Scott Graham

Classmates in separate years of secondary school in the UK evolve into friends and by the end of the volume reach out for a tentative emotional connection. The drawing style is good, the characters are consistent, but a little crudely sketched. More effort is made in moving the plot along than creating totally fleahed out conversations, to the point where speech bubbles often contain just an emoticon to give the reader the general tone of a conversation that isn’t needed to cast a light on the characters or the action. It works well and the main characters are likeable, but volume 1 is strictly an introduction, and leaves the reader wanting to see how the budding romance develops and the obstacles it will run in to.

This book, written in 1967, is of a time and may have been enjoyed more while “under the influence”. Four humans in the distant future gather in a spacecraft at the edge of the universe with the intention of taking a three hour tour into what lies beyond. The craft has duplicated safeguards to protect them from the effects of the lack of reality outside the universe, but sabotage leaves them open to the effects of nonlinear everything. From there, the book explores multiple scenarios/permutations of reality that the four main characters find themselves in. The different realities are actually pretty interesting, but without much cohesion or resolution there isn’t much here. If only I still had the phone number of my dealer from the 70s…

The story of encroaching teen gay discovery was admirable and the idea of the seabirds woven in was unique and interesting, but the execution was clunky, the supporting characters were too conforming to a pattern for the type of story. From the gruff storekeeper who hates his teen customers to the bitter divorced budding alcoholic father and his enabling brother, Will Taylor fills the supporting roles with caricatures. But he ends the story masterfully with foreshadowing for the main character with a symbolic action by his summer boyfriend. A little more nuance would have gone a long way.

Shamelessly derivative. Two professional hockey players on different teams in a romantic and sexual relationship? Check. Participating in a summer hockey camp? Check. Proceeds from extracurricular work being donated to mental health charities? Check.

An interesting gates of hell apocalyptic story was adversely attected by an overwrought narration. An emotionally unhinged young woman accepts a subjectively princely sum for the responsibility of caretaking a waterfront property (and perhaps unbeknownst to her, the world), for a weekend with mysterious tasks disclosed in increments as supernatural threats accumulate and the remedies grow from quotidian to more onerous and life threatening.

Granted, the author stacks the deck against the antihero, and trust me, the MC is not an easy person to root tor. To add to the general feeling of antipathy toward the MC, the narrator performs the MC as a screaming lunatic, from when the listener is just hearing her thoughts up through her ramblings toward other real and otherworldly characters. Even her more rational moments are read with a snide sarcastic voice that grows irritating quickly. Take an ativan before listening. Better yet, read the physical or ebook version and give the MC the voice you deem best because it will most definitely be a better choice than Simon & Schuster's choice foisted on the insuspecting audiobook consumer.

Perhaps better titled Aliens In Pop Culture: A Review, this short book is disappointing in its lack of serious discussion of extraterrestrial life, its probability, and its possible paths of evolution. Although Dr. deGrasse Tyson does tip his hat at those subjects, it doesn’t take long before he diverts the discussion towards The Day The Earth Stood Still, The War Of The Worlds, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and even the as of yet unreleased Disclosure Day. Thank goodness for Steven Spielberg, for without whom this book would have been a pamphlet.