Title: The Sculptor
Author: Scott McCloud
Genre: Graphic Novel
Stars: * * *
I have complicated feelings about Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor. I very rapidly became immersed in the narrative, so much so that I blew through 200 pages while standing around in a store. However, despite the ease at which I devoured the book, it wasn’t wholly satisfying as McCloud relies too heavily on overused tropes and fails to rise above what other writers have done, often better, before.
SPOILERS AHOY
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.
Title: Will-O-the-Wisp: An Aurora Grimeon Story
Authors: Tom Hammock and Megan Hutchinson
Star Rating: * * *
Genre: Graphic Novel, Mystery, Paranormal
NOTE: Review copy obtained via NetGalley.
Synopsis
After her parents died from accidentally ingesting poisonous mushrooms, Aurora is sent to live with her estranged grandfather deep in the southern swamps. Not only must she contend with this cantankerous old man, but she must figure out how to fit in with the diverse residents of Ossuary Isle. When strange occurrences begin to happen, she starts to explore the realm of Hoodoo magic alongside a priestess from the swamp in order to protect her new community from a vengeful spirit.
The following two reviews are going to be short because I find it hard to write about books that I really enjoy. Instead of giving people a fair and accurate description of the good and the bad, I just want to run around in delight, babbling about all the things that I liked. To prevent my review from becoming just a series of animated gifs, I’m going to challenge myself to be brief and concise in my attempts to encourage people to read the latest volumes of both The Unwritten and Locke and Key!
Also, since both books are new or soon-to-be-released entries in popular series, let me be clear that there are at least some SPOILERS AHOY!!!!
Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of London
Authors: Sylvain Cordurié (Author), Laci (Illustrator)
Star Rating: * * *
Genre: Graphic Novel, Mystery, Paranormal
NOTE: Review copy obtained via NetGalley. Publication date is February 11, 2014.
Synopsis
After the events at Reichenbach Falls, Sherlock Holmes goes into hiding. By convincing everyone that he is dead, he hopes to avoid any reprisals for his part in Moriarty’s death. However, he finds himself drawn back to London for a case from a very strange client. Individuals linked to the royal house are being brutally killed, and it is not the queen that has sent for him, but a demonic master vampire who needs Holmes to track down a rogue monster. With Watson and his wife being threatened, how can Holmes crack this case without handing over his soul to the proverbial devil?
Title: The Night Wanderer
Authors: Drew Hayden Taylor (Author), Alison Kooistra (Adaptor), Mike Wyatt (Illustrator)
Star Rating: * * * *
Genre: Graphic Novel, Indigenous Narrative, Paranormal
NOTE: Review copy obtained via NetGalley
Synopsis
Pierre L’Errant is an Anishinabe man who has been away from home for centuries. When the desire to come back becomes too much to bear, he flies to Otter Lake to deal with his inner demons. However, when he arrives, he finds himself embroiled in the problems of the family that he is staying with. Tiffany, the teenager of the house, is struggling. Her parents are separated, her boyfriend isn’t treating her well, her grades are dropping at school, and her dad refuses to understand her difficulties. By intervening, Pierre not only helps Tiffany start to sort through her issues, but he comes to a conclusion about his own struggles.
Continuing on yesterday’s thread of RRRs for graphic novels, here is part two!
1. The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Ship that Sank Twice – Mike Carey
Star Rating: * * * * *
The Unwritten is one of my favourite graphic novels series, and this standalone prequel did not disappoint. Tommy Taylor and the Ship that Sank Twice gives readers a deeper glimpse into the mind of Tommy’s father. At the same time, a huge chunk of the Tommy Taylor story is revealed. Themes and plots that were hinted at in the main series are shown in detail, and this background helps readers make sense of what is happening to adult Tommy. I also really enjoyed seeing how the Tommy Taylor story was an amalgamation of so many different stories. A definite recommend for fans of the series!
2. Blacksad – Juan Diaz Canales, Juanjo Guarnido
Star Rating: * * * * *
Have you ever wanted to read a set of noir mysteries about anthropomorphic animals? Well, you should because Blacksad is amazing. Canales and Guarnido capture the feel of the genre perfectly, and the art is absolutely stunning. I was amazed at just how detailed and carefully composed this volume is, and the mysteries themselves were enjoyable and touched on important themes including racism and political corruption. This incredible book is vying for a spot on my top graphic novels of all-time list.
Who could say no to this amazing art?
3. Uglies: Cutters – Scott Westerfeld, Devin Grayson, and Steven Cummings (Illustrator)
Star Rating: * *
The Uglies is a four book series by Scott Westerfeld that dealt with a dystopia where everyone was made pretty, but brain damaged in order to maintain social order. The books starred Tally Youngblood, a girl who tried to protest the system, but kept finding herself used by those in power. It was an interesting and fun series, but I always thought that Tally’s friend Shay was far more interesting than Tally herself. This graphic novel series, therefore, was made for me. Grayson and Cummings retell the Uglies story through the eyes of Shay, a character that is actually quite a bit more active in her choices than Tally, and they do so in the form of a manga.
Cutters is the second volume of the Shay series, and while I enjoyed the first retelling, this one was not quite as enjoyable. The problem with a retelling is managing to keep the story interesting without repeating everything that went on in the original work. Unfortunately, Cutters loses this balance, and the story is choppy and feels incomplete. These narrative choices make it difficult to follow what is going on, even if you’ve read the original series. I also found the art to be a detriment to the story. In this volume, Tally and Shay are pretties, young adults who have undergone extensive plastic surgery to become aesthetically perfect. However, the manga style that this story is drawn in makes it hard to distinguish pretties from uglies! I would recommend this book for fans of the series, but I hope that volume three addresses some of these problems.
4. Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand – Jim Henson, Jerry Juhl, and Ramon K Perez
Star Rating: * *
If I was rating this book solely on the art, it would have received a five star rating. The illustrations are gorgeous in their fluidity and delicateness. The story, however, is lacking. A dude is trying to make it across the desert and a bunch of weird stuff happens to him (including some racist caricatures). It’s not really a story so much as a collection of emotional vignettes, but since I felt no connection to the characters, it was hard for me to engage with these feelings. I’m glad this was a library read rather than something that I purchased since I am unlikely to reread it again.
5. Habibi – Craig Thompson
Star Rating: *
Craig Thompson is one of the super stars of modern graphic novels, and Habibi is widely seen as an absolutely stunning piece of work. I, on the other hand, loathed it and couldn’t even bring myself to finish. While the art is beautiful and detailed, showing that that the author spent a lot of time researching his subject, it’s also sexually exploitive, and the themes that the novel brings up make me very uncomfortable.
The story centers on the tale of Dodola and Zam, two refugee slave children who are attempting to survive on their own. Dodola is a highly sexualised character, often portrayed naked and in sensuous poses. However, she is raped multiple times, and engages in sex work to ensure that she can feed Zam and herself. Zam falls in love with her, and I had to stop reading around the point where he begins to fantasise himself as the one who is assaulting Dodola. It is rare that I don’t finish novels that I start, but flipping through the rest of this behemoth of a book showed me that Dodola was going to undergo more exploitation, and the way that it was presented made my stomach churn as her naked body was portrayed in a sexualised manner that did little to showcase the violence of what was happening to her. I was also very uncomfortable with the racist implications of much of the novel. All in all, this is one of my least favourite graphic novels, and I can’t in good conscience recommend it.
Back in May, I started a habit of noting down everything that I read with an accompanying bit of text about the book’s topic and what my thoughts on it were. Shortly thereafter I discovered GoodReads and the book review blogosphere, and this is what inspired me to start my own blog. However, I’ve run into a bit of a problem: I read too fast. I can’t write full reviews quickly enough to keep up with the books that I finish, but I often have at least some brief comments to say about what I read. Consequently, I have decided to launch “Rapid Response Reviews”, named so because saying RRRs is fun. These are meant to be short reviews for books that I just don’t have as much to say about or ones that I don’t have time to write a full review on. They’ll be released in sets, possibly with themes, possibly not when I am lazy. In any case, it will be a good way of getting myself back into the habit of commenting on a bigger selection of my reading material.
Today’s theme is graphic novels that I have read within the past little while. I swear I’ll get back to writing about other types of fiction soon. I have been glutting myself on comics ever since I got a library card in my new city and discovered that their collection is vast and amazing. Consequently, this RRR is going to be longer than I anticipate most will be so that I can get through the vast majority of graphic novels that I have built up over the past little while.
Title: Thumbprint
Author: Joe Hill, Jason Ciaramella, Vic Malhotra (Illustrator)
Stars: * *
Genre: Graphic Novel, Murder Mystery, Horror
Today’s review is a bit shorter than normal and not in my usual style because I do not have a whole lot to say about Thumbprint. I received a copy of this graphic novel off of Net Galley, so I wanted to make sure that I completed a review. However, I didn’t actually enjoy the book all that much. There isn’t much objectively wrong with Thumbprint, it’s just not what I expected from Joe Hill. I am a big fan of his Locke and Key series, but his fantasy-horror books have nothing to do with this latest war-based work.
Thumbprint is the story of a woman soldier coming home from the war in Iraq after having done horrible things. She’s got PTSD and flashbacks, and is absolutely convinced that someone is out to get her. As it turns out, the threats that she is receiving are not a paranoid delusion, and part of her past life is coming back to hurt her.
It’s not that the story in Thumbprint is necessarily uncompelling, it’s just that I’ve read similar tales before and this one isn’t really giving readers a new perspective. There’s a lot of graphic violence and shock tactics in use, but I’ve seen these things before, and frankly, their use in stories is starting to strike me as a bit gratuitous. The biggest weakness of Thumbprint is that its grand message is not particularly grand. Human cruelty is a reality, and war messes people up quite badly. I would have appreciated a theme that was a bit more subtle and nuanced, and an ending that was clearer in what it was trying to convey.
All of the above being said, there are people out there who are going to love Thumbprint. In many ways, it is a short and powerful work. It didn’t do much for me, but I am already very familiar with the horrors of war (thank you, political science background and general news junkieness). There are those for whom this will be a new and horrifying story, and this book may be a five-star read for them. However, this review should serve as a warning to those who are coming in because they love Joe Hill’s work in general. This is not Locke and Key, and you will be disappointed if you are looking for a similar story in this book.
Title: Lazarus
Author: Greg Rucka (Author), Michael Lark (Illustrator)
Star Rating: * * *
Genre: Graphic Novel, Dystopia, Sci-fi
NOTE: This review is based off an advance copy of this book from Net-Galley.
Synopsis
Forever started her day by dying. Her enemies, however, didn’t realise that Lazaruses don’t stay dead for long. In a world controlled by a small number of families, the Carlyles created Forever to be their protector by altering her body to become a perfect fighting machine that can rejuvenate itself even when critically injured.
When war is about to be declared on the Carlyles by another family, their Lazarus is sent to arrange a peace treaty with them. The discussions end well, but Forever is betrayed by a family member who tries to kill her before she can deliver this news. After surviving the attack, she is left with the question of who can she trust in this crumbling world?
Maggie's Towering Pile of Books 