A Net of Dawn and Bones

A Net of Dawn and Bones
By C. R. Chancy
2015

This is a self-published book available on Amazon, written by one of my favorite fanfic authors, who described it as:

Urban fantasy for anyone who’s stared at the latest vampiric/werewolf/whatever supposed “love” interest, and prayed the main character would have the common sense to set them on fire.

It really was a joy, with a great deal of awesome world building, and wonderful characters and interesting plot. In addition to the general fantasy elements, it also has a lot of religious exploration, which is something I enjoy a great deal. Plus a significant amount of interesting historical information is inserted into the story, too, to the extend that there’s a bibliography at the end of the book with recommended non-fiction books.

One bit of lovely backstory is the premise that a lot of people wind up in Hell –- via original sin or being cursed or whatnot — who don’t really deserve it. Our main character is a “Hell raider”, who breaks into Hell and then back out again, carrying souls with her to be released to face a more fair judgment. The book starts with our main character in Hell, discovering a rather worrying link to Earth that will need to be fixed from the Earth side of things.

Meanwhile, on Earth, the backstory is more like that of the Anita Black series: that various supernatural creatures have revealed themselves to the public and are now granted citizenship and legal protections. And the police are struggling a bit to figure out how this all works out. This is an awesome premise, and I’m still somewhat bitter about how awful the Anita Black series got after a really wonderful start. Chancy is doing something similar, but doing it right.

And thus our Hell raider and our local police attempt to work together to stop a supernatural evil. Yay!

It’s fun and relaxing while also being fascinating and surprisingly informative, and addresses a lack in the vampire/werewolf fantasy genre, for heroines who aren’t going to fall for beautiful monsters.

My one caveat to a positive review is the presence of a few casual anti-Islamic descriptions which threw me off, both for the prejudice and for it’s offhandedness, given that most of her other statements tend to be more backed up with either research or world-building. The anti-Islam sentiment had neither, alas, and I honestly think her editor should have removed them for literary as well as ethical reasons.

That said, I have a lot of experience reading and enjoying problematic things and it only came up twice and I, at least, was able to easily put that aside and enjoy the rest of the book for what it does right.

The first chapter and a half are readable in a preview on Amazon if you’re interested.

Darths & Droids

Oct11 by Rebecca

Darths & Droids
by The Comic Irregulars (Andrew Coker, Andrew Shellshear, David Karlov, David McLeish, David Morgan-Mar, Steven Irrgang, Ian Boreham and Loki Patrick)
and, of course, Lucas Films
2007 – present (and ongoing)

So, I’m currently reading book 3 of this series, while the authors are still regularly updating book 6. And, with the soon-to-be released Star Wars episode 7, I’m sure hoping the authors continue to write a book 7.

Because this is a graphic novel parody re-telling of the Star Wars movies and it is hilarious!

I actually blasted my way through Books 1 and 2 and am now laughing my way through Episode 3, even as I also go back to Episodes 1 and 2 to laugh at that over Anna’s shoulder as she reads it.

The great thing about this is that it doesn’t actually deviate from the plot (as best as I can tell, although I admittedly don’t really remember the movies all that well) – it uses screen captures for the illustrations. The parody aspect comes with the fact that it’s told as the adventures of a Dungeons & Dragons style role playing game and has the dialogue of the players, both in and out of character, overlaying the events. And let me tell you: all the things that make no sense in the movies, suddenly make all sorts of perfect (and perfectly hilarious) sense when you see the motivations of the players making the decisions.

I have no real interest in role playing games, but this almost tempts me to try because it’s so funny, except that then I remember that I find them kind of tedious. It doesn’t matter, though: this makes it look fun and awesome! And the author’s comments below each page are also hilarious bits of commentary either on making that particular update or on the joys/frustrations of role playing games.

Plus, I had not thought it possible to be absolutely charmed by Jar Jar Binks, but apparently I can be. And I really want to tell you all about the hilarious things that happen (Shmi! Sally! “Summon bigger fish”!) but once I started, there’d be no end and you really just need to go start reading it yourself.

Go forth and read Darths & Droids: here!

I’m also going to include a couple of other somewhat related links, which are well worth exploring too:

DM of the Rings: Darths & Droids was originally inspired by DM of the Rings, another webcomic parody with the same premise of role playing gamers being the Lord of the Rings characters. It’s also hilarious, although I think Darths & Droids does it even better, in part at least because the Star Wars movies are active/ludicrous enough to support going through it scene by scene, while DM of the Rings necessarily skips over large sections.

Star Wars: Before The Force Awakens (original Korean: “스타워즈: 깨어난 포스 그 이전의 이야기”) by Hong Jacga is actually a fully licensed and approved addition to Star Wars that is also a free online webcomic being regularly updated. It’s also beautifully illustrated and adds scenes of Luke Skywalker’s early life even as it retells much of the story of the original trilogy.

Fallen Angel: To Serve in Heaven

Aug3 by Rebecca

Fallen Angel: To Serve in Heaven
by Peter David (author) and J. K. Woodward (illustrator)
2006

This graphic novel was beautifully drawn and had a quite interesting philosophical take on God and the meaning of life, etc. I like religious themed stories, especially ones that deal with the motivations and choices of god-like beings, so this was right up my alley. On the other hand, it was a bit too noir-ish for my particular taste.

The premise is that there’s a city, Bete Noire, that’s sort of the center of reality and fully of dark grittiness and only certain special people are able to access that city. It’s a pretty common trope (Simon Green’s Nightside springs to mind, but also Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Melissa Marr’s Carnival of Souls, etc.) Our main character is a fallen angel and the plot circles around some machinations by the city’s Magistrate and conspiracy, but mostly serves as an exploration of Liandra’s backstory and introducing the other main players in the city, introducing the series as a whole.

So it was beautiful, it introduced at least one really interesting idea, and there was at least one really funny scene (the Magistrate is furiously trying to interrogate Liandra about her past, but she’s spent the last several hours trying to drown her sorrows about an entirely different part of her past, and it was pretty hilarious failure to communicate). However, that failure to communicate isn’t uncommon as these characters mostly alternate between being threatening and being cryptic. It makes the characters come across as both unpleasant and more than a bit dumb.

It wasn’t great but was still worth reading.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Jul26 by Rebecca

Uprooted
by Naomi Novik
2015

This was so good! I love it!

I love this so very much, and luckily I’ve been on vacation so I was able to just blast through this book within 30 hours (which did include a full night’s sleep, for which self-control I should definitely get kudos.) Of course, now I’ve finished it, and that is a travesty and I may need to start it all over again.

Novik created a world of magic and politics and then wrote these gorgeous, vivid descriptions, and complex characters. I love Agnieszka (the main character) and I can empathize with literally every other character who appears, good and evil and in-between. The characters are complex and human. The story is a fairytale, but it’s also a fully developed novel and it addresses the difficulties and horrors that get skimmed over so easily in a short fairy tale.

Uprooted reminded me of Robin McKinley’s various fairytale books, but I think I like this even more. Unlike McKinley’s stories, Uprooted is an original story with original characters, but is steeped in Polish and Russian folklore.

The story starts with Agnieszka being picked as the once-very-ten-years tribute to the Dragon. The Dragon is actually the local lord and an immortal wizard who protects the land from the Woods, which are quite dangerous. It’s unclear what happens when he takes his tribute except that when they are released after ten years, they are well-dressed, well-spoken, are delighted to see their families, but refuse to live anywhere near the Woods ever again.

After that, things happen! And it’s all very exciting.

You can read the first chapter here.

Go read it!

more Graphic Novels

Jul20 by Rebecca

Runaways, 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.

The 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
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

Jul4 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:

A 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

Jun18 by Rebecca

Service 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

Jun14 by Rebecca

7^th 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 7^th 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

Jun10 by Rebecca

Carnival 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

May25 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.

Biblio-therapy

Author Archives: Rebecca