Book Review: Shadows by Robin McKinley

In Shadows Robin McKinley has built another world I want to see more of. I initially was not that happy with the concept of the magic-using world vs. the technology-only world. I have my jaded-reader moments when I think "I've seen that before." But it was McKinley, and I will always read books by McKinley, so I read it, and of course, I hadn't seen it before, and I loved it.

Maggie's new stepfather may make her mother smile, but he comes complete with terrible taste in shirts, an odd accent, and far, far too many shadows. The shadows are oddly shaped and they don't move the way they should. Maggie has enough to handle dealing with her senior year of high school, hauling around an enormous Algebra book, and helping out at the animal shelter to cope with shadows that shouldn't be there, and that she shouldn't be seeing anyway. Then she meets a handsome young man who recognizes her stepfather, gaps in reality start opening near her town, and the army moves in to help out, and magic, which should not exist in Newworld, where Maggie lives, becomes increasingly important.

I'm always happier as a reader when I like the narrator, and I liked Maggie. McKinley avoids making her the horrible sullen teen who dislikes people for no reason. Maggie is prejudiced against her stepfather because he is her stepfather (and because of his shirts), but she only really dislikes him because she is terrified by the shadows that come with him. And, even then, she mostly tried to avoid him rather than starting a confrontation. She also has a group of friends she spends time with plus some closer friends that she's known for years, and I do love a good, strong friendship. Both aspects of Maggie--her difficulty with her family and her good friendships--are portrayed well. The details and love that go into animal care help ground the more fantastical bits, and the two types of work complement one another.

There are several memorable characters in here. Maggie and her friends, Takahiro and Jill are strong protagonists. Her hyper dog, Mongo, "a hairy attack squad carooming off the walls and trying to fetch pieces of furniture so somebody would throw them for him" is a standout. The shadows develop as the book goes on as well. I think my favorite, though, has to be the most unexpected: an Algebra book. Like Maggie, I disliked my math classes, so it was surprising, funny, and good to find a truly useful textbook in the subject.

Shadows is a good read, by the writer of Beauty and Sunshine both, something to curl up with and be happy. It's closer in kin to Beauty, in that while it has difficult choices and deep troubles, it will not take you to some of the truly dark places Sunshine inhabits. Sunshine, while a book I like, is not going on my comfort-read shelf. Beauty has had a place there for years, and Shadows might gain one (It's hard to tell. "Comfort reads" develop over the years). Like Sunshine, it has a more complex world-building and a strong sense that there is more to do yet. This means that, like Sunshine, it has a perfectly good, perfectly respectable ending, and it still leaves me hungry for more.

Did you read Shadows? What did you think?

Other Reviews
Books with Bite

Links of Interest
Shadows on Amazon.
Your library (No, I can't actually link to your library, but if you don't have your library's catalog bookmarked or haven't memorized the address, it's time you did).
Robin McKinley's blog (Which just distracted me. Again.)

Publication Details
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books (September 26, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0399165797
ISBN-13: 978-0399165795

Did I miss a review I should have included? Let me know in the comments or by using the Contact Me link above.

Link List: Plants Telling Time, Gold-Dusted Crickets, Books to Watch For, and Other Good Stuff

This and That

1) Sugar is not the root of all evil. It's quite useful, if you're a plant wanting to keep track of the time. Plants track the accumulation of sugar formed through photosynthesis and use the buildup as a way of measuring time, thus keeping their circadian rhythms in order.

According to Dr Mike Haydon of the University of York:

"The accumulation of sugar within the plant provides a kind of feedback for the circadian cycle in plants -- a bit like resetting a stopwatch. We think this might be a way of telling the plant that energy in the form of sugars is available to perform important metabolic tasks."

Sugar buildup, it seems, serves as something of an hourglass; the plant can, in effect, say "I have this amount of sugar, therefore that amount of time has passed."

From Science World Report and the article summary in Nature (the full article is behind a paywall).

2) Quirk Books blogger Allison Racicot has compiled a short list of "Breaking All Four Walls: Boston Bookstores That Aren’t Actually Stores". My favorite item on the list is actually a library: A red phone booth operating on the "Take one, leave one" or, "heck, just take one" policy. Go take a look at the rest of the list and get some ideas for what you might want to see in Boston.

Also: Let me know if you've spotted any similar bookstores elsewhere, will you? I'm no Bostonian, but I do love a good bookstore, and libraries are even better!

3) Continuing on the theme, Derek Attig writes of unusual library locations, past and present, over on Book Riot.. He talks about past librarians carrying books out to hard-to-reach places in the Cumberland Mountains during the Great Depression, a contemporary rider in Columbia transporting books by biblioburro, twenty-first century book vending machines, and more.

4) Chocolatier Sylvain Musquar is working to make insect-eating palatable in the finicky West. He tops his made-in-France chocolates with crickets and worms--after they have been dusted in gold dust to give them some “make-up ... to make them a bit sexy."

The crickets and worms come from MicroNutris, a Toulouse-based specialist company, which feeds them a “diet rich in vitamins, minerals and saturated fatty acids," so, you know, they're healthy themselves as well as being healthy for you.

As one of the "squeamish" I applaud the effort, but I'm not sure the gold-dust is going to make a lot of difference.

On the other hand, Sylvain Musquar's customers do appear to be buying.

What do you think? Will gold-dust convince you to eat bugs? Or do you already?

From The Star

5) Take a look at Fong Qi Wei’s Time Is a Dimension, photographs. In each of these photographs, Wei has taken pictures of the same place over a two to four hour period, melding them together to create one, unique image. Often, different strips of time are visually portrayed as strips, squares, or circles in the image as light changes and the day moves on.

I like them all, but I'm especially partial to the changing light on the bird of paradise. What about you? Got a favorite?

Found through Wired

Book News

It's a funny thing about to-read lists: They never get any shorter. Here are this week's additions to mine:

Out this week is The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects by Richard Kurin

Reasons I'm interested? The Smithsonian writers are always good, and it's a series of micro-histories. Of course I have to read it!

Found via Publisher's Weekly

From the publisher's description:

The Smithsonian Institution is America's largest, most important, and most beloved repository for the objects that define our common heritage. Now Under Secretary for Art, History, and Culture Richard Kurin, aided by a team of top Smithsonian curators and scholars, has assembled a literary exhibition of 101 objects from across the Smithsonian's museums that together offer a marvelous new perspective on the history of the United States.

Ranging from the earliest years of the pre-Columbian continent to the digital age, and from the American Revolution to Vietnam, each entry pairs the fascinating history surrounding each object with the story of its creation or discovery and the place it has come to occupy in our national memory. Kurin sheds remarkable new light on objects we think we know well, from Lincoln's hat to Dorothy's ruby slippers and Julia Child's kitchen, including the often astonishing tales of how each made its way into the collections of the Smithsonian. Other objects will be eye-opening new discoveries for many, but no less evocative of the most poignant and important moments of the American experience. Some objects, such as Harriet Tubman's hymnal, Sitting Bull's ledger, Cesar Chavez's union jacket, and the Enola Gay bomber, tell difficult stories from the nation's history, and inspire controversies when exhibited at the Smithsonian. Others, from George Washington's sword to the space shuttle Discovery, celebrate the richness and vitality of the American spirit. In Kurin's hands, each object comes to vivid life, providing a tactile connection to American history.

Publication information
Hardcover, 784 pages
Publication: October 29th 2013 by Penguin Press
ISBN 1594205299 (ISBN13: 9781594205293)

Someone recently found a lost Pearl S. Buck novel in a Texas storage. It was apparently finished just before she died andcame out on October 22, 2013. Omnivoracious.com has an excerpt up.

Reason I'm interested? It's Pearl S. Buck.

I've been reading her books off and on for years, and she always has strong characters and amazing world building. Yes, I know, she's writing historical fiction, not science fiction, but the ability to give the reader a world is still important.

From the publisher's description:

The Eternal Wonder tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax (Rann for short), an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, on a mission patrolling the DMZ in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.

Rann falls for the beautiful and equally brilliant Stephanie Kung, who lives in Paris with her Chinese father and has not seen her American mother since she abandoned the family when Stephanie was six years old. Both Rann and Stephanie yearn for a sense of genuine identity. Rann feels plagued by his voracious intellectual curiosity and strives to integrate his life of the mind with his experience in the world. Stephanie struggles to reconcile the Chinese part of herself with her American and French selves. Separated for long periods of time, their final reunion leads to a conclusion that even Rann, in all his hard-earned wisdom, could never have imagined.

Publication information

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Open Road Media E-riginal (October 22, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1480439703
ISBN-13: 978-1480439702

The Library: A World History by James W. P. Campbell (Author) and Will Pryce (Photographer)

Reason I'm interested: This article in The Telegraph, "The Most Spectacular Libraries in the World" has some of the images with brief descriptions of the libraries in question. I'm all in favor of gorgeous images, and (as you all know by now) I'm in love with libraries.

I do hope my library carries it!

From the publisher's description as found on Amazon (Goodreads hasn't got its entry up to snuff yet):

A library is not just a collection of books, but also the buildings that house them. As varied and inventive as the volumes they hold, such buildings can be much more than the dusty, dark wooden shelves found in mystery stories or the catacombs of stacks in the basements of academia. From the great dome of the Library of Congress, to the white façade of the Seinäjoki Library in Finland, to the ancient ruins of the library of Pergamum in modern Turkey, the architecture of a library is a symbol of its time as well as of its builders’ wealth, culture, and learning.

Architectural historian James Campbell and photographer Will Pryce traveled the globe together, visiting and documenting over eighty libraries that exemplify the many different approaches to thinking about and designing libraries. The result of their travels, The Library: A World History is one of the first books to tell the story of library architecture around the world and through time in a single volume, from ancient Mesopotamia to modern China and from the beginnings of writing to the present day. As these beautiful and striking photos reveal, each age and culture has reinvented the library, molding it to reflect their priorities and preoccupations—and in turn mirroring the history of civilization itself. Campbell’s authoritative yet readable text recounts the history of these libraries, while Pryce’s stunning photographs vividly capture each building’s structure and atmosphere.

Publication information:

Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (October 14, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 022609281X
ISBN-13: 978-0226092812

Trailers

The graphic novel version of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (which is also on my to-read list, in case you were wondering; I have to see how a photo-based novel turns into a graphic novel. Also, it's a good book), has a trailer up on Entertainment Weekly's site.

Book Review: Fairest Vol. 2 The Hidden Kingdom by Bill Willingham (author), Lauren Beukes (Author), and Inaki Miranda (Illustrations)

Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom wasn't for me. I can't really say it was a bad book. I think, probably, for what it was, it was a good book, but despite wildly loving the Fables series and thoroughly enjoying Fairest Vol. 1, I found this not my cup of tea. There will be some spoilers in the following, though I will try not to touch on major plot and turning points.

Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom is Rapunzel's story which, like most Fables tales draws from and exaggerates elements of the traditional tales. It seems that, after being kicked out of the tower by the witch, who was none other than Frau Tottenkinder, Rapunzel gave birth to twins with the help of a kindly elderly woman who told her they were stillborn and took the bodies away. She is sure they are alive and that the woman was Frau Tottenkinder, and she spend years looking for them, eventually ending up in the Hidden Kingdom (the Fables version of Japan) shortly before the Adversary invaded.

Now, in present day Fabletown, she is attacked by a flurry of origami cranes with the words "your children" on them. She immediately bargains for help with hair control and heads out to modern Japan in search of the twins. She takes her friend and barber, Joel, with her. She also takes Jack who proceeds to be his egotistical, oversexed, unreliable self through the rest of the book. Yes, I know he's a trickster and that's what tricksters do and are; that doesn't mean I have to like this particular incarnation of the Trickster type.

in any case, the story switches between the three time periods: Rapunzel's life just after being kicked out of her tower, her life in the Hidden Kingdom, and her present-day hunt for her children and attempts to navigate alliances old and new alliances in the unstable Fabletown communities of Japan.

It's not so much that Fairest breaks the Fables mold as that it takes it and pushes its darker side, hard. There's dark and then there's "Dropped down a well and trapped under a pile of your friends' corpses as they decay." There's "weird and a little twisted" and there's "eating your own hair to survive and then coughing up deadly, angry bezoars who devour everyone around." The humor that marked the other tales was largely absent as was most of the warmth.

Too, I found neither love story present particularly compelling. Snow and Bigby have me on their side all the way. Ali and the Snow Queen had me laughing and hoping. Rapunzel and the kitsune? Not so much. As a sexual indulgence I could more or less believe it, as a love that lasts through the centuries and survives multiple perceived and actual betrayals? No. By the end of the story, I did not particularly care for either partner, and was definitely rooting for Puntz to put the past behind her. The other story should have been more compelling; Joel actually is likable, but the ultimate pairing didn't really have the kind of emotional resonance I want.

The art, also, seemed to be more of more: More crowds, more creatures, more scenes, more sex, more fighting. Like the story, it wasn't bad precisely, it just wasn't to my taste.

Read it? What did you think? Got a review I should link to? Let me know, here in the comments or by clicking the "Contact Me" link up there.

Other Reviews
On Fyrefly's Book Blog

Book Review: Courtney Crumrin Vols. 1-3 by Ted Naifeh

The Courtney Crumrin books were one of this year's serendipitous finds. I stopped by the library one day and, scanning the shelves, saw a handsome dark blue hardcover book of just the right size to slip into a bag or prop up at the table. Of course, I checked it out and found myself in the world of Courtney, a young teen forced to move from her inner city house to a grand house in a wealthy neighborhood owned by her aloof and somewhat scary Uncle Aloysius Crumrin. This uncle, it turns out, has a library full of books on magic. This comes in handy when Courtney finds that the neighborhood woods is full of goblins and is near the entrance to Goblin Town, a dangerous place for mortals.

Being independent and inquisitive, Courtney soon figures out how to use the spells, and quickly starts exploring the goblin haunted woods, eventually venturing into the Twilight Kingdom where the Faerie folk live. She also experiments a bit with using them to help out in daily life, with somewhat mixed results.

I liked Courtney precisely because she is prickly and aloof or, as she says, "I'm rude, bad-tempered, and basically, I don't like people." She is uncertain and vulnerable in both worlds, and determined to protect herself. Her parents are would-be social climbers who pay more attention to the daughter they want to have than the daughter they do, and Courtney's background makes her unable to reach out to her wealthy and snobbish classmates. She alternates between not caring and wondering what is wrong with her. She's also never quite willing to give up her independence in order to fit in, but she does, gradually begin to trust some of those around her and to gain their trust in return.

I appreciate Naifeh's portrayal of someone who is gifted at magic but also still a young teen. Courtney does some powerful magic, but she also makes some big mistakes as she's learning, and they cost. Neither the human world nor the Faerie world is particularly forgiving, though the Faerie rules are, perhaps, easier to understand in the end.

Naifeh's angular artwork is very well suited to the Fairie folk and their town. The black and white is minimalistic and understated. I admire the line work. In the hardcover versions, color has been added to add atmosphere and lighting more than for detail purposes. The effectiveness of the addition varies: On the one hand, color! On the other, I really liked the understated black and white and don't find that the color always adds as much to the new versions as it could.

By the way, anyone who pays attention to the cover colors will notice that I picked up the third book first. It read quite well as a stand-alone. I went back and read it in its proper order after getting books one and two out, but if you'd rather start later in the series--or can only start later--things should work well!

I find myself in a bit of a bind in terms of copies. I now own two of them in paperback and I like the cleanness of the black and white and the line work. I also like the size: They're small, easy to carry, and light. However, Oni is reissuing the books in hardcover, and, as I mentioned earlier, the books are beautiful with jewel-toned covers, ribbon book marks, and color. They're a nice size, too, not the huge spread of the usual hardcover graphic novel but a nice, well-balanced book that sits nicely in the hand₍₁₎. Do I go for a matched set or try for mixed? Neither bookshelf nor wallet supports multiple copies, so no answers of "both" please!

And, for your enjoyment and enlightenment: Here is a spread, both colored and uncolored. My thanks to Oni Press for the use of it!



I have not read Courtney Crumrin and the Monstrous Holiday yet, but the hardcover just came out this month.

--
(1) My library system is awesome; they have both versions of volumes 1-3, and I was able to compare them side by side!
(2) Many thanks to Oni for sending me good-quality versions of the same page in color and in black and white. This way, you can compare!

Link List: Robo Roach to the Rescue! Secret Dungeons, Taking Care of Your Zombie Problems, and Other Wonders from the Web

1) Scientists actually have found blood in a mosquito fossil (found in shale, not amber, too bad!). It's not quite the quality needed to make even one dinosaur from, much less a whole park, but it's still a nifty find.

According to Dale Greenwalt, a volunteer research collaborator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and the lead author of the study on the mosquito, it might be in the genus Culiseta, which means it might be full of ancient bird blood.

No one has looked directly at the blood, finding it by "detecting heme—a pigment in red blood cells—via a special method of nondestructive x-ray spectrometry." I suppose cutting open one-of-a-kind fossil open to look directly really is a no-no.

2) Cyborg insects exist, and they may be more than curiosities. It's possible that a large number of "biobots" (The ScienceWorld Report article calls them a swarm. Are large collections of cockroaches really called swarms?) could be sent in to crawl randomly around an enclosed areas--places where GPS would not work. Each insect would signal when it met another insect, however, scientists could use this intermittent signal to "map" the environment as the insects are instructed to find unbroken areas to run along, thus defining walls and blocked territory.

No one has ever done this yet, but it's theoretically possible and would save humans time, trouble, and risk.

While you're waiting for folks to figure out the Rescue Roach, you can start steering your own RoboRoach (and maybe helping to figure out the whole mapping problem) next month Robo Roaches courtesy of Backyard Brains, which sells a "backpack" that you surgically attache to your selected roach; after that, you can control the roach via smart phone signals that make it think it's being touched on the right or the left side. It then turns away from the touch.

This only lasts for "a few minutes" at a stretch before the roach figures out something's up and has to be "reset" through a twenty minute rest, so I guess the "swarm mapping" is going to have to be done pretty quickly.

Also, after two to seven days (depending on what, I wonder?) the roach quits paying attention to the signals all together, after which "you can clip the wires and retire the cockroach to your breeder colony to spend the rest of its days making more cockroaches for you and eating your lettuce." It's sweet of Backyard Brains to suggest treating your cyborg subjects well after they retire, even if they are cockroaches.

I find the roaches ability to learn impressive. They are being told by their senses that they have to turn because something is in the way and yet, after only a few days, they somehow figure out how to sort false signals from true--at least, the article doesn't mention them becoming permanently disoriented. That's pretty impressive!

The above drawn from Science World Report, NPR.org, and Backyard Brains.

Speaking of which: Does anyone know what became of the cyborg rats folks were talking about a while ago? The ones who could be steered through small places in search of disaster survivors. Did they end up being useful? Or are they still hypothetically so if the hypothetical rescuees can be persuaded not to be scared of rats wearing backpacks as they pick through the rubble?

3) On another note (though I think he, or at least Calvin, might like robo roaches), Bill Watterson has decided to put the entire Calvin and Hobbes archive online, for free! Read more about the whys and wherefores here, in this Galleycat article, or go straight here to read the strip online.

4)Take a look at this map which shows what each country is leads the world in. The U. S. leads in Nobel Laureates and lawnmower deaths; Russia in raspberries and nuclear warheads; Canada in maple syrup and asteroid impacts, and so on.
Doghous Diaries via Io9.

5) Here's a series of images by Nickolay Lamm approximating the way cats see the world in contrast to the way humans see it, with explanations of how and why in the article below. It's one thing to read that cats have a wider field of vision, or see fewer colors, than humans, it's another to see it for oneself.

from Wired

6) Just under two weeks ago, a man in an unnamed part of the UK rented a small, studio apartment, only to discover a spacious dungeon underneath. Seems unreal as well as both fun and creepy, but there's nary a hint of anyone saying "Nope! Not true!" so I'm thinking that somewhere out there, there really is someone who's found the perfect space for "a dungeon party."

Images on Imagur.com found via The Geek Girl Project.

7) Forget about dungeons, for a minute; let's talk about zombies. This is just the time of year for the shambling undead to come out and terrorize the town--unless, that is the wild animals get to them first!. National Wildlife Federation naturalist David Mizejewski has an article on BoingBoing explaining that the standard zombie is really just so much self-propelled food as far as many of our local animals are concerned. He breaks things down by category, starting with "Birds: Winged Zombie Annihilators" and moving on through "Mammals: Zombie Dismemberment Crew," "Reptiles: Scaly Zombie Clean-Up Committee," and down to the "Decomposers: Masters of the Zombie Buffet."

He explains that many of the meat-eating animals have no problem with carrion, and even the non meat-eaters can be ferocious, if threatened. Among the birds, for example,

The two vulture species native to North America, the turkey vulture and the black vulture, flock up to make short work of any corpses they find. Both vulture species are dwarfed by the massive California condor, whose wingspan can reach 10 feet and which relish carrion. A sluggish zombie wouldn't stand a change against one of these giants or a flock of vultures.

Alligators and crocodiles are

are stealth hunters, and can burst from the water at surprising speeds to pluck large prey from the shoreline. They are quite capable of tearing a human-sized meal into bite sized chunks of meat with their toothy, vice-like mouths. Soft zombie flesh would melt in their mouths like butter.

What's more, Mizejewski explains, both American crocodiles and California condors are endangered and would benefit from regular, tasty carrion self-delivery. When you put it that way, a zombie invasion almost sounds like a good idea.

It probably wouldn't be a very long-lasting invasion, though. Not only would the big eaters move in for lunch, various microbes, beetles, maggots, and other small but active decomposers would settle in for a fleshy feast, finishing the decay of the undead in record time.

Head on over to the article for more of Mizejewski's explanations plus pictures and video demonstrations of just how quickly a determined animal can tuck in.

from BoingBoing found via a whole bunch of friends who thought I should see this and were right.

8) Sisters Jill and Lorna Watt yarn bombed a magnolia tree in San Mateo nd turned it into a squid. It's truly a work of art, very silly, and took over four miles of yarn and a lot of planning.

Book News

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh is really real, and it is coming out October 29, 2013. Yay!

The publisher's description:

Named one of the Funniest Sites on the Web by PC World and winner of the 2011 Bloggies Awards for Most Humorous Weblog and Best Writing, the creator of the immensely popular “Hyperbole and a Half” blog presents an illustrated collection of her hilarious stories with fifty percent new content.In a four-color, illustrated collection of stories and essays, Allie Brosh’s debut Hyperbole and a Half chronicles the many “learning experiences” Brosh has endured as a result of her own character flaws, and the horrible experiences that other people have had to endure because she was such a terrible child. Possibly the worst child. For example, one time she ate an entire cake just to spite her mother.

Brosh’s website receives millions of unique visitors a month and hundreds of thousands of visitors a day. This amalgamation of new material and reader favorites from Brosh's blog includes stories about her rambunctious childhood; the highs and mostly lows of owning a smart, neurotic dog and a mentally challenged one; and moving, honest, and darkly comic essays tackling her struggles with depression and anxiety, among other anecdotes from Brosh's life. Artful, poignant, and uproarious, Brosh’s self-reflections have already captured the hearts of countless readers and her book is one that fans and newcomers alike will treasure.

Other useful information:
Paperback, 384 pages (there are other versions, including ebook)
Expected publication: October 29th 2013 by Touchstone
ISBN 1451666179 (ISBN13: 9781451666175)

As a long-time follower of Brosh's blog, Hyperbole and a Half, I am delighted! Her work unpredictable, quirky, funny, sad, and original. Also--after her struggles with depression, it's good to see that she was able to finish this. The Publisher's Weekly review is up here.

Sorrow's Knot by Erin Bow will be out in the US next month. It's already out in Canada. The publisher sent a review copy to The Geek Girl Project, which I reviewed. Read about the book that gave me the best/worst book-hangover in a long time by following the link.

Psst: Plain Kate, Erin Bow's first book, is also very, very good. I snagged a copy from the library for review purposes some time ago.

Clips & Bits

If you haven't watched it already, you definitely need to see this music video featuring Rick Astley's “Never Gonna Give You Up” in Klingon. The amount of energy, creativity, and sheer fun that went into this is inspiring.



I've embedded the video for your viewing convenience, but it's worth visiting Youtube to read their notes. For one thing, that's how I found that, "All performers are part of the cast and company of "A Klingon Christmas Carol" (2013) in Chicago, Illinois by Commedia Beauregard"

That is, they are performing The Christmas Carol, in Klingon.

Scrooge has no honor, nor any courage. Can three ghosts help him to become the true warrior he ought to be in time to save Tiny Tim from a horrible fate? Performed in the Original Klingon with English Supertitles, and narrative analysis from The Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology.

The Dickens classic tale of ghosts and redemption adapted to reflect the Warrior Code of Honor and then translated into tlhIngan Hol (That's the Klingon Language).

This is the first time I've ever wished to be in Chicago in the winter (or ever).

2) Improv Everywhere is continuing their Movies in Real Life series. Last week, they recreated Gandalf the Grey's "You shall not pass!" scene from The Lord of the Rings in New York's Central Park.

Tourists are harder to impress than balrogs.

On the other hand, no one shoved him of the bridge.




Trailers and Such
The trailer for the upcoming Day of the Doctor is a really cool series of images of past Doctors. I'm pretty sure long-time fans of Old Who are having a great time picking it apart and that there are probably a lot of clues about the upcoming episode in there. I like Old Who, but am not conversant enough to do anything other than nod and say "Yep. Looks good."



Did I miss something I should've included? Contact me or let me know in the comments!

Book Review: William Shakspeare's Star Wars--Verily a New Hope by Ian Doescher

I’m sitting here looking at William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher and wondering how to start a review that sounds anything like objective. And, you know, I can’t. I loved this book. I loved the idea so much that the book sat unread for a while because I couldn’t be sure the text would live up to the concept, loved it so much that the minute I finished reading it, I called one friend to tell her she had to read it before she talked to me again and then got online so I could rhapsodize about it with another friend who had read it.

So, now you know. I'm not objective; I'm in love.

Much as I liked the idea, I was a little wary when it came to reading the actual book. How well good could a simple retelling of Star Wars really be, in the end? Very, as it happens. The book isn’t a “simple” retelling, not even “simply” in rhymed iambic pentameter. It incorporates ideas from the prequels (and does it well), comments on fan debate, adds an extra layer of character to everyone, and generally turns Star Wars into a quite respectable Shakespearean play. Vadar has some villainous monologues, R2D2 adds some scorching asides to the audience, Luke is given a thoughtfulness not always evident in the movie (and make no mistake; I like Luke), and Han has a couple of thoughtful monologues.

R2D2's asides are an unexpected addition. To the other characters, he still beeps and boops (iambically), but he gives frequent asides to the audience, commenting on events and character, at one point stating

Although with sounds oblique I speak to them,
I clearly see how I shall play my part,
And how a vast rebellion shall succeed
By wit and wisdom of a simple droid.

Doescher continues to play with words in a very Bard-like fashion, sometimes mixing in a an altered line or two from Shakespeare's (other?) plays, teasing with references to Star Trek, or adding playful references to fan controversies, as when Obi-wan muses about what to tell Luke about his father, or when Han and Greedo confront one another and Han leaves with the aside,

And whether I shot first, I'll ne'er confess!

The chorus, meanwhile, provides commentary on what is happening, effectively filling in for the visuals not present. It works very well, and I do still hope someone actually acts this play and films it so I can watch this and Lucas' version back to back.

My copy of the book is bristling with bookmarks indicating quotations I really have to share, except I probably had better not or there won't be much book left for you to read.

I can’t close without mentioning Nicolas Delort’s illustrations. I thought the Elizabethen ruff in the book trailer was a nice addition to Vadar’s costume. Delort’s elaborate chain-mail version of the outfit (see the cover) is even better. His reimaginings continue to enliven the book: There’s Luke musing on the storm trooper’s helmet, Han facing Jabba, and (another favorite), Vadar looking at the smoking ruins of a model Death Star.

Is this book worth reading? Yes, if you like Shakespeare, if you like Star Wars, if you like literature, or if you enjoy laughing, it’s worth reading. Now I can settle back happily to wait for The Empire Striketh Back and The Jedi Doth Return, next year!

Now, for the third time, here's the trailer!



Links of Interest
Victoria Irwin reviews Ian Doescher for The Geek Girl Project
Quirk Books' page for Star Wars: Verily a New Hope.
Ian Doescher's Page

Other Reviews
Victoria Irwin's review on The Geek Girl Project.
Bookin' with Bingo
In Bed with Books
Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers

Did I miss a review I should have included? Let me know, either here in the comments section or by using the Contact Me link above.

A Largely Literary Link List: Books, Comics, Webcomics, and Some Other Stuff

1) I know I've mentioned Order of the Stick before. It's one of my favorite webcomics, a series that plays with D&D conventions and rules, and thus also with fantasy tropes in general. It features a team of adventurers out to foil their arch-nemesis and save the world being both foiled and helped by gaming and literary conventions along the way (The current arc features an evil father who is trying to promote his good son's heroism along so that their eventual clash will be more interesting). It's quite gripping, even if you don't know all of the D&D conventions (I don't). Anyway, if you're not already hooked, or if you've ever wanted to ride a dinosaur, take a look at #923, "Breakthrough". Then do settle down to read the backstory.

2) Hm. On the one hand, the last time I ate at McDonald's, I thought their hamburger tasted like cardboard. On the other, they're going to give out books in their Happy Meals through November, and that's pretty awesome. So, it's a win-win for MacDonald's-lovers, who can now take their kids and get something truly worthwhile with the meal, and the rest of us will stand by the wayside and clap enthusiastically.

3) Here's a map on Business Insider that shows the "Most Famous Book Set in Every State". Whether the states in question will always be happy with their literary representative is a good question.

Book News

How did these sneak up on me? Really, how?


Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

From the publisher's description:

Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common, as each was their generation’s signature means of “instant” communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon.

From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used to exchange news across the Empire to the advent of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly sophisticated ways people shared information with each other, spontaneously and organically, down the centuries. With the rise of newspapers in the nineteenth century, then radio and television, “mass media” consolidated control of information in the hands of a few moguls. However, the Internet has brought information sharing full circle, and the spreading of news along social networks has reemerged in powerful new ways.

A fresh, provocative exploration of social media over two millennia, Writing on the Wall reminds us how modern behavior echoes that of prior centuries—the Catholic Church, for example, faced similar dilemmas in deciding whether or how to respond to Martin Luther’s attacks in the early sixteenth century to those that large institutions confront today in responding to public criticism on the Internet. Invoking the likes of Thomas Paine and Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, Standage explores themes that have long been debated: the tension between freedom of expression and censorship; whether social media trivializes, coarsens or enhances public discourse; and its role in spurring innovation, enabling self-promotion, and fomenting revolution. As engaging as it is visionary, Writing on the Wall draws on history to cast new light on today’s social media and encourages debate and discussion about how we’ll communicate in the future.

Other relevant info:
Hardcover, 288 pages
Expected publication: October 15th 2013 by Bloomsbury USA
ISBN 1620402831 (ISBN13: 9781620402832)

If it's like The Victorian Internet (which I enjoyed immensely), it will be historically grounded, full of interesting tidbits about real people, and thought provoking. I'm definitely going to read it.

Also coming out this month--and how did I miss it?! is the third book in Valente's Fairyland series, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

From the publisher's description:

September misses Fairyland and her friends Ell, the Wyverary, and the boy Saturday. She longs to leave the routines of home, and embark on a new adventure. Little does she know that this time, she will be spirited away to the moon, reunited with her friends, and find herself faced with saving Fairyland from a moon-Yeti with great and mysterious powers.

Other relevant Info:
Hardcover, 256 pages
Published October 1st 2013 by Feiwel & Friends
ISBN 1250023505 (ISBN13: 9781250023506)

The first two books in the series were funny, unexpected, quirky, and all-around good, so I'm going to snatch this one up as quickly as I can as well.

One of the fun and good discoveries I made this year were the Courtney Crumrin books by Ted Naifeh. Courtney is a prickly young girl just learning how to be a witch, how to make friends, and how to navigated doing the both at once. I've read books 1-3 (and a review is coming, I promise!), but book 4, Courtney Crumrin and the Monstrous Holiday, somehow snuck by me. A lovely new hardcover edition (and the hardcovers are beautiful) came out on the ninth.

From the publisher's description:

Courtney Crumrin's adventures continue – this time in a newly remastered, full color edition! Courtney and Uncle Aloysius' European vacation has brought them into the heart of a country rich with mystical history and tradition. At first, eastern Europe seems like the perfect place for Courtney to strengthen her abilities, but just as Courtney begins to tap into the mystery of the old country, she comes face to face with an overwhelming magic and even larger moral ambiguities.

Other relevant info:
Format: Trade (Collection), Hardcover
Content Rating: A (All Ages)
Street Date: Oct 9, 2013

Diamond™ Order Code: JUN131224
ISBN: 978-1-934964-92-7

I have enjoyed Courtney's adventures in the earlier books. She's sharp, observant, prickly, and still endearing.

Not so long ago, I was complaining that kids got all the good octopus and squid books. Now, not only do I have Octopus: The Ocean's Intelligent Invertebrate
by Roland C. Anderson, Jennifer A. Mather, and James B. Wood checked out of the library, I find there's another book coming out at the end of the month: Octopus!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea by Katherine Harmon Courage.

From the publisher's description:

We eat, study, copy, and idealize the octopus. Yet this strange creature still eludes our understanding. With eight arms, three hearts, camouflaging skin, and a disarmingly intelligent look behind its eyes, it appears utterly alien. But octopuses have been captivating humans for as long as we’ve been catching them. Cultures have created octopus-centric creation myths, art, and, of course, cuisine. For all of our ancient fascination and modern research, however, we still haven’t been able to get a firm grasp on these slippery beasts.

Now journalist Katherine Harmon Courage dives into the fascinating underwater world of these mysterious cephalopods. From her transatlantic adventures to Spain and Greece, expeditions in the Caribbean and back to Brooklyn, she invites readers to experience the scientific discoveries, deep cultural ties, and delicious meals connected to the octopus.

Other relevant info:
Hardcover, 272 pages
Expected publication: October 31st 2013 by Current Hardcover
ISBN 1591845270 (ISBN13: 9781591845270)

As I've been busily developing an octo-obsession lately (as anyone reading my link lists lately is likely to have guessed), I am delighted. Also, Courage writes The Octopus Chronicles blog over at Scientific American, and, having finally figured out it is a regular blog, I've taken to reading (and often linking to) it, so I'm expecting good things.

Comic Books
Three newly announced sets of comic books made me happy:

1) Marvel's Loki: Agent of Asgard was announced at the New York Comi-Con (Does the con season ever end?), and looks like it'll be starting sometime next year. It features Loki in "in an officially sanctioned new role as Asgard’s subversive defender." The All-Mother calls on him to run errands as All Ewing says in an interview on Marvel.com "There are things he wants from the All-Mother, and things the All-Mother wants from him, and they have a mutual arrangement. Essentially, as Kid Loki hinted, Loki’s fresh start is by no means a done deal; it’d be very easy for him to slip back into his old self, the super villain trapped in endlessly recurring defeats, which would be worse than death for him. The All-Mother has a way to help Loki avoid that terrible fate, but there’s some quid pro quo involved," so it sounds like he'll get to be a slippery sort of hero.

I'm not at all familiar with Marvel's Loki outside of The Avengers and Thor (where I loved him--who didn't?), but I do like the mythical Loki, and it sounds like they've got a good take on him.

Read more in this interview on Marvel.com with writer Al Ewing and artist Lee Garbett

2) Starting somewhat sooner--as in, this week, is Boom! Studios Imagine Agents, a four-issue mini-series by writer Brian Joines and artist Bachan about a pair of agents "whose job it is to keep the products of kids' imaginations in line." Their current challenge? A little boy and his teddy bear. Sounds like it has the potential to be spooky, silly, and strange all at once.

Read more on USA Today

3) Dark Horse is putting out a series of Firefly comic books that take place after Serenity! Serenity: Firefly Class 03-K64—Leaves on the Wind #1 (of 6) will come out January 29, 2014. Zack Whedon is writing and Georges Jeanty is the artist. So, while we won't get to see the show on TV, we will at least get to see the story continue, and I'm glad. One of the saddest things about the cancellation is that we never got to see the full scope of the story, never got to found out "What happens next?" Now we do.

Sadly, it does take place after Serenity so Shepherd Book and Wash will both still be dead, no retconning here.

Two links up there in that little blurb? Both are from Io9; the first will take you to a longer (older) announcement with some sample pages (one I missed the first time around); the second takes you to a newer announcement and includes a cover image.

4) I reviewed Fairy Tale Comics: Classic Tales Told by Extraordinary Cartoonists for SpeakGeekytoMe. I'm not going to repeat the review here (not linked due to site difficulties), but I will say that it was a fantastically fun read and a book I'm delighted to have stumbled across. I definitely plan to read the earlier Nursery Rhyme Comics: 50 Timeless Rhymes from 50 Celebrated Cartoonists.

From the publisher's description:

From favorites like "Puss in Boots" and "Goldilocks" to obscure gems like "The Boy Who Drew Cats," Fairy Tale Comics has something to offer every reader. Seventeen fairy tales are wonderfully adapted and illustrated in comics format by seventeen different cartoonists, including Raina Telgemeier, Brett Helquist, Cherise Harper, and more.

Other relevant info:
Hardcover, 128 pages
Published September 24th 2013 by First Second
ISBN 1596438231 (ISBN13: 9781596438231)

You almost certainly do want to take note of the ISBN. The downside of the title is that searches for "Fairy tale comics" invariably turn up other stuff. This includes links to Fables, which is also good (though much, much darker, and limited to the adult audience), so you might be interested in the results, but they won't help in locating this specific fairy tale book.

And I think that's all for this week! Did I miss anything awesome? If so, contact me or let me know in the comments.

Book Review: Chalice by Robin Mckinley

This is one I picked up while in the mood to reread (see my initial review here).

In Chalice, Mirasol, a beekeeper and woods-tender must learn to help run her segment of the country while trying to bring the lord of the land back from his near-total transformation to an inhuman priest of fire. She must also contend with political intrigues she barely understands. It is not made easier by the fact that, while she is a very good beekeeper, she was never trained in the rituals of her new status and has no training at all in politics.

Chalice is a leisurely read, perfect for a relaxed day. A lot of it focuses on Mirasol's daily life as she tends her bees, studies her new role, and tries to apply the things she used as a beekeeper to life as a Chalice--someone who comforts the land and sees to the people's daily needs.

This is one of Mckinley's many retellings of Beauty and the Beast, and it shares some of the traits with Beauty and Rose Daughter. As with those, the heroine has some special bonding to the land and, as with those, she has a mundane talent that helps keep her anchored in the magical world. Where Beauty/Honor loved her horses and her books, and Rose Daughter Beauty knew and loved roses, Mirasol knows bees and plant care, and draws both her magical and practical strength from their presence. In all three cases, the seemingly trivial aids in the large.

This is not to say the books are mere echoes of one another. They aren't, not by a long shot. Chalice stands up well on its own with hints of a long history and tradition that I was dying to learn more about. Much as I loved Mirasol, I also loved the land she lived in and I wanted to see more of it. I wish there were going to be a sequel! There's room for a sequel, but of course there never will be. McKinley never writes sequels--Except when she does--see Pegasus and Blue Sword (sort of)).

Other Reviews
Bookshelves of Doom
Erin's Bookshelf

Links of Interest
Chalice on Amazon
Robin Mckinley's home page. The spot where you can find out which book is coming up next and why the book coming out this year isn't the Pegasus sequel but another book entirely (but Pegasus II is coming, and I'm definitely planning on reading Shadows) and other such items. Also there's plenty on the absence of sequels, and some on gardening, and lots of footnotes.

Today is National Chocolate-Covered Insect Day

It is not, you will note, national insect day.

It is national chocolate covered insect day.

Now go celebrate it!

You note the day's title says nothing about eating the things. You just have to celebrate them.

If you want to celebrate by eating, there are recipes for you.

1) How to Make Chocolate Covered Insects is a nice, general EHow tutorial.

Step one:

Place mealworms, crickets or grasshoppers in the colander and cover with a screen or a large strainer to prevent insects from escaping. Rinse thoroughly and drain.

.

And so it goes down to the actual covering in chocolate and eating part.

2) Chocolate Covered Crispies--from ASU. This one features bees!

3) Chocolate Covered Ants On ChefDepot.net which starts with the practical advice "avoid red ants, too spicy"


And, yes, I'm wavering between "horrified" and "fascinated" here myself. I may or may not try any of these. If you do--let me know!

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland--Down the Rabbit Hole Not Quite a Review

I quite liked it. It has:

1) An Evil Queen (the Red Queen) who gets her fashion tips from the same place Regina (Once Upon a Time) got hers.
2) A knave of hearts with adorable accent
3) A rescuer (of sorts) who stands with his arms folded while Alice fights her way out of the asylum.
4) A marshmallow swamp. Gotta love a show that combines true love and a marshmallow swamp.
5) A rabbit with purple eyes.
6) Did I mention the marshmallow swamp? It has fire-breathing dragonflies, and Alice stops to have a conversation there. It's really gooey. Her planning skills are probably a bit rusty after the whole insane-asylum thing, but don't worry--she gets out.

Til next week!

Currently, Down the Rabbit Hole is up on hulu and on ABC for free & will be for the next few weeks, if they keep to their usual schedule. I usually find Hulu has fewer hiccups than the ABC version, but either way, have fun!

Doctor Who: Sections from The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear found

As any Doctor Who fan knows, rumors of missing episodes have been swirling for some time. Fans hopes have soared as estimates ranging from sixty to one hundred and six episodes found stashed in Ethiopia-or-maybe-it's-Zambia have been shared and as people have listed favorite missing episodes and hopes.

BBC has finally stepped up and confirmed the less-glamorous truth: Nine episodes from two stories have been found. The Web of Fear is now almost complete--it's still missing episode #3, and the company now has all the episodes from The Enemy of the World.

Two new full (or nearly full) episodes from the Second Doctor's era is quite a find; Troughton's era is sadly underrepresented in current collections.

However, I do have to admit that I wish BBC had gone ahead and announced it yesterday rather than announcing that they were going to announce and giving everyone an extra day plus of highly-caffeinated guesses and hopes.

No one has mentioned yet where the episodes were kept in hiding.

Here's to the half-filled glass, and to a few hours of happy black-and-white viewing in the future.

Episode names and numbers come from the BBC Doctor Who Blog

PS: Do go see the clips they've put up!

Edit: Just after I posted this, someone pointed me to This article from DoctorWho TV. The episodes were found in Nigeria.

Link List: Petrifying Lakes, Octopus Brains, Books, and More!

1) This lake is petrifying its visitors. Lake Natron in northern Tanzania has a high concentration of natron means that animals that die there--and that's any animal immersed in the water--are calcified. Photographer Nick Brandt saw the perfectly preserved bird carcasses on the shore and did what anyone would do: He posed them and took pictures.

They're somewhere between creepy and beautiful, and very suitable for Halloween contemplation.

Found on NewScientist.

2) The brain of the octopus is distributed rather than single-site, housed in a downright anti-social invertebrate, and generally not the sort of thing we humans think of when we think of thinking. And yet--octopi learn. They learn well, and they learn pretty quickly.Possibly they even used tools.

They can also be cranky, unwilling to keep wires in their heads so we can measure their brain waves and, having decided to pull the wires out, are flexible enough to enforce that decision.

In short, they're a fantastic way to study a completely alien brain without leaving earth, and a good way to tease ourselves with the ongoing question "What does it mean to be intelligent?" and "What equipment is required?"

Lots more analysis and comment in this Wired article!

Book News

1)

I just found out that Tony Hillerman's daughter, Anne Hillerman, is continuing the Navajo mystery series. She's made Bernadette Manuelito (a relatively minor character in the series) a major character in Spider Woman's Daughter. It sounds to me like a winning solution: We readers get to have more of the Navajo mystery series, but by focusing on a different character, Anne Hillerman gets to tell her own stories.

It's not even unprecedented in the series as a whole; it started out focusing more on Leaphorn and then Chee moved into the spotlight with Leaphorn taking more of a support role, so if Anne Hillerman's work goes past the two works she's currently contracted for, it would be in keeping with the series as a whole to let Bernadette move forward to the lead and develop her own set of friends and relatives while Chee and Leaphorn move more to the back--without, one hopes disappearing completely!

I love the way she refers to Leaphorn and Chee as "adopted uncles."

From the publisher's description:

It happened in an instant: After a breakfast with colleagues, Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manualito saw a truck squeal into the parking lot and heard a crack of gunfire. When the dust cleared, someone very close to her was lying on the asphalt in a pool of blood.

With the victim in the hospital fighting for his life, every officer in the squad and the local FBI office are hellbent to catch the gunman. Bernie, too, wants in on the investigation, despite regulations strictly forbidding eyewitness involvement. Her superior may have ordered her to take some leave, but that doesn't mean she's going to sit idly by, especially when her husband, Sergeant Jim Chee, is put in charge of finding the shooter.

Pooling their skills, Bernie and Chee discover that a cold case involving his former boss and partner, retired Inspector Joe Leaphorn, may hold the key to the shooting. Digging into the old investigation with fresh eyes and a new urgency, husband and wife find themselves inching closer to the truth with every clue . . . and closer to a killer who will do anything to prevent justice from taking its course

Need I say I have the book on hold at the library?

Now I also want to read Tony Hillerman's Landscape: On the Road with Chee and Leaphorn by Anne Hillerman, which is about the Navajo country featured in Tony Hillerman's work and which I have to admit, I hadn't heard of until now.

2) Quirk Books is releasing sequels to Star Wars: Verily a New Hope! Verily a New Hope. The Empire Striketh Back will be out March 2014 and The Jedi Doth Return in July 2014. Both are by Ian Doescher, writer of Verily a New Hope.

In case you missed the trailer for Verily a New Hope, it's still available.

Random Cuteness

There's nothing like a lion cub learning to roar to brighten your day:



Found on Io9

TV Stuff

Did you know ABC was airing Toy Story of Terror on Wednesday, October 16 at 8pm/7pm Central on ABC? You do now! So do I, and you better believe I plan on watching.



With thanks to Io9 for the heads up.

Book Review: Fairest. Vol. 1 Wide Awake by Bill Willingham (Author) and Phil Jimenez (Illustrator)

Yes, I'm in love with this series!

Fairest: Wide Awake is another spinoff from the main series, but it's by Willingham himself, so it has the balance of fun and seriousness that the tale does so well, plus a good stiff dose of the multi-layered fairytale play: Ali Baba, the Snow Queen, and Sleeping Beauty are main players, and then there's a bottle imp.

It's a spinoff, but it is more closely tied to the main stories than some. I really, really, really don't recommend reading it until you're at least past Volume 16 of the main series, not if you don't want some more spoilers. In fact, if you haven't gotten that far and you do mind spoilers, you should probably just accept that Fairest Vol. 1 is awesome and skip the rest of the review, because there are going to be a couple of spoilers for Fables.

What's Fairest about?

It goes back to battle tactics in Fables. Remember how Sleeping Beauty's curse put everyone around her to sleep? The Fables used this against their enemy, taking her to a major city and having her prick her finger. She thus put an entire enemy city to sleep and was left there to keep them from waking. Later, soldiers were instructed to move and guard her carefully. The problem? There were two beautiful maidens found asleep in the city. Both were collected and left in the center of a camp. Now, a resourceful thief, Ali Baba, has found a bottle imp who leads him to the princesses. He wakes both. One is Sleeping Beauty, one is not. There could be true love ahead. There could be death.

The bottle imp really steals the show here. Oh, the thief and princesses are great, but the bottle imp is the one using his wits and words to shape the tale and he's fantastic. I love the fact that he really wants to be mischievous and cause trouble, but his orders mean he can't--at least, not mostly. This is also the first retelling of "The Snow Queen" I've ever liked.

Also, there is a really heart-breaking "Beauty and the Beast" story at the end. The volume would be worth it just for that.

I don't really recommend this for people who haven't been reading the main series; it will make you want to read the rest, and you'll go into the book with some major plot elements spoiled, but if you like the series, but are unsure about spinoffs, don't wait any longer. Pick it up!

Other Reviews
The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia
Book Banter
Fyrefly's Book Blog

Links of Interest
Fairest: Wide Awake on Amazon.
Bill Willihngham's website
@BillWillingham on Twitter
Phil Jimenez website

A Bookish Dilemma

The libraries were a little too efficient this time. I am in a deep dilemma, trying desperately to figure out which of these books I really, really, really want to read to start with and which I want to risk having to return unread because these are all new and/or popular.

These are the books I'm not likely to be able to renew because most of them are new


Fairest Vol. 2: Hidden Kingdom by Bill Willingham & Lauren Beukes (authors) and Inaki Miranda (Illustrator) Willingham's Fables are among my favorite ever books now.

Octopus: The Ocean's Intelligent Invertebrate by Jennifer A. Mather, James B. Wood, Roland C. Anderson I'm curious about cephalopods. Very.

Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 4: Realm Of Kings by Dan Abnett (Author), Andy Lanning (author), Brad Walker (Illustrator) I love Guardians. OTOH, it is a reread & out of order...

The Urban Bestiary: Encountering the Everyday Wild by Lyanda Lynn Haupt I loved Crow Planet and I like books on urban ecology generally.

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily A New Hope by Ian Doescher. Shakespear + Star Wars. How can I not?

Joyland by Stephen King--sort of an outlier because I don't like horror but on the other hand, I do like noir & a nearby book group is reading it and I'm curious about Stephen King.

Shadows by Robin Mckinley. I mean--new book, Robin Mckinley. How can I resist?

Leonardo's Foot: How 10 Toes, 52 Bones, and 66 Muscles Shaped the Human World by Carol Ann Rinzler It's a micro-history of feet. I do need to at least try it, right?

ROY G. BIV: An Exceedingly Surprising Book About Color by Jude Stewart I love books on color and color history and the meaning of color and such.

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld I probably can renew this one--probably--but on the other hand, I just finished Leviathan and I want to know what happens next!

Evaluating these, I have to add that Gulp is taken care of, unless I review it--and I want to--and Guardians probably is--unless I want to hope I can get the other books in the Realm of Kings before it's due.

Not pictured: A Night in the Lonesome October by Zelazny, which is due it's semi-annual Halloween reread in time for the upcoming book group because I can probably fake it if I need to and can likely renew it, The New Avengers: Everything Dies by Jonathan Hickman (author) and Steve Epting (Penciler) because it just didn't fit into that pile and I can probably get it read on time, and assorted other books that I can probably renew, but really do still want to read (Like Spooks by Mary Roach. This is the perfect time of year for it. Last year I read Stiff) for the same reason.

What to do? What to do?

*Dithers

Book Review: Avengers Arena vol. 1 Kill or Die by Dennis Hopeless(author) and Kev Walker (Illustrator) and Alessandro Vitti (Illustrator)

I picked this up because I wanted to find out what happened to Cammi post-Guardians of the Galaxy, which I loved and am rereading, not because I liked the premise, so you're fairly warned: Kill-or-be-killed is not my preferred genre, and Avengers Arena₍₁₎ only reinforced my non-preference.

I still don't really know about Cammi₍₂₎. She gets to show up at the beginning, right before she and a lot of other teens, some of whom I recognized, some of whom I did not, are captured by some bored villain to and stashed, his own private little cut-off pocket of space wherein he can manipulate stuff so they have to kill one another in order to amuse and entertain him. Hasn't this guy heard of TV?

In any event, he isn't much amused as the teens spend most of their time wandering around trying to figure out if there's a way off. (There isn't, yet, or we wouldn't have volume 2. I hadn't realized when I checked this out that there was a whole series planned₍₃₎) and vaguely discussing how not to kill anyone, while someone or another is staging sneak attacks. I think one or two characters might actually have died in the attacks, but not only is this hard to be sure of for comic book reasons (people turn out not to be dead all of the time for various good and bad reasons), it's hard to keep track because I only recognize a few of the characters and only really know a couple, so it's hard to keep them straight. This combination drastically undercuts the "suspense": It's hard to care who's doing what to whom if you don't know why they are in the first place, and harder still of a drowned team mate isn't actually dead after all.

Mostly, everyone persists in wandering around talking and not fighting. This is an odd thing for me to complain about, since I don't actually want them to fight; I haven't even read Hunger Games, for crying out loud, and that's supposed to be really good. I just want them to do something, to have some sort of a story, and they don't--there's no option but to kill, and little desire to kill, so the plot options are severely limited.

There's not even much by way of character development, the sort of thing desert island scenarios are built for. Oh, they talk, and someone everyone thought was nice turns out to be a nasty, manipulative sort, but I didn't know her enough before to find this surprising, or even to know if I was meant to find it surprising, or how surprising anyone else on her "team" finds it, or even to remember her name, so it's a wash in terms of development or caring.

Not even the guy who assembled the bunch appears to have thought things through much. Arcade's teenage "contestants" include Cammi, who is entirely normal human in terms of strength, Darkhawk, who isn't actually a teen, and a cyborg girl, who has had no training at all--she's barely had time to realize she has implants. You'd think if the guy wanted excitement he'd have gone for the more explosive and trained sorts.

By the end of this volume Arcade, like the reader, decides not enough is happening. Rather than taking this as a cue to abort the experiment and take up crocheting or chess, he opts to up the stakes a bit by making survival-without-killing even harder. The abductees still stubbornly refuse to go Lord of the Flies, though there are ominous hints that Things are Only Going to Get Worse.

I'm not holding my breath.

---
(1) Named that because a small segment of the stolen teens are Avengers in training. Why their teachers haven't found them yet, I don't know.
(2) Except that she's doomed. She may have good survival skills, but they're the sort that mean forming strategic alliances and knowing when to run. There is no way for her to be the last one standing in a pure power fight. So, yeah. She's doomed, and Drax (if Bendis remembers to have him remember her) will have something more to angst about. Basically, Murder World is a giant refrigerator. No one is going to get a heroic death; the survivor(s) will get to mourn, and that will be that. Unless, that is, someone hits the reset button.

(3) It would work better as a six-issue miniseries, I think. That would actually open the door for more options: They could overcome Arcade, outwait Arcade, actually act like heroes....

Relevant Details
Paperback, 144 pages
Published May 21st 2013 by Marvel
ISBN 0785166572 (ISBN13: 9780785166573)

Author: Dennis Hopeless
Illustrations: Kev Walker & Alessandro Vitti

Links of Interest
Avengers Arena on Goodreads

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