And the theme continues, as does the nightly reading of Star Wars movie novelizations with my kid. I’m so glad he’s into this stuff, rather than those awful Wimpy Kid books. Although he did just have to read How to Eat Fried Worms for school, which was terrible! These novelizations are based on the screenplays of the movies, and they often can fill in some of the back story and the subtext. I also think that they do a fair amount of retconning (more so […]
Osteomancy: a magic system so good, you’ll eat it up!
In “California Bones”, Greg Van Eekhout has created an alternate version of our world where magic exists. New magic systems excite me, I love figuring out their rules and how they fit within society, and Greg Van Eekhout delivers in his first adult novel. California has seceded from the rest of the United States and Northern and Southern California are separate, hostile kingdoms. Southern California is ruled by The Heirarch. The Heirarch is the single most powerful osteomancer in Southern California, in part due to […]
I want to be a Lumberjane
…they sound better than Girl Scouts! After tearing threw Nimona, I was pleased to have another Noelle Stevenson graphic novel around to immediately devour. The design of the book is really nifty as the layout makes it seem as though you are reading this adventure inside of a Lumberjane’s Field Manual. As a fairly new Girl Scout troop leader I loved reading parts of the field guide, learning about their badges and the appropriate way to wear a uniform. Each chapter ends with “pictures” of […]
Tongue-in-cheek steampunk urban fantasy romance, yes please!
Loved it! Loved it, loved it, loved it. I always get really nervous when I write reviews for books that I have such positive reactions to, especially ones like this one that have such strong personalities. This book knows who it is and what it’s trying to do and does its thing with aplomb. I happened to love it immediately after reading the first sentence, but I can understand how if the humor in the writing or the language she uses, or if you don’t […]
A promising, but not super thrilling beginning.
It’s hard to say too much about the first volume of Saga. Much of the book sets up the relationships between characters and starts what promises to be many larger plots in motion. So while it didn’t grab me by the face like many first volumes do, I’m definitely intrigued enough to continue the series. That’s part of the fun of graphic novels. You can follow along as long as you’d like and abandoned a series that seems to lose its mojo after awhile. […]
Unicorns and magic and tragedy oh my
This is a pretty typical mid-90s fantasy. It’s decent, but nothing particularly amazing. Still, there are worse books to spend a few hours with. And the thing that interests me most about the novel is not the actual book, but the publishing history. Reandn is a Wolf in the Kings Keep. As near as I can tell this means he’s a palace guard but more responsible for patrolling the outside of the keep as opposed to the inside (The Hounds) but not too far, because […]