Rutu Modan draws the people in her comics as if they are made of human bodies. There’s no good reason this should be so striking and touching, but somehow it is: Her characters are not at all times trying to appear to best advantage. They are made of human matter. Sometimes they look their best, and other times they do not. The Property is Modan’s first full-length comic since the acclaimed Exit Wounds in 2007, and it’s well worth the wait. Mica has come to Poland with her grandmother, Regina, to reclaim the property that Regina’s family lost during the…
6 CommentsCategory: 4 Stars
When I was a baby blogger, I wrote a really nasty post about Sarah Monette’s book Melusine. Years and years of crawly shame spiders have effaced my memory of the details of the post (which I long ago deleted), but I know I said fuck and annoying quite a bit. Sarah Monette subsequently linked to my post from her blog, with a sad frowny-face emoticon, and I felt — and still feel — terribly guilty and ashamed that my thoughtless pique made an author feel bad. Ever since then I’ve been much more cautious about writing resoundingly negative posts — fun though…
21 CommentsIn Fangirl (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), identical twin Cath goes off to college and finds that her sister, Wren, no longer wants to do the twin thing. Adrift, lonely, and anxious, Cath tries to navigate the waters of college on her own: her intimidating roommate, Reagan; Reagan’s cheerful friend?boyfriend? Levi, who walks Cath home from the library; and Nick, one of Cath’s classmates, with whom she partners for an assignment in their creative writing class. Meanwhile Cath continues working on her most enormous writing project ever: Carry On, Simon, a fanfic completion of the as-yet-unfinished, hugely popular series…
42 CommentsConfession: I love Daryl Gregory, and I wanted to read all his existing novels prior to the release of his new one, but I kept putting off reading Raising Stony Mayhall (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) because I don’t like zombies. Of course, Daryl Gregory doesn’t just do zombies like everyone does zombies. (Well, he does, but not right away.) Wanda Mayhall is driving her children home one night, in the year of the zombie outbreak, and she finds a dead girl wrapped around a tiny, still-moving baby. When she gets the baby home, she realizes that he isn’t…
23 CommentsBefore I get started with this review, it’s time for PRAISE PLEASE, a segment I do sometimes because I need praise like oxygen. I decided that in 2014, I was going to read 20% non-white authors. I got a slow start because by the time I resolved this, I already had ten reviews scheduled or in need of writing, and they were all of books by white authors. However, in the first third of the year, my books have been 40% by authors of color. Half POC authors would be best, but I am still pretty pleased with myself. (I’ve…
29 CommentsNote: I received a copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review. Scottish werewolf Kalix MacRinnalch is trying to make her life better. She’s taking remedial classes at a nearby college and trying to cut back on the violence she does to others and herself. But her plans for self-improvement are interrupted when the Guild of Werewolf Hunters — abetted in their work by Fire Queen Malveria’s deadly enemy — begins to hunt down and murder the members of the werewolf clans. And the werewolves are all: Well, to start with, I am in favor…
18 CommentsThere was something I was always very good at, however, and that was teaching myself not to be frightened while frightening things are going on. It is difficult to do this, but I had learned. It is simply a matter of putting one’s fear aside, like the vegetable on the plate you don’t want to touch until all of your rice and chicken are gone, and getting frightened later, when one is out of danger. Sometimes I imagine I will be frightened for the rest of my life because of all the fear I put aside during my time in…
24 CommentsFwoo. This was dark. Which I guess is what I should have expected from a murder mystery that takes places in a small town in apartheid South Africa. The beginning: British police detective Emmanuel Cooper comes to investigate the murder of an Afrikaner police captain in the small town of Jacob’s Rest. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a murder mystery where the victim is male. This probably happens more often than it seems to me to happen. I don’t read that many murder mysteries, partly because it always seems to be women getting killed, and I get tired of…
27 Comments