Author Archives: Rebecca

more Graphic Novels

by Rebecca

RunawaysRunaways, Vol. 1: Pride & Joy
By Brian K. Vaughan (author) and Adrian Alphona (illustrator)
2011

This is a really excellent comic book with the premise that these kids are all acquaintances because their parents are friends, but there is nothing exceptional about any of them… until they realize that a) their parents are actually a super-villain group, and b) they all have various super-powers of their own. Having superpowers is awesome, but who wants to be a supervillain when you can be a superhero instead? Except that their parents are supervillains and are killing people and what in the world are they supposed to do about that because despite it all, they’re still their parents?

As a thirty-something, parental issues aren’t really my thing, but I wish I’d found this when I was somewhat younger and into the X-Men. There was a time when the thought of super-powered teenagers dealing with school and parents and teachers and working in groups while still remaining an individual really spoke to me. At the moment, this book addresses issues just a trifle young for me, but it’s still really good and I do recommend it.

TheWickedAndDivine_vol1-1The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 1: The Faust Act
By Kieron Gillen (author) and Jamie McKelvie (illustrator)
2014

This was beautiful and I loved the premise that there are these reincarnated gods who are hanging around. However, it turns out that there’s a pantheon of 12 reincarnated gods, and they all know each other and have complex, interrelated backstories that relate in complex ways to the actual plot, and all of this is presented in large data dumps. I couldn’t keep track of what was happening or who was involved. It’s a beautiful book, and the premise really does remain pretty fascinating, so I may try to read the second volume eventually and see if it helps at all with tracking what’s going on.

Deadpool_Kills_the_Marvel_Universe_Vol_1_1Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe
By Cullen Bunn (author) and Dalibor Talajic (illustrator)
2012

Deadpool has been crossing my radar somewhat more frequently recently and I noticed one of the trade comic books at the library and decided I should give it a shot. It’s fun and gratuitously violent, but with the sort of satisfying comic book violence that’s also a commentary on how ludicrous previous plots have been to kill various characters. I didn’t like the characterization of Charles Xavier who plays a minor but pivotal roll in setting up the plot, such as it is, for this story. But characterization is not really the point of this story. Instead, irony seems the order of the day, to the extent that at the end I was kind of wondering if the author was trying to ironically be ironic. My take-away is that Deadpool might be the most violent, most hipster character ever.

A Girl and Her Fed by K.B. Spangler

by Rebecca

First: Happy American Independence Day!

Then we get to the part where I have various concerns regarding my country. I love it, but oof, there are some things that need to change. A Captain America: Winter Soldier fanvid that I particularly appreciate sums it up best by changing the chords of the Star Spangled Banner from major to minor. Just the music change, changes the connotations of the classic question from “does my country of freedom and bravery still exist?” to “is my country that exists still free and brave?” And given the recent prevalence of fear-mongering and preemptive actions, the second question is a timely one.

Anyway, on the same note but with a much cheerier tone: have an absolutely hilarious webcomic all about government surveillance, government conspiracies, non-government conspiracies, presidential ghosts, and some pretty raunchy jokes:

 

AGirlandHerFed_4574A Girl and Her Fed
by K.B. Spangler
2007 – present

This is awesome! It’s a webcomic, but that doesn’t really capture it, because it’s also a serial story and a graphic novel. While each update is quite awesome on its own, it’s very plot-driven and I highly recommend starting at the beginning and reading through to the end.

Of course, it’s not actually ended. Spangler is currently working her way through chapter 10 (updates twice a week!). However, the introduction thru Chapter 6 make up an entire plot arc. Chapter 7 starts with a quick montage of the next five years and then proceeds with the next plot arc, five years after the close of Chapter 6.

The premise (without any spoilers: this gets covered in the first 5 pages) is that a journalist who speaks to the ghost of Benjamin Franklin is on the terrorist watch list after an article on civil liberties. The fed in charge of monitoring her was part of a secret government experiment that implanted a cybernetic computer chip in his brain that includes an interface avatar that looks like George W. Bush.

And conspiracies abound!

Our two main characters have widely divergent political leanings but they’re both good intentioned. And our primary main character (the titular “Girl”) is incredibly outspoken and, while she has doubts about what to do, she is fearless in doing what she decides to do. Which is often incredibly dangerous and maybe she should be a bit more fearful, and yet, I love her because she is not.

There’s also a talking koala, Speedy. Speedy was the result of another government experiment, who is very smart and capable and yet remains very much a sexually-mature male koala (think tom-cat, except koala.) Speedy is largely the reason this story is PG-13 at minimum.

The whole thing is a joy to read and I love it. You should read it too!

You can read the author’s About the Story here (the webcomic equivalent of the back of the book.)

Or you can just dive in and start reading here.

Also, the art is lovely. I wouldn’t give a positive review of a graphic story if the graphic portion wasn’t good. Something to note is that Spangler developed a great deal artistically over time, and while she’s gone back and started redoing earlier pages to match up with the more mature art style, there’s a couple of chapters in the middle that are still significantly rougher than the rest. It’s not bad, by any means, but it is a bit jarring to hit that point where it starts to look like a rough draft to the final version rather than the final version.

But still: lovely!

Go read it!

 

Service Included by Phoebe Damrosch

by Rebecca

ServiceIncludedService Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter
by Phoebe Damrosch
2007

The subtitle is misleading: while there was one chapter that told some stories about some of the wacky customers, the focus was really on the professional (and sometimes personal) life of a high-end waiter. It’s fascinating. It’s eye-opening, nonfiction, and really makes me reassess my experiences at various restaurants. I don’t tend to go to the high-end restaurants like Per Se, where Damrosch worked, but I imagine much of the same structure is true in a watered-down fashion in other restaurants.

Also, the food descriptions are mouth-watering. Even when the descriptions were of food that I don’t generally care for, wow, I wanted to try them out because it sure sounds like this place would be doing them in a way that all people would like. I want to try these dishes! And I really want to visit Per Se to experience them.

I could have done without the sections focused on Damrosch’s adventures in dating, but it was still well written with humor and humility. I just found it somewhat soap-opera-like and an unwanted break from the intricacies of the high-end service industry. It’s possible and even likely that other readers will enjoy those sections, though.

I still don’t understand the interconnected budgets of the restaurant, the service staff, and New York living, but I assume it’s all based on the incomes of the regular clientele who apparently might spent $20,000 on dinner. (After reading this book, I looked up the Per Se website and confirmed that a regular dinner without wine is a fixed price of $310, which is within the realm of possibility if I save, in contrast to the $20K that is just not.)

Damrosch also includes tips on how to interact with service staff, most of which I already knew, and some of which I (rather embarrassingly) did not.

Anyway, this is a fabulous book and I definitely recommend it.

7th Sigma by Steven Gould

by Rebecca

7thSigmacoverart7th Sigma
by Steven Gould
2011

This was a fun and interesting science fiction book that was mostly a character study, with the science fiction largely a backdrop for the Wild West atmosphere. Most of the chapters are essentially stand-along short stories about what our main character, Kim, is getting up to.

In many ways, this book reminded me of Zenna Henderson’s The People series, what with the mixture of high-tech knowledge and low-tech life and the overall theme of people being people. Much more blatantly, the story is also heavily influenced by, or possibly a re-write of, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. It’s been a while since I read that and don’t particularly remember it, but I do think they suffered the same issue: Kim as a child is adorably precocious; Kim as a young man is somewhat irritatingly perfect.

Luckily, as Kim grows older in 7th Sigma, the world building also begins to expand, so it balances out and I enjoyed the book as a whole. I do wish there were more, because the world building was pretty fascinating and I wanted to see the implications of one of the final reveals.

Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr

by Rebecca

carnival-of-souls-melissa-marrCarnival of Souls
by Melissa Marr
2012

I picked this up randomly at the library because I remembered enjoying Marr’s previous book Wicked Lovely. And Carnival of Souls was fabulous to begin with. And then it got really kind of skeevy. And then it ended abruptly without any resolution.

I assume there were plans for a second book or two in this “series” but really it should be another part or two in this book. (Instead, there was apparently a reprint of the same book with a different title, Carnival of Secrets.)

Things this book does really well:
The characters are all full characters such that even when they consider each other their enemies, the reader is left rooting for each of them and not sure what to do about the conflicts between them. Because they’re all trying to survive in a really rough world!

On a related note: the world-building in which there are witches and daimons (and humans, but they hardly matter) and they hate each other. They each think the other are dangerous creatures that need to be put down, and you can see the point of view given that there are protagonists on all sorts of sides within this conflict.

Thing this book does not-so-well:
Keeping me rooting for all the protagonists. I started out really rooting for all of these characters, and understanding why they’re making some pretty messed up choices given the situations they’re finding themselves in. But as time goes by and they keep on making ever more horrible decisions for poorer reasons, I lose a fair bit of respect for a lot of them.

Thing this book does terribly:
Come to any sort of resolution. The book ends on a big reveal, but it’s the kind of reveal that generally acts as the turning point of a book rather than the conclusion. About 50 pages before the end, I was already getting suspicious because Marr kept on adding complexities rather than even advancing the timeline such that a resolution was possible. This is something that I generally see in long but unfinished fanfic, but didn’t expect in a published novel. It was annoying. This was essentially half a book and doesn’t stand on it’s own.

Disappointing given how much I was enjoying it to begin with.

The Hillywood Show musical parodies

by Rebecca

Since I’ve spent the last few weeks (months?) re-reading old favorite books and a series of pretty amazing, incredibly long Star Wars alternate universe epic fanfics that I’ve got no idea how to review, I don’t have any new books to review here. But I do have a fun series of links to give, because if you don’t know about The Hillywood Show already you should be introduced to it pronto.

The Hillywood Show was created by sisters Hilly and Hannah Hindi and they make extremely elaborate video parodies of blockbuster films using famous songs.

At the moment, there are 20 parodies, and 20 behind-the-scenes videos (which are well worth watching).

While I absolutely recommend them all (there are three for Harry Potter, five for the Twilight series, two for Lord of the Rings, and bunch of others), the one I just found today that inspired this post is:

The Supernatural Parody
(using Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off)
along with the Behind the Scenes on making the video.

One I ran across some time back and only now realized that it was by the same group:

The Doctor Who Parody
(using Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Time Warp)
along with the Behind the Scenes on making the video.

These are really just brilliant. Go check them out either on their own website or on YouTube.

The Bible: Kings 2

by Rebecca

And here in Kings 2, we continue the rundown of the various kings of Israel and Judah, along with their rather fraught relationships with the kings of Moab, Egypt, Syria, Assyria, and Babylon, plus a note on how God is judging them (hint: mostly sinful.)

Once more, the chapters that discuss the various kings of Israel and Judah generally end with the direction that more information about that king is available in The Annals of the Kings of Judah, or The Annals of the Kings of Israel.

Also the prophet Elisha gets a lot of stories:

Chapter two: A chariot of fire comes to take the prophet Elijah bodily up to heaven. The devoted assistant/apprentice Elisha becomes an even greater prophet (and sends bears to kill 42 men who mocked his bald head. – Kings 2 2:23)

Chapter four: Elisha is a prophet and, among other miracles, raises the dead.

Chapter five: Elisha cures a leper but refuses a reward. His assistant Gehazi sneaks around in order to con the reward out of the former-leper, and Elisha curses Gehazi with the leprosy himself.

Chapter six: Elisha spies on the Syrian king via prophesy and then leads a troop of Syrian soldiers intent on kidnapping him to Samaria, has them given the food and water offered to prisoners of war and then sent on their way back to Syria.

Chapter seven: Elisha breaks a siege by scaring away the Syrian troop besieging Samaria to the extent that the troops even leave all their supplies behind and the starving Samarian residents feast, except for an unbeliever who gets trampled to death.

Chapter thirteen: Elisha dies an old man and is buried, but later some Moabite bandits went to bury one of their own dead in his tomb, but as soon as the dead bandit came in contact with Elisha’s bones, he came back to life. Wowza.

As for the rest, there’s a continuation of the various Kings, each of which have their own stories that mostly involve being invaded by various other kings.

Kings of Israel

  • King Ahaziah (son of King Ahab, fell off a porch, broke his leg, and died) (sinful)
  • King Jehoram* (son of King Ahab, brother of King Ahaziah) (sinful)
  • King Jehu**** (son of King Jehoshaphat of Judah) (sinful)
  • King Jehoahaz (son of King Jesu) (sinful)
  • King Jehoash + (son of King Jeheoahaz) (sinful)
  • King Jeroboam II *****(son of King Jehoash) (sinful)
  • King Zechariah (son of King Jeroboam II, king for only six months before he was assassinated by Shallum) (sinful)
  • King Shallum (king for only a month before he was assassinated by Menahem)
  • King Menahem (sinful)
  • King Pekahiah (son of King Menahem) (sinful)
  • King Pekah (assassinated King Pekahiah) (sinful)
  • King Hoshea (assassinated King Pekah) (sinful)

King Shalmaneser of Assyria invaded in King Hoshea’s seventh year. Three years later, Samaria is conquered and the people of Israel are taken from the land (due to their sinfulness). This happens in the sixth year of King Hezekiah of Judah.

And thus ends the Kings of Israel.

Kings of Judah

  • King Jehoshaphat
  • King of Joram* (son of King Jehoshaphat) (sinful)
  • King Ahaziah (son of King Joram) (sinful)
  • Queen Athaliah ** (mother of King Ahaziah) (unstated)
  • King Joash *** + (son of King Ahaziah) (virtuous but also sinful?)
  • King Amaziah (son of King Joash) (mostly virtuous)
  • King Azariah (aka King Uzziah?) (son of King Amaziah) (mostly virtuous)
  • King Jotham (son of King Azariah) (mostly virtuous)
  • King Ahaz (son of King Jotham) (sinful)
  • King Hezekiah (son of King Ahaz) (virtuous)
  • King Manasseh (son of King Hezekiah) (extremely sinful)
  • King Amon (son of King Manasseh) (sinful)
  • King Josiah (son of King Amon) (extremely virtuous)
  • King Jehoahaz (son of King Josiah) (sinful)
  • King Eliakim aka King Jehoiakim (son of King Josiah, puppet to Pharoah Neco) (sinful)
  • King Jehoiachin (son of King Jehoiakim) (sinful)
  • King Mattaniah AKA King Zedekiah (uncle of King Jehoiachin, puppet to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon) (sinful)

Judah is essentially destroyed after King Mattaniah attempts to rebel. All the remaining population left for Egypt as refugees. Some 37 years after King Jehoiachin is dethroned and replaced by King Mattaniah, the new king of Babylon, King Evilmerodach releases Joehoiachin from prison, gives him a regular allowance and a seat at the table of kings.

And thus ends the listing of the Kings of Judah.

Summary: There are a lot of Kings of Israel and Judah, most of them were sinful, but they each get little stories of their lives and troubles. It’s kind of overwhelming as the two sets of kings are tracked in relationship to each other.

Moral: Punishment is coming. It doesn’t matter if you weren’t aware you were sinning, and apologizing might postpone the inevitable a generation or more, but punishment is definitely coming.

* The edition I was using of the Living Bible actually had several typos here and confused King Jehoram with King Joram and it made a confusing situation even more so. I cross-checked with a copy of the New English Bible to figure out who’s who.

+ The edition of the Living Bible also uses Joash for both King Joash of Judah and King Jehoash of Israel. Trying to figure out who’s doing what is incredibly frustrating.

** When she learned of her son’s death, she had all of his sons (her grandsons) killed, so that she could rule instead.

*** He was hidden in a temple as an infant and raised there in secret for seven years.

**** This was a crazy drive-by anointing. Elisha tells one of his younger prophet students to go get Jehu away from his friends, dump a bottle of holy oil over his head, tell him that he’s been chosen as the new king of Israel, and then the young prophet needs to run for his life to avoid being killed in the fallout. (chapter 9).

***** Kings 2 14:25 references the prophet Jonah (son of Amittai) the prophet from Gathhepher. Jonah apparently saw the various failures of King Jeroboam II. Was this the Jonah of Jonah and the whale? I have no idea.

Next up: Chronicles I

For a quick laugh: 3 Fanfiction plus 1 Nonfiction

by Rebecca

It’s been a while since anyone’s posted, so I’m going to recommend four short stories that are crazy good for a laugh. Two of them are so short that they don’t even have titles, but still, go read them!

LINK for FIC
by kyraneko

Fandom: crossover between State Farm Insurance Commercials and All State Insurance Commercials

Original Inspiration for Fic: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” we chant, and another agent appears in the pentagram. He screams. The Dark Lord feasts tonight.

LINK for FIC
by paginationline

Fandom: Marvel’s Avengers comic books

Original Inspiration for Fic: “Clint.”
“I know—“
“You have the army after you and no health and you’re falling out of a crashing plane.”
“I know, Nat—“
“It’s a bass fishing simulator, Clint.”
“I know! It just—it just happens!”

LINK for FIC: Your Highnessness
By shadydave

Fandom: crossover between Guardians of the Galaxy and Jupiter Ascending

Summary: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far a—
Yeah, I know that’s not when it happened, but that’s how you start this kind of—
I don’t know, do I look like George Lucas?
No, he made the movie. No, it doesn’t have Kevin Bacon. Not everything has Kevin Bacon!
Of course it’s still good!
Fine, you dicks. If you think you know better than one of the greatest stories of the human race:
A short time ago, in this galaxy…

LINK for FIC: So I used to be a martial artist
By textuallyaroused

Fandom: nonfiction, autobiographical

Example paragraph: Now, Sensei Diven was not a stupid man and he hated high-ranking kids that showed a bad attitude. This kid had a bad attitude. So he must have seen the evil gleam in my eye from a mile away and decided it was time for a little improvisation.

The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Rebecca

darkest partThe Darkest Part of the Forest
By Holly Black
2015

Since I really enjoyed The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, I started paying more attention to Holly Black. This book didn’t hit me quite the same way, but it is still a fun read. There’s something really pleasing about her heroines in both books: they know what they want and they go after it. Even when they flounder about a bit, there’s a certainty to them that I like.

Hazel, the main character here, occasionally (okay, more than occasionally) makes idiotic decisions, but she does so with a purpose. It’s always understandable and I’m often left wondering if maybe she’s right. And when she’s wrong, she acknowledges it, which is another rare and attractive quality. I didn’t feel much of a connection with Hazel (it’s possible I’m aging out of YA, at least a little bit), but I liked her.

The book also provides an interesting look at how easily some pretty horrific things can be normalized such that both the characters in the book and the reader reading the book don’t think too much about it… until someone points out that, wait, no, what you had been accepting for so long is actually not acceptable.

Only the most obvious example of this is how cruel, tricky and magical the fae are, but also how accepted they are in the town of Fairfold. They’re a dangerous and disturbing part of life in this town. People just carry on… until they can’t anymore.

The Bible: Kings 1

by Rebecca

This book is literally a listing of the various Kings of Israel. This is clearly a summary of events and many of the chapters end with a citation: For more information about King [whatever king this chapter discussed] see The Annals of the Kings of Judah, or The Annals of the Kings of Israel. These are apparently both lost books, with no known copies still in existence.

Anyway, at the start of this book, King David is old enough that it is time (again) for his sons to fight over the succession.

King David’s son Adonijah apparently decided that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission and went ahead and arranged his own coronation. (With Joab’s support, too!) With some prompting from his wife, Bath-sheba, King David immediately arranges for the officially recognized coronation of their son Solomon.

King David dies but not before reminding Solomon of all the betrayals he (David) suffered and all the people he (David) promised not to kill, but reminded Solomon that those promises would not bind him (Solomon). Thus there’s no surprise that Solomon starts off his reign with ordering a variety of deaths (chapter 2). After that, Solomon prays for the wisdom necessary to rule the land, which God grants (chapter 3).*

After some talk about how wise King Solomon now was, there’s a lot of description of the temple he has built to hold the Ark of the Covenant. It was built with much cedar wood (as a gift from King Hiram of Tyre) and gold and brass in a very specific design (chapters 5 thru 7) and then consecrated with much worship and sacrifice** (chapters 8 and 9).

Chapter 10 is about Solomon’s wealth and Chapter 11 is about his virility with his 700 wives and 300 concubines. However, it also talks about how he let some of those wives worship gods who were not the one God and thus he sinned started a pattern of sinful behavior in the line of kings. God decides that in punishment, Solomon’s son would only rule over only one of the tribes of Israel and be king in Jerusalem, while a man named Jeroboam would rule over the remaining ten tribes as king over Israel.

The next eleven chapters (chapters 12 thru 22) list the various kings who ruled and the ways in which they variously offended God and tried to kill one another.

Kings of all Israel:

  • King David
  • (King Adonijah, son of King David – had himself anointed king without his father’s blessings)
  • King Solomon (son of King David) (sinful)
  • King Rehoboam (son of King Solomon)*** remained king of the tribe of Judah

Kings of Judah:

  • King Rehoboam (sinful)
  • King Abijim (son of King Rehoboam) (sinful)
  • King Asa (son of King Abijim) (faithful)
  • King Jehoshaphat (son of King Asa) (faithful?)
  • King Jehoram (son of King Jehoshaphat) (unstated)

Kings of Israel (minus Judah):

  • King Jeroboam (sinful)****
  • King Nadab (son of King Jeroboam) (sinful)
  • King Baasha (having assassinated King Nadab) (sinful)
  • King Elah (son of King Baasha) (unstated)
  • King Zimri (having assassinated King Elah) (sinful)
  • King Omri (having defeated General Tibni the other claimant after King Zimri’s suicide) (even more sinful than Jeroboam!)
  • King Ahab (son of King Omri) (even more sinful than King Omri!)*****
  • King Ahaziah (son of King Ahab) (sinful)

While there’s all sorts of civil unrest within each of Judah and Israel as well as between them, there’s also all sorts of conflict and temporary alliances with the various kings of Syria.

And thus we are through Kings 1 and thus on to Kings 2.

Summary: There have been a lot of kings of Israel and Judah and most of them have been sinful. Most of the sins, however, have had to do with allowing the worship of idols rather than regarding their tendencies towards killing one another.

Moral: There’s a lot of sinning going on here, but punishments for those sins is largely hit or miss.

* Chapter 3 contains the famous story of Solomon’s wisdom in which two mothers are claiming an infant child is theirs. King Solomon orders the baby to be cut in half so that they can each have half. The woman who protests that decision is identified as the actual mother. Given Solomon’s recent history, it’s no surprise that the two women involved absolutely believed that King Solomon would be more than willing to cut a baby in half.

** 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep and goats were sacrificed at the temple over the course of 14 days. This comes to a bit more than 7 animals killed every minute for 14 days. Oof.

*** The people of Israel asked King Rehoboam to be a kinder taskmaster than his father, to which he responded along the lines of: you only thought you had it bad under Solomon. I’ll work you to the bone and whip you till you bleed. They decided not to accept him as their king after all.

**** King Jeroboam didn’t want his people going to Jerusalem to worship since King Rehoboam remained king of Jerusalem even after Jeroboam took over the remaining ten tribes. Thus, Jeroboam made a bunch of local temples with local priests for his people to worship at and thus horribly offended God. For a while, Jeroboam is the benchmark for the sinfulness of all other kings.

***** King Ahab was so wicked that he gets chapters 17 thru 22 to recount some of his evil deeds which include marrying Jezebel and worshiping Baal. The prophet Elijah comes in here to, first, announce the coming of a drought and, second, to demonstrate the non-existence of Baal. He also arranges the slaughter all 450 of the prophets of Baal, who had been under Jezebel’s protection. Eventually, Ahab was so terrified of a prophesy Elijah made that he rent his clothing, fasted, and wore sackcloth, such that God decided to punish Ahab’s children instead of him.

Next up: Kings 2