Category Archives: Fantasy

Comic Book Glut

by Rebecca

RurouniKenshinRurouni Kenshin: Restoration
By Nobuhiro Watsuki
2013

This was one of the free comic books that I picked up at Free Comic Book Day. It is a teaser for an AU (alternate universe) version of Rurouni Kenshin by the original author. It was fun, but mostly I enjoyed it because it reminded me how much I love this series. The actual teaser itself wasn’t all that great. It reintroduced the characters and held their first meeting at an arranged illegal fighting/gambling event, which just seemed like a bit of over-the-top, idiotic, self-indulgence.

While the reboot wasn’t so great, I definitely recommend the whole original series of Rurouni Kenshin, following Himura Kenshin, an amazing swordsman who, after a bloody past during the civil war, made an oath to never kill again but still manages to find and be found by a whole lot of trouble. The anime series based on the manga is also really good, and the recent live-action movie was excellent! (The animated movies, branded “Samurai X”, however, should be avoided.)

Anyway, seeing more of these characters written and drawn by the original author made me bounce around grinning with excitement. But the actual thing wasn’t all that good. It was a it of self-indulgent fluff, and while there’s nothing wrong with self-indulgent fluff, if you actually want to read a good AU take on this series, fandom (in the person of Vathara) has provided several better options, including the urban fantasy Blades of Blood and it’s sequel Witchy Woman, the Star Wars-crossover Shadows in Starlight, or the historical fantasy Gargoyles-crossover All I Need is a Miracle (which is a direct response to the awfulness of the animated movies).

So this series is awesome, and I highly recommend it, but this particular comic book is not the best example of it.

 

HawkeyeHawkeye: My Life as a Weapon
By Matt Fraction, David Aja, and Javier Pulido
2013

I’ve never really followed any of the Hawkeye comic books, but I enjoyed The Avengers movie a lot and the characters cameo in the Thor movie made me grin. So a new stand-alone comic book about Hawkeye at my library caught my eye. It was a whole lot of fun.

It’s a look at what Hawkeye, aka Clint Barton, is doing when he’s not out being a superhero Avenger… which is mostly getting into other types of trouble and going out being a secret agent for SHIELD. But it also involves hanging out with his neighbors at a rooftop barbeque/potluck.

Anna pointed out that the stories in this collection are all a bit grim, which I was going to argue with, except, okay, yes, they are a bit grim. But it left me happy. I liked it. Even though it does kind of imply that one of the main requirements of being a superhero is the ability to take a beating.

 

the-book-of-five-rings-a-graphic-novelThe Book of Five Rings
By Miyamoto Musashi, Sean Michael Wilson, Chie Kutsuwada, and William Scott Wilson
2012

I picked this book up because I have struggled to read The Book of Five Rings for a while now. It was highly recommended by a seventh-don black belt that I was training with. And yet, I found it super uninteresting and unhelpful. In some ways it read (to me) like The Art of War, except without the value. The graphic novel version makes up for some of that lack by being really well illustrated. And from everything I’ve read, Musashi himself was a fascinating character and I wouldn’t mind reading more about him, despite not caring for his writing.

Anyway, I actually highly recommend the graphic novel as a precursor to the plain unabridged text of The Book of Five Rings. It will give you a taste of the text while making subject more accessible. It’s readable in about an hour. Then, if you find the graphic novel appealing, maybe you should try reading the original text in its entirety.

Although, really, I mostly recommend Sun Tzu’s The Art of War instead.

 

Elektra_Lives_Again_00-1book_coverElektra Lives Again
By Frank Miller
2002

I read a couple of Daredevil series before and really enjoyed them (Frank Miller’s Daredevil: The Man Without Fear is excellent, as is David Mack’s Daredevil: Vision Quest although it largely focuses on a different character), but over all the quality of Daredevil comics varies wildly, so I also read a couple of Daredevil series before that I didn’t enjoy at all. Elektra is Daredevil (aka Matt Murdock)’s tragic girlfriend, a zombie-ninja-assassin who has her own spin-off series, but I had never read any of her comics that were any good at all… until now. This collection really brought her to life (haha!) as a character, despite her being a zombie ninja assassin. I liked the writing and the illustrations and just the whole feel for it. Well done.

Plus, there are two more Elektra graphic novels by Frank Miller for me to look forward to.

Red Glove and Black Heart

by Anna

By Holly Black

I previously reviewed the first in this trilogy, White Cat, which I absolutely loved. I can’t really review these subsequent books, though, because it is the kind of series where even reading the back blurb of each book gives away brilliant twist endings from the previous book. I can’t just not review them, though, because they are awesome! I wanted another chance to tell everyone to go out and read the whole series. I swear you’ll just devour all three in one lost weekend of literary debauchery!

Book Cover: Red GloveAnyway, without any spoilers for any of the books, Red Glove really brought home to me what I love so much about these books: they are noir mysteries, full of old school gangsters and con men and corrupt cops, but also noir-lite, set in high school, or rather an up-scale preparatory school. Our protagonist is classic teen boy, often angry and with poor decision-making skills, but is also a very amusing and often clever smart-ass.

Red Glove spends more time in the school itself than White Cat, which I appreciated. I really love world-building and just the mundane details of the school life were fascinating to me (I especially loved the school scenes in Harry Potter, too).

Book Cover: Black HeartEach book, too, gets a little wider in scope. White Cat deals with the protagonist’s direct family, while Red Glove extends more into the criminal world surrounding the family (I swear, these are all elements introduced right off the bat, and not spoilers). Black Heart goes even further and deals with the politics and government of the world. Unfortunately, I believe that this series has been planned as a trilogy with no subsequent books anticipated, though I would be a happy reader if Holly Black decided to revisit it.

—Anna

Stalking Authors, the Ilona Andrews edition

by Rebecca

Magic_RisesPeriodically I like to drop by the websites of my favorite authors to see when their next books are coming out and if they have anything new and interesting up.

Lois McMaster Bujold doesn’t tend to update her website very much, alas. But she does actively support fanfiction, which I appreciate.

Patricia Briggs is pretty good with her website, although she’s gotten somewhat less active on it as her career has taken off.

Ilona Andrews is still very active on social media, including their own website, AND posts regular free stuff.

Robin McKinely has a decent website, although I’m generally somewhat disappointed in her. I love her early work (The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, and Beauty) and feel like Sunshine was her absolute Best Book Ever! Ever since, it’s been just kind of down hill. But I still like to check up on her, periodically, to see if maybe there will be a sequel to Sunshine at some point, or if any of her more recent books look good.

Megan Whalen Turner has possibly the least active author’s website I’ve seen, and yet I still check back because, by god, if there’s going to be another book in series, I will start stalking bookstores and possibly publisher’s warehouses in the hopes of getting to it just that much sooner. (So far, no luck. I will just have to re-read the four that already exist.)

Anyway, this is all a long wind up to letting you guys know that Ilona Andrews has the first chapter of her next book up! This is book 6 is the Kate Daniels series, Magic Rises, due out on July 30, 2013. Yay! You can read the excerpt: HERE!!!

I love this series.

However… the chapter raises some concerns for me.

Thus: Here Be Spoilers (for both Book 5 and for Book 6).

Continue reading →

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

by Anna

By Karen Russell

Book cover: Vampires in the Lemon GroveMy wonderful friend Lori sent me this just because she thought I’d like it and it arrived in the mail in the middle of my Atlas Shrugged doldrums, and it was such a mood lifter, just having it on my to-read shelf. The cover is just so bright and graphic!

I had heard of the author, Karen Russell, through a brief review of her previous book Swamplandia!, which I had assumed was a comic narrative of Florida craziness á la Elmore Leonard. If it is anything like this book, though, (and I believe it is, according to the blurbs on the back cover) my assumptions are way off. Vampires in the Lemon Grove is the strangest book! It is a collection of short stories, and when I described the premise of each story to Rebecca, they just sounded kind of absurd:

“All silkworms in the Western hemisphere have died, so China is now the sole proprietor of silk, and in order to meet the now increased demand, they have discovered a way to turn women into more efficient silk worms.”

Rebecca said, “hmm.”

But, this story and the others are just beautifully written and poetic, even. Russell emphasizes the senses in her writing, describing not just the sights, but also the sounds, smells, tastes and touch of the worlds she builds. In the titular lemon groves, she describes the sun on the fluttering leaves, the feel of the wind that blows through the grove, the smell of lemon that pervades, and the sweet tartness of the lemons and lemonade.

The silkworm story took a bizarre and, quite frankly, almost silly premise and created layers upon layers of symbolism. The disenfranchised, used for production and others’ profit, find hope in self-identity and transformation. Each story was like this; reading them felt like scuba diving or spelunking, moving deeper and deeper through layers of alien landscapes. The stories themselves, too, seemed to each move a little deeper into the human psyche, getting darker and darker, until the last two broke my heart. So, take that as a caution: don’t avoid reading the book, by any means, but just be emotionally prepared.

It wasn’t a quick read because I wanted to savor each story for several days after reading it and before reading the next one. The only criticism I have is that each story ended too soon, almost abruptly, and each time I was left sort of blinking my way out of the story’s world and wanting to know far, far more about the characters.

Three word review: “otherworldly, emotionally devastating”*

*I’m not promising to always follow Kinsey’s lead with the three word reviews (though I love her addition), but I found these in the NPR review, and they just seem spot-on.

—Anna

Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs

by Rebecca

Frost_burnedFrost Burned
by Patricia Briggs
2013

There are a lot of girl-vampire-werewolf series out there, with a wide range regarding quality. Frost Burned is the most recent book in one of those series, that started out excellent, backslide into generic, but has managed to recover.

This is the tenth* book set in this particular universe, the seventh that follows the character Mercy Thompson, and I was impressed. The first few books in this series (Moon Called, Blood Bound, and Iron Kissed) are the best ones, while some of the most recent ones (Bone Crossed and River Marked) have felt rather bland, like Briggs was forced to write them in order to fulfill a contract, without having any particular plan or goal with them. In Frost Burned, Briggs is back with energy and interest.

I’m guessing it’s due to the major happening that concluded her most recent book set in this universe, but following a different set of characters. The Alpha and Omega series only has three books so far (Cry Wolf, Hunting Ground, and Fair Game) and these keep on getting better. The end of Fair Game was so spectacular, in fact, it drew me back into reading the Mercy Thompson series, just so that I could see what happens next in this universe.

And, without giving any spoilers: there is definitely a lot of fall-out.

I’m very excited about Briggs revamping (hee: re-VAMPing!) this universe, and think it was probably pretty important that she started alternating which series she was writing, so she could approach the characters with excitement rather than getting bored with them. However, I’m not entirely sure how readable any of her books are, at this point, without going back and reading the earlier ones.

Frost Burned did a pretty good job of filling in the blanks for what happened before, but it was enough that I think I need to go back and read the earlier Mercy Thompson book that I skipped entirely (Silver Borne).

Although, if you want to jump into this universe without having read any of the previous books, I would start out with Fair Game, just because it was a good book, delightful characters, the climax/epilog is really spectacular, and it sets up a whole new situation that is going to continue percolating through any future books in this universe.

* Or eleventh, if you count a novella in an anthology. Or fourteen, if you count short stories in anthologies.

Anna Dressed in Blood

by Anna

By Kendare Blake

Book Cover: Anna Dressed in BloodThis book title jumped out at me in the library months ago (for obvious reasons), but then we started the marathon of reading Atlas Shrugged, so I back-burned it for a while, knowing it was going to be my palette cleanser after Rand. At the worst parts of Atlas Shrugged, I just pictured Anna Dressed in Blood waiting for me. And I couldn’t have asked for a better palette cleanser!

It is cheesy and spooky and just awesome! It reminds me a bit of Twilight, actually, if a better writer had written the characters and situations in a way that makes more sense in a rational world. Also with some gender turnaround: Cas moves to a small town in Ontario with his single mother, starting a new school in his senior year and is immediately popular. Sound familiar? He’s also brooding and rude and immediately drawn to the titular female character. He’s kind of both Bella and Edward, but everything he says and does actually makes sense.

Cas is a ghost hunter, a talent and career that he inherited from his now-deceased father. He and his mother travel to new towns that have killer ghosts, settle there long enough for Cas to draw out and dispatch the ghost, and then move on to the next town. He is immediately popular at his new school because he makes an effort to be; he needs access to the gossip mill as quickly as possible in order to do his job. He knows that by being brooding and a little rude, he’ll be considered even more attractive, so he does that on purpose as well. I just love rational characters who have a goal and then follow logical steps toward it!

I felt like the plot got a bit scattered toward the end; I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the pacing just felt kind of odd to me. Even with that, though, this was a very satisfying book with which to recover from Atlas Shrugged. I would be somewhat cautious about recommending it for young readers: there was a fair amount of violence, and I can’t attest to fear factor because I have already described how I completely unfrightening I find ghosts.

—Anna

As You Wish and Sisters Red

by Kinsey

I’ve been reading a stack of non-fiction lately–books that are interesting, but not necessarily things I want to blog about. That is, unless folks are interested in a giant autobiography/oral history about the Mob hitman who killed Jimmy Hoffa? But I broke up all the history with a couple of lovely young adult fairytale retellings that seem like they might fit well into the YA vibe we generally have going here. Jackson Pearce clearly has the knack for reframing classic stories into modern young adult stories–she’s got a whole catalog of them. The two I read were As You Wish and Sisters Red and both were totally charming, easy reads.

As You Wish is the story of a depressed teenage girl who accidentally conjures a jinn (or genie) who has to stick around until she makes three wishes. But she doesn’t really want to fix her life with wishes, and he ends up getting interested enough to want to stay. The book is pretty short–almost spare–but it does a wonderful job creating a back story for the jinn with a minimum of information. In fact, the whole book gets across a lot of information and plot while staying very simple and not getting overly flowery. Sisters Red is a more complex story, wrapping together werewolves and the Little Red Riding Hood story, but adding in a relationship between sisters that really touches on the kind of layers that love and obligation create.

This might be making a fine distinction, but I found both these to be more like YA books plus a little fantasy, rather than fantasy books aimed at younger readers. There are no elaborate maps of fantasy kingdoms or complicated world building, but both books present a nuanced picture of teenagers and the serious issues they face, magic and mundane.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: ABCFamily-esque modern fables

You might also like: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver or Robin McKinley’s Beauty and the Beast retellings.

Codex Seraphinianus

by Rebecca

codexCodex Seraphinianus
By Franco Maria Ricci
1981

In honor of April Fool’s Day, I am reviewing the Codex Seraphinianus. No, this is not a prank or a lie, at least not on my part. The book exists. Just, well… it’s more like it’s a prank or a lie on the author’s part.

The Codex is an incredibly beautiful and extremely peculiar biology/sociology text in a foreign language. Yeah. Think on that for a bit.

Also, I recommend it.

Regardless of what languages you may be fluent in, this book is in a language foreign to you. It’s actually an alien language constructed as either a code or simply a very detailed doodle by the author, such that the written text is just as much an illustration as any of the actual color illustrations.

The color illustrations, of which there are many, are beautifully done, likely with oil pastels or some such.

codex03  codex7  codex_09

The subject of the book is the biology and sociology of an alien world… an extremely peculiar alien world, with a very complex biology. In some ways it reminds me of a steam-punk universe with cyborgs/implants/etc., except that such mechanical additions are intrinsic to the biology of the plants and animals rather than intentional additions later. (Sort of like WTF-Evolution’s even crazier, acid-tripping brother.)

In other ways it reminds me of the biology from Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep or Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead. Except more so than either Vinge or Card went.

It also reminds me a great deal of the Voynich Manuscript, a document that I have yet to actually see a good copy of, but which is another biology text written in an unknown language. But the Voynich Manuscript has had professional and amateur codebreakers trying to break it for nearly a century at this point and variously manage to “prove” is (a) a complex code that we just don’t have the key to yet, (b) a brand new language that would need to be translated rather than uncoded, or (c) complete gibberish that contains no meaning and can thus be neither uncoded nor translated. Its provenance is also deeply questionable. It has the potential to be (a) a secret alchemical manuscript from the 1200s, (b) a forgery created in the late 1500s and sold to Emperor Rudolf II as a secret alchemical manuscript from the 1200s, or (c) a forgery created in the early 1900s perpetrated either by or on the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich.

But back to the Codex Seraphinianus, it is vibrant and gorgeous and inspiring and confusing.

If you can get your hands on a copy, it’s a lot of fun.

Or, for a more easily accessible book, check out Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and try to figure out what the plots are of those stories.

Hounded

by Kinsey

Well, I think it’s time to get Atlas Shrugged off the top of the blog once and for all! I hope that Anna and Rebecca are both off somewhere reading fluffy things and not thinking about political philosophy. And if they want a fun new fantasy series to read now that they’re free to read fun things, I’ve got a good one for them.

Hounded is the first book in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series. I think there are five books out right now, and after reading this one I am going to hunt down all the rest. The story centers on Atticus, a 2000-year-old Druid who is peacefully running an occult bookstore in Arizona when a Celtic god from his past shows up to settle an old grudge. There are also witches, and vampires, and werewolves–Hearne does a great job of introducing a fully-populated universe of mystical characters who I suspect will play roles in future books, while still keeping this story moving right along. Thor doesn’t actually show up in this book, but all the characters who’ve met him think he’s a dick, so I’m really hoping he shows up eventually. Oh, and Atticus has maybe the best talking dog in the history of talking dogs.

The thing that really charmed me about this book is that it’s funny. Fantasy books can b so dark sometime, and certainly there is some death and destruction here, but there’s limited angst and lots of humor. I really enjoyed the whole thing and am looking forward to downloading the next few to keep me happily distracted on some long plane flights I have coming up.

Also, I don’t do audiobooks because I don’t have the attention span to follow fiction read out loud, but the friend who recommended this one to me said that voices in the audio version were absolutely awesome. So if you are a books-on-iPod person, you might want to check it out.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Snarky, modern-day fairytale.

You might also like: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, or any of Christopher Moore’s books.

Fanfiction

by Rebecca

productimage-picture-discover-fanfiction-today-9528Fanfiction

I have not been reading just Ayn Rand this whole time. That would have driven me completely crazy. I’ve also been reading a fair amount of fanfiction as some light-hearted, palate cleansers. I won’t be reviewing a lot of fanfiction on this site, but I do feel like I should introduce it as a genre, at least.

Fanfiction is a term that describes when fans of a particular story line decide to expand upon that story line by creating their own additions. While the practice has been going on for as long as anyone has been telling stories, the term “fanfiction” is more recent, first gaining wide usage by fans of the original StarTrek series. Now, there is fanfiction for pretty much any book, movie, tv-show, or other type of media that you can think of.

The genre lives in a bit of a legal gray zone since, if the original source is recent enough to be under copyright, then such stories and pieces of artwork are potentially infringing on that copyright. However, fanfiction is generally not produced for commercial gain, reading it comes with the expectation of prior consumption of the original source, and no case of fanfiction has ever been judged in a U.S. court. Published authors vary between actively promoting fanfiction based on their works and actively discouraging it.

As a genre like any other, it also ranges wildly in quality, from extremely shoddy works to amazingly spectacular masterpieces. The amateur nature of the genre allows writers to push at boundaries and experiment with ideas and characters in a way that publishing houses discourage. The online community is well aware of the way they are pushing boundaries, and compensates for it by generally beginning any story with a summary and a series of warnings. These warnings will let you know what source materials (AKA “canon”) you are expected to already know, what characters the author will be using, what romantic relationships will be included, what levels of violence and or sexual content will be included, and any events that readers might have problems with. Fanfiction writers write for fun and readers are expected to approach it for fun, too: use the warnings to read what you expect to enjoy and avoid what you expect to dislike.

The genre as a whole is a living demonstration of the multi-worlds theory: anything that could potentially happen in any universe or with any character, can be written and read with fanfiction. I love it.

Rather than just find fanfiction at random, your best bet is to follow recommendations and browse friends’ bookmark lists. The two biggest online fanfiction compendiums are Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own, both of which include reviewing and bookmarking functions.

Here are some good introductory fanfiction stories (ie, fun, short, not too different from their original source material, and no necessary warnings):

Flying Monkeys
by Thimblerig
It can be read on Archive of Our Own.
To understand what’s going on in this story, you should have watched the Marvel movie The Avengers.

The summary is:
The inevitable, horrifying debrief.
“Is this some kind of hobby for you? Planning our imminent destruction?”

The reason I like it is:
First, it’s hilarious. Second, it creates a series of scenes for after the events of the movie, about Clint Barton being debriefed from his time as a mind controlled slave of Loki. The author uses a rich universe and makes it just that much richer by showing some details that just couldn’t have fit into the movie.

Prediction, Protection
By Icarus_chained
It can be read on Archive of Our Own.
To understand what’s going on in this story, you should have watched both the current TV show Person of Interest and the 1990s TV show The Pretender.

The summary is:
Harold was a failed Pretender experiment. Years later, Jarod tracks him down. What follows is a somewhat tense negotiation.

The reason I like it is:
This story uses some background from The Pretender to explain a mystery in Person of Interest. This story makes a connection between these two unrelated universes and asks what if they are the same universe.

Food for Thought
By Ruth Stewart
This can be read on Fanfiction.net (as plain text) or on Livejournal.com (as an entire fake livejournal account, completely with many illustrations.)
To understand what’s going on in this story, you should have read C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series.

The summary is:
A modern teenage girl goes into the Wardrobe, meets Aslan, and learns an important lesson that does not include falling in love with a King.

The reason I like it is:
This is an outsider’s perspective on Susan Pevensie’s life. Susan has died and her grandson and great-granddaughter have come to sort through her belongings. This story is written as a series of blog posts by her great granddaughter, learning about Susan’s life from the records she left behind. This author does an amazing job of researching and then showing recent British history.

Day One
By Zee Viate
This can be read on Fanfiction.net.
To understand this story, you should have watched the TV show NCIS.

The summary is:
The night DiNozzo and Gibbs first met.

The reason I like it:
I stopped watching NCIS around season 7, because the characters were going in directions that I didn’t care for, but this is a look back at young Tony DiNozzo and Gibbs before he knew him, and it reminded me why I loved this show so much for so long.

Followers of the Carpenter
By PaBurke
This can be read on Fanfiction.net.
To understand this story, you should have read book eight of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher and watched the TV show Criminal Minds.

The summary is:
A serial killer moved to Chicago and followed his normal MO, but this time, he bit off more than he could chew.

The reason I like it:
There’s something wonderful about an outsider’s perspective on some of the characters and events of urban fantasy novels.

Five Scenes Over a Goban
By Opalish
This can be read on Fanfiction.net.
To understand this story, you should have read the manga or watched the anime Hikaru no Go.

The summary is:
Ichikawa laughs until she chokes, and Akira suddenly understands why Shindo spends so much of his time yelling at people to stop hitting him already.

The reason I like it is:
I just love these little looks at how these characters view and interact with each other. This is a peak at everything that made me love these characters in the first place. There isn’t any plot arc, but just some fun character studies.

Evening Encounter
By Maeniel
This can be read on Fanfiction.net.
To understand this story, you should have read the manga or watched the anime Rurouni Kenshin.

The summary is:
Okita’s heading home at the end of the war and encounters a certain redhead. What do they say to each other?

The reason I like it:
In the series, we don’t get much of a look at this time period in Kenshin’s life, but it’s a major turning point for him, and seeing him in this time really shows off his thoughts. Plus, it also develops Okita, who is given very little attention at all in the series, and creates a connection between the fictional series and the real history of the time period.