to investigate the death of a junkie who may have been the Messiah before his untimely death.
This book was amazingly written. I hadn't read much Chagon previously, but he's one of those writers who has a complete mastery over the language, to a degree where I think I would read him write about anything at all, just because of the style it's written in.
I really don't think the “Force Heretic” subseries really needed to be three novels long. There were some really good ideas in it, like the Tahiri/Riina story (which I think is going to be key to the resolution of the whole NJO saga) and Zonama Sekot, but it's something that really could have been set over two or even one book. The whole thing dragged out way too long and suffered greatly from the “Let's revisit every single Star Wars plot idea ever” concept that the NJO has been suffering from.
Significantly weaker than the first part of the mini-series. The stuff I liked from book 1 was all scaled back, and uninteresting stuff put in its place - it also seemed to suffer from this desire on the part of some NJO authors to revisit every single plot point from earlier novels, as we return to Bakura to see how things have been holding up there in the two decades since the planet was introduced.
I think once the Force Heretic series is done I need to take a Star Wars break.
Read this right after reading vol. 5, and was glad to see that the high level of depth and quality in the previous volume was continued here.
In this volume, a new Eva is brought to Tokyo; however, it is taken over by an Angel, forcing Shinji, Rei, and Asuka to choose between friendship and duty. We also learn a little bit more about the organization, NERV, responsible for selecting the Eva pilots, and a bit more about the links between the Evas and the Angels.
I started this book with the sense that it was unnecessary; after all, Lasher and Emaleth, the only two Taltos still alive, were both killed at the end of the last book, bringing a close to the conflict between the Taltos and the Mayfair witches. However, because people love trilogies just as much as Anne Rice loves interview-style exposition, we get a third part to the Mayfair saga.
All kidding aside, this is a very interesting book; we meet a new, more mature Taltos named Ashlar, and he freely shares with the Mayfairs the history of his species, stretching back to Atlantis, to the Picts, and continuing up until medieval times and beyond. We also learn about what's going on inside the Talamasca, specifically with regards to the excommunications of Yuri and Aaron in the second book. Overall, I think I would say that I prefer this trilogy to Rice's vampire work.
This series is apparently a sequel to an earlier manga series, so I wasn't sure about all of the characters, but overall it was a fun read. The central idea of it: a locomotive that travels throughout the galaxy, with the inhabitants boarding and disembarking at different planets along the route - is a wonderful one, as well as a powerful metaphor. I'm looking forward to checking out the rest of the series.
This book was an interesting read in a lot of ways, but it's 15 books into a 19 book long series, so if you haven't been following it, the rest of this might not make a lot of sense to you. First was that in it we see further development of the “Jeedai heresy” amongst the Yuuhzang Vong, and learn a bit more about their cultural values. On top of that we see the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic start to work together, and we see the appearance of one of my favourite science fiction ideas: the sentient planet that moves throughout the galaxy under its own willpower. I loved the idea when it was Mogo from GLC, and when it was Ego the Living Planet from Thor and Silver Surfer comics, and I love the idea here, where it's the planet Zonama Sekot.
What really surprised me about this novel, though, is that it's another Star Wars novel where the EU characters really come into their own. While most of the movie characters do appear here, the meatiest roles of the book go to Jedi Knight Tahiri, Jagged Fel, and Gilad Pellaeon. It's amazing that a series based on a film would get to that point, where the main characters of the film have become secondary, but that's how the Star Wars universe has evolved, and I think it's just great. I especially loved Pellaeon in this book; he's very clearly an Imperial character, but one that you want to root for anyways.
One of the things that I've always loved about science fiction as a genre is how adaptable it is - lots of people have had a lot of success meshing sci-fi with everything from fantasy (Star Wars), to westerns (Firefly), to horror (the Alien trilogy). I kept this in mind as I read Coruscant Nights, which not only combines elements of science fiction and fantasy (as all SW stories do), but also mixes in equal parts of film noir as well. It's set shortly after the imposition of Order 66 and the film Revenge of the Sith, so that makes a lot of sense; noir is the kind of thing that thrives after wartime, when the horrors of war force the characters to deal with the darker elements of themselves).
The story revolves around a missing droid, and a former Jedi turned bounty hunter, Jax Pavan, who has to prowl the streets of the naked city to find him, in order to fulfill a promise to an old friend from the war. What complicates matters for him, though, is that both Darth Vader and the Black Sun criminal organization (as represented by a young Prince Xizor) also have their designs on the same droid, so it's a race against time to try to find the droid.
If you're a fan of this era of the Star Wars saga, definitely check this novel out, as it's a fun read and gives a slightly different perspective on things.
The first half of this book was fairly good - Niven did a good job of setting up characters, and the looming threat of a giant comet strike is handled in a believable, realistic way. After the comet strikes, though, the book kind of devolves into right-wing wank fantasy.
To start off, everyone who's not in the American South either dies off immediately, or is not worth spending any significant time on - the Soviets and Chinese start a nuclear war with each other immediately after the comet strikes; Europe is entirely washed away over the course of a single page; the Israelis and Palestinians find each other to mutual destruction within a paragraph.
Even looking within the parts that do survive, the same sort of devolution is shown - women are treated like property and married off for political considerations, racism is completely socially accepted, and in one bizarre moment Islam is equated with cannibalism.
The only redeemable things about the book by the end are two of the characters: Tim Hamner, the playboy amateur astronomer who becomes a hero, and Harry the Mailman, who refuses to let a little thing like the end of the world keep him from his duty of delivering the mail.
This was a fun little spin-off series dealing with one of Bone's ancestors, Big Johnson Bone. Set in the same valley that Bone finds years later, this story was written in the style of old folk legends, as the visiting hero helps rescue the local townspeople from an evil queen. And, along the way, we also learn the important moral of why Rat Creatures wear their tails short, rather than long.
If you've read the Bone series, you'll probably get a kick out of this, but if not, you probably won't really appreciate what's going on.