She's too fond of books and it's turned her brain

[1-7] Reader's Digest: The Forgotton Books

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:11:58 GMT

I'm trying to do away with my REALLY LONG LIST of stuff to reaction shot! Unfortunately, the books at the top of the list are from SEPTEMBER.

... Yeah, these reviews are going to be me going "Oh! I remember this!" and "I think it was okay..." a lot.

[1] Lucifer: Mansions of the Silence by Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, and Dean Ormston
Let's have a quick intelligence test! You're on a flying boat with a lot of other people. One of them's kinda meek and sweet and terrified and tiny and oh yeah, he has wings. He flies off for a short time while you're in a mysterious place filled with things trying to kill you, and when he comes back he's wearing armour and has taken a level or three in BADASS.

If you either don't notice or don't question this, you'll fit right in with most of the cast of this.

Seriously, that's my main memory of this: yelling at the main characters for being blind or stupid (I really should check this out in the library again, because I remember bitching at the final boss fight a lot but not WHY beyond "YOU COULD DO THIS YOU PILLOCKS!". There was also a guy making CREEPY DOLLS or LANTERNS with little sad faces out of souls, cheering for the pregnant woman pretty much the whole way through (Woman has one arm and won't let it get in her way. Woman pounces on hot guy and as I recall tops him pretty thoroughly because he's lazy. Woman refuses to take back the demon-baby even though it saved her life and seriously, that was SENSIBLE because that was SO going to kill her! D: ), wishing the art was better for the scenes with Lucifer (who was seriously the only good reason I can find to read this comic again, and he wasn't even IN IT that often), especially when he was with his brother Michael. And I may have spent a ridiculous amount of time cackling at the girl and her friend becoming goddesses. Especially what they became goddesses OF.

Verdict: This is one of those books that sounds AWESOME when people summarise it for you, but I... Wasn't really that enthralled with it! Lucifer was quite awesome though, so I may give the series another chance.

[2] Hellblazer: Lady Constantine by Andy Diggle and Goran Sudzuka
Mwahahahaha, Constantine and the Swamp Thing are probably DESTINED TO MEET FOREVER and that makes me happy. As does the fact that this Constantine, while not the sarcastic chain-smoking dick from The Swamp Thing, is a swindler and smart and unashamededly moneygrubbing and she has a pirate captain on call. (Also, please tell me I'm not the only one who wanted pirate captain/magical construct slash. Please?) I think the villain was kinda ridiculous, and seriously, HANDS UP ALL THOSE WHO DIDN'T SEE EVERYTHING TO DO WITH MOUSE COMING FROM FOUR MILES AWAY. No one? GOOD.

Verdict: Not bad, just kinda predictable.

[3] Batman: The Joker's Last Laugh by Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty
Really, who the HELL would tell the Joker that he had brain cancer? WHO? At least without doing a thousand checks first to confirm the result, locking him in a box he can't get out of, and really strong sedatives?

Apart from my problem with the whole basic premise (and haha, you really need to see what happens with THAT), this was INSANE! The lunatics take over the asylum and all become jokerfied! The Joker all-but destroys the world! Oracle's OCD about never leaving her screens is validated! Nightwing! No, really Nightwing needs no explanation because flsdhgjkjf! The Joker's plans for the escape! The completely badass woman protecting her boss and killing people because she doesn't want him to have to! The guy who changes powers every time he dies! Harley Quin!

Oh god, the whole thing is mental but I'd read the whole thing again just to boggle.

Verdict: ... Oh god, I don't even know.

[4] Batman Year Two: Fear the Reaper by Mike W. Barr, Alan Davis, Todd McFarlane, Paul Neary (artist), Alfredo Alcala (artist)
Wow, these parallels with Bruce Wayne's childhood trauma are completely not forced or shoe-horned in for plot purposes in any way! Nor is Batman swearing off crime fighting for the love of a good woman!

Also Batman being talked into offing himself was completely ridiculous but there was Robin! Robin is always for the win!

[5] Batman: No Man's Land Volume 2 by Bob Gale, Greg Rucka, and Ian Edgington
I've read one of the issues compiled here - the one with Two Face and the police officer - and I love it with the fire of a thousand suns even though the art makes me twitch. NOW though, I have slightly more context and know vaguely WHY Gotham was suddenly post-apocalyptic. And I MEAN slightly, because the exposition kinda fails at being memorable.

Things that DON'T fail at being memorable!

* GCPD and the supervillains and the goddamn Batman having EPIC GANG WARS up to and including gunfights and tagging their territory.
* THE TWOFACE STORY! *flails*
* The story about the old man who was looking after people. Oh god, that broke my heart. ;__;
* The two idjits wandering into one of the Joker's old hideouts and surviving all the traps through sheer dumb luck.
* The new Batgirl appearing and Oracle's reaction. Oh Oracle...
* Batman in a gladiator-style arena courtesy of the Penguin!

The story itself would probably make more sense to me if I'd read the first volume, but as it is? Random scenes of win and heartbreak.

[6 & 7] Café Occult Volumes One and Two by Ahn No Uhn (Artist), Oh Rhe Bar Ghun
Do not read this after playing The World Ends With You! If you're anything like me you will get really confused. Apart from that, this appears to be your standard action-shoujo series. The heroine is liked by EVERYONE except the hero (even the adorable little girl with split personality/mother issues), and sought by everyone. The hero is brooding with A Dark Past and, y'know, killing himself by inches - he has a funky cross-shaped gun that made even me boggle, and I think he can turn into a monster but I COULD BE WRONG! The villains can all do weird and wonderful things, possibly involving turning into monsters or other people. The heroine's BFF is there for no reason other than exposition and motivation. There are places only Special People can go.

It's not a bad series, just not memorable enough that I'd pay money for it. I mean, seriously, if they weren't all dead I wouldn't remember it at all.

Request: Anyone know the one about England getting twatted for once?

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:02:45 GMT

As I twittered indignantly about this yesterday and apparently convinced heyheyrenay to appeal to her expert Flist in an attempt to shut me up: does anyone know about apocalypse/zombie/plague/post-apocalyptic/all of the above novels set in England? Starting in England? Mentioning England in a more-than-tangental manner?

Seriously, since I read World War Z, I have had a CRAVING. There was exactly ONE englishman in the book, talking about castles, and a throwaway mention of fortified motorways. I'm a naturally greedy person, guys, I want as much detail put into my country going nuts as America gets.

(I finished Life As We Knew It about an hour ago. I see no connection between that and this post. >_> )

For those who're wondering what our combined Flists have come with so far:

Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman

War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells

The Day of the Triffids

How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness

Also, I am considering mirroring this journal over at Blogspot or Wordpress. I'm not sure if I should - on the one hand, bookdom seems to shun Livejournal like it hasn't bathed in a month. On the other hand, bookdom seems to like Blogspot and Wordpress.

(For those who don't understand why the latter scares me: If the SUPER SRS BSNS reviewers who do thoughtful reviews and make effort to be coherent are the black hats and the reviewers who are still thoughtful and coherent and semi-SRS BSNS but have fun with what they do ~~HI NAY!~~ are the white hats, I'm the one wearing the sparkly pink sequinned cowboy hat and asking if we can re-enact Cat Balloo yet. Srs bsns is not something I can do, I'm much better at keysmash and rambling about cowboys. I... Don't think bookdom approves of these shenanigans.)

Anyway, I haven't decided yet, but if I do mirror it I'll let you all know!

[75/75] Reading Digest - Yes, my last review will be "lsdgkjhs;dogjldsnkjgbsndlkgjblsndj"

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:31:14 GMT

[71/75] Darkside: Lifeblood by Tom Becker: This book has the dubious honour of freaking me out when I wasn't even reading it - I left the book propped open on my desk, went to bed - and opened my eyes in the middle of the night to see a pair of glowing fangs!

Note to self: next time I get out a kid's horror story, I need to check whether the cover glows in the dark or not.

APART FROM THAT, I have to admit I liked this an embarrassing amount, which shouldn't surprise anyone who heard me flailing about Skulduggery Pleasant. I'm pretty sure I made my love of supernatural private detectives with child sidekicks blatantly obvious when babbling about that. The relationship between the private detective and the child sidekick are completely different in this though - Carnegie is violent and looming and fantastic more because "Holy shit berserker werewolf investigating in the break-heads-until-info-turns-up." Plus, much less with the snark and more with the raw meat. Jonathan... I want to say he depends less on Carnegie than Stephanie does on Skulduggery, which isn't quite what I meant. They don't have the same sort of father/child relationship - it's more... Business-like? As in, Carnegie cares but would kill Jonathan before he admits it. It's interesting. :D

The setting itself is fantastic, I have to say - it's like someone took the worst parts of Victorian society, populated it with vampires and werewolves and tired humans, and shoved them into a corner next to the real world. Dark and dirty and I heart it a ridiculous amount, even when I can't decide whether it's over the top or not. The mystery works pretty well, even if you can work it out through simple process of "Who's it LEAST LIKELY TO BE?" The book actually refers to things that happened in the first book - YES THAT SURPRISES ME, SHUSH - beyond the BIG things. The characters are quite awesome, even when they're stereotyped and Obviously Bad People. Basically, it's fun and I would actually go and find the rest of them!

[72/75] Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling: I... Don't understand. The story feels vaguely familiar, it has the most awkward gear change in the middle of the story, the characters all sounds the same, it has serious amounts of infodumping, and everything seems - a little neat in the end - but I love it with the fire of a thousand suns. I wish I was even joking. I can read it and point out that there are so many problems with it, but I think it's COMPLETELY FANTASTIC.

Oh come on, it opens with a DARING RESCUE. Of COURSE I'm going to love it with the fire of a thousand suns.

Seregil and Alec are really quite fantastic - not only are they FUN, awesome, and FAKE-GENTLEMEN THIEVES, they really end up caring for each other and it's been a while since I've seen that in a fantasy novel. The characters either SUDDENLY LOVE EACH OTHER or hate each other forever. This builds it up nicely, and it makes me happy. The other characters - Micum and Thero, for example, or Nysander - are equally awesome, although I would SERIOUSLY LOVE to see more of Seregil's adventures with Micum, or epic battles with Thero. PLUS I actually like the world building - it's SERIOUSLY infodumped, but it's INTERESTING, which is all I really ask of it. And it has the added bonus of having awesome matriarchy and awesome military women. ALWAYS GONNA MAKE ME HAPPY. :D

... Look, as soon as I finished this, I went out to try and buy the next one. Was furious to not be able to find it ANYWAY. Send amazon a thousand hearts for having it in stock. ♥

[73/75] Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin by Joe Casey, Eric Canete: Also known as: Iron Man is introduced to the Mandarin, assassinations are planned, and the epic battle of Iron Man versus A SATTELITE. If the Iron Man versus a satellite isn't a regular thing, IT SHOULD BE. *cough* Really, that's all I can say about this. The story seemed... More than a little ridiculous to me (although I DID feel sorry for the brainwashed son. Poor guy.), and the art's weird - I meant to actually check when this was made, because THAT'S how odd the art is. :\

[74/75] The Three Incestuous Sister by Audrey Niffeneger: ... I admit, I picked this up SOLELY for the title, and it's actually a sweet story! It feels like reading a storyboard, or at least something similar with a little more poetry to it. It's sweet and sad and it makes very little sense, but I don't expect it to.

[75/75] Stalking Darkness by Lynn Flewelling: Again, FULL OF HEARTS over this one. FULL OF HEARTS. TO THE POINT WHERE I CAN'T ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT THIS COHERENTLY. I want to criticise the investigation. I want to say that there's problems with the story or something, but - but I remember the second half and just. lsdgkjhs;dogjldsnkjgbsndlkgjblsndjbgklsdnsg!

FINALLY, FINALLY DONE! :D :D :D

[67-70/75] Reading Digest - So close to the end!

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:41:07 GMT

[67/75] Blood+ Volume 1 by Asuka Katsura: I go to an anime society on Mondays, and someone always brings the anime of this series. Our awesome description monkey can summarise most series in one sentence - and for this one, he's chosen "KILL DEMONS WITH YOUR AIDS!"

... Seriously, that's pretty much it. It's your standard "amnesiac-girl-with-mysterious-past-discovers-she-has-powers-and-destroy-monsters" manga (and yes, that is so a genre in it's own right. If it's not, it should be because I read CRAPLOADS of manga with that plot) with less hiding the powers and more hatred from the community, more government officials, and family swearing their eternal devotion.

It's not necessarily BAD, it's just - I kept getting the feeling I'd read this story before. And it had been better that other time.

[68/75] 52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen by Keith Giffen, Pat Ollitte, and John Stanisci: I have to preface this with an admission: I don't really read DC comics. The only one I'd really read and enjoyed before this was Kingdom Come (And I loved it, actually, even though I had NO KNOWLEDGE of who anyone but the big three was.). Partly because I'm a Marvel fangirl - okay, they're not really mutually exclusive, but I think they handle things differently - and partly because when I'd read other TPBs from DC, the big three bored me to tears. Gotham Central was right up my street because it had normal people affected by superheroes. The actual superheroes aren't so interesting to me.

So when I read this and found myself actually liking it, you can understand I was more than a little confused.

The backstory/context went RIGHT over my head, so why Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were slumming around with an army, or why there's a woman who hates Wonderwoman so much, I have NO IDEA. I can't comment on how well it fits into the rest of the timeline or whether the characterisation is noxiously offensive to someone who's read more of the respective series, is what I'm saying.

This is a CANONICAL ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. Oh god, you KNOW I'm going to fangirl it excessively just because of that. CANONICAL ZOMBIES. The Four Horsemen possessing corpses! The Four Horsemen possessing the heroes! Plus, once one body had been neutralised they just went to another one. YAY FOR CRAZY MANHUNTS!

The zombie apocalypse is EXPLAINED. In a way that at least vaguely makes sense in context. A+!

As I recall, the art was pretty decent, but DUDE WHY DOES BRUCE WAYNE HAVE POINTY EARS?

I love the guy who showed up half way through and kept calling Superman "Clark." I really, truly do. Especially when Batman ends up dragging him around. ♥

I love that when Batman finally loses his temper and smacks that guy, it's because of the calling-Superman-Clark thing.

Actually, I think that's why I liked Batman and Superman in this one. In Kingdom Come Batman was a snarky manipulative bastard - and BFFs with Superman. In The Four Horsemen he's a snarky bastard AT Superman, and I promptly said "Okay, maybe you're awesome after all!" And then Superman was snarky back, and putting Batman safely out of harm's way even as Batman was telling not to. And Batman actually being concerned about Superman! I ♥ these two when they're together.

... Plus Batman's a smart bastard. A thousand hearts for the smart bastard!

I actually liked the Woman-Who-Hates-Wonderwoman by the end. Mainly because she was a manipulative bitch and didn't care, and because she was the one to save the day and get rid of the Horsemen. Everything's going to hell, it turns out she'd secretly been planning for this eventuality the whole time. I mean, come on, she swallows the thing that traps the Horsemen and staggers out to deal with them herself! That gives her back any points she lost for general WTFery and evilness during the book, seriously.

My favourite thing about this story though is at the end. When Wonderwoman and Superman get possessed by two of the Horsemen - War and Plague, respectively - it's obvious because they get overpowered and become a vessel for the Horseman. But they get the Woman-Who-Hates-Wonderwoman, she gets the Horsemen out of them and between them they manage to take out Death (Superman THROWS the woman at Death, it's the best thing ever.) - and then everyone looks round and goes "... Where's Yurrd?" (Famine.)

Cue Batman walking up, calm as you please, completely normal and asking "How soon can she get this nattering thing out of me."

Like the woman said, "Your hunger... Greater than Yurrd's. Almost funny." *flails* WAY TO MAKE ME ADMIT THAT BATMAN MIGHT BE AWESOME, DC. WAY TO GO.

[69/75] The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born: This is as far as I can tell, the comic version of the FLASHBACK OF DOOM in "Wizards and Glass" - the fourth book in the Dark Tower series. With what I think is a completely different flashback at the start to give it some context.

... Having read that book (And pulled faces at the flashback because GOD DAMMIT, WHY ARE THE PEOPLE WITH MY NAME NOT AS AWESOME AS I WANT THEM TO BE?! I had this objection to Fool Moon too, only slightly less with the inarticulate keysmashing over what HAPPENS to the Susan. Fool Moon's Susan needed more interesting things to happen to her. ALSO the thing at the beginning, with Eddie and the riddle-game against the demon train is FAR MORE AWESOME than the flashback o'doom, just for the record), I have to say that this? Is not a good adaptation.

Don't get me wrong, the art is GORGEOUS and... Lush. But even by the standards of adaptations, where I KNOW they have to cut out a lot to fit it into the space they've got, they left out a metric crapload. To the point where unless you really remember what happened in the flashback o'doom in the book, it doesn't really make sense. When that happens, the adaptation is a failure. No matter how pretty it is, IT FAILS.

... On the other hand, this is another one where the guys (Cuthbert and Roland in particular) need to make out. ANY TIME SOON.

[70/75] The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld: Really, I have nothing to say about this book. All I want to do is POINT AND LAUGH at it. It's a sequel to Parasite Positive, and instead of coughing discreetly and pretending that the last third of the book never happened, it gleefully embraces it. Uses it as the foundation of its entire plot! All the characters sound roughly the same, to the point that if they're in a relatively neutral location I have to check the chapter title to find out who's POV it's supposed to be in, and most of the characters make me want to beat my head against the desk. I admit, the idea of how mundanes treat the vampirism (as in, attempt to cure) is interesting, although... Rosa, I think her name was, made me want to ask WHY THE HELL IS THERE A STEREOTYPICAL WITCH-DOCTOR HOUSE SERVANT? WHY?

... I think I actually did at one point. I may be wrong.

Another thing that made me want to throw things was the "Ohhhhhh, we play MAGIC TREMORS-SUMMONING MUSIC that our crazy singer HEARD FROM UNDERGROUND." Just. No. Really, no.

[66/75] Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:14:34 GMT

Business has been slow. Okay, business has been dead. And not even of the undead variety. You would think Chicago would have a little more action for the only professional wizard in the phone book. But lately, Harry Dresden hasn't been able to dredge up any kind of work - magical or mundane. But just when it looks like he can't afford his next meal, a murder comes along that requires his particular brand of supernatural expertise. A brutally mutilated corpse. Strange-looking paw prints. A full moon. Take three guesses - and the first two don't count.

I have something I need to get off my chest about this book, and all I ask is that you PLEASE don't judge me for it.

HARRY DRESDEN AND HIS SUBCONCIOUS NEED TO MAKE OUT. LIKE, YESTERDAY.

That is all.

What?

Oh, the review! Yes, I remember.

I have to agree with thebaconfat on this one: it's not as much fun as the first one. Murphy's Law's still in full effect, Harry's still getting into bloody awkward situations, but - it's not done as well as it was in the first book. Now it's just one-thing-after-another. Whatever he does, no matter what or why, will backfire on him horribly. No real suspense because it's OBVIOUS everything's going to go to hell and be fixed with a MIRACULOUS AND COMPLETELY COINCIDENTAL RESCUE. Plus all the characters... Rargh. Seriously, when you spend half a book yelling at Harry and Murphy to just TALK to each other - seriously, I have a feeling that if Harry had, y'know, ACTUALLY BLOODY EXPLAINED to Murphy about why there'd been a picture of a magic circle with his handwriting on it, things may have gone differently - and I did actually sit around going "Murphy, you're supposed to be a trained martial artist, you should know better than to lash out like that in case you break the scrawny wizard's head off." The other characters were paper thin

(Haha, teenage werewolves in love though! Although I take this moment to point out that out of a pack of six, only TWO are named. This seems to be a thing of the Streetwolves too - I'm noticing a pattern of "Leader figure and two named/nicknamed subordinates" here. ALSO WHY ARE ALL THE EVIL WOMEN PERPETUALLY VIOLENT AND HORNY. AM I MISSING SOMETHING INHERENT ABOUT WOLVES HERE?),

and, y'know, I know there's that thing about guns going off in the third act being there in the first but - Dear Jim Butcher, you really didn't have to describe every different time of werewolf (I take this moment to point out that Bob is infodumping fantasticness, along with his general reaction of "Will you stop going on about silver bullets and biting?") and then USE THEM ALL. REALLY NOT NECCESSARY.

I think there's only a handful of characters I still LIKED by the end of the book. Namely Harry's subconcious, Bob, and Johnny Marcone. ... I know I'm not supposed to like the evil mobster but DUDE, he's a gentleman mobster who is calm and controlled while strung up as live bait for a werewolf! And also dude, throwing a knife while strung up with such accuracy that he cuts one of the ropes holding a platform. DO WANT.

The only thing I'm going to say about the technical side of things is this: if I'd taken a shot every time the words "feminine" or "masculine" popped up, I'd be writing this review from the floor.

That is all.

And I actually mean it this time.

[65/75] Parasite Positive by Scott Westerfeld, co-reviewed with YA Fabulous!

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:08:36 GMT

Me and Renay tag-teamed Parasite Positive over at YA Fabulous! Go witness her awesome seriousness and tl;dr skills, watch out for the graboids!

[61-74] Extremely Short Reading Digest

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:02:47 GMT

[61/75] Hellboy: The Right Hand of Doom by Mike Mignola: Heh. The film really took some liberties with this one... Unless there's another issue dealing with the demonic arm of doom that they snatched the plot from! SO. The art is... Not something I really remember well enough to comment on, but I remember going "Oooh, shiny flat colours" and then moving on to the stories, so it can't have been that bad. The stories, as I recall, were... Hm. Well. I think the two-page short at the start was probably the funniest, cutest and best, followed by the one based on a fairy tale. The one with a plot that was... Probably supposed to be original? The one with the demon summoning and the Right Hand of Doom? ... Yeah, not so much. I don't remember why it didn't ping with me as much as the others, but I remember that it couldn't compare to demons wailing "Noooooooo, he ate the pancakes!" or the fairytale where the good aren't really dead the bad get justly punished...

[62-63/75] Y: The Last Man Volumes 4-5 (Safeword, The Ring of Truth) by Brian K. Vaughan et al: I have this talent, usually based on my complete inability to pick up a series from the beginning, for starting a series with the volume/episode that appears to contain the weirdest things in the series. Okay, so maybe not THAT weird, but considering this volume had spies get dressed up in AWESOME+TERRIFYING OUTFITS and counselling the main character into being reasonably well-adjusted and not-deathwishy through MENTAL TORTURE AND CONVINCING HIM TO COMMIT SUICIDE SO HE FINDS A REASON TO LIVE ~~AND ALSO FLASHBACKS TO EXPLAIN PAST TRAUMAS~~, well. CHRIST HOW ARE THEY GOING TO TOP THAT?! I DO like this series - I like Yorrick and the women and the world that's been set up - crazy, fucked-up, sort of pulling together and sort of breaking apart at the seams at the same time. PLUS it has 711 in THAT DRESS, and an actual sense of humour! Most of it related to Yorrick being an idiot. (The scene where Alison says "She reminds me of one of my exes," and Yorrick is SERIOUSLY CONFUSED is ALL KINDS OF PRICELESS.) As is the scene with the scientist-lady and the army-lady after they've been captured, and - and the MECHANIC! Oh god, I heart her with the fire of a thousand suns and the fact that she has NO INTEREST in Yorrick AT ALL warms my heart. ♥ Ditto for Hero, actually, Yorrick's crazy-in-every-sense-of-the-word sister. Whether she's being a paramedic or a crazy or trying to do the right thing, she's AWESOME.

BASICALLY, I love Brain K. Vaughan. He seems to write series that have LOTS OF WOMEN KICKING ASS in, and not all in the physical sense. They all kick ass in DIFFERENT WAYS, seriously, like Doctor Alison and the 355 with their code and their being an AWESOME TEAM and the scene in the tent between Alison and 355, and the CRAZY NINJA PEOPLE, and Yorrick + Ampersand, and everything with Ampersand (lfiaushdg;sldjgsldkjgh STUPID LIBRARY GET VOLUME 6 IN!) and the last scene with 711, and Hero! And how yes, their lives revolve around Yorrick, but it's not because he's a stud (Augh, harem manga making my eyes bleed...) or particularly special in and of himself, it's because he's THERE, existing when all the other men don't. So their lives revolve not so much around HIM, but around his EXISTENCE and this sentence made much more sense in my head. PLUS there are crazy people calling themselves the Daughters of Amazons which makes my classics-loving heart happy.

... SERIOUSLY I WANT THE BOOKS AFTER THIS. And also before actually, because WHY IS THERE A PREGNANT ASTRONAUT GUYS?!

[64/75] ttfn by Lauren Myracle: I remember the first book in this series! Well, I remember it EXISTS - although I mainly remember it as snack reading, interesting in it's own way and pretty good for a book written as AIM convos. That pretty much describes the second book as well! ~~Although with the added bonus of me headdesking and going yes, I've had some of these conversations...~~ It's snack reading with the added bonus of having MESSAGES like DRUGS ARE BAD AND IF YOU DO THEM YOU'LL GET NO SYMPATHY FROM YOUR FRIENDS WHEN THE POLIC COME ROUND and FRIENDS ARE AWESOME TO HAVE and IF ALL ELSE FAILS, THERE'S ALWAYS THE GREYHOUND! :D Not a bad book, but not something likely to hold my attention for more than a few hours...

[Bookblogging] Havemercy by Jaina Jones and Danielle Bennett (Chapters 1-4)

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:20:02 GMT

Okay, for those you who actually look over my journal occasionally, you may have notice I kinda go crazy when reaction shotting things-in-progress. There are long, bullet-pointed lists filled with exclamation marks and keysmash and capslock and explosive amounts of hearts! And then there is usually a long pause, followed by a reason why everything I just said was a filthy lie and it does in fact suck.

... Yeah, I've decided I'm going to take this fine, time-honoured tradition and apply to my book reading. THIS MAY END IN TEARS AND TL;DR.

NOTE: This very likely won't make any sense unless you have either read the book, or have it open in front of you. It contains a lot of quotes with page numbers; these are mainly for my reference, and probably won't be accurate unless you have the... *checks* Bantam hardback. And, because there's quotes and dragons swearing entertains me endlessly, there is explicit swearing behind the cut. Nothing I say here will reflect my final opinion on the book - the general purpose of a reaction shot is to explode in hearts over all the awesome things as I see them, leaving me free to be a negative twat afterwards. Hence the filthy-lies-and-sucking thing. I didn't start bookblogging when I actually started the book, so expect some vagueness. I shouldn't have to warn that this contains SPOILERS.

... You can tell the characters apart by their VOICES oh thank god. After The Last Days I was starting to think that authors doing that was just some crazy dream I had.

I like Rook. I have a feeling he's going to go from "magnificent bastard" to "total dick" and vice versa a few times. Although... Maybe he's a little too crazy? Crude? To be a magnificent bastard...

Although I have to say, Rook and the diplomat's wife is lulzworthy all on its own, and then you add in the fact that no one seems SURPRISED that he did it -

Thom trying to keep the Molly way of talking out of his very thoughts. ♥

Re: Thom's meeting with the Dragon Corps - my imminent-embarrassment senses are tingling...

And it was not only averted, I got a giggle out of it. Oh Thom. You're doomed. Plus your scenes are going to end up pretty much describing the class FROM HELL.

You know, I'm always doubtful when there are groups of more than about eight in a story - they start to blur together, and they usually just end up "Name with a defining characteristic" as opposed to an actual character, which always makes me wonder why they're even there - but I could like the Dragon Corps. I could consider having hopes that these two can do it decently.

Hal is - adorably naive. I want to hug him every time he appears on the page, especially with his constant thirst for MOAR KNOWLEDGE. Ditto Balfour, replacing the THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE with BEING NICE TO THOM. (Although in adorableness stakes, Hal wins, just for the "I'm sorry about your watch" scene.)

I like how they're using something we've all grumbled through (Introducing ourselves at the start of a new class/year), and just thrown into a fantasy novel. A+, JAINA JONES AND DANIELLE BENNET. A+ INDEED.

"I'm Jeannot [...] I'm on Al Atan, and I've never seen the ocean at anything closer than a dragon's height."

"Oh," said Balfour, from whom I hadn't expected an outburst. He looked as though he'd just heard something very sad. "Sorry," he said, by way of realising he'd interrupted. "Only, I didn't know that." (Page 52-53)

Seriously, how can anyone NOT love him?!

... I just tried to picture what Rook would be like if he was a woman. (Don't ask, I don't know why either.) Holy mother of god...! I hope this book has a big fandom someday, because that will have to exist at SOME point. *starry eyed*

PLUS who else is putting money on Thom getting on a dragon at some point before this book's over? Anyone?

Chapter Three:

Also, Royston is depressed doing-the-right-thing love. And I was not unaccustomed to telling men and women what to do in their own homes (Page 59) and taking a simile - as though it had the entirety of Loque Nevers behind it" (Page 59) - and applying logic to it! This was foolish, I knew, as rivers could not be pulled from their beds without at least three days' advance planning and a geographical knowledge of the area.

HEARTS FOR ROYSTON. THIS PARTICULAR SNIPPET OF PLOT HAS BEEN DONE TO DEATH IN SO MANY PLACES, BUT HEARTS TO ROYSTON!

Oh, I love this part, I really do. Royston being an uncle and looking after Hal too and - ♥! Plus mmmm. *hugs*

(How badly can you tell that the writers were in fandom AT SOME POINT?! *giggles and revels*)

Rook and Adamo make me happy, even though all they do is argue. ♥ Yay for Adamo going along with Thom, and yay for Balfour being convinced it wouldn't be so bad!

Gaaaaaaaaaah, Rook is a magnificent suspicious bastard! ♥

Also MECHANICAL DRAGONS THAT LIVE AND THINK! *flails happily!*

She looked at me over one metal claw like I was a fucking disappointment. (Page 64)

"Good," said Havemercy. "I'm getting rusty."
"Shit," I said. "You ain't."
"Aren't," Havemercy said. "You common little fucker." (Page 66)
OH GOD, SHE'S LIKE ROOK DO FUCKING WANT!

See, mechanical dragons + magic = undying hearts. Add aviator goggles and I will EXPLODE IN GLEE all over the place. I am a SHOWER OF HEARTS, guys.

Plus, Rook's arrogance. ♥ And the making sure the city's not forgotton them and Havemercy showing off. Mmmm.

World building bia the magnificent bastard whose main concern = the whorehouses and complaining about everyone in the entire city. Oh yes. (Also, I see through your using commenting on the words being what scholars would call the tiers. *sceptical*)

If I'd known getting myself almost drowned in the rain would help improve the Margrave's spirits so enormously, I would have done it sooner. (Page 71)
That and the practicalities following? OH HAL! *boobsquishy hugs* YOU ARE ADORABLE AND I THINK YOU'RE BEING PERFECTLY SERIOUS. ♥

And William's reaction to Royston coming in with stories. ♥

It occurs to me that I'm nearly four chapters in and I don't know what the plot is. I mean, I know what's going on so far (and I LIKE only knowing the little scraps the characters do because it equals FOCUS ON THE CHARACTERS and the characters are generally what I'm here for), and I'm sure that the actual plot is going to involve the Arlemagne's injured dignity in some way, but I keep thinking that there should be a big Yahtzee-style sign saying TO THE PLOT sign somewhere by now, which of course there isn't.

I have a feeling that the stories Royston tells will be worldbuilding infodumps. :\

... Or on the other hand, there could be input from the other characters, making it less infodumpy. ♥ for William! ♥ for Hal! ♥ for infrodumps that get interuoh wait spoke too soon. *kicks back to enjoy the infodump anyway*

Also, I lie. It does kinda read like someone telling a story and he does get interrupted again.

I love William asking all the questions Hal wants to ask and doesn't.

I love Balfour looking after Thom. He's SWEET dammit.

Haha, Thom you're doomed.

Chapter Four:

Hehe, Royston telling stories and doing good uncle stuff. Also the attention he pays to Hal paying attention to him.

... So the Margrave really is friends with Adamo? *is inexplicably shocked*

I love Adamo, I love his appraisal of Thom, and I love his threatening to "fly upcountry way to pluck you out of there myself." (Page 85)

Royston/Hal OTP y/y? I mean, I kinda figured from the first page they were mentioned to each other (What did I tell you about being able to tell the authors were in fandom?), but. Page 86. Book metaphors. Royston trying to hang around Hal and not look like he's trying to hang around Hal at the same time. Heee.

(I have a feeling I'm going to think about this and going "Wait, this pairing makes no sense," but for now I'm happy with it!)

Oh Hal, I love you and your lonely bookwormyness and I love that Royston's NOTICING.

How else you can tell the writers are in fandom: the characters are thrown together a lot, and there is a BIG DRAMATIC OH SHIT moment. XD

... Although really, they could probably stand to go into a little more showing - don't get me wrong, I LIKE the way they do it, but when you're left thinking he excused himself politely and everyone in the book is acting like he just walked out, there's a little cognitive dissonance.

I nodded and felt that this would be an appropriate place to for an apology about the rug. "You may give my deepest regrets," I told Hal instead. "And inform him that no one was eaten by ravenous sea creatures." (Page 89)

Also, pairings where one's convinced the other's only doing whatever because it's their duty or to keep them from doing something stupid or that the other doesn't actually love them, despite any and all evidence to the contrary and that the author is probably just doing it for the angst? Yeah, uh, BUTTON MASHED, right there.

Gaaaaaaah, Hal blushing! *hugs him more!*

Haha, I heart William being the crazy nephew. We hear NOTHING of the others (This is what I was talking about with the Dragon Corps! Too many characters and they don't get enough definition!) but yay for William!

Oh wow. Margrave vs Mme. Pages 92-98. *hugs them*

"Will you do the china cupboard next, Uncle Roy?" (Page 96) *cackles and flails*

Oh Hal. You're just. *HUGS!*

I love how Hal says exactly the right thing without really knowing what he's doing. *hugs more!*

Haha, I was wondering how long it would take before Rook turned up in a brothel. Plus, yay for brothel owners with a lick of common sense, which is something I never thought I'd say.

... The more I hear about Adamo, the more I like him. Plus the part about the knifefights not only entertains me endlessly, it convinces me Rook is a FUCKING CRAZY BASTARD. Funtimes.

And the thing is, there's so MUCH in his sections - like with the Margrave going "Oh SHIT I have a THING" - that I can't just pick out the bits that make me flail and heart right away.

Well, apart from Thom being crazy awesome and deadpan and just plain crazy and standing up to Rook. ♥ And also ♥ for him calling Rook a liar and applying logic to everything he said and then Rook letting him go and managing to fuck him over without actually doing anything.

I- I know I'm kinda VERY INTO the angry snarly pairings, but guys, something MAJOR had better happen between now and the end of the book because these two in a relationship? SCARILY NOT HEALTHY. O_______________________o thebaconfat, please explain! If there is any way to do it without spoilers!

[51-60 ] Reading Digest

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:48:09 GMT

It occurs to me, ladies and gentlemen that I never actually got around to whoring out my Good Reads account. Mine's kinda messy and disorganised, but it's useful for keeping track of what everyone else is reading! (Or, if you're like me, remembering "Oh yeah, I started that XYZ months ago and never finished it...")

Anyway, on to the reaction shots!

[51-55/75] Gotham Central 1-5 by Ed Brubaker, Gref Rucka, and Michael Lark: Okay, I think I may have hidden this reasonably well because it's mainly a "Pounce on the TV and spend a quiet evening with my dad watching Lewis/Midsomer Murders/A Touch of Frost/etcetera" thing which I can't do any more for obvious reason of no longer having either, but I kinda have A Thing for detective stories. Not just Sherlock Holmes sallying forth to solve the crime based on mud on a left bootlace or the giant rats, but actual detectives.

I also have a thing for superheroes, and ordinary people being affected by superheroes.

GUESS WHICH TWO BUTTONS THIS SERIES MASHES! :D

I obviously have to go into a book-by-book breakdown of why I am filled with eternal and unrelenting hearts for this series, but in the meantime, have a short, spoilery list:

BFF partners! Partners that argue but get the job done! Partners with secrets from each other! Partners that are together because one absolutely pwns the other into getting stuff done! Partners sorting out each others lives! Partners saving each others lives, getting each into and out of trouble, and generally being awesome! Plus the whole of the first TPB because OH MY HEART.

The obvious problems of being in a detective in a city where there are SUPERVILLAINS. Again, see first arc and the fact that it nearly made my heart explode even though I'd NO IDEA who any of the characters were.

ACTUALLY GOOD DETECTIVE PLOTS WITH TWISTS AND STUFF! :D I love the plots and I love that normal people are the ones bringing in the supervillains and I love how seemingly irrelevant plots actually end up coming together and. And. DO WANT, basically.

Lesbian detectives. No, this is a completely valid reason to heart it!

BATMAN. No, seriously. I love how the series isn't ABOUT Batman, but he has a PRESENCE. However the characters feel about him (and it comes up! I love how not everyone feels the same, and not everyone is divided into love-him/hate-him and I love how many of the people born and raised with having Batman around don't think it's odd!), Batman is there and Batman is part of their lives. And I love the mention of the chart with cases on having a column for Batman. ♥

Okay, so it obviously has problems. Some of the issues depend so very, very obviously on something from the main Batman series - although I give the writers credit for taking a scene from Infinite Crisis and doing it properly HERE instead of there! And also boggle because uh, hello, GCPD are a BIG DEAL in No Man's Land and it's BARELY MENTIONED - and sometimes you don't realise a character's dead until three issues later when their partners come back and takes a shot at Batman. S-SOB. ESPECIALLY WHEN THE PLOT IS IN ALL THE OTHER SERIES. The art though? MMMMMM. ~~Although Starfire SCARES me...~~ *hugs it*

[56/75] Shadowheart by James Barclay: Another one of my big shiny buttons? Trashy fantasy novels. Especially ones that are roughly big enough to be pretty good doorstops, use pretty much every cliché going in SOME way, have epic, EPIC plots and so many characters it's impossible to keep them all straight. That, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly the sort of book that makes my heart beat faster and makes me make grabby hands at bookcases. Shadowheart has an added bonus: it manages to have all that and be COMPLETELY AWESOME WITH IT.

That and there are ELVEN NINJAS.

You know I'm going to heart this book to the end of the world and back.

Lessee. It's the middle book of what I think is a trilogy, but it's one of those wonderful books that manages to worldbuild and mention past adventures without infodumping! *is shocked* And. And. As part of this, I love how they don't really angst over a character who died in the last book, but he's mentioned and provides motivation! (I'm not used to this. I'm used to stuff like Tamora Pierce, where once someone dies they are never mentioned again.) Although, on the flip side, do not get attached to any character without a name. THEY WILL DIE. It doesn't matter whether they're a ninja, a mage, or that schlub on the enemy's side. THEY WILL DIE. Not that the characters WITH names are safe, but.

Also, the main characters... They do seem quite similar to each other. Part of it's that there's some characters with similar names, part of it's that yes, they do seem to have some shared character traits, and the rest is probably me reading this in the middle of the night and sleepily shipping pretty much everyone in the party with everyone else.

(It's terrible, this. Half of the characters in the party are married, sometimes to each other, and I would still read fic of them all being an awesomely competent fighting force/arguing epically/being Together. Auum and his troup of Elven Ninjas who I am perfectly willing to believe are close enough that they share ONE SINGLE BRAIN. Goddammit WHY IS THERE NOT A FANDOM FOR THIS.)

In some ways, it feels like an RPG game (Look at the names of the spells and the way the story flows - THEY EVEN HAVE RANDOM BATTLES, GUYS! - and tell me you don't think of an RPG), and in some ways it just feels like he rolled a lot of clichés into a ball, shook it about a bit, and turned it into a book! The story works well, anyway (Well, so long as you're okay with keeping track of fightscenes, viewpoint characters you've never seen before and never will again, and the odd bit of "Holy shit where did that come from?"), random battles or no random battles. The female main character (I'm sure Baco's going to be miffed that the party has only one female character, but I hope the NINJA ELVES go some way to help?) KICKS ASS and is also Main Thing of the plot (I told you, CLICHÉS AND RPG PLOTS ABOUND!). The characters - even the villains! - are all generally likeable and admirable in some respect, and most display SOME COMMON SENSE, which is awesome. I am incoherent. AWESOME TRASHY FANTASY BRICK IS AWESOME, basically.

[57/75] Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories Volume 2 by Shiro Amano: I admit, it's been a while since I played KH:CoM, but - I seem to recall there being a lot more... STUFF happening in the game around this point. Or at least more interesting things. ALTHOUGH, Axel? Creepy and unexpectedly badass, and I've spoiled myself for Riku's ending, but. LOOK AT HIM. DO LIKE. Anyway, it has the same little moments of humour that the game didn't, and different looks at the scenes it DOES keep from the game. I just wish it had KEPT a little more! D:

[58/75] Full Metal Alchemist Vol. 16 by Hiromu Arakawa: BADASS WOMAN WITH A SWORD. OMG. BADASS WOMAN WITH A SWORD. Do indeed WANT. The story is still shaky and confused and probably needs to be put to bed with a warm drink until it remembers where exactly it was going, but it has Hawkeye being calm and capable, Kimberly vs Scar in an EPIC BATTLE ON A TRAIN, the grumpy doctor getting some... I dunno, reassurance? And of course, the BADASS WOMAN WITH A SWORD. Apart from that? Ehhh...

[59/75] Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo Vol. 1 by Matsuri Akino: I went into this FULLY PREPARED to hate it with the fire of a thousand suns. The last volume of Petshop of Horrors pretty much chewed my heart up and used it for confetti, so having a new volume kinda... I dunno. Cheapened that for me? I KNOW, I'M STRANGE. So, I have to say I'm kinda relieved and disappointed that the new series is pretty much the same as the beginning of the old one! It's a different location, and a different recurring nemesis-character (fksdhgls.dkjgdsg WHERE IS LEON I DO NOT WANT SOME CRAZY BUILDING OWNER I WANT LEON BACK TO PUNCH D IN THE FACE! fskdhgfknsjdg), but it's back to focusing on the customers, which is a pretty good way to start it I suppose! Now I think about it, I do remember boggling at all the women in this book - the woman with the dream-eater's nightmare was sacrificing her child to save herself, and got her happy ending when she sacrificed herself for HIM, which doesn't really bother me anymore than abused-spouse stories usually do, but the next story has a woman who gets told that her husband dying doesn't matter because he's served his purpose by getting her pregnant; the story after has a silly woman sleeping with a mob-boss and completely undeserving of the devotion she gets from the underling (although by the end? I am willing to believe she IS more than a silly woman who used to sleep with a mob-boss, but that's after everyone concerned nearly gets killed, so.), and EVA BRAUM. As in. Hitler's girlfriend. Whose only desire in life was to marry Hitler and have his child. I boggle! I am slightly bemused by the women in this! I am impressed that Matsuri Akino actually wrote and drew a story featuring Hitler because I completely didn't expect that! (Although that story gave me the basis for a Nora/Sofu D/Alex OTP so you can tell I was taking it seriously) - but. I'm torn between boggling-and-going "... She really wrote a story where HITLER'S GIRLFRIEND got a creature that grants the wishes of the owner?" and actually enjoying it while doing that! It's just. It's as strange as I'd expect! I JUST WISH LEON WAS IN IT FOR MORE THAN ONE FLSUDHG;LDOMD PANEL!

[60/75] Swamp Thing: Reunion by Alan Moore, John Totleben, and Rick Veitch: ... I used to REALLY LOVE the Swamp Thing. I mean, come on, I was twelve and the one volume I could ever find had the Swamp Thing dying of radiation poison then going on to fight things from horror films (underwater vampires, a haunted house that possessed people, and a werewolf as I recall.), and JOHN CONSTANTINE. I think at that point I was convinced that anything with John Constantine was AWESOME. (I have two volumes of Hellblazer from my NEW library, actually, and one supports that view while the other doesn't. I AM TORN.)

Reunion has no horror film plots and no Constantine. It has the Swamp Thing's girlfriend Abby, who I always rather liked, it has a Green Lantern (It's a DC thing, don't worry about it if you don't know) who is a PLANT and who I think was having a thing with his teacher, it makes reference to things that happened in the volume I've actually read, and it has the Swamp Thing KILLING PEOPLE WITH PLANTS IN VERY CREATIVE WAYS, all of which makes me happy. I just - it doesn't flow as well as the one I read before! It has short, bitty stories that don't really seem to fit together (including one about some space traveller whose name I can't remember, and another about a mechanical planet that rapes/murders the Swamp Thing to SPAWN MORE PLANETS! And also a guy trying to get to the meaning of the universe or something.) and. I EXPECTED BETTER AND I'M DEPRESSED THAT I DIDN'T GET IT. S-SOB.

[41-50] Reading Digest: The edition made up entirely of comics

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:50:48 GMT

Okay! Hello ladies and gentlemen, I'm back! Sort of. I have um, moved to university? And discovered a BRAND NEW LIBRARY! Woohoo! Cue getting out roughly a million books, and the very real risk of dislocating my shoulder as I cart them back and forth.

And when I say "a million" I mean "Hurrah, hurrah! I have read the books I needed to reach 75! Now, to write about all... of... Oh bugger." So, my current plan is to go through my list and do [EXTREMELY short reaction shots (although with my penchant for tl;dr, which is full effect as you may have noticed, that is NOT likely to last long), then make a NEW list of books I plan to go into more depth about! If you have any books you particularly want me to witter about, please say so! (I warn you, some of these are back from early summer, so my memory might be a bit foggy! Please forgive me!)

[Edit: As I FAIL at keeping things short, I'm doing these in batches! We'll see if that works any better.]

[41/75] Young Avengers: Sidekicks by Jim Cheung and Allan Heinberg: I have this sneaking suspicion that if I hadn't read this awesome fic (which spoils this whole volume ROTTEN but considering I picked up the comic with the Young Avengers in just as what is apparently the second TPB started I didn't think it was such a big deal) before I got this, it would have made A LOT LESS SENSE. PLUS, it has TIME TRAVEL and that is guarranteed to have me muttering in a corner about "GOD DEVIDES BY ZERO, TIME TRAVEL STORIES HAPPEN." So uh, the story is um. It involves time travel and the Avengers trying to be practical and backstory and I like that it ends where it begins, and I am SO SAD FOR KANG b-but. It was LACKING something.

And it had time travel. Eh.

Anyway, let's see. The art is good, I like the twists (even though I knew what was going on), I like that the Avengers' first reaction is an understandable "Call their parents and don't let them be superheroes" and they stick to it despite everything - it frustrates me a little, but they're trying! I like that for all that they're trying to FIX everything, the Young Avengers manage to make things WORSE but still try to do the right thing anyway. I like the CHARACTERS and the fact that they're not some super-organised polished team - they're teenagers, and they bicker and argue and don't agree on courses of action and! Yay for disorganisation! Also yay for people like Kate, who is awesome practical-even-in-a-bridesmaid's-dress love. She does a little much "*handwave* Problem solved!" for my tastes, but GIRL WHO HAS NO POWERS PWNING A BOY WHO HAS is always going to win in my book. Also Kate/Eli is one of those pairings that you can see coming four miles away with your eyes closed and facing the wrong direction. ♥ AWESOME SARCASTIC BITCHY OTP, GUYS.

ALSO, speaking of the pairing stuff, I will now put up with a lot from Marvel because TEENAGE GAY SUPERHEROES WHO DON'T DIE HORRIFICALLY AT THE END! Admittedly, that was subtle-to-the-point-of-subtext (except that, y'know, I've read the next comic, and that OPENS with Billy outing himself.) but goddammit it MADE SENSE which more than can be said for the Cassie/Kang. WHERE DID THAT COME FROM, MARVEL. Other characters that are AWESOME ON TOAST (which is, to my distress, not something I said a lot during this series) involve Jessica Jones (and although her friend had some awesome lines I want to SLAP her), Iron Man. Iron Man mainly because of the panel where he was carrying Captain America with an arm quite comfortably around his waist. Which is the only panel I remember in any real detail, except possibly the one where Cassie GROOOOOOOWS. THIS SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT THE REST OF THE COMIC GUYS.), and Teddy who is huge and green and has a daft sense of humour and is SURPISINGLY SNEAKY. DO WANT. Now if we just got more of him-and-Billy being together... Basically I love all of the characters, even though I still confuse them for each other, but I still come out of it going "... Huh."

[42-43/75] Runaways 3 and 4 by Adrian Alphona, Jo Chen, and Brian K Vaughan Guuuuuuuuys HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS COMING!? Right, here is my thing. If there is EPIC SECRET ONE-OF-US-IS-A-TRAITOR I generally refuse to play along, even when the story asks me to believe that parents WOULDN'T recognise their own child. But in Runaways, I couldn't think of who it would be anyway! All the characters seemed to be NOT THE TYPE WHO WOULD DO THAT, and well, Alex felt like the POV character completely, and the POV character is NEVER the -

Wait.

What!?

Yeah, suffice to say, Alex being the traitor surprised the hell out of me, as did Gert/Chase (and a side-note: HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THAT THIS IS A PREDOMINANTLY FEMALE TEAM WITHOUT THE FUCKING FANSERVICE. Oh yes, the rest of you Marvel people, IT CAN BE DONE. Now follow their example!), although in retrospect it all makes perfect sense. Alex WOULD, and all his explanations - and his scheming and playing all the others like instruments a-and - and basically, YES. It does indeed work out very well! The parents sacrificing themselves is logical too - a little odd until you think "Guys, they DOOMED THE WORLD and gave up their own plans to save themselves FOR THE KIDS." And I love that none of the Runaways can bear to go back to a normal life, being told what to do and talking to therapists - and that Chase was about two months ahead of them, stealing dinosaurs and kicking ass.

I also love Chase in the whole STOP THIS GUY BEFORE HE KILLS THE AVENGERS IN THE FUTURE (And how much do I love Gert being called "Heroine" and leading the Avengers? LOTS AND LOTS!), because o-omg, he is CRAZY and so devoted to Gert. And the new kid is adorable and I love that organisation and I made a noise audible only audible to dogs and goldfish when I saw Jonathan Starsmore because I LOVED GEN X WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND SUNS AND HE IS BA - oh, wait, no he isn't. It's someone PRETENDING to be an awesome sarcastic english guy with half a face. Ah well. Anyway, I love the mystery in that - of figuring out who the kid was and why he was going to blow up the world, and. And. I love that they mention Ultros, dismiss him, and then it turns out that YES IT WAS INDEED THE EVIL KILLER ROBOT. I love the fact that there is a SUPPORT GROUP for former teenage superheroes (and that Jonathan's a git to them all. ♥). I love how Karolina's just that much more obvious with her thing for Niko. I love Molly full stop. I love GERT AND HER FSKING DINOSAUR! \o/ I also like that (I think) they're going back to the Old Thingimawhatsits that the parents were working for as well, because I love it when thingimawhatsits don't just disappear off the map, they PLOT and RETURN MORE EVIL THAN EVER MWAHAHAHAHA. *ahem* For the record, I want more comics to be like this: COMPLETELY AWESOME. And with AMAZING ART. *is starry-eyed over the covers and the inside art*

[44/75] Full Metal Alchemist Volume 15 by Hiromu Arakawa: Dear Tokyopop: Sometimes I REALLY HATE your translators. It's nothing personal. It's just that, well, when they change a characters name half way through the series, or when there's something so off I can pick it up, we have A Problem. Kay? Kay. Anyway, this is kinda - not up to the standard I expect of FMA? Don't get me wrong, I flailed because HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGHES and BROKEN ROY and BROKEN RIZA, and NOT!CRAZY SCAR and his FAMILY a-and holy shit, Kimberly + homunculi? SCARY STUFF and all the BACKSTORY, and all the art was as good as ever but - there was something missing. Something besides Ed. It just felt like what it was - a really extended flashback sequence at a REALLY ODD POINT TO HAVE IT and it disappoints me. ;__;

[45/75] Tactics Volume 3 by Kazuko Higashiyama and Sakura Kinoshita: And you know what, despite any reservations I might have about the translators at Tokyopop? I am SO GLAD that they have Tactics instead of ADV. GUYS, BUY THE FIRST TWO FROM TOKYOPOP INSTEAD OF ADV, they do wickle Kantarou with the most ANNOYING baby voice EVER, but it's gotta be better than what ADV did. *shudders* Anyway. The stoooooory. I love stories about sisters who will do anything for the other, and this one mashes pretty much all my buttons. Yes, I do have a button labelled "Sickly, sweet, self-sacrificing psychics." (Alliteration ftw!) I try not to admit it too often. I also have a weakness for Haruka Doing The Right Thing (and being asked to teach Kantarou the way of the manslut!) The ending of that chapter made me sad for all involved, which - doesn't usually happen. PLUS, they managed to put foreshadowing and THREATS OF DOOM into the silly cheering-up story that followed! What the hell! (By which I mean: DID LIKE, PLEASE DO IT AGAIN.)

[46/75] Cybersix Volume One by Carlos Meglia and Carlos Trillo: I have to admit, I actually read this before I saw the cartoon, and my god, was that a tone-shift and a half. The cartoon is a lovable, heart-warming little thing with CUTE HAPPY SLUDGE MONSTERS and a miniture dork completely failing to rule the world. The Cybersix comics? Um. Wow. NONE OF THE ABOVE. I think thebaconfat once said she wanted more time in Cybersix's head? Or at least to know how she thought of herself - this is where you get it! ~~Plus the confirmation that Cybersix DID actually get her outfit out of a prostitute's wardrobe!~~ It's kinda depressing, and her backstory's a little different to the cartoon - and there is less of Lucas charging in to save the day and NO HAPPY SLUDGE MONSTER - but the character dynamics are still there! Lucas is still kind and knows Cybersix could bend him in knots, and he READS POETRY. Adrian is still kinda "Er, what?" apart from how he gets A LOT LESS screentime which makes me sad. The art looks kinda like something out of Tintin to be honest with you - which is odd because, y'know, Cybersix wanders around naked a lot. ANYWAY, I do like it, but it is NOTHING like the cartoon in tone or certain details of Cybersix's backstory. (AVAILABLE HERE FOR ALL WHO WANT IT.)

[47/75] Petshop of Horrors Volume 3 by Matsuri Akino: Oh, Petshop of Horrors, HOW DO I LOVE THEE. I love it LOTS. Anyway, I was reading this to try and get my groove back for writing fic, and it has lots of the stuff I like about this series! Contracts going badly wrong, Leon being a detective/trying to buy D with sweets/saving D's life/completely failing at any of the above, Count D being smug and creepy and beating the moral into the customers and making out with someone who's trying to kill him WHY HAVE MORE PEOPLE NOT READ THIS?! I do love this series, and I think this is the volume with the abused dog (which is sad and logical and I feel so sorry for the dog!), the cannibal chef (... I love Wong, and I think I've actually written fic about this story so uh. My love of it does not need to be restated), and the old lady who escaped Nazi germany (which is another one that's sad and sweet, if slightly less logical than I'd like. ;___; ) There IS another one somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is - REST ASSURED THOUGH, I do indeed reccomend this series! If only so I have more people who'll capslock about it with me.

[48/75] League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 1 by Alan Moore: I believe I said most of what I think about this series when I was reading it - although by the second volume it had mostly descended to AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH. More on that when I actually get to that volume. Let me see! *quotes her Twitter digest*

* 10:36 Dear Alan Moore: HOW MANY PEOPLE GET RAPED/NEARLY RAPED IN THIS DAMN COMIC? Yours with grevious WTF, Susan #
* 13:55 Is anyone else REALLY SCARED of Mister Hyde? Anyone at all? Also the whole can't-see-Griffin thing not usually played up this much. :\ #
* 14:04 And by "not as much" I mean "why is the only person who makes a big deal about it the one who CAN see him?" #
* 14:05 Sherlock Hooooooolmes! Alan Moore I may forgive you all the raping in this. #
* 14:07 Someone pointed out that Moriarty was right about the "drug addict," so why not the "sodomitic." I only just got what they're talking about. #
* 14:29 "I'll see to it if you just get out of my bloody pissing WAY... Please." Mina enforces manners on the scary guy! \o/ #
* 17:41 Oh god Baco when you said this had horrible things in it, I didn't think you really MEANT it. #
* 17:55 Okay, I finished it and am now making this face: O_____________o.
Only BIGGER. #

My thing with this series is that all the "monsters" - Hyde and the invisible man - are actually monstrous. Hyde's a murderer, and the invisible man MOVED INTO A GIRL'S SCHOOL to have his way with the students. O___________o And, y'know, that WORKS because it FREAKS ME THE FUCK OUT. At least until Mina sort of bullies Hyde into submission (Can I take this opportunity to mention I love Mina and how she's practical and dignified and figures everything out faster than the others!) and I realise that as Hyde can see the invisible man, HE IS GOING TO DIE HORRIBLY. The art is... Odd... But the story's interesting and I love stories where the heroes (such as they are) get played mercilessly, so even when I'm physically recoiling from the screen I like this. Then we get...

[49/75] The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2 by Alan Moore: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH! That is all can say about this at the current point in time because I STILL want to curl up in a corner and scream whenever I think about it. AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!

[50/75] Firewatch by Connie Willis: Oh my god, I love this story to death. It's - I dunno, it feels quiet and Bartholemew is shattering apart slightly at the seams and- and- I love how he gets the LITTLE things wrong and how he and Langby suspect each other and. And. FOR THE RECORD I consider this by thebaconfat to be PART OF CANON. It's a BRILLIANT companion to it, please all read it! It adds so much to some of the scenes! (AVAILABLE ONLINE HERE.)

[40/75] Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:46:21 GMT

Lost items found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Reasonable rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or Other Entertainment.
Harry Dresden is the best at what he does - and not just because he's the only one who does it. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal capabilities, they come to him for answers. Because the everyday world is not as "everyday" as it seems. It's actually full of strange and supernatural - and most of them don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a- well, whatever it is the police are having trouble with this time.
There's just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things start to get... Interesting.
Magic. It can get a guy killed.

So, I'm a member of lkh_lashouts - a community dedicated to mocking and frothing about the works of Laurel K. Hamilton, who used to write a paranormal detective series before it turned into bad porn. Jim Butcher is one of the writers who's always mentioned over there as a GOOD paranormal detective writer. One with decent prose, something approaching realism, and actual consequences for the characters.

I'm actually kinda surprised, but they were right.

The book's short - a three or four hour read at most, and it's pretty fast paced. Admittedly, that's mostly due to Murphy's Law at EVERY opportunity (And if you think I'm joking...) and things get a bit rushed towards the end, but everything ties together really well, and I like the world building - although I generally only object to infodumps if they're really obnoxious, so. Some of the descriptions (especially of the women), sound like they're repeated to hell and back, but some of them are wonderful. The only example coming to mind though is one of a vampire's true form in the middle of the book, but I'm sure there are others that I'd actually be able to quote if I'd done the sensible thing and kept the book near me for this. (Although the aftermath was kinda a prime example of told-not-shown, which depresses me.)

Harry Dresden is the sort of character I will cheer for any time - crotchety and sarcastic, bookish, wrecks havok on technology (and THAT was a detail that cracked me up - I love that there are LITTLE consequences to wizardry in this world as well as big ones; on that topic I also love that Jim Butcher's willing to let his characters cock something up). Kinda old fashioned (and on one level, I like it and on another I think I got to the point where I started rolling my eyes every time the word "feminine" came up), and so unlucky I wouldn't stand in the same building as him in a thunderstorm. Like I said, Murphy's Law the WHOLE WAY THROUGH THIS BOOK. The other characters I don't think were as well fleshed out (basic personality, yes, but I COULD actually play clichéd character bingo with this and probably get a full house), but for writing a character in first person POV that I LIKED I'll forgive Jim Butcher a hell of a lot. And that's without factoring in how Harry doesn't get to solve his problems by waving his hand and using a bit of magic, and how he actually does stuff like have Harry be attacked while he was in the shower, which is kinda hilarious and again, consequences, DO WANT. (Some of his logic in other places is admittedly out of whack to make up for it, but still.).

What this reminds me of, really, is some of the older crime stories - the only one springing to mind is Raymond Chandler, and they're not really similar in any way, but that's the closest thing I can think of as an example of the feel. Tone. ... Okay, I'm not sure what I mean either, but this stuff pings me in the exact same way Raymond Chandler's did.

Verdict: It's really not bad! Not exactly Great Literature, but it's not bad!

[33-39/75] Reading Digest

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:28:42 GMT

So! I went to York this week, and my Susan/Bookshops OTP has now expanded to include Borders.

Seriously, I had never been in Borders before now. I think I described it as "the bastard child of a threeway between Waterstones, WHSmiths, and HMV" and the description stands. Especially because the nearest one is STILL nowhere near me, dammit. ~~No, seriously, there isn't a SINGLE BOOKSHOP in the town where I live. I FEEL DEPRIVED.~~

Anyway, part of my sudden love for Borders is that they had a clearance sale going on when we went, and I managed to get a stash of manwha and bad sci-fi at around a quid each. I consider that a perfectly acceptable way to win my heart.

Anyway, quick and dirty reaction shots of half this haul (including a couple from a while back):

[33/75] Comic (Volume 2) by SiHyun Ha: Of all the manwha I got, this is the one I'd be miffed about not being able to read again. (In fact, I managed to LOSE this for all of a minute and was quite put out.) The romance (Well, such as it is) feels predictable - cool, aloof young man with a certain amount of Mysterious Angst and a Secret Identity, plus an earnest young woman who is hardworking and trying to get the respect of both the young man and the older guy she's got a crush on? You really think I can't see this coming a mile away?) but the OTHER stuff - the girl wants to be a manwha artist, and the guy is a published one she bullies into taking her on as an assistant - makes me happy! I enjoy reading about making comics or publishing books, so I will put up with retarded romance for stuff about manwha + guy getting pwned by a girl he intially dismisses + AWESOME ROOMMATE + guy being a dick and still helpful at the same time (It's a THING, all right?) = HAPPY SUSAN.

[34+35/75] Lone Wolf and Cub (Volumes 14 and 17) by Kazuo Koika & Goseki Kojima: I have the feeling that this is one of those series you have to had read almost the whole way through to have it make sense. Then again, I'm not sure - going off the volumes I've read - I could take seventeen closely packed (I'm serious, the books are SMALL, and considering how detailed the linework is that's not necessarily a good thing. Eyestrain ahoy!) volumes, which all presumably consist of "Guy and son travelling somewhere, their journey interrupted occasionally for a bloodbath." I have a feeling I might put up with it if I knew what was going on, but really - I approve of journeys+bloodbaths, but this feels repetitious and flat to me.

[36/75] Heavenly Executioner Chiwoo (Volume 3) by Park KangHo & Lee HaNa: This feels like an RPG. No, really - in the first few pages the characters yell about "turns," cast sleep, and bitch about missing the character who'd been put to sleep. ~~Plus the FLEE! sequence.~~ It's fun! Apart from that... The art's nothing special, but the story itself is quite interesting! I'm not so sure I'd dig the rest of it up if it wasn't on the cheap - like I said, it feels like an RPG, to the point where I'd swear I'd played something like this - but it's not a bad read.

[37/75] The Royal Palace Goong (Volume 1) by Park so Hee: Predictable shoujo rubbish is predictable? Daft humour + two people who don't like each other getting married + royalty = something I would give to my little sister full of confidence that she will LOVE IT TO DEATH. But for me - not so much.

[38/75] Courageous Ali and the Heartless King by Tariq Mehmood: Even for a kids' fairytale, I'm pretty sure this is DAFT. Not funny daft, but daft-story sort of daft. I may offer it to my nieces though and see what they think of it; I don't think much.

[39/75] Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (Volume 1): This is really cute artwise, and has more Sora-Donald-Goofy dorkery than the game - although the rest of it is kinda... Not what I remember from the game. All I bought it for though was to remind me what happened in the games (which is why I'm eyeing up the rest of the KH books...), and it does that pretty well!

Coming up next: Storm Front by Jim Butcher, Runaways 3 and 4 by Brian Vaughn, and Young Avengers: Sidekicks. After that, I have a pile of bad sci-fi with my name on. \o/

[31/75] Watchmen by Alan Moore

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:33:52 GMT

Reaction shot: To be honest, my first and pretty much only reaction to this is "Holy shit." I finished it an hour ~~and three weeks~~ ago, and everytime I try to start this off, something about the story blindsides me, and I'm stuck with a reaction shot that basically consists of "Holy shit!" and looking like I've just been struck in the face with a large yellow trade paperback.

So. Lets try this again. The story centres around a group of superheroes (Well, I say superheroes - they're mostly people who dressed up in costumes to fight crime for various reasons.) from the forties and seventies who are being killed, discredited, or otherwise disposed of. But - that's not all that's going on. If the costume-people were all that this was about, then I could quite happily keysmash about this and move on to catching up on everything else I'm behind on. It's about more than that - it's more about the people wearing the costumes than what they actually did while they were wearing them. It's the distinction between the superhero and their true identity - Rorschach for example, who has his "real" identity and the one he has when he's not in costume, which is just a distinction that breaks my heart.

And speaking of Rorschach - Alan Moore is incredible. He presents characters doing terrible things, and he makes it look completely rational. Like - Rorschach does so much, and I can almost accept it as normal, or a course of action that makes sense, even though I know it isn't. And he just breaks my heart - he's so monotone and - I dunno, the word I want to use is precise, but I doubt that's right - even in his thoughts, and he's such a rationally crazy bastard. And the scenes with the psychologist, and when there's a riot in the prison - god. He's so calm about everything. He's creepy and effective and I love some of his lines (the one about how they're stuck in prison with him not the other way around.), and I love his relationship with Nite Owl. They're just - such best friends, even after Rorschach loses his mind.

And god - how he died. Sticking to his principles, and telling Jon to kill him, and. ;_; And leaving his journal with the crazy newspaper people. ♥

And - Jon and Laurie. Jon trying so hard and just being - completely alien. So distant from all of it, to the point where he doesn't even flinch when they find half of New York dead, and at the same time involved enough to be upset when Laurie leaves him, and at the TV studio, and when Laurie tells him she's with Dan, even though he knows it's going to happen. And Laurie being moulded by her mother, and her thing about the Comedian (Oh god, there was a character I could hate with impunity, even if Alan Moore managed to give him more depth than I would've thought.) and how that turned out, and her thing with Dan. THAT filled me with hearts a lot. Speaking of Dan - he was kinda awesome. Starting with his fanboying of the OLD Nite Owl (Oh god, THAT should not have ended like it did. ;_; ) and owls, and all his gadgets, and his trying to do the right thing and insisting on saving Rorschach - he is probably the most normal superhero in it. The one with the least baggage. Ozymandias was INSANE - clever, considering what did with the assassin ("What have you got in your mouth" and he's putting the cyanide pill there himself *flails*), and his plan to unite the world (CABLE, TAKE NOTE: THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE RIGHT), and his not tl;dring about his plan until it's too late, and his catching the bloody bullet. Also his cat, I loved his cat.

I even loved the minor characters - the ones in the off-scenes by the newstand (I KNOW I've read the story that pirate-comic book is based on. I know it. Either that or I've read something similar, because I knew how it turned out before he even got past the first few pages.). I was honestly heartbroken with what happened to them - I liked them, all of them, even when it was all going to hell and they were losing it, and the last page of that chapter where it all goes white just broke my heart.

Basically - this feels real. This is how it feels like it would've ended if real life and all its fuckery had applied. The good guys don't always win, sometimes the bad guy is faster and smarter and doing terrible things for a good reason. I wish it hadn't turned out like it had, but if they had got there in time, I would feel so cheated. The ending feels - right. Like it was the only way the whole thing could have turned out, and ending it happily would have completely voided everything Alan Moore did.

Verdict: ... I feel like I've been hit in the face with a trade-paperback just from thinking back to it to finish this reaction shot. It's - it's powerful and real and I made a crack about wanting Alan Moore's weirdly-bearded children but after reading Watchmen I would do it.

[25-32] Reading Digest

Fri, 30 May 2008 16:46:54 GMT

Okay, in the spirit of "Oh god I have this list of books that will not get shorter," I am doing mini-reaction shots. Some of these (Like Watchmen, which DESERVES a proper reaction shot, and will get one so I can use it for a Herding Cats review) I'll come back to and do a proper reaction shot of, but right now - I want my list to get shorter!

[25/75] Angel Sanctuary: Volume 4 by Kaori Yuki - Dear Ms Kaori Yuki: PLEASE NEVER STOP WITH THE CRACK AND THE GORGEOUS ARTWORK. THE WORLD WOULD PROBABLY IMPLODE IF YOU DID. That said: I love the art in this. I love Rosiel and his attachment to his subordinate, I love pretty much everything that happens in hell, and I love people trying to be cunning and scheme their way past Rosiel and having it fail miserably. I really should remember to read the rest!

[26/75]Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Illustrated Short Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Guys, I have a massive Victoriana kink. I also know that the best way to convince most of my Flist is to tell them that there is boys kissing. UNFORTUNATELY, because of the Victorian-ness, there is no kissing, but it is pretty gay in a very repressed Victorian way. ALSO, awesome mysteries. The timelines' a mess, some of the stories make even me stop and question the logic, and sometimes I just want to shake all the characters involved, but - but it fills me with hearts! ~~What can I say, it's been my favourite book since I was eleven. Smudged type and all.~~ Also, if you have the same version as me, you get the illustrations from when the stories were originally published in the Strand. ♥

[27/75] Claymore Volume Two by Norihiro Yagi - The art style in this is - strange. Not bad, just - strange. That's really all I remember about it. The art style was strange, I loved the little kid with... Jean was it? I've forgotton her name, it's been that long. I liked the mystery and the skulking and how the people in the city were idiotic enough to keep up the prejudice of NO CLAYMORES ALLOWED even when they were being picked off one by one. ~~I also think I shipped the knight and the knife-throwing bastard. I have no excuse.~~ I picked it up from the second volume, because I have NEVER completely followed a series that I bought in order, so I'm thinking I need to buy the rest now. If only because FIGHT SCENES, YAY! ~~Also, because woodburner flails over this series regularly, and apparantly it gets better!~~

[28/75] King of Hell Volume 8 by Ra In-Soo and Kim Jae-Hwan - AWESOME MANWHA WITH RIDICULOUSLY PRETTY ART AND LOTS OF FIGHT SCENES. GUYS, THIS THING IS JUST ONE BIG BUTTON PRESS. I mean, it has zombies, assassins (Who I have major hearts for), a pretty much crazy guy who works for the god of the dead, Secret Societies That Are Going To Wipe Out Other Societies (And The Rest Of The World), sweet looking boys with split personality issues, and CURSED TREASURE HUNTS. I love this series, and I love this particular book of it. *hugs it* (I think this is the one volume WITHOUT the three dorks. I don't remember though.)

[29/75] Fables Volume Two: Animal Farm - I picked this up at the library while I was waiting for the family to show up, and I have to admit that this book presses two of my buttons (fractured fairytales and different worlds being smushed together) without even trying. Added to that, I ♥ the art, so that's three! It borrows heavily from Animal Farm (shocker there, amirite?) and Lord of the Flies, and to be honest there are points when it's genuinely creepy. Then again, there are points when I had to put the book down, bury my head in my hands and ask "HOW IS SOMEONE AS NAIVE AS SNOW WHITE MAYOR?" and "OH GOD SHE IS DAFT." I liked her, sure, but I liked Rose Red (o hay I've read that fairy tale! Also DEAR RED, WOULD 100% WRITE FIC ABOUT YOU RATHER THAN YOUR SISTER.), and found her more believable than her sister. I like her POV! I like how sneaky she is! I like her pissed off explanation at the end, and how even Bigby looks at Snow White as though she's kinda dumb about her sister. *hugs* Ah well, nothing's perfect - I'm just not sure I could read the rest of the series, even if I could find it.

[30/75] Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman - I have notes for a reaction shot of this, and they are basically

Clunky prose and info dumping - generally INTERESTING infodumping, but that's what it is
Team that isn't a team and how awesome that dynamic is.
Fatale being concerned about who she is and who she was, and her attempts to actually have a relationship with people (Lily/Fatale for a quid)
Doctor Impossible = generic evil supervillain, although with a little more public humiliation in his background and a very crazy POV.
Little details of the world - MHD (Evil genius = official mental disorder)
Twists on standard tropes - Erica, Autistic superhero, etc.
Pacing = CLUNKY AS HELL.

And that is basically all I have to say about this one, although I would probably have fleshed it out prettily if I was trying to spin a post out of it. The thing is - I've figured out that heyheyrenay's thing with "phases of not being able to read first person" is infectious. That is my only explanation for how all the books I can't properly identify with are in the first person. Ah well.

It's not bad! It's reasonably well written (clunky, but the prose gets the job done), the POVs are distinct enough for me to know who I'm reading about, and it has some wonderful imagery (helloooo Doctor Impossible's POV.). The other characters aren't introduced well, and most of them barely feature in the story (there are majoy origin backdumps, but - but most of them are names and a power, with little actual character or interaction. Which kinda depresses me, because I want to like it. But the plot is pretty much a thin line of hope through Doctor Impossible's flashbacks, and Fatale is more of a secondary character in her own story. *sighs and still wishes she could've liked it*

[31/75] The Watchmen by Alan Moore - Holy shit. Another one I have half a reaction shot to this already written, but seriously, holy shit.

[32/75] Beyond Baked Beans [Budget] by Fiona Beckett - Guys, cookbook containing deliberately cheap recipes that can be spread out into lots of meals! I have no idea whether these are any good, because I've not tried them yet (I will be doing either tonight or tomorrow; if you don't hear from me, I've set the kitchen on fire.), but they look relatively easy, the instructions are clear enough (and yay for books that are set out in a semi-decent fashion! \o/ ), and it's reasonably not patronising, considering the first chapter's telling people where to shop and stuff. (The author says something about how she's writing for people who're at Uni - it's pretty obvious they're gonna be smart enough to cook things more complicated than baked beans.) I don't know whether it would be any good for the american friends (YOU DON'T HAVE MARMITE, YOU PHILISTINES!), but she has a website here, so if anything on it looks useful, try the books?

[23-25/75] Runaways Volumes One and Two by Brian K. Vaughan

Fri, 30 May 2008 14:44:34 GMT

All young people believe their parents are evil...but what if they really are? Meet Alex, Karolina, Gert, Chase, Molly and Nico - whose lives are about to take an unexpected turn. When these six young friends discover their parents are all secretly super-powered villains, the shocked teens find strength in one another. Together, they run away from home and straight into the adventure of their lives - vowing to turn the tables on their evil legacy.

Still on the run from their super-villain parents, this motley crew of super-powered kids finds a kindred spirit in a daring young stranger and welcomes him into their fold. But will this dashing young man help the teenagers defeat their villainous parents...or tear them apart? One troubled member finds out, as she leaves the group's hideout with their new recruit, who reveals his startling secret, putting the entire team in jeopardy! Plus: Who do you send to catch a group of missing, runaway teenage super heroes? Marvel's original teen runaway crimefighters, Cloak and Dagger, are making their first major appearance in years!

I'm not sure how I'm going to warn people for spoilers when it comes to talking about this! Apparantly the one heyheyrenay and justira has the storylines from Volume 2 in the first volume, which severely confused me when reading Nay's reaction to it. GUYS: CLOAK & DAGGER, VOLUME ONE OR VOLUME TWO? Anyway, thoughts on Runaways: I love the art. No, seriously, it is gorgeous, and - and its the little details I remember of it, like Karolina biting her lip when she's thinking, and most comics I read just don't bother with little bits of body language, so excuse me while I flail.

Oh yeah, the story. Um. It's novel, I have to say! I don't think I've ever seen anything from the point of view of the supervillains kids - well, I've seen characters who've become superheroes in response to parents being supervillains, but not quite like this! Anyway, the pacing feels awkward, and the story itself has some issues (Some things are slightly predictable, and some things make me boggle a little like how none of the parents can look at the note and go "Well, my chld didn't write that." I know this is probably just a symptom of having reasonably attentive parents and pretty distinctive handwriting, but jesus - you'd think they'd at least be able to GUESS so it'd feel less like a cheap way to cause tension. (For the record: It works. It's cheap, but it works.),) but the story works. It really does.

And because I'm a character whore: I do like them. ALL of them. The kids all feel a little like your standard sterotypes, but they're handled pretty well and they're all distinct and I love them. Even when they're idiots, naive, or not really shown (Gert, for example, appears to be the babysitter of the group for NO EXPLICABLE REASON.). The parents - well, apart from Alex's, who're the only ones shown to have separate views on things - only really seem to have enough character between them for one person, which is disappointing. Why give all the characters the exact same family type if you're not going to characterise the parents as separate people?!

(And on the topic of characters: TRUE STORY that kinda spoils Volume Two a little!:

Karolina: *admits to being interested in someone (who is interested in someone else) who isn't Alex*
Susan: ... Wait, how does that work?
Susan: It's not Alex, and it's not Topher, but the only only other person we know is interested in someone else is Nico -
Susan:
Susan:
Susan:
Susan:
Susan:
Susan: Oh god how slow am I?!

Now I have to pick up the rest of the series, because if I'm not right, then I'll have just admitted to being completely stunned by thinking Marvel would allow teenage lesbians for no reason.

Verdict: It's really good! This sounds like I have nothing but issues with it, but that's not it at all! *looks sheepish*

I have to admit though, I am going with Young Avengers as my "Teenager costumed superheroes" of choice. Admittedly, this is biased because Young Avengers = possibility of boys kissing in that one of the first scenes I ever read from it was one of the boys trying to come out to his parents and them telling him they already knew and then forcing his boyfriend to have breakfast with them, but what can I say? I'm relatively easy. Besides, Runaways don't count - like Molly says "... I'm the only one who made a costume?" ;)

[15-23/75] Cable & Deadpool Volumes 1-8

Mon, 12 May 2008 20:46:48 GMT

Wade Wilson and Nathan Summers - Marvel's mightiest mutant mercs - are back, and this time they're stuck with each other! Can two grown men armed to the teeth with deadly genetic weaponery live together without driving each other crazy?! Action, adventure, black humor, black-ops, face-changing viruses, gratuitous France-bashing and lots of gunfire mark the return of two of Marvel's fan-favorite anti-heroes!
With Cable recuperating on his island haven of Providence, who else can investigate when there is "A Murder in Paradise"? You know who. Say it. Go ahead. Picture it: Deadpool, as a detective, interrogating the most brilliant pacifists on Earth. Monk and Columbo have nothing to fear. Plus: Deadpool is brainwashed by the mysterious group known as the Black Box to become a mindless assassin (which, honestly, didn't take much washing). So Deadpool does what comes naturally to him - the opposite of what's expected! But hey, where's Cable? And what are Cannonball and Siryn doing in the book?	Deadpool finally gets hired for a job! There's a missing hard drive, and whoever gets it could very well own the world! Naturally, our Merc with a Mouth is going to find it first, right? Well...only if he can outwit that superspy known as the CAT, and slide by the undulating charms of three gorgeous and deadly snake chicks. That's right: Black Mamba, Asp and Diamondback are back in business as the B.A.D. Girls! And what's Cable doing during all of this? Well, keeping an eye on Deadpool, since whoever owns the hard drive could very well own the world!
Our greed for knowledge recreated his telepathy. Our quest to confine him recreated his telekinesis. He has forged a paradise haven that threatens to destabilize countless governments and religions. One man wants to find out what Cable's intentions are before it's too late. Guest-starring Captain America! Plus: Cable sees the signs - omens and portents - characters gathering, moving across the board like chess pieces...can Apocalypse be resurrected? Can Cable and Deadpool stop it in time? And most surprising of all...what if one of them doesn't want it to be stopped? And finally, Domino is hired to stop Deadpool's activities in the Central European country of Rumekistan, only to learn he plans to assassinate the country's imposed ruler, the international terrorist named Flag-Smasher. Should she stop him? Will her decision be influenced when she finds out DP was given his mission by...Cable?	With Civil War tearing the Marvel Universe apart, only one man can sew it back together: Deadpool! Well, who else would make the perfect mercenary hero-hunter? In an effort to do his part, Deadpool crosses paths with the Great Lakes Avengers, and slices and dices his way to Daredevil, the Man Without Fear! Plus: What happens when the Merc with a Mouth faces the Sightless Scarlet Sentry? And where does Cable stand in all this? Where he always does: pretending he's above the fray. Then why is he having a secret meeting with Captain America?
	Since Deadpool is twice as much trouble as anyone in the Marvel Universe, the only logical people who could possibly rescue him and Bob, Agent of Hydra, from their temporal tantrum are...well, everyone! Guest appearances include Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Doctor Strange and more! Twice the guest stars! Twice the fun! But not twice the price! How can you say no?

Reaction Shot: The trouble with trying to do any sort of coherent reaction shot on this is that really, when I try to explain why I like this series I tend to just end up flailing my arms and babbling how it's REALLY REALLY AWESOME and THE GAYEST MARVEL THING I EVER READ and FLSDKJGHLJSDHGF and really that's hardly a good way to get people to read it.

Unless of course keysmash IS a good way to get people to read it, in which case you can ignore me now because really I'm just babbling and that's never a good thing.

The best way to describe Cable&Deadpool is the way thebaconfat described it when she was pimping it out - "EXPLOSIONS and [...] the EPIC LOVE STORY between an obnoxious superpowered mercenary with ADD and a self-righteous telepathic mutant with a Messiah complex (They fight crime! And also commit it)." I would like to add a few things to her excellent summary though - some of which might even make sense!

This is the sort of EPIC ROMANCE where the main parties meet up, exchange banter, one of them gets shot in the head - usually by the other one (You think I'm joking. YOU WILL SEE.), and then carry on like this is a perfectly normal occurence! Which, as it's a Marvel series, it is.

If you love your fourth wall, some parts of this comic are going to make you flail in wrath. Made me laugh though, which admittedly isn't that hard. *hugs the recap pages and admits this is mainly because Deadpool. IN A TUX.*

If anyone doubts my claims that this is the gayest Marvel comic ever: Deadpool's darkest desire. Spoilery, but worth it for the lolz.

Deadpool is described in every Recap page as "the merc with a mouth." THIS IS 1000% ACCURATE. HE NEVER SHUTS UP. I'm glad of this! Even if I'm kinda disturbed that his logic and trains of thought generally make sense to me. (Actually, most of his pop-culture references go right over my head though. Curse you American pop-culture!) I do like Deadpool, mainly because he's crazy.

... Also, Deadpool is awesome. He is an obnoxious superpowered mercenary with ADD, too many weapons, and the scariest headspace I can imagine, and yet there's times where he really makes my heart hurt for him. I don't know how, but he manages it.

- no seriously, this whole comic series is fully capable of going from crack to SRS BSNS to something that will punch you in the heart - or the head - in one volume. I don't understand it, but I like it.

So I just realised I got this far without mentioning Cable once. That has to be a talent! Anyway, yes. Cable. I remember him from my crazy obssession with my brother's Marvel comics when I was younger and seriously, if he'd been this AWESOME and persuasive-even-though-you-know-he's-crazy I might have been a hell of a lot more interested in him. >_> He's just - manipulative, and always thinking five moves ahead, and even the people who don't like him or what he's doing fall in with him. And he always comes out of everything either okay or with a plan. It's - bizarre. Fun, but bizarre.

I am ABSOLUTELY GUTTED that the series ended with only 50 issues. I wanted SO MUCH to happen, and it didn't. And my original reaction was to be so disappointed with it, for reasons I'm not even going to go into because I can't spoil it. I just - in and of themselves, I loved the last few issues. As an ending - they feel anticlimatic, which isn't the word I want because dinosaurs aren't anticlimatic BUT YOU GET THE IDEA.

I am also pissed off that some of the MAJORLY IMPORTANT AND CLIMATIC BATTLES/SCENES/INCIDENTS are IN COMPLETELY DIFFERENT COMICS THAT I HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT. DEAR MARVEL: KISS MY BIG ENGLISH LACKING-ACCESS-TO-A-ZILLION-AND-ONE-COMICS ARSE. Rrr. It's not TOO bad, because it's generally explained pretty well, but for god's sake. When you go from BUILD-UP-BUILD-UP-DRAMA-DRAMA-DRAMA to THE AFTERMATH D: without anything in between - well, you can understand my wrath, right?

I love most of the minor recurring characters. Irene, Gareb, Weasel, Bob, Agency X, The Cat - seriously, I would hug all the minor characters in this. And maybe write dozens of dorky interactional fic. ~~You think I'm joking I would so write Irene-and-Gareb for a quid.~~ Some of the female characters (not that there are many, as I recall) make me think I can hear Girls Read Comics growling in fury but - if you can ignore gratuitous tits/"... she just got pwned by Cable WHY IS SHE MAKING THAT FACE owait" sort of issues (and really, that applies almost exclusively to the B.A.D Girls - I seem to recall the other issues being less like that. And yes, those of you who made the same face I did when I saw the name of that group, I DID say I could hear GRC growling.), then you can get through the worst C&D is going to throw you genderwise.

Verdict: PLEASE READ THIS. IT WILL MAKE MY WEEK.

[Recs Request] Superheroes?

Sun, 11 May 2008 14:51:27 GMT

Okay, so May is turning into the Merry Month of Superheroes for me (or rather Not-So-Merry-Month-of-Susan-SPAZZING-OUT-Over-Exams, but that's not nearly as interesting and involves less snappy banter and gayness unless anyone catches me slashing everyone in my Class Civ texts.). I'm currently wallowing in Cable&Deadpool, Amazon sent me Hero (Perry Moore) and Soon I Will Be Invincible (Austin Grossman), (TO WHICH I SAY "!!!!!!!!!!" AND HUG MY PARCEL A LOT) and I've just finished the first volume of Runaways.

SO: Dear internets, I am on a superheroics kick. ~~This may or may not be due to wanting to write some superheroics, but I'm of the opinion that if I just read lots of good stuff the urge'll go away.~~ Therefore, does anyone have any reccomendations!

I have "the merc-with-a-mouth," a psychic with a Messiah complex, teenagers vowing to take down their parents, a cyborg woman, and gay teenage superheroes. BASICALLY DOES ANYONE HAVE ANYTHING THAT'LL TOP ANY OF THAT. >_>

[15/75] Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers

Mon, 05 May 2008 11:30:33 GMT

Mom, I went to the store. See inside the fridge. I watered the plants. I cleaned out Peter's cage. I tidied the sitting room. And the kitchen. And I did the washing up. I'm going to bed. Your live-in servant, Claire "Life on the Refrigerator Door" is told exclusively through notes exchanged by Claire and her mother, Elizabeth, during the course of a life-altering year. Their story builds to an emotional crescendo when Elizabeth is diagnosed with breast cancer. Stunningly sad but ultimately uplifting, this is a clever, moving, and original portrait of the relationship between a daughter and mother. It is about how we live our lives constantly rushing, and never making time for those we love. It is also an elegy to how much can be said in so few words, if only we made the time to say them.

Reaction Shot: I admit, I was wary of picking this book up, just because it was so very, very pink. Then I got into a fight with a year seven who wanted to read just because it was pink and then I had to read it. (... I don't think she actually wanted to read it! I think she just remembers me at Valentine's Day muttering darkly about all these pink books we have in the library, and was trying to accuse me of hypocrisy.) But epis - epi - epistolary, that's the word thank you heyheyrenay, are a particular Thing of mine. Especially when they're sort-of making me feel guilty for all the white space on the page.

(No, seriously - one of my favourite books when I was younger was called Jinx, by an Australian author, and it was told entirely in poems. The amount of empty space in that book made me writhe in guilt but I hearted that book so much!)

Okay, so, book written in the form of notes on a fridge. Some of it's the ordinary stuff - pick up the shopping, gone out, I'm at work delivering triplets, we've had a fight so I'm spending the night at my dad's if you notice I'm not here - and some of it's unexpectedly poetic, such as the letter where Claire asks about her mother's past, or her mother's descriptions of the world outside. Some of it's "I haven't had time to tell you properly, so I'm writing you a note to say I have cancer and leaving it on the fridge." The ordinary stuff - especially when it's telling the off-screen moments without actually telling them - worked, the cancer thing worked, the poetic notes made me go "Um" a little but, y'know, generally effective.

Well, apart from the fact that this is kinda... Lacking in emotional resonance. The story's fine, the writing gets the job done even when you look at it and go "You expect me to believe she put that on her fridge?" It just - doesn't work for me emotionally. I feel a vague sort of sympathy, but that's it. It kinda disappoints me, because I want to like it, and I want to feel something for them, but I can't. (And the ending just makes me roll my eyes instead of feeling sad, which... Probably wasn't the effect it was supposed to have.) I'm going to excuse Kuipers on the grounds that it's her first book, but next time I'll expect a hell of a lot better.

Verdict: It's as emotional as can be expecting of a book written in the form of notes on a fridge door, but it's not a necessarily a bad book.

[14/75] One Piece Volume 1 by Eiichiro Oda

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:04:21 GMT

As a child, Monkey D. Luffy was inspired to become a pirate by listening to tales of the buccaneer "Red-Haired" Shanks. But his life changed when Luffy accidentally ate the fruit of the Gum-Gum Tree and gained the power to stretch like rubber... At the cost of never being able to swim again! Years later, still vowing to become the king of the pirates, Luffy sets out on his adventure... One guy alone in a rowboat, in search of the legendary "One Piece," said to be the greatest treasure in the world...

Reaction Shot: or, THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME ABOUT THIS VOLUME:

Shanks! Shanks and his crew are FABULOUS and their fight against the bandit (I admit this was the scene that made me sit up and pay attention, because I honestly did not expect deaths/cigarettes TO THE EYE drawn in this sort of art style. I know, I'm weird.). And then Shanks protecting Luffy, his complete lack of concern about his arm so long as Luffy's all right, and the scene with the hat! ♥ Basically I love Shanks and his patience and the fact that Luffy yelled at him and then defended him. HE HAD BETTER SHOW UP AGAIN LATER, is what I'm saying, otherwise I'm going to have to shake down the fandom and hope fic falls out.

Luffy! Luffy is going to be a pirate captain. He has no sense of direction, he can't swim, and he's completely laissez-faire when faced with drowning in a whirlpool. He is the rudest, nicest character I've seen in ages. He sticks up for everyone - Koby, Zolo, the little girl... He gets them kicked out of town for Koby's sake. He gets played by Nami. Luffy is the best goddamn person ever.

Zolo! Eating the riceball after it got stomped to dust because he is an awesome person. And his determination, and his goal, and his promising to make Luffy commit hari-kiri if he stopped him being the greatest swordsman in the world. ♥♥♥

I love that all these characters are shaped by something they saw, did or promised when they were kids. I'm serious! It makes me go ♥ and flail over little!Luffy and little!Zolo. I've read a few chapters of the later books in Shounen Jump, and I take this opportunity to flail over little!Nami too.

I ♥ the fightscenes 1001% - especially with Zolo, because DAMN, I love Zolo and his swords. ~~And the muscles in his arm and his pose when he's ducking under Luffy's leg? I want to lick the art there. Um.)~~

The villains in this are fabulous and completely over the top. Axe-hand Morgan! That fat lady in the cowboy hat who thinks she's the witch of the west! The idiot son! The fight scene against Axe-Hand Morgan, and the conclusion - oh man, Luffy and Zolo tagteam of AWESOME. I WANT MORE, GUYS!

The art makes me happy. I thought it would irritate me, but no - I really honestly love it. I repeat what I said about wanting to lick Zolo's arm muscles. *_*

I want to see the anime, actually. It might make me froth incoherently about the voices, but I want to see it.

I can feel this is going to be one of those translations where I'm going to use something from it and everyone who's read it in scans is going to make suspicious faces at me. I can feel it. OH WELL, WHAT DO I CARE. ONE PIEEEEECE!

Verdict: Guys, it is AWESOME and I can't think of anything that irritates me enough to deserve a mention. I feel like the sky's turned green.

I am using this as a herding cats review even though it doesn't start till May - the book has to go back to the library on Monday, and I can't review without it. ;_; ALSO, if I see the title of this when I'm not expecting it, I always think of a dorky puzzley PS1 game I used to love called One Piece Mansion. Yay trivia?

[13/75] Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:56:43 GMT

There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it's unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. But there hadn't been any trouble out at the lake for years, and she needed a place to be alone for a while. Unfortunately, she wasn't alone. She never heard them coming. Of course you don't, when they're vampires...

They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion - within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight.

She knows that he is a vampire. She knows that she's to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, when dawn breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him survive the day...

Reaction shot: This book was actually recommended to everyone who read Twilight as something that would take the horrible taste of Stephanie Meyer's terrible writing out of their mouths. Everything Twilight does wrong, Sunshine does right, and if you've read Twilight that should be all the recommendation you need, dammit.

Ahem.

Anyway.

Sunshine is a wonderful book. The world McKinley's built, and what she tells you about it and what she doesn't. The narrator and her narrative voice, my god. ♥♥♥ It reads like someone's thoughts. like McKinley just transcribed someone's thoughts. It waffles a little, and it infodumps in the middle of action sometimes - but I am a crazy mutant and nine times out of ten I liked the info dumps. I thank god for the awesome voice, partly because Sunshine sounds like what she is - a normal person, trying to remain normal in the face of proof (or conjecture) that she isn't, and partly because it helps reinforce what the story's about - Sunshine. Not Con, or the thing with Bo, or the thing with the SOF - it's about Sunshine and who she is and who she becomes. The other characters - and hell, the plot - are drawn in where they're needed, but Sunshine is the focus of the story and I love it to death. But yes, I love the supporting characters too - Mel and his tattoos and their relationship just makes me happy, as does the fact that Sunshine and her mother don't actually talk in the book - the charms her mother leaves says a lot and and and Sunshine's landlady is fabulous ♥.

I've read some of McKinley's work before, and I generally thing she is an awesome writer, but the climaxes of her book always feel - rushed to me. All that build-up, and then the main event is over in ten pages or less. In some ways, I LIKE this - she doesn't have her books end with the climax, she follows through the aftermath of it and I love her for it, but - but, well, it's the bookish equivalent of playing through a game and having the final boss take about three hits to defeat. But I know about this habit now, so it doesn't bother me that much anymore - I came into Sunshine expecting that to happen, and so I wasn't surprised. I did like it, don't get me wrong - it just felt rushed to me. In keeping with Sunshine's character, but - rushed. It's not a problem, per se, but hey, it's enough to warrant its own paragraph, right?

The problems with this book is that it waffles, and the infodumping and backtracking might not be to everyone's taste - nor the fact that the plot is secondary to the character. One thing that pinged me a little is the random-near-sex scene in the middle. I love that it nearly happened, because even with my pseudogen tendencies there's only so much subtle-relationship building that I can take - but it was just jarring. My only real major problem with this is dammit McKinley, why have you banned fandom?! I want there to be some fandom for this, guys, writing awesome fic all over the place about. ;_;

Verdict: Excellent read, but got a couple of issues.

342, 745 Ways to Herd Cats - or Yet Another Book Challenge

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:59:58 GMT

heyheyrenay is holding yet another challenge - this time, to make a list of ten books I would reccomend, and read/review three off someone elses. This is more difficult than it sounds! I LIKE EVERYTHING. TEN BOOKS IS NOT ENOUGH, SIMPLY BECAUSE I END UP REJECTING ALL THE BOOKS I REALLY LOVE BECAUSE THERE ARE ONLY TEN SPACES. WHAT THE HELL GUYS.

Anyway, in no particular order:

1. Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I do not need to explain this; I need to point out that it is AWESOME, very gay in the most Victorian manner possible, and available online so YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE.
2. Larklight by Phillip Reeve
Okay, so I've only just realised I have a major Victoriana kink. The sky/space pirates kink I knew about, the steampunk kink I knew about, the thing for AWESOME, KIND, AND NOT-NECCESSARILY HUMAN PIRATES I knew about. The falling in love with a narrator (I ♥ ART), narrating voice, and loving a character I want to kick a lot (Myrtle, YOU ARE WONDERFUL BUT YOU DRIVE ME MAD), that comes and goes. But I only just realised the Victoriana kink. Huh. NEEDLESS TO SAY, all those things are in Larklight and if you don't read it I shall have to set heyheyrenay on you.
3. Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
I've said most of what I could ever say about Skulduggery Pleasant here, but it bears repeating: SKELETON DETECTIVES. AWESOME TWELVE YEAR OLDS. WITTY DIALOGUE. It has issues - MY GOD, it has issues; the dialogue crackles but the description is terrible, it has many of the fantasy tropes, and some of the names can/will make you FROTH WITH RAGE if you're inclined that way - but it's a fun read!
4. The Etched City by K.J. Bishop
This book is BEAUTIFUL. I have a big language kink and basically this book presses every button. Buttons also pressed: awesome female characters, psychotic dark haired mercenary, world building that feels like different worlds and eras have melted together to beautiful effect.
5. Petshop of Horrors Volume 10 by Matsuri Akino
Okay, this is my Cunning Plan to make people read Petshop of Horrors - I mean, you're not going to read the last book in a series before you read any of the others, right? - and join in the love of a) idiot american detectives, b) mysterious sarcastic owners of a pet shop in China Town that sells animals that do on occasion look like people, c) the customers who almost invariable screw up and suffer along the way. In some ways, the stories are like morality plays or fables, but in others they're pure awesome and D and Leon snarking is one of the fabulous things about it. This is the last volume, and everything in the series comes together and comes to an end and it made my heart hurt. READ IT PEOPLE.
6. Saiyuki Volume 9 by Kazuya Minekura
The final battle of the first series of Saiyuki, and it's a toss-up between this and volume 8 as to which one is my favourite. It has Goku being the voice of reason, everyone kicking ass, and the last seen is one of the best things ever in the series. ♥
7. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
The best use of scenes-from-the-past in the history of everything, fake priests, conmen, thieves, the mafia and Locke. It all gets a little - a lot? - shaky in the middle, but it comes together by the end, and it MAKES ME HAPPY. ♥
8. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
The Auditors of reality decide Death really should be gotten rid of, and so Death disappears and a man who is accused of being a skeleton by small children appears - a man who happens to be rather good with a scythe. BASICALLY, it is a story about Discworld's Death, and therefore it must be read kthnxbai.
9. Temeraire by Naomi Novik
DRAGONS IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS. LAWRENCE. A DRAGON NAMED AFTER A SHIP. ABUSE OF MY HISTORY-LOVING KINK. DO I HAVE TO SAY MORE?
10. The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
Precious, obnoxious little brat summons an equally obnoxious djinni to help him take revenge on a more powerful sorceror who humiliated him. BARTIMEOUS = &hearts!

FUN STATS:
Books set before or around the 1900s (AU or otherwise): 4/10 (There was going to be a "British Empire AU" category, but I'm pretty sure that'd just end up with the same results.)
Detectives (Private, dead, or otherwise): 3/10
Starring skeletons: 2/10
... Or other bizarre/mythical creatures: 6/10 counting aliens, 7/10 counting youkai, 8/10 counting mages with bizarre hawk-things as familiars, 9/10 counting The Etched City as a bizarre mythical thing in it's own right, 10/10 if you count Sherlock Holmes himself.

[12/75] Stigma by Kazuya Minekura

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:02:46 GMT

In a post-apocalyptic world of gray sky void of life,a man with a suitcase full of money but no memory of his past has a fateful encounter with a physically-scarred boy searching for birds and blue sky. Together, they journey away from a man-made purgatory toward hope and freedom. What happens when the past catches up to them?

Reaction shot: FULL COLOUR KAZUYA MINEKURA STORY. *FLAILS* No, I'm serious, you try telling me that Minekura art + colour isn't a combination of awesome. ♥ Stigma is gorgeous, and the choice of which scenes are coloured and which are grey makes me want to babble about symbolism and how things connected to Stork's past lose all their colour like I actually know anything about it. ♥ The overriding story is quite simple - a man who's forgotton his dark past joins a young boy (who seriously looks like Sanzo from Saiyuki when he was younger - only happy.) who is looking for somewhere the sky is blue instead of grey and where there are still birds. ~~As someone who sees only grey skies from about September to April, I don't understand why grey skies are such a big deal, but eh. I'm a philestine.~~ The individual chapters are a little more complicated, and have less to do with finding the sky or the birds than with why or with Stork's past and the man with the butterfly tatoo. And pretty much every scene with Tit in makes me go "♥♥♥♥" a lot - and the ending made me sniffle while I did it, but then I'm a sap. *coughs* It has the same problem as Wild Adapter in that it doesn't feel complete to me, but I'm gonna blame that one on myself and just hug the scans a lot.

To be completely honest; I read Wild Adapter before this, except I thought that Wild Adapter was this story. So I was very bemused when there was no little blond kid in it.

Verdict: Stigma is like most of Minekura's other works - beautiful, full of messed-up people, and generally hopeful at the end. It makes me happy. ♥

For those who're interested: this post has both it and other one-shots by Kazuya Minekura and some doujinshis of her work.

[9-11/75] Wild Adaptor Volumes 1-3 by Kazuya Minekura

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:35:36 GMT

Makoto Kubota wandered through life, not taking things too seriously or looking too deep within himself. His job as the head of the Izumo Group's youth gang kept him occupied with yakuza wars, mahjong and assassinations... Until the day he stumbled upon a strange drug called Wild Adapter that produces bizarre side-effects - including death.

Life is cheap in the back alleys of Yokohama. Makoto has had enough of Sanada and the Izumo organization, leaving it in a rain of blood. It seems a yakuza turf war is brewing, and Tokito is caught in the middle of it. How long can Makoto stay away from a life that keeps calling him?

Kubota and Tokito decide to infiltrate a cult that preaches a return to a more animalistic level of humanity, hoping to pick up information on Wild Adapter and perhaps even Tokito's forgotten past. But there is more to this religion than just meditation and ritual chanting, and once you join up, the only way out may be on a stretcher.

Reaction shot: Wild Adapter, to be honest, is beautiful. Minekura's art style generally makes my heart happy (especially when she draws fightscenes. Mmmmmm. ♥) and this is no exception at all. The story is a little - fragmented, I guess, and parts of it makes me sit and go "Okay, I enjoyed that but what the bloody hell -?! Then again, I get that with most manga I read in scanslation, so I'm gonna guess it's more to do with me and the way I'm reading it than it's anything to do with the manga itself.

(The story IS odd though - I mean, the first volume deals with gangs and drug dealing, the second with a pregnant teenager whose boyfriend had something to do with Wild Adapter, and the third with a cult that drugs its members. The linking threads between stories are there, but they're - tenuous, I suppose.)

My main problem with anything Minekura does is that - through no fault of her own, I suppose - I look at the characters and go "Huh, well they remind me of [xyz] from Saiyuki." (Seriously - Kubota reminds me of Hakkai, and Komiya kinda reminds me of Gojyo. I CAN'T HELP IT.) I don't know why - and besides, the characterisation doesn't feel as sturdy to me as it does in some of her other works. I can't excuse it as "Well, it's been a while since I read it" or "I've not read enough of it" - Bus Gamer was a single volume, and the characters in that felt more developed, more solid, than in Wild Adapter.

Verdict: I did enjoy it, but - it doesn't feel complete after I put it down.

thebaconfat and others who might want to read: These may be relevant to your interests. Apologies for not being able to find the central post I got the links from. :(

[8/75] Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire by Derek Landy

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:14:48 GMT

"Valkyrie Cain looked down at her own dead body, cold and unmoving. She kept expecting to see it breathe. But it just lay in the boot, a thing, a corpse with her face..."

With Serpine dead, the world is safe once more. At least, that's what Valkyrie and Skulduggery think, until the notorious Baron Vengeous makes a bloody escape from prison, and dead bodies and vampires start showing up all over Ireland. With Baron Vengeous after the deadly armour of Lord Vile and pretty much everyone out to kill Valkyrie, the daring detective duo face their biggest challenge yet. But what if the greatest threat to Valkyrie is just a little close to home...?

So what's the story: Valkyrie Cain (Apparantly Stephanie has given up using her own name entirely, which makes me a little sad because it's just going to get muddling when I start writing fic) had almost entirely given up her normal life, leaving her reflection to live it for her while she trains with Skuduggery and Tanith and fights evil. However, life gets a little more complicated when the new leader of the Council charges Skulduggery and Valkyrie with arresting the newly escaped Baron Vengeous before he can a) recover a suit of armour containing the powers of a necromancer, to b) revive the monster equivalent of Frankenstein's monster, which he plans to use to c) open up a portal and bring back the Faceless Ones. Especially when you factor in the vampires and the man who can walk through walls, all of whom appear to be after Valkyrie.

Reaction shot: I probably should let this stir around my brain a little more, but as I've just finished it, I might as well get it done now. My knee-jerk reaction to this is "It's brilliant, but." The prose is still clunky - in action sequences especially; sometimes it feels rather like a list, which isn't really a good thing - and the names are going to make heyheyrenay scream in fury. Stephanie's heritage makes a reappearance as Super Important To The Villians, but it's not that big a deal within the book so I'm willing to let that and Stephanie having to bear the brunt of stopping the Grotesquery slide. Stephanie's family appear mainly as caricature's and clichés than anything else, but they appear so infrequently that it's not as noticable as it might be.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT though, I do like this book! The dialogue is, as in the last book, absolutely fabulous (although in some cases, the adult characters sound a little too young), and both Tanith and China Sorrows appear more often than in the first book (Tanith kicking ass and taking names! Tanith being a Gordon Edgely fangirl! China Sorrows kicking ass an unbelievable amount! ... Yes I completely fangirled over China sorrows in this book do not judge me.) Perhaps it's just me being a complete idiot about this sort of dynamic, but I have to say I love the moments when Skulduggery fusses over Stephanie - and there are a lot, which makes me happy - and Stephanie compares him and Tanith (Stephanie's apparantly told Skulduggery he should get a motorbike, and his reported reply to that made me grin; Stephanie comparing how he and Tanith fight or use magic/mundane means makes me ♥♥♥ a lot.), and Skulduggery being just a little out of touch with reality. There's just - so many little things in this - characters, or conversations, or Skulduggery fussing, or the doctor, or Springheeled Jack (Okay, I have a think for homicidal gentlemen with tophats, especially when they're from London. Stop giving me that look.) or the fact that "Huh, there may be consequences for Stephanie letting her reflection live her life for her - just not completely in this book" - that fill me with glee.

... I've just realised I haven't mentioned the story. Huh. It's less linear than the last book, which is always a good thing, and I couldn't guess the ending beyond the general "Everyone dies" or "Happy Ever After" thing, although it does repeat some elements - Stephanie's dislike of contact with her family, for example, or her Ancient heritage, and untrustworthy Council members. Some parts of it (Like the entire section that the blurb makes a big deal of) are predictable, others are original; generally those, it's paced well and a good read. I love this series, and all it needs now is for Landy to learn what he's doing.

Verdict: Fun, and good within reason.

[7/75] Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:44:36 GMT

Okay, I've been reading Twilight. Today, I gave up in disgust. I just couldn't take it anymore. So, instead of a review, and to maintain my quota, I give you the point-scoring I did to make sure I remained passably objective after hearing a zillion and four bad reviews of it. It didn't work, but I tried.

The rules were: Meyer started with 100 points, and I knocked them off when she did it wrong, and added them on when she did it right.

Chapter by chapter breakdown of points:
TWILIGHT CHAPTER ONE: 100 POINTS

Family dynamics: bemusing. Maturity of main character: greater than that of mother. Sense that this is a seventeen year old girl as opposed to a middle-aged housewife: non-existant. [-1]

Inexplicable sadness! Stating that she just "doesn't fit in" - even though EVERYONE unconditionally appears to love her, despite her continual contempt of the people helping her. Her appearance sounds pretty standard to me, but is described as "unusual" and a barrier between her and other people. And everyone knows who she is. I realise this is justified as "It's a small town so everyone knows everyone," but you'd think there'd be more of a "Have I seen you around?" reaction. [-1]

I swear to god, the book has suddenly become as dull as the lessons. =_= [-1]

Bella really sounds like a stereotypical emo. "I will hate it so I won't even tryyyyyyyy!" And yet everyone ignores this and is nice to her. [-1]

The Mysterious Boys and Girls are described exactly as I'd describe original characters - brief suggestion of build, hair and eye colour. FUCK I knew I wasn't as good at this stuff as I thought. [-10]

HM. COINCIDENTAL NOTICING OF MYSTERIOUS AND UNUSUAL PEOPLE. [-1]

Oh god, backstory dump. [-10]

Extreme antisocialism! Edward acting like he hates her AND she smells! Guys, even if I hadn't had these books spoiled to buggery for me, I'd be able to tell they were getting together by the end.

So she only likes the CUTE boys. And she's pretty mean about them even then. God, kill me now. [-1]

OUCH. He'd rather switch all his classes around than sit next to her. I - I actually feel sorry for Bella! [+10]

Something about this BOTHERS me. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the general sense of inexplicable woe, or the clinical way Bella appears to view the world. Maybe it's just that I have no idea who the character is. It's in first person POV, but there's - no sense of who she is, nothing I can identify with. When it's in first person and it's like that, I get really uneasy. It's not a concrete feeling, so I can't score it, but. It's there.

TWILIGHT CHAPTER TWO: 84 POINTS.

Oh, so she DOESN'T like the cute guys and is flattered by strife when she's the cause. FOR FUCK'S SAKE. [-1]

Well, at least this school day is less dull than the last one. :\ [+1/2]

Why in god's name did she whine about WOE UNPOPULARITY when EVERYONE HERE unconditionally loves her, regardless of how she treats them. Inconsistant tell-not-showing. =_= [-10]

I'm trying to work out if braining someone with a volleyball is clumsiness or just a normal symptom of being a human being. I suppose, if I'm being fair, I have to give her a point for not being OMG AMAZING at everything... >_> [+1]

Oh Bella, what a housewife you'll make. Or you are. And GOD you sound like someone's MUM, I swear to god. I know, I know, not everyone likes snow, but god. KILLJOY.

... Hot guy talking to her for no reason. The hell.

Stalker!Bella reappears, although YAY for the Cullens being more than waxworks.

So he is amazingly polite, she is no good at this working-in-pairs business, he has electric fingers (Meyer, why don't you just come out and SAY you're going to be pairing these too up and save me having to read this crap?), gold eyes that change colour (...), and is apparantly as bad at the working in pairs thing as she is. They're just MADE for each other aren't they? ~~And I wish I could say that and NOT BE 100% SERIOUS.~~ [-1]

So she explains her past and motivations to just ANYONE? And someone she thought didn't like her? And she sacrificed her home for her mum's happiness? [-10 for being a fooking MARY SUE and backstory dump]

"You put on a good show (...) but I'd be willing to bet you're suffering more than you let anyone else see." [-10 FOR BAD FANFIC DIALOGUE!]

(After this, the story doesn't get better: I just lose interest and stop scoring it properly.)

TWILIGHT CHAPTER THREE: 53.5 POINTS

"I had enough trouble not falling down when the ground was dry." Really? I never noticed! And basically, this is the chapter where I have to take off eleven points for inconsistency and show-don't tell characterisation. [-11]

The car thing's been done, but hey, at least it's effective. [+10]

Again, the scene at the hospital bothers me but I can't think why. Dammit.

Is that an actual depiction of clumsiness on Bella's part I see? My god, I think I shall faint! [+1]

TWILIGHT CHAPTER FOUR: 53.5 (.........................)

Dreaming about future boyfriend in mysterious place. "....................." says I. [-10]

The first step is to admit you have a problem! Bella admits her stalking is OTT. [+1]

Edward's eyes are changing colour. Do I mark down for this? ... YES DAMMIT. I'M FEELING VINDICTIVE. [-1]

For those who don't know: I'm studying Psychology at A-level. Currently, we're studying mental illnesses. I look at Bella's conclusion ("He wished he hadn't pulled me from the path of Tyler's van - there was no other conclusion I could come to."), and all I can say is "WAY TO GIVE YOUR CHARACTER SYMPTOMS OF A MENTAL ILLNESS (I forget the exact terms but disasterism and extreme views - everything is perfect or it's a disaster, as well as irrational thinking and conclusions; ALL THIS STUFF IS GROUNDS FOR SOMEONE TO GET THERAPY) AND NOT ACKNOWLEDGE IT, MEYER." [-10]

Eyes changing colour, Bella dreaming about him, more stalking - FOR GOD'S SAKE, THIS IS PUBLISHED BADFIC. [-1]

I have to say I'm GLAD she mentions her irrational ideas to Edward. Then he KNOWS she's crazy and can't think straight.

WHY IN GOD'S NAME DOES EVERYONE WANT TO GO TO THE SPRING DANCE WITH HER? [-10 FOR PISSING ME OFF WITH HOW MUCH EVERYONE WANTS HER.]

Edward's characterisation. FIRST he'd rather switch classes than sit with her, THEN he's offering her a ride to Seattle. WHAT THE HELL, MEYER. [-10]

TWILIGHT CHAPTER FIVE: 12.5

I repeat my complaint about Edward's characterisation, but don't knock off anymore points.

Bella is DENSE. If he's telling her he's ignoring her for her own safety, wouldn't she think "dangerous?"

Okay, so how does he know that they're doing blood samples?

Heroine of a vampire book who faints at the sight of blood! Well, that's novel. [+1]

FOR GOD'S SAKE. EDWARD START MAKING SENSE. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO DRIVING HER HOME AND THEN SENDING HIS SISTER TO MAGIC BELLA'S CAR HOME SOUNDLESSLY DESPITE THE FACT THAT IT'S A RUSTBUCKET. [-10 out of SHEER SPITE.]

More Bella being middle-aged and talking about her past too much. [-1]

See, he avoids her at first, and then FLIRTS with her. What the HELL. Teasing I approve of, because DAMMIT she needs it, but sdkglhsdkhgdf. MAKE SOME SENSE MAN. [-1]

TWILIGHT CHAPTER SIX: 1.5

FINALLY, someone who doesn't worship the ground Bella walks on. Even if she's portrayed as a bitch, I appreciate the effort. [+1]

UGH, manipulating Jacob. For god's sake. [-10]

... This is the chapter that really just DISGUSTED THE HELL out of me. Bella is a BITCH. A manipulative bitch and I am really sick of her. I managed to get a bit of the way through Chapter Seven, but I'm just bored of what the story's about, and I can't stand Bella. I tried, I did my best, but I can't read any further. I'll go crazy.

TOTAL SCORE: -7.5