Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
My wife and I went to our local comic shop several months ago, and this was one of the books she grabbed. I liked the art, she liked it was a story about women, by women. I want to get out of the way right that the outset that the art of Sana Takeda is absolutely beautiful. I mean, that’s immediately obvious from the cover. Beyond that, there was almost nothing about this book that I liked. We start off with Maika Halfwolf, an Arcanic, […]
Axiom’s End by Lindsey Ellis
(Minor spoilers) In an alternate 2007, President Bush is dealing with (in addition to the War on Terror) his own Julian Assange-type character named Nils Ortega. Except Ortega is also kind of an Alex Jones-type person, as he’s obsessed with supposed cover ups of alien visitations. His daughter is a college dropout living with her mother and two siblings, and they were all abandoned by Nils after he leaked some government documents called “the Fremda Memo” and fled the United States. The narrative is mostly […]
Sorry for the delay. For perhaps the first time ever, I actually had the database complete on January 1st….and then life happened, and I haven’t actually looked at it until today. As always, my numbers may be slightly off from this website (or your own personal tallies). At this point, I’ve automated most of the database, so there may be some errors in how things are counted. I don’t physically check everything in the database to confirm accuracy (so, for instance, V.E. Schwab and Victoria […]
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
I think I’m a well-intentioned person. But we all do, I suppose. I try to read more books written by women. But I often don’t. Since I started reviewing books for CBR, I’ve reviewed 91 stories written by women, which is a hair over 20% of everything I’ve read. CBR07: 2 (7%) CBR08: 32 (29%) CBR09: 20 (26%) CBR10: 6 (11%) CBR11: 5 (18%) CBR12: 16 (26%) CBR13: 9 (18%) CBR14: 1 (8%) That’s abysmal. There’s no two ways about it. And that’s after some […]
Saga (Vol. 1) by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
As someone on the outside of the comic book world looking in, Saga has always been one of those comics (like Watchmen or Akira) that seems universally loved by fans and respected by critics. So it seems like something I should probably at least give a shot to. And, if this one book is anything to go by, it’s absolutely deserving of that framing. Alana and Marko are from two different, warring, extraterrestrial species. Marko was a prisoner, and Alana was a guard tasked with keeping him […]
People of the Dark by Robert E. Howard
I had intended this to be the start of a review dump of short stories. It’s ended up being a review of a single story: “People of the Dark”. I haven’t been reading very much this year. Anyway. Published in 1932, this is the story of John O’Brien’s attempt to kill his victorious rival for the affections of Eleanor Bland. His target is Richard Brent, and John has followed him into Dagon’s Cave, hidden away in the English countryside. Before he can let loose his […]
