book review

  • It doesn’t have to be Greek to us

    I needed something to take the weight of Arrival off my mind. Daryl Gregory’s Spoonbenders was a very effective and enjoyable salve. It’s Daryl’s clever observations about life and the poesy he wraps it in that makes Spoonbenders such potent medicine. When we are introduced to Teddy Telemachus, he is cruising for women in the

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  • Sensibility and Discovery in Ted Chiang’s Speculative Fiction

    It’s been months since I finished the stories in Ted Chiang’s Arrival. Before that I had binged Rick Remender’s Black Science comic book series. It was a struggle to get through the opening story in Ted’s book. After the kinetic shootouts and chases of Black Science, it was a challenge adjusting to the slower pacing

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  • Billy Dean Sounds Out War

    WARNING SPOILERS!!! As I read David Almond’s The True Tales of the Monster Billy Dean Telt By Hisself I kept thinking of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Both stories center around preadolescent boys who have become part of an ad hoc families. Gaiman’s Bod is adopted by the graveyard’s ghosts and Almond’s Billy, while still

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  • Jughead as Thurber Man attending Degrassi High

    Jughead is best when his story stops being THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY and attempts to be Degrassi High. I preferred Volume 2 of Chip Zdarsky’s Jughead over Volume 1. It felt a little deeper than the first. More thoughtful. Volume 1 felt unimaginative despite the Jughead’s fanciful daydreams. It was formulaic and overly

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  • Goodreads Review – We Are Robin Volume 2: Jokers

    We Are Robin…, Volume 2: Jokers by Lee Bermejo WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILERS! It’s the last story in WE ARE ROBIN VOLUME 2: JOKERS, “The Hero Business,” that I enjoyed the most. The inclusion of “Jokers” made the volume’s title provocative but the story itself was a let down — No new addition or twist to

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  • Goodreads Review – Gotham Academy Volume 2

    Gotham Academy, Vol. 2: Calamity by Becky Cloonan WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILERS! Waiting for the next volume of your favorite comic book series is like waiting for the next season of your favorite TV show to stream on Netflix. Sometimes it takes too long, so you forget certain details that help the story in the new

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  • Hemon’s Book of Lives

    Aleksandar Hemon’s book of essays, The Book of My Lives reminded me that when I moved back home after failing to make it on my own after college, Yugoslavians were leaving their homes to escape what The Atlantic called “horrific acts of ethnic cleansing” in a “long, complex, and ugly” war. Hemon’s book documents his search for a new

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  • Jacob Mendelsohn All Knowing All Seeing in All My Goodbyes

    I tried to find a song or video the summed up the tone of Jacob Mendelsohn’s book without the religious assumptions but Godspell’s “Day by Day” captures the daily conflicts of his characters most perfectly. I spent my summer getting to know Wilson Vincent (who was once accused of a terrible crime), Laurie (who used

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Vincent Young