This was our library’s random graphic novel acquisition of the week. Didn’t quite work for me. Sure, the concept is interesting, the cover is vivid, the title makes me think of a magical song, but…but…the overall production leaves a lot to be desired.
Mainly because it’s such a mess. I mean, there’s an entire world built here and with some impressive world building skills, no less. This is a colonized world on a distant planet where the undesirables i.e. low-income prospectless minority youth of this one is sent to – think one way ticket penal colony situation or a labor camp. But even in the most hostile environments, people find a way to survive. In this instance, they form gangs and we, gang around and do what gangs do. It’s all intricately thought out with gang leaders and even its own patois, which is a clever combination of slang from different languages and so extensive it requires its own glossary (included). So, it’s very all ‘street’ and very hip and very tough – it’s kind of like a rap song. And it’s also so very busy with constantly shifting perspectives and agendas that it’s a juggling job and not the most engaging way to tell a story. The art is quite good and the book reads very quickly. If it sings for you tonally and doesn’t distract you with its business, it might work. For me, it didn’t, really. Though it seems my inner competist is still determined to read book two.
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In the afterword, the author describes this debut of hers as a melancholy, witchy, sapphic book. Accurate, but then again, that’s only the mood of it. And we can’t go by mood alone…
I often wonder how books come to be. For instance, did Francesca May read The Great Gatsby and thought, ‘well, yeah, that’s fun, but what if Gatsby was a female and Nick was a female and they were both witches and had a special connection?’ Then again, the Gatsby connection here is pretty tenuous – this book is very much its own thing. It’s set in a post WWI England on a small island known for its witches in a world very recognizable but with a distinct addition of magic. Magic has been outlawed, but it’s still very much a valued and present commodity in this world – think booze in the US post-prohibition. In this world, a master witch, the striking Emmeline Delacroix, with her masculine clothing and her feminine wiles is the Gatsby to Annie’s naïve provincial innocence of Nick. Emmeline is a local, once taken in by a grand witch before here and now the inheritor of that estate, the estate she shares with a pair of adopted siblings with powers of their own. Annie’s on the island to collect her own inheritance from the father she’s barely known and also to track down a beloved childhood friend. She rents a cottage next to Emmeline’s. Sparks, sparks, sparks, etc. But their will-they-or-won’t-they thing is outrageously dragged out because of Emmeline’s buckets of drama. You can just see a tagline for Em…So complicated, so sexy, so reluctant. So it’s a soap opera, for sure. But a fairly entertaining one. The writing’s nice in that dreamy witchy sort of way. The world building is very good – the island comes alive in descriptions. The characters are…well, very dramatic and quite young, but interesting enough. The romance is so very drawn out and chaste, you might fall asleep cheering for it, but it is there and for all its leisurely pace, passionate in its own way. I love magic and all things to do with it, but a different kind, the prestidigitation and trickery, not the spells and potions. So this wasn’t quite my thing, but it did have that hypnotic quality that V.E. Schwab Magic trilogy has the draw-you-in-and-make-the-time-disappear kind. At 423 pages it’s much longer than I prefer my novels (apparently magic novels tend to be overlong), it does move along nicely, but it's fairly rambling and languid of a narrative. Overall, much like with Schwab’s novels, I was entertained but in a one off that was a lot don’t know if I’d do it again sort of way. Fans of witches and fantasies might get more out of it. So, user milage may vary. Thanks Netgalley. Blake Crouch is about as reliable of an author as you can find. Quite remarkable for a man who hopped around a variety of speculative genre spectrum before settling on his latest passion – science fiction techno-thrillers.
Following in the most impressive footsteps of his recent books, Upgrade is a similar sort of very intense, very dynamic scientifically-fascinating, conceptually-exciting, and thrillingly thrillery sort of a story and this time it’s all about DNA. All you ever wanted to know about Deoxyribonucleic acid and then some. Unlocking the secrets of DNA sequencing has been one of the greatest discoveries of modern time and the thing with greatness is that it’s tough to leave it well enough alone. Especially, for a person sufficiently intelligent to manipulate it. Especially, for a person sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the implication of living during the six extinction and wanting to change things. The savior complex kicks in and then all sorts of madness ensue. This is how it went for Logan Ramsay’s mother. A genius determined to save the world, she inadvertently unleashed a global famine that killed 200 million people and changed the world forever. That has been Logan’s legacy, on top of the fact that he, only being average smart at best, has never really measured up to his mother’s spectacular intellect. Nevertheless, he has managed to put the past behind him enough to make a nice life for himself. A good job with Gene Protection agency, a loving family, etc. And then one day, the world explodes around him (literally) and he finds himself upgraded. A concept initially terrifying, but then…something so much more. Now Logan is well on his way to becoming a superhuman, the question remains, though, at what cost? Why him? Is he the only one? Ok, that’s several questions, really. But this is a novel that gives you extra, so much information, so much science, so much fiction. Such a fascinating speculative concept that while totally suspense and action driven for the fans of those things, is also very clever, thought-provoking and profoundly poignant. Is the world worth saving? What would you do to save it? Where do you draw the line? What are the acceptable costs? When you are the smartest person in the world, what do you prioritize? Those are some interesting questions readers might find asking themselves afterwards, but for what Logan Ramsay does…read this book. It’s so much fun. It’s such a rush. Crouch has perfected his very own brand of pacing, specifically one sentence paragraphs, it’s all very dynamic. If some scenes are too sciency and some too actiony, the overall balance is still just right. A smart, exciting, wildly entertaining read.. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. Since I’m the first person to rate and review this book, here’s a fair warning/advice - I’ve been striking out with science fiction lately, not quite finding something to match my mood and interests, so this review must be considered accordingly.
Considered objectively, The Nocturnals is an original and interesting story about a world that spins the wrong way around and its population divided into those who strive to always stay in the light and those who prefer darkness. As always, in a society that strikingly polarized, misunderstandings are bound to occur, misunderstandings based on misinformation and fear, the sort of things that lead to aggression and violence. And yes, a parallel to modern politics can easily be drawn there, but it doesn’t seem necessary. In this strange light-divided world, a former retriever (bipedal variety) and his freshly appointed partner set out to rescue a young boy who might have (literally) gone over to the dark side only to uncover the great secrets about their divided society. There are some complicated local politics that go way back and lies, lies, and more lies by those in power. Again, draw your own parallels if you’re so inclined. The author created a nicely imagined universe for readers to visit with pretty clever world-building to boot. For me, the emotional engagement or connection or something wasn’t quite there, so it ended up one of those books I appreciated more than loved. Which is fine, for it’s just short enough of a story to not overstay its welcome either way. User mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley. Flicker in the Dark is one of those rare thriller debuts that does its name justice and indeed sparkles. Some of it might be fool’s gold, flash in a pan sort of thing, but the sparkle is there – I read enough of these ubiquitously popular thrillers to know it when I see it.
This is a story of a serial killer’s daughter. A girl forever scarred at age 12 by her beloved father being revealed as a kidnapper and murderer of six local teenage girls. Fast forward two decades and at 32, Chloe is thriving…well, considering. She’s a well-to-do psychologist with an adoring fiancé, a lovely place to live, and a chemically-induced peace of mind. Which is to say that Chloe lives in Louisiana, one of the only three states where a psychologist has the kind of freedom Chloe routinely abuses to stay chemically calm. Not exactly on the up-and-up, but easy enough to do. Is Chloe still jumpy, neurotic, traumatized? Sure. But she is coping. The rest of her family…not so much; her mother barely survived a suicide attempt and perpetuates in a sort of vegetative state, her older brother seems unsettled in his life. Chloe is ok, but comparison, and would probably stay that way if not for a recent string of kidnappings and murders eerily similar to her father’s work. That pulls every trigger in Chloe’s addled mind sending her into a state so paranoid that even the cops don’t trust her…and Chloe herself, she can trust no one. Suddenly, every man in her life is a menace. The author plays with that sense of paranoia very cleverly and throws in one lead after another to chase, anticipating that killer final twist. The narrative is tight and dynamic. It doesn’t jump around too much, there’s a nice focus here. The writing is very enjoyable, dark psychological fiction at its finest. This would have been a total winner, in fact, if not for one thing… The thing where I predicted the killer (and with it the plot) less than a third of the way in. Not every minute detail of the plot, but most of it. And that’s just disappointing. The entire book I was hoping the author would surprise me, but alas, there’s no surprising this armchair detective extraordinaire. The fact that the book managed to stay so enjoyable despite the early figuring out is definitely a credit to the writer. And if she is this good fresh out of the gate, her subsequent works might prove tougher to solve. All in all, this was good fun. Recommended. It stands to mention that the author is an Edinburgh solicitor. With an apparent boner for all things Americana, specifically the neo-noir variety of small towns and brutal crimes. This is a not unusual thing, from books to Guillermo De Toro’s recent Nightmare Alley. The exoticism of noir cannot be denied, neo or otherwise.
Anyway, in Ashkanani’s first book he welcomes you to Cooper, a fictional Nebraska town as dirty and crime-heavy and bleak as any noir would have its setting be. And sure enough, it’s a bleak story of a detective and a serial killer battling wills and wits. A solid debut. In this, his sophomore effort, the author takes you back to Cooper for an (arguably) even darker and more disturbing visit. Takes you back in time too, back to pager time. Another set of cops, this time a dedicated local and his newly assigned partner, a cowboy-looking fresh outta Texas detective. Together they set off to investigate a brutal slaying of a local family, made all the more brutal for the main protagonist since it occurs in the walls that housed his childhood once upon a time. In a parallel narration, there’s a cult. A relatively small cult on a verge of boiling over into the sort of final act madness that makes the news. Gotta love a good cult story. The two tales connect in interesting and unpredictable ways. In fact, one of the best things about this book, is its unpredictability – a must for a discerning mystery reader. But it has other strengths too, mainly the writing itself. Ashkanani’s debut was good, this is really, really good. This is a talented author stepping up his game kind of good. It’s visceral realism at its best, a bleak place rendered with cinematic vividness so much so that it becomes it own character. Nebraska is never inviting in fiction, not the fiction I’ve read, but it does always lend itself to a sort of oppressiveness and here, once again, it hangs over the characters like a heavy grey cloud, obscuring all light. And in the ensuing darkness, desperate, traumatized people do terrible things to each other. Now that’s noir, that’s the very soul of it. What lurks in the shadowy corners of the mind, the soul, the street… The author gets it just right. Well done. This dark dynamic read is neo-noir at its finest and ought to delight mystery fans of all varieties. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. What a weird, weird book. An odyssey, really, a science fiction dystopian odyssey but a distinctly European flavored one. Incal was dreamt up by Alejandro Jodorowsky, a controversial cult-classic sort of avant-garde figure, who despite being originally from Latin America, is mostly and very distinctly Gallic in his sensibilities. Born is 1929, he’s also a man of a different era, several different eras, really. So all of that must go a long way to inform his sexual politics, because it’s impossible to talk about Incal without mentioning them.
I mean, sure, we can discuss at length the wildly imagined world of Incal, with its precise and striking social strata and its futuristic wildness – it’s sort of like cyberpunk, crazy-advanced tech and low-quality lives. We can discuss the social injustices that set off the young detective John Difool on his missions, but,,,but…in the end of the day, what really stands out here is the sex. It’s like that joke “You f*ck one goat…” Because these comics are laden, rife with sex in a variety of grotesque scenarios. Some are romantic - Difool and his beloved on and off aristo Luz get all loved up romantically - but the rest…yikes. Incal really goes there and I mean really goes there, everywhere. Well, everywhere within author’s own imaginations’ limitations, presumably. For, it’s all pretty much straight, for one thing, however perverted. For another…there’s all that rape. And how much rape, you might inquire? Well, there’s a rape scene of a dead fourteen-year-old girl, so that should answer that question. And (here’s a weird sentence) Jodorowsky isn’t even a stranger to rape controversy. In fact, this might be one of the milder instances for him. He did some bizarro western in the 70s El Topo and…well, you can look that up. Suffice it to say, the man proudly claimed the authenticity of the rape scene in that movie for ages until modern day and age has finally forced him to say he hyped it up for publicity, which…well, you can decide just how believable that sounds. And sure, the ethics and gender politics have changed a lot since and they’ve been very different to begin with when comparing the generally puritanical US to the do as you please Western Europe, but still…it stands to be mention that some readers might be quite…um…disturbed by the sexuality of the Incal comics. Aside from that…this is a difficult book to love as such, but it has a certain magnetism, certain energy. And there are lovable things about it, like Difool’s companions, both fowl and robotic. There’s a very peculiar strangeness to the Incal world that can draw you in. It’s certainly different enough to be interesting. Now when it gets into the actual Incal as a mystical object, the mysticism aspect of it…that reads straight out of the 70s, someone did too much acid, sort of thing. Didn’t care for that at all. But the actual Difool’s adventures otherwise can be compelling, especially since he is such non-traditional/non-heroic/reluctant protagonist. And the world building here is top rate. You can see why this comic is so highly regarded by the people who know these things. Fun fact, Jodorowsky was once tapped for the original cinematic adaptation of Dune. See if you can tell why. Another fun fact, according to the internet, the awesomely talented Taika Waititi is set to direct the cinematic adaptation of the Incal. At long last. Who knows how a thing like this can be even brought to life…it’s so otherworldly in so many ways. But if anyone can do it, Waititi can. That ought to be a spectacle of first order. As for the book, it’s difficult to recommend for many reasons. But for people looking for something completely different and not overtly prudish/easy to disturb, it might be worth a read. The idea behind this novel isn’t exactly novel – the world has been de-manned before fictionally. Y The Last Man comes to mind immediately, for one thing. So the novelty here is in the spin. Wherein YTLM did the arguably misogynistic thing of telling the story of a man-free world from the perspective of the last man alive, The Men is a women’s story, a story of women surviving in a suddenly and strikingly changed world.
Then again, a. I never found YTLM misogynistic, I found it poignant and fascinating and very clever and b. I like a large sprawling take on dystopia that informs of all the ways society changes and this novel tells a much more contained story. The Men is essentially several separate narrative strands of different women that eventually weaves itself into one, and that one is mainly a tale of Jane Pearson, a wife and a mother, who finds herself alone and adrift and that drift takes her right back to her ex, once an infamous political voice and now a potent political power. In the past, Jane and her ex have both been victims of the system. Jane is now forever associated with a sex abuse scandal and her ex is officially a cop killer. That alone allows the novel to pontificate the societal evils elaborately and thoroughly, covering the justice system, racism, gender, sexuality, the court of public opinion, etc. Their relationship is fraught and complicated and only gets more so as the time progresses. And all the while, there’s a strange footage that everyone’s watching that show the disappeared men going on about their business…adding a strangely surreal element to the already somewhat surreal proceedings. All in all, it’s a very strange book. The narrative is dense and light on dialogue, but it has a very nice flow to it. There’s a hypnotic quality there even, it’s immensely readable in all its strangeness. And it’s positively laden with morals and messages that are strategically targeted to the modern woke audiences. It’s an interesting and an intriguing novel, but it leaves something to be desired. In no small way, due to that cheat of an ending. Not sure what to make of that twist, can’t discuss it – it would give too much away, but it kind of cheapens the novel and distracts and detracts from its overall poignancy. Or at least, it did for me. Either way, interesting enough of a read to be worth your time, especially for the gender-based dystopian fans out there. Thanks Netgalley. It’s been tricky finding science fiction to my liking. This book is a shining example of that. While traditionally I do strive for a certain degree of objectivity in my reviews, first and foremost they are meant to represent a personal reading experience, and thus…while this technically might be a perfectly good sci-fi adventure, it really, really didn’t work for me.
Objectively speaking, it has the mad manic energy of a contemporary space romp and the intricately convoluted intrigue of a space opera and the wildly contrived quirk of “look how quirky we are, we’re going to do footnotes, copious amounts of footnotes that’ll make it look like the protagonist might be talking to himself, but is he, really”. And that might be enough for some readers. It wasn’t enough for this one. Random facts about the animal kingdom (which the protagonist of this novel is loaded with), sure, yeah. The rest…no, thank you. I did try, I really did. But it was just so hyper, so busy, so over the top, that it managed to leave me completely indifferent. Most of the time it was just turning pages. Sometimes there were some fun things occurring on those pages, but honestly, I don’t think I can even do an accurate plot summary for this and that’s after 400 pages. For some reason the publisher, Angry Robot, has decided that 400 is a proper length for a science fiction novel and that’s all they do. Personally, I believe that to be much too long, not to mention peculiarly inflexible. Although far be it for me to argue with a robot. It was certainly much too long for this novel, even though technically about 6% of it is taken up by footnotes, all those freaking footnotes. It’s an inventive novel, it might even be clever, although in that “look how clever I am” way, but it’s exhausting and really kind of hyper, like hyped up on its own energy. For me, contrived cleverness and animal trivia aside, it barely amused and mostly ended up being a waste of time. It was easy to tell the sort of book this was meant to be…a wacky, whimsical, humorous space adventure that gets a lot of mileage out of a jar of pickles, it just didn’t quite get there. It stands to mention…I don’t normally like space operas, and I am particular about my science fiction, so my opinion might very well be a minority one and must be considered as such. Which is to say, user mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley. I really enjoyed Day’s Paradise City, so I wanted to read more of the author and then this one showed up on Netgalley. A thriller. Because of course why write a serious drama about serious subjects like immigration when you can write a thriller that’ll sell like hotcakes because it’s all anyone wants to read these days. Can’t fault the author for wanting to be popular, but also…can’t help but be left wanting.
Mind you, this might have been an exceptional thriller, with mind-boggling twists and stunning writing and so literary as to make even the snobbiest of readers happy to have read it, but it wasn’t…well, not quite. It came very close, mind you. But as Bond would say, No Cigar, Moneypenny. It did have a terrific plot twist, but it was a. kinda predictable and b. came about third of a way in which is way too soon. After that, it mostly went on like a messed-up but fairly straight-up narrative about…well, motherhood. Yes, after all that, and all the layers of literariness, beneath it all it’s just another mommy thriller. Well, ok, technically mommy and daddy thriller. It’s all (and I mean ALL) about the absolutely insane crap people will do to have a baby. Can’t talk too much about the book without giving something away. The official plot description only covers the first third of the novel, the juicy third that leads into the plot twist. Reader beware, the other two thirds of the novel will likely not live up to the previously set standard. But also…does the world need another mommy thriller? Another reproduction-obsessed couple? I mean, when is it going to be enough? Just stay childless (the world really doesn’t need any more people), or adopt and shut up about it, already. Your genes are not that precious and there are a lot of kids out there desperate for a family. Day is a very good writer, and so it’s quite frustrating that she decided to throw her not inconsiderable talent in this direction. Understandable, but disappointing all the same. Because of this talent, the book is a compelling read, but in the end doesn’t amount to much. An evilly manipulative mother-in-law and babies, babies, babies at all cost are the sort of plot drivers that are dime a dozen. And if you’re into that sort of thing, this is the book for you. Maybe the author can go back to something original now with all that thriller dough. Thanks Netgalley. |
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