Review: Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine by Tim Hanley

Title: Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine

Author: Tim Hanley

Star Rating: * * * *

Genre: Pop culture analysis, Superhero

Thanks to NetGalley and Chicago Review Press who provided me with a free copy of this book in return for a fair review.

 

Background and Synopsis

Wonder Woman is a very hot topic at the moment due to the immense popularity of superhero movies, and the unfortunate absence of female leads in any of these films. For Marvel, the conversation has been focused on Black Widow, a character that has at least gotten screen time. For DC, the heroine at the heart of these discussions is Wonder Woman, one of their “holy trinity” of main properties. However, despite the fact that she is supposedly one of the central DC characters, Wonder Woman is often ignored in terms of merchandise and non-comic appearance opportunities. This has led to a situation where most people could probably talk about the histories of Batman and Superman, but are largely ignorant of Wonder Woman’s origins and basic story premises.

Hanley published Wonder Woman Unbound to try and clear up some of the confusion regarding this iconic character. He painstakingly details her history, from the golden age to today, talking about how her stories have been affected by different authors and varying time periods. To those who think Wonder Woman is too confusing a character, Hanley proves them wrong by presenting Wonder Woman as a hero who has undergone extensive changes like all the other major superheroes of DC and Marvel, but she has multiple histories and origins that can be drawn upon to make a cohesive, interesting, and empowering whole.

Review – Nepture Noir edited by Rob Thomas

Title: Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars

Editor: Rob Thomas

Star Rating: * * *

Genre: Literary and pop culture analysis

Note: Review copy obtained from NetGalley.

Synopsis and Background

Before I can talk about the book, I have to talk about a TV show: Veronica Mars. Long story short, go watch it. Go watch it right now! I am not generally a TV person, but Veronica Mars is one of my absolute favourite stories. It’s a noir mystery series with a spunky teenage girl as the protagonist. It’s dark, morally challenging, and has a complex and imperfect female main character that drives the show forward. The show ran for three seasons, but was cancelled in 2007.

So why talk about a TV series that was cancelled several years back? In 2013, a massively successful Kickstarter campaign was launched to fund a new Veronica Mars movie, and that movie was released on March 14, 2014 (check your local theatres!). The movie takes place several years after the series when Veronica is a fully fledged adult coming back to Neptune to help out an old friend. I went to see it on opening night, and I can guarantee that fans are going to enjoy this new addition to the Veronica Mars canon!

But what about Nepture Noir? This book is a compilation of essays written about various literary and social aspects of the series with commentary from Rob Thomas, the creator of the series. The essay authors, fans of the series themselves, explore many different aspects of the show, including the symbolism that it uses, and discussions about why the show worked so well.

The Good

If you have not watched Veronica Mars, this book is not for you (yet). But for fans, it’s an interesting addition to the series that celebrates some of the best aspects of the show.

Some of the essays are quite unique, and I really quite enjoyed Chris McCubbin’s piece on why Veronica Mars has a surprisingly big conservative fanbase, and Lawrence Watt-Evans’s character analysis of the cars used in the show. I was also a big fan of the two essays from Joyce Millman and Amy Berner on the role of fathers in the show, particularly the focus on Keith Mars who is one amazing fictional dad. While there was nothing truly ground-breaking presented in this volume, the authors caught onto little details that add quite a bit to one’s experience of the series.

The Bad

Despite my enjoyment, there are some downsides to the book. For one, the pieces were all written before the third and final season came out, so there is a lot of speculating about future development that is no longer relevant as the show moved forward. But since I enjoyed seasons 1 and 2 quite a bit more than season 3, this didn’t bother me at all.

For people looking for more critical academic work on this show, Neptune Noir is more of a lighter, analytical look at the show. This isn’t a fault unless you come in looking for something deeper than you will get, so don’t expect scholarly quality and depth. Just enjoy a series of essays produced by a bunch of articulate fans of the series.

There was only one essay that I truly did not like in Neptune Noir, and that was Heather Havrilesky’s “The Importance of Not Being Earnest”. Before I explain my discomfort, I should give readers a spoiler warning for the show and a trigger warning for content involving sexual assault. One of the most controversial plot elements of Veronica Mars is that the main protagonist is a rape survivor. It’s an integral aspect of her backstory, and part of the reason that she is so driven to root out the evil in Neptune. In Havrilesky’s essay, she concentrates on talking about Veronica as a world-weary teen that has crossed into adulthood too soon, specifically in relation to her views on love. She applauds Veronica’s maturity in understanding that love isn’t this perfect state of being, and that the people you love can hurt you. She then goes on to talk about her first high school breakup. However, this comparison is pretty tasteless when one realises that Veronica’s issues with love arise out of the fact that her first love dumped her without telling her why (and she later finds out that it’s because they might be half-siblings), shortly thereafter, her best friend was brutally murdered, the entire town then turned on Veronica and her father for attempting to solve the crime (Veronica’s dad was the sheriff at the time), she was drugged and raped at a party when she tried to fit back in with her former group of friends, the new sheriff refused to believe her when she reported the assault, and her mother ran off when her father lost his job. In short, Veronica’s views on love have been affected by some severely violent and emotionally disturbing events that are not equal to an average high school breakup. To compare to the two diminishes the severity of the harms that Veronica suffered, so the essay, despite saying some interesting things, left me uncomfortable and frustrated.

Final Thoughts

If you like Veronica Mars, Neptune Noir is probably going to be a fun and thoughtful addition to the series as you wait for what Rob Thomas is going to produce next (and fans should know that the Veronica Mars movie continues in book form with the release of The Thousand Dollar Tan Line on March 25^th!).

 

Review – French Milk by Lucy Knisley

Title: French Milk

Author: Lucy Knisley

Star Rating: * ½

Genre: Graphic memoir/travelogue

French Milk is about Lucy Knisley’s month-long trip to Paris when she was 22. It is meant to be both a travelogue, as well a series of ruminations on the transition to adulthood. Unfortunately, the book does neither particularly well.

Review – After Dead by Charlaine Harris

Title: After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse

Author: Charlaine Harris

Star Rating: * *

Genre: Urban Fantasy

After Dead was a very strange and unfulfilling follow up to the Sookie Stackhouse universe. Harris writes short (often only a sentence or two long) notes on what happened to the different characters after book 13. However, many of the included characters are minor, forgettable people that readers probably don’t really care about, and several of the more popular characters suffered through very unfortunate lives. Not to suggest that events like heart attacks or divorces don’t happen, but for readers, it is really unpleasant to have your last look at a series be tainted by unhappy events that did not have the benefit of build-up or denouement.

I finished After Dead without feeling as if it had added positively to my experience of the series. If Harris was going to write something like this, I would have preferred to see longer stories about the main characters with more than just tiny hints about significant events in their lives.

I also expect that Harris may be teasing readers with future possible stories (involving Barry, Quinn, other people listed as having adventures that were unspecified), and this was annoying. After all, if we never get these stories, then some of the more interesting characters were left unexplored.

In any case, this is a book for only the most diehard of fans. It’s very short, takes under a half hour to read, and is oddly melancholy.

Review – Parasite by Mira Grant

Title: Parasite (Parasitology #1)

Author: Mira Grant

Star Rating: * * * *

Genre: Sci-Fi/Medical Thriller/Horror

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Synopsis

Sally Mitchell was seconds away from being taken off life support when she miraculously woke up. The only explanation that the doctors could suggest was that her tape worm implant managed to save her from the effects of her terrible car crash. After all, in 2027, who doesn’t have one of these helpful creatures in their guts to help control their health?

Six years after her accident, Sal remembers nothing of her previous life and just wants to move on. However, her family still wants their “old” daughter back, and Symbogen, the corporation behind the intestinal implants, is still very interested in her as a test subject. When people start falling ill to a mysterious “sleeping sickness” that seems to turn people into mindless, violent automatons, Sal’s life becomes even more of a mess. Wanting answers, she reaches out to an anonymous source who speaks to her in code, but the truth leaves her with difficult choices about who she needs to be loyal to and who she really is.

Review – No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Parenthood edited by Henriette Mantel

Title: No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Parenthood

Editor: Henriette Mantel

Star Rating: * *

Genre: Memoir/Women’s Issues

Synopsis

No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Parenthood is a series of essays from women in the entertainment industry discussing their decisions not to have children. Some contributors are happy with this choice, while others are filled with regret. All of them have faced discrimination because of their childlessness and have had to come to terms with how their lives have been affected by this prejudice.

Review – How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny

Title: How the Light Gets In

Authors: Louise Penny

Star Rating: * * * * *

Genre: Mystery/Crime

Note: Heavy spoilers throughout the entire review!

Synopsis 

After the events in A Beautiful Mystery, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache finds himself almost alone in his battle against those in Sûreté who want to destroy him. He and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir have not spoken in months, the homicide department has been gutted and stacked with disloyal agents, and it seems like Gamache is about to lose everything that he has worked for during his career. However, the Chief Inspector is not ready to give in quite yet.

There are two central plots being dealt with in this book. As with each of the novels, a murder has been committed, and it once again involves the village of Three Pines. One of Myrna’s acquaintances was murdered in her home as she was packing to visit, and during the investigation it comes out that she was one of the famous Ouellet quintuplets. To solve this case, Gamache must explore her background as a child used by her country as a commodity, and try to uncover who could have possibly wanted to violently murder a quiet woman who had absolutely no friends or close loved ones.

As he attempts to solve this mystery, Gamache is also trying to root out corruption in the Sûreté and determine exactly who managed to avoid capture during the infamous Arnot case. As he gets closer to exposing the closely held secrets of his enemies, he and his allies must flee Montreal for their safety. Who can they trust to help them, if anyone, and can they figure out what Gamache’s enemies are planning before more people die?

Review – Exodus by Paul Antony Jones

Title: Exodus (Extinction Point Book 2)

Authors: Paul Antony Jones

Star Rating: * * *

Genre: Dystopia, Sci-fi/Science Thriller

Synopsis

Emily and her dog are making their way to Alaska after the devastation caused by the alien red rain in Extinction Point. One day they stumble across a valley with a unique microclimate that has allowed it to escape the effects of the red rain, and Emily discovers three survivors:  Simon and his two children, Ben and Rhiannon. While trying to escape with them, Simon is killed by a new type of alien creature, and Ben is infected and begins to change into some sort of alien hybrid. Only Emily, Rhiannon, and the dog make it out of the mainland US and into the wilderness of Alaska, but the scientists they meet have not been telling the whole truth…

Review – Extinction Point by Paul Antony Jones

Title: Extinction Point

Authors: Paul Antony Jones

Star Rating: * *

Genre: Dystopia, Sci-fi/Science Thriller

Synopsis

One day the sky started raining red water. The next day almost everyone in the world was dead. In New York, Emily Baxter survives for unexplained reasons, a lone person in a city that formerly held millions. She discovers that a small team of scientists is alive in Alaska, far out of the reach of the red rain, and decides to take the long journey to join them. However, as she tries to escape the city, she learns that the red rain brought far more than death to the Earth. Using the corpses of humanity, this alien presence has begun to terraform the planet into a strange new place with terrifying creatures and red forests.

Review – The Eye of God by James Rollins

Hello there, book review blogoshere! Today I am launching my own little word-filled corner of the internet dedicated to my thoughts on books and stories. Rather than blather on about myself, I will jump straight into the review and direct readers to my introduction and review standards pages if they want to know more about this blog.

This review was originally posted on GoodReads in an abridged form.

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Title: The Eye of God

Author: James Rollins

Star Rating: * * *

Genre: “Science/Historical” Thriller