A war, a negotiation, a compromise, a solution. Earthlings and aliens working together. Yey. The end.
All right, thus it wraps up. Time to talk about the overall series and all that. This is categorically a lesser apocalypse for a man who's done so well with zombies in Walking Dead. The character drama is still there, but less compelling. The strong dialogue writing is still there, but less logistics. The entire series reads wildly uneven and not just because of the time (and dimensional) jumps. The concept is fun. The aliens are great. The main detractor here is art. It's been the case from book one. You do get used to it after a while, the weird ugly faces and all, but it continues to stand out. There's always the impression that the story deserves better. The colors are (almost) psychedelically vivid, which works especially well when rendering the other side. All in all, it's entertaining, but never went above three stars for me. User mileage may vary. After all, we're talking about a song--an Oblivion Song--and music works differently for everyone. Should you hear its siren call, at least you're in for a quick read. And a decent enough of a distraction.
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This series could have easily wrapped up at book two. BUT Kirkman in particular and the comic book industry in general likes to draw things out. In book five the stretch gets to the point where you start to see the seams.
Of course, both the writer and the artist are working as hard as they can to distract you from it with all the bombastic action sequences, but the time skips are a mess and so is some of the character writing. And also, it's crucial to mention that the art just isn't that good, so it can only distract so much. Nevertheless, it's all very dramatic, and one feels compelled to see it to the end. So, onto the last book. Meet the Faceless Men. Neither faceless, nor men.
I read the first three volumes of this back in September of 2021. And our library just got the rest of them, so I promptly binged the entire thing, rereading the first three first. The overall impression remains the same. This is no Walking Dead, but then it doesn't really try to be. Not all apocalypses are created equal, but Kirkman seems to like them all. If not zombies, then aliens. So meet some aliens. They are pretty wild, quite interesting, and better drawn that the people of these books. Onto the next one. But plenty to drink too!
It's official. Collins is my favorite modern poet. None of the maudlin navel-gazing and exhaustive microanalysis of one's inner self/race/abuse/sexuality that other poetry out there seems to thrive on. Collins' poems are lovely - lovely observations of everyday things and everyday life. Slice of life sketches wrapped into the rhythmic but never rhyming thing that is poetry these days. So if you want to read poetry that will elate and delight, look no further. There's plenty of the other kind out in the world. But why dwell, when you can punch up? Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. I've actually never seen the movie. I know. Gasp. But I do like a golden age mystery now and then, so when I saw this new edition of the classic novel, I figured I'll check it out. It turned out to be a rather mixed reading experience.
First a disclaimer: I read it over the course of several evenings at the end of long, exhausting days, so my brain was sleepy and not the most fine-tuned to nuance. That said, I found the novel well written and interesting to begin with. It also didn't read all that dated, which is no small feat for something from 1936. The narrator is a posh young lady who takes a train, meets a governess named Miss Froy, and spends the rest of the novel looking for the woman when she disappears without a trace. Since the posh young lady had a heatstroke prior to boarding the train, she is somewhat of an unreliable narrator. And her perception of reality is challenged further by everyone around her denying ever seeing Miss Froy. So far so good. And then it gets muddled. I'm not sure if it was me or the book, but I ended up as confused as the protagonist. Though, unlike her, I didn't care as much. Moreover, I mostly predicted the outcome, just not the muddled path that gets us there. It's a perfectly decent read, but not a particularly exciting one. As in, it might have made me sleepy even if I wasn't sleepy to begin with. But it's possible that my experience was unique, and this really is a masterpiece. Opinions, after all, are subjective. And I definitely want to see the movie now. The Wheel Spins (the original title), The Lady Vanishes. The book's longevity is a testament to people's continuous interest in finding her. And that's no small feat. Thanks Netgalley. As a part of the industry (the tiniest of cogs) and an analytical by nature person, I have, on my own, come to the disappointing realization that book business is mostly business. This book reaffirms that fact resoundingly, with historical background and numbers to back it up.
This is a terribly disheartening but an absolutely essential read for writers and an informative one for all book lovers out there. I wasn't sure how much to expect from the book that featured quite possibly the largest amount of blurbs I've ever seen, a full 4% of the total page count. But it turned out to be an excellent read. Castleman pulls no punches as he pays out exactly what the industry was and is, using research, data, and frank shares of personal experiences. It's certainly eye-opening, though you may not like what you see. I'm not sure how I feel about his assessment of self-publishing, as in my experience its main contribution is flooding the market with crap, diluting the overall quality, and lowering readers' expectations. But all in all, there's plenty of food for thought in this (traditionally published) book. Lamentably, the Netgalley ARC doesn't feature the photos, but the text alone is enough. Reader beware, you may never look at books the same way again. With the mechanisms of the tricks revealed and the curtain pulled back, some of the magic inevitably dissipates. Still, it is an absolutely worthy read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. I read Gauld's Mooncop and immediately knew I had to check out more of his work. This collection certainly did not disappoint. It's a very different book, though drawn in the same charmingly minimalistic style. Not a single narrative, but a bunch of cartoons on the themes of books and all things to do with books. Definitely more to do with writing them than cataloging them, but the title is too fun to mind.
These are clever, funny, erudite ... an utter delight for anyone who loves/reads/writes books. I've enjoyed it very much. Recommended. Literary and literally! There should be way more reviews for this book. This book is brilliant and deserves a wide readership. Though, of course, it won't be to everyone's taste.
For one thing, it's relentlessly, intensely dark. For another, perhaps more important one, it's way, way too smart for an average genre offering. It's even--beautifully!--unconventionally moralistic. Until the very ending, because it seems the moral police must have its pound of flesh. Anyway, Old Soul is a story of a woman who refuses to die. And why wouldn't she? Who wouldn't want to live forever? Immortality has been largely rendered wrong by the puritanical attitudes equating it with evil, but what is immortality but extreme love of life? 300 years is a long time to be alive, especially when it comes at a terrible cost, but she can't seem to give it up. And now there's a real and present danger on her tail. Told wonderfully through alternating perspectives, this is a tale of two quests--one man's journey to find and punish the woman responsible for the death of his best friend and one woman's journey to stay alive, no matter what. Propulsive, magnificently written, literary in the best possible way, this book is a smart reader's dream. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. A cabinet of curiosities is a wonderous thing. And a great concept for storytelling, too. Guillermo Del Toro has recently used it for a Netflix anthology, and now there’s this book in which section after section, the readers are presented with the most incredible true stories that often are indeed stranger than fiction.
I am not a podcast person, so I’ve never heard of this until finding the book on Netgalley. It seems that it is very popular as a podcast, and it’s plain to see why. The stories are told in the sort of anecdotal, easily accessible, humorous way usually with a really cheesy gotcha groaner of a pun in the end. According to the afterword, it seems the author has someone else do the legwork of finding the tales, which isn’t as impressive, but in then end the final product is a whimsical and wildly entertaining delight, which is really all that matters. And it's exactly as unbelievable, unsettling, and bizarre as the title promises. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. The early comic books (what I’ve read of it, anyway) were text heavy and exhaustively overexplained. As time went on, the industry seems to have figured out the balance between the art and the text. Nowadays, there are so many graphic novels that do just what—tell the story in graphics. And if you do it right, text may not be needed at all.
This book is a shining example of it. A chronicle of the life and times of a park bench and those who briefly occupy it. A marvelous intersectionality of people and an object. Minimalistic, beautifully drawn, and moving, this book is as succinct as it is charming and leaves the reader satisfied and even elated. Recommended. |
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December 2023
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