Fables Vol. 1, by Bill Willingham

Man, I really wanted to like this book. I tried to like it, all the way through, but save for a few moments of amusement I was largely unimpressed. This is not The Unwritten, sadly, and maybe my love for that comic colored my view of this one? I'll need to do some SCIENCE to find out.

In the meantime, let me tell you why this book should have been awesome:

First, I mean, fables. I have really grown to enjoy satires/homages of fairy tales and the like, and that's exactly what this is. In this comic series, the inhabitants of, like, any imaginary story have been exiled from their respective homelands by some mighty Adversary and now live mostly in NYC, except for the non-human ones (or non-able-to-pretend-to-be-human ones) who live on a farm upstate. Which sounds kind of ominous, actually, I hope they're okay. In this particular volume we have Old King Cole as the mayor of Fabletown, Snow White as his deputy, the Big Bad Wolf (aka Bigby) in pretend-human form as a cop/detective-type, and lots and lots of other favorite characters doing many and varied things. Oh, and Bluebeard shows up and I totally know who he is this time! Thanks, Neil Gaiman!

Second, it's a murder mystery. Bigby's case here is the mysterious disappearance slash probable murder of Rose Red, whose apartment is covered in blood almost like that one episode of Dexter and whose man-friend Jack (of Beanstalk fame) is eager to find out whodunnit. I love murder mysteries, and in this case I get to actually see the crime scene for a change! Graphic novels are cool like that.

So, fables and murder. Fantastic. But, here's why it failed for me: the writing. It was very comic-book-y with the emphasis on all the important words but also sometimes on words that seemed to be fine on their own and I was like, wait, what? He said that sentence how? Does he speak English? (Does he speak English? Does he speak English? I could do this all day...)

Ahem. And then also Willingham tried to be all cutesy and self-aware with the dialogue and it comes out instead all verbose and clunky and awful and like absolutely no one anywhere would actually talk, and I am like, omg chill out, which is easy for me to say from this end of an extremely run-on sentence but WHATEVER. It's a comic book! I want to look at the pictures!

Example: Bigby says to Snow White, "This isn't about Prince Charming. It's about your sister, Rose Red." And of course no one talks like that unless they're Expositing, and so Snow White calls him on his BS and says, "This may surprise you, Mister Wolf, but I'm not entirely an idiot. I actually know my sister's name." Unfortunately, this is ALSO not how anyone talks unless they're putting on a show for a listener, of which there are none that are not the reader. A simple "Yeah, that's her name, what about her?" or "Do I have another?" would easily have sufficed, but no-oooo, and that's how the whole rest of the book goes and it is tiresome.

The concept and the general execution are so good, guys, and if you are more forgiving of terrible dialogue than I am you will probably really like this series, which I imagine goes on in the same vein. But I can't do it. Let me know how it goes?

Recommendation: Fables, MURDER, pretty pictures. Is this your bag?

Rating: 5/10

The Unwritten Vol. 3, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Nooooo I forgot to pace myself and now I have to wait some unknown amount of time for the next volume! Nuts! But my husband got his hands on it and he's the type of person who accidentally spoils things on a regular basis, so really I had to read it. Had to.

And it is so fantastic. Even if you don't want to read this series, track down this volume at your library and find the page with the amusingly terrible rip-off of His Dark Materials. And then flip forward to the other page that looks like that one and that gets in a dig at George Lucas with a reference to "meta-condrians." Totally worth it.

Other things that are totally worth it: one of the issues that makes up this collection is a Choose Your Own Adventure. Did I mention FANTASTIC? My husband and I proved our perfectness for each other by choosing the exact same path through the story (we apparently are fans of evil evilness), but I also went back and read through a few other iterations and a) they were all interesting and b) some paths made sly winks at other paths that you wouldn't notice except if you read them all. Oh, AND, the whole point of the choosing of your own adventure is to make the point that you, you know, get to do that with your life. Hands-on morals? How intriguing.

Story, you say? There is one, but why aren't you just reading it? Seriously. Okay, fine.

Our friend Tom is presumed dead but still on the run from the Shadowy People. Someone has written a terrible fourteenth (yes, fourteenth) Tommy Taylor book and even though the publishing house knows that it wasn't Tom's dad, they're totes willing to make a jillionty-twelve dollars off of it. It includes the aforementioned scene with Lord Gabriel explaining Powder to Tommy Taylor. Oh, yes. It turns out that the SPs wrote it to bring Wilson Taylor out of hiding, which may or may not end up working. Also, we find out who Tom's mum is and we sort of find out what Lizzie Hexam's deal is ("sort of" because part of it is the CYOA). And if they're giving away all this information now, I am very interested in finding out what they aren't telling me!

I'll just wait here, impatiently, until I can find out.

Recommendation: For people who don't mind parodies of beloved children's fantasy series, people who like to choose their own adventures, and fans of the garrote.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

The Unwritten Vol. 2, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I held out as long as I could, but after The Unwritten's super-intriguing start, I just couldn't stay away! And it's still super-intriguing and also baffling and also heartbreaking.

So last time there was Tom Taylor, the namesake of a bigger-than-but-basically-a-ripoff-of-Harry-Potter book franchise who is either not actually his father's offspring and therefore not worthy of the Tommy Taylor franchise or actually Tommy Taylor and therefore an unknown-to-himself Man Wizard. Which is still pretty much where we are, sort of.

Now, at the end of the last book someone murdered a whole bunch of people and Tom was the only one around to take the blame, so this story arc takes place in a French prison overseen by a governor who is not sympathetic to minor celebrity. But the prison thing isn't really important, what's important is all the people in it. Tom makes unlikely friends and allies with some of the inmates and makes a huge enemy of the governor for what seems at first to be no reason at all. Except that then we go look at the events from the governor's perspective and you find out that he has these kids who are obsessed with Tommy Taylor to the point of believing in his real and actual existence, and the governor is not pleased that Tom has effed things up big-time. Oh, and then those shadowy people from the last book decide to burn down the prison. No big.

Also, a trip to Nazi Germany via magical doorknob and an... interesting meeting with Josef Goebbels. Also, also, in the non-Tom comic at the end, an adventure with a foul-mouthed rabbit in a sort of Winnie-the-Pooh land. It's all very delightful, really.

I think the best part about this series so far is that even with the ridiculousness and insanity, it's all very literary. It loves literature and references it, in the form of the aforementioned Pooh spoof and an extended riff on the Song of Roland and of course all of the Harry Potter/fantasy-in-general allusions. It is also way more than its premise; sure, there's adventure and potential wizardliness, but there's also a lot to think about in terms of the role of media, the effect of childhood heroes on children and the adults who love them, and the magical power of attention. That middle one is what leads to the heartbreak in this volume, big time, as it does in real life.

I am definitely in for the next volume, and almost definitely for getting off my duff and patronizing my local comics shop for the issue-by-issue comics when the time comes. It's good stuff.

Recommendation: Yeah, you'd better have that strong stomach for some of the violence in here, and also a strong heart. A love of the f-word can't hurt, either.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

The Unwritten Vol. 1, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I don't remember where I first heard about this series... one of those blogs or podcasts or something that tells me what's good. I don't remember what I was promised, either, but whatever it was I liked it enough to give it a shot.

That forgetting posed a bit of a problem in the first few pages, which I read and thought, "Whaaaaaaaaat is this? This is not very good. What's with all these words? It's a graphic novel!" And I really almost gave it up right then, but I said to myself, I said self, you've done this before and maybe you should just give it a little bit longer.

And of course, I was right. The second time, with the reading just one more page. Because it turns out that first three pages or whatever are meant to be pages from a not-graphic novel series that is like Harry Potter et al. and therefore is written as a send-up of Harry Potter et al. And once I figured that out, I was much happier!

The real novel, the graphic one, is about this fella called Tom Taylor whose father wrote the aforementioned series that instead of Harry Potter is Tommy Taylor. Tom is emphatically not Tommy, but is still making a living going around to all the cons and whatnot signing Tommy Taylor signatures and talking about his father's work, which his father can't do because he's gone mysteriously missing, or possibly just abandoned everyone. And right now Tom has two opposing problems causing him no end of trouble — a group of people who think he's not really Tommy Taylor but some kid his father absconded with to make himself look good, and another group that thinks he's totally Tommy Taylor, magical wizardry and all. And some people in that last group would really rather him dead...

There's so much to this story, I've barely cracked the surface of it, which makes sense considering these are just the first 5 comics of an ongoing series. But other interesting things so far are Tom's obsession (given to him by his father) for literary locations, a mysterious staircase that has more stairs going down than coming up, people possibly made of words, and some revisionist-history backstory involving Rudyard Kipling.

I may or may not have gone right out the day after reading this volume to get the other two that currently exist. I might have to track down a comic shop if I get through those too quickly...

Recommendation: So far, I'd recommend for people with a good sense of humor about fantasy conventions and a slightly strong stomach.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, A to Z Challenge)

Death Note Vol. 8, by Tsugumi Ohba

Nrrrrrrt.

That's about the only sound I was capable of making after this book EXPLODED MY BRAIN. If you've read any of my other Death Note reviews, you're going to be like, "Yeah, yeah, I get it with the brain explosion, get a new phrase, lady." But I can't. Because my brain has exploded. Again.

Okay, so. Light's sister has been kidnapped, and the kidnappers, led by a chocolate-loving mini-L want the notebook in trade. Light comes up with a plan to not do that last part, but the kidnappers are way wily-er and they temporarily hijack a plane and take Light's dad out to the desert where they're keeping his daughter underground in some crazy revolving door trap and there's no choice but to give up the notebook and now the kidnappers are like, sweet, and go killing all the people they don't like.

But of course there's still another notebook, and a person who can see people's names to write them down in it, and so Misa is still useful and Light still hangs out with her, even if her sexy underpants do absolutely nothing for him. Poor Misa.

AND Light is working with the American special ops team headed by the other mini-L, who at first acts like he's never heard of the first mini-L and then is like, "Oh, no, I totes know him. And must defeat him."

Oh, also, there's a third Shinigami who apparently owns one of these notebooks? I don't remember this from the previous books but I remember so little that I will go ahead and believe it, and he totally messes everything up.

And then a bunch of people die, and then Light contemplates killing, like, everyone else, including Misa. Because that's what you do to the people who love you, right?

This is all very confusing, I'm sure, because the book is super confusing, and there are still like five books to go and I might suffer a mental breakdown before I finish them. But I still want to finish them. There is something very wrong with me.

Recommendation: Probably you should NEVER read this series, because you're just going to get sucked in and your brain is going to explode and you're going to think it's a good idea to keep reading them. But still, you should read them.

Rating: 7/10
(RIP Challenge)

Anya's Ghost, by Vera Brosgol

I heard about this book over at the NPR a couple weeks ago, which makes this an incredibly fast turnaround, for me, for hearing about, ordering up, and reading a book!

It almost didn't happen, though. The first few pages of this graphic novel are all, "Wah, wah, I'm an immigrant child and I don't wanna be, I wanna be AMERICAN and get skinny by eating LOW FAT POP TARTS and I have crush on a guy with a GIRLFRIEND and I get so little allowance I can only buy ONE pack of cigarettes a month, wah wah," and then Anya falls down an abandoned well and I am like HAH YOU DESERVE IT THE END. And I closed the book, and was like, well, there's that then, but then I was like okay, fine, I'll stick around at least 'til the ghost. And then I didn't stop reading.

So, yes, there's all the immigrant stuff, which is rather like the other First Second book I read, American Born Chinese, and really, I shouldn't have doubted, because also like that book Anya gets hers for all the whining and becomes a much better person by the end. Spoilers? Probably not.

What happens is, she falls down this well and finds a skeleton and then finds a ghost, who is all, "I've been trapped down here for 90 years and really, couldn't you help me see the world a bit?" at first, and becomes very slowly more creepy and then menacing and the art is wonderful because you can literally see this change happening. And, as in all good horror stories, the creepy and menacing parts of the ghost are really just exaggerations of Anya's own life and potential future.

And even if you're not into finding-yourself stories or ghosts or whatnot, there's plenty of horrible high school stuff you can look nostalgically back on, like tests you haven't studied for and showing your British-style pants in gym class and finding out that the hot guy at school is a total loser, actually, and did I say nostalgically? I meant HOLY HECK AM I GLAD I AM NOT IN HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE.

Recommendation: Right, so, yes. Give this one a chance!

Rating: 9/10

Death Note Vol. 7, by Tsugumi Ohba

Hey there, Death Note! How have you beeeeeen for the last seven months? Good? Good!

So when last we left off... um... stuff was happening. There was this notebook, and you could write people's names in it and they would totally die, and that was kind of interesting, and then this kid with God-aspirations was like, "I'm'a totally kill all the bad guys in the world" and that was pretty awesome except that there are, like, laws and stuff and so the police decided to go after God-kid, who happens to be the son of the police chief guy, which is all complicated, and then God-kid started having to kill some good guys, which is terrible, and then God-kid made with the crazy-ass LOGIC and PSYCHOLOGY and managed to escape the police largely by forgetting that he ever had this mysterious notebook in the first place.

Yes. That. That's totally what happened.

And I don't recommend forgetting all of that yourself before reading this seventh volume, because right from the start the writers are like, lets have some weird stuff happen that makes no sense but we'll explain it later! Which is good, except when I don't realize that I shouldn't already know what's going on and sit there with a confused look on my face instead of reading the five pages I need to get to the part with the explaining. Not that the explaining is very explainful. I'm still confused.

'Cause basically, in this one, God-kid, aka Light, remembers that he had the Death Note thing, and it turns out that he totally planned to remember this and that he's got some crazy logic/psychology plan to get his Death Note back without getting caught as the killer, and also to kill anyone who might ruin said plan. And it's brain-hurty but also awesome, and it mostly works, except that the killing-people part only encourages NEW people to come out of the woodwork to track Light down, like I didn't already have enough characters to keep straight. Which I did.

Luckily, I have the next two book in my possession now, so I might actually get around to reading them in a timely manner!

Recommendation: Oh, you should totally read this series (if you don't mind things that make your brain explode), but you should probably start back at the beginning. :)

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Global Reading Challenge: Asia)

I Saw You..., edited by Julia Wertz

This is an odd little book. It has a long subtitle, like so: "Comics Inspired By Real-Life Missed Connections, filled with near misses, brief encounters, strange sightings, lusty longings, and a little hope for love." I'm... not really sure what to say about it.

Okay, well, so it's a series of comics, that's a good start. And they're all based on Craigslist "missed connections" ads, which can be awesome or depressing, and are therefore sometimes awesome and sometimes depressing. I'm not clear if all of these comics are actually based on specific Craigslist postings or if some are just sort of made up, but they all sound pretty plausible.

Also, each comic is done by a different artist, so there are a lot of different art styles and different takes on how to illustrate a missed connection — some are straightforward and beautifully rendered, a couple take the Craiglist ad and turn it into something super-creepy (though I suppose some of the ads are!), most are somewhere in between. All of them give you a little insight into the kind of person that might find themselves writing to a hottie they've possibly barely spoken to.

For the most part, I found the comics a bit boring and/or predictable, but a couple really stood out and made me happy in my heart, so it wasn't a total loss.

Recommendation: For people who surf the missed connections, because maybe there's something you need to know. :)

Rating: 6/10
(A to Z Challenge)

V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore

...Interesting. That's how I would describe this book. I love the movie version, which I've watched at least once a year (on Guy Fawkes Night, natch) for the past several years, and this year someone reminded me that it was, you know, a graphic novel first, and maybe I should read it? Yes, maybe I should. So I requested it from the library, and it took forever to arrive, and then I renewed it a couple of times, and then finally I says to myself, "Self, you've gotta just read this thing. Go." So I did. It took a while, largely because I started a job in the middle of it and I'm still working out how to read print books (I listen to audiobooks at work) on my new schedule. But I read it and it was interesting.

The story is this: There's a dude, and he's called V, and he dresses like Guy Fawkes, and he blows some stuff up, and you're like, cool. He is blowing stuff up because he lives in a fascist state run by basically Big Brother, with help from a computer, so we've got some good dystopian tropes in there. At some point, he saves a girl called Evey from some police-type people who are going to do terrible things to her, and she sort of becomes his apprentice. Also, the fascist state does not like V and is hunting him down, and slowly learning his backstory (which is kind of nuts) in the process.

The book is actually quite different from the movie — and this necessarily is how I have to approach this review — with more creepiness in V's backstory and seedier government officials, and actually much less blowing stuff up, which is disappointing but understandable for the medium. I quite liked all of the extra things I learned about Larkhill, where V was imprisoned, because it made V make more sense, but much of the stuff I learned about the government officials (they're corrupt! promiscuous! ne'er-do-wells!) was rather tedious. More creepy smiling masked people, please!

All in all, I did like the novel, but it won't top my yearly dose of explodey things any time soon.

Recommendation: Definitely read it if you've seen the movie, or if you generally like dystopia and intrigue in pictorial form.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Death Note Vol. 6, by Tsugumi Ohba

Oh. Em. Gee.

This is another of the books I've read recently only because they were due back at the library. After things got very wonky in the last book, I was not sure I was going to like this next one.

But I did.

Things? Still wonky. L still doesn't trust Light, which is as it should be, but now also he's decided to go after Kira whatever the costs while the ex-police guys are like, um, shouldn't we try to stop him killing people even if we can't catch him? So there is a split, and Light gets caught on L's side even though he doesn't like it on account of the handcuffs that keep him attached to L at all times. Oh, and also on account of his girl-thing Misa being really excited about being used as bait to find Kira.

But! While Misa is doing the bait thing, she discovers that in fact she used to be a Kira and that Light was also one (they had made themselves forget this previously), so now she has even more leverage with the new Kira, provided she doesn't slip up in front of the people who want to capture her. Who are also the people she is acting as bait for. And it's all crazy and stuff.

But but! It gets even crazier when the plans start to come together and the new Kira is being chased and herded and almost caught... but then the book ends in a bit of a cliffhanger. And to make things worse, my husband says that what happens next is EVEN MORE INSANE. I am going to have to go track down book 7, like, yesterday. Sigh.

Recommendation: This stuff is insane, yo. Read it if you don't mind your brains EXPLODING EVERYWHERE.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook, by Eleanor Davis

I love volunteering at the library. The other day I found myself roped into hanging out in the children's section, shelving their series and "display" books, which usually means graphic novels. One of those latter books was this one, which I grabbed right off the cart and kept with me through all the rest of the sorting and shelving I did that day, just so no one else could take it from me!

And I am very glad I did. This is an excellent book! We have our hero, Julian Calendar (teehee), who is a Big Ol' Nerd but sees a chance to reinvent himself when his family moves to a new school district. Of course, being a Big Ol' Nerd is not a curable disease, and so Julian finds his new persona slipping away rather quickly. Luckily, there are some other kids in school who are equally as nerdy, and they group together to form a Secret Science Alliance (with an AWESOME secret hideout) with the goal of inventing things useful to 11-year-olds, like secret message pens and a flying machine. Unfortunately, these things are also useful to crotchety old inventors who are too lazy to do their own work...

I adored this story and the wonderfully crammed illustrations that go with it, and I'm pondering getting this for my 12-year-old brother who loves science-y things. There's so much stuff to look at that it will definitely do well under incessant re-reading, which is always a good thing. :)

Recommendation: For Big Ol' Nerds, especially those with ADD who will have lots of shiny things to look at.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Book Nut

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

So. The movie version of this series came out a while ago, and I was intrigued but not movie-going-money intrigued, but my brother was like "OMGSCOTTPILGRIM" and so I decided to get the first book and see what it was about. Of course, the queue for it at the library was forever long, so it took me like a month or two to get it, and by then I wasn't really super-interested anymore, but then last week I realized it was due back at the library the day after I looked that information up, so I figured I'd read it.

And boy, am I glad it was short, both because I was able to finish it before it had to go back and because I didn't really like it. Now my brother is going to complain at me.

But... really. There's this kid... well, I say kid, but he's 23 and I'm pretty much that old too, so whatever. This kid, Scott Pilgrim, and he's dating some high-school chick, and he has a band, but then some girl starts entering his dreams, like LITERALLY, and then he meets her and he likes her but he has to fight her evil ex-boyfriends first but that's okay because Scott's the best fighter in Ontario which we find out when he's fighting the first ex and also there's some musical-style choreographed backup dancing fighting something....

That's pretty much the entire story. Sorry for spoiling it for you? But I'm still very very baffled. I think this might actually be something I'd like more if I could watch it. Onto Netflix this movie goes!

Recommendation: Good for people who don't need any of that fancy "logic" stuff interrupting their story. Also people who are rock-band-y nerds, I think.

Rating: 5/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

The Night Bookmobile, by Audrey Niffenegger

Oh, Audrey. I know we've had our differences before, but I was hoping that maybe if you wrote another book with a librarian in it, we'd be good as new. Sadly, I am still ambivalent.

This is a super-duper short story, told in a graphic format, and there's not much I can say without giving the whole thing away. Baaaasically, there's a thing called a Night Bookmobile, which is a sort of mobile library that comes when you need it. Or something. And it holds all of the things you've ever read in your life. And the main character, Alexandra, finds her bookmobile and becomes a little obsessed with it, as I imagine one might.

And so that's an interesting premise, but then the story goes a little crazy at the end, there, and a whole host of issues crop up that would be interesting to address but that do not get addressed. Niffenegger writes in the "After Words" that this is the first installment of a larger work, so I hope that perhaps I will get to see that larger work and that it will tell me what the heck is going on.

Recommendation: Eh, it's a quick read and it's certainly ripe for discussion... probably an interesting pick for a voracious reader.

Rating: 5/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Y: The Last Man Book 4, by Brian K. Vaughan

I ended up reading this one pretty quickly after the last because I seem to have gotten Scott interested in the series and thus I didn't want him stealing this before I got a chance at it. Because I'm territorial like that. But now I think Scott's going to end up reading them first...

Okay, so, book the first was all exposition-heavy and kind of annoying, but then book the second was a lot better with the action and the plot moving forward, and then book the third was pretty equally okay. But then I got completely squicked out and a little derailed by this book, and I can only hope the squicky stuff NEVER COMES BACK AGAIN.

I'm sure it was at least a little on purpose, but these weird scenes in which repressed sexuality is made unrepressed and some odd form of torture happens really made me cringe. It was just so... weird and awkward and so seemingly completely irrelevant to the story (which is actually how I feel about the Israelis in this series, too, now that I think about it) that I just wanted that half of the book (yes, half) to be over now!

Luckily, once it's done you can see that there was, in fact, a point to all the awkward and it actually makes me feel a little less annoyed with Yorick because he becomes a slightly less annoying person. So that's a plus. And the second half of the book is fairly interesting, with yet another set of crazy people and an equally crazy throwdown between them and our heroes (who are still Yorick, Mann, and 355).

So... I think I'm going to put this series away for a little bit and come back to it once I can repress those unrepressing scenes. Makes perfect sense, yes?

Recommendation: Ehhhhhh... let me get back to you on this. If it makes sense in the overall story, I'll give it a thumbs up.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Y: The Last Man Book 3, by Brian K. Vaughan

More Yorick! Good times! Well, good for me. Not Yorick. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Let's see, who's a player in this book? We're still following Yorick, his monkey Ampersand, 355, and Dr. Mann on their journey to California. But there's a quick detour in Kansas when a terribly accented Russian shows up ready to rescue some male astronauts (well, one is obviously a cosmonaut) on their Houston-unsupported return to Earth. Which would be going fine, except...

The strange Israeli army people are back, apparently following the orders of Yorick's mother who thinks that 355 is going to do something terrible to Yorick... or something. It's not terribly clear. What is clear is that the Israelis' leader is bent on kidnapping Yorick for herself... not like that. Maybe like that? Okay, not as clear as I thought.

Who else, who else... there are some geneticists, which is cool. Oh! Right! And a troupe of actors who stage a play about the last man on Earth, make meta-commentary on this series ("If there's one thing I hate, it's crappy works of fiction that try to sound important by stealing names from the Bard"), introduce me to a work by Mary Shelley called The Last Man (which is on my TBR pile effective immediately), and piss off a bunch of Kansas ladies who really just wanted someone to continue their stories (you know, soap operas) for them.

OH. And then there is someone called Toyota who for some reason wants Ampersand. I imagine that will come back again quickly.

So all in all the series remains on a high level of ridiculousness tempered by an intriguing question and some fine illustration.

Recommendation: Yeah, you should probably pick up this series. It's pretty cool.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Y: The Last Man Book 2, by Brian K. Vaughan

This is definitely better than the first collection of the series, mostly because there is nearly 100 percent less exposition. So relaxing to just read a story!

The plot is still generally the same, of course — Yorick is probably the last man on Earth, making him a very hot commodity for many groups who want him in varying levels of alive. A government operative called 355 and a Dr. Mann would like to figure out why he's still alive and possibly clone him, because that would be useful, but the group farthest to the "dead" end of the aforementioned spectrum is hunting this little group down as they travel from Boston to California. They make it as far as Ohio in this book and stir up quite a bit of trouble in the process.

This series continues to provide an interesting answer to the "what if we got rid of all those pesky men" question, though the focus on the Daughters of the Amazon in this set got pretty tedious pretty fast — I get it, they're a cult, they're quite crazy, can we move on now? But of course we can't, because Yorick's sister has gotten herself caught up in the crazy.

With any luck, things will get crazy in a different direction in the next book.

Recommendation: Read the first set; if you like it, read this!

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Y: The Last Man Book 1, by Brian K. Vaughan

I'm getting smart on this A to Z Challenge thing and picking books to read from my long TBR list on GoodReads. Birds! Stones!

This book is the first volume of the collection of Y: The Last Man comic books. In this set we learn that some mysterious and possibly ooky thing has eliminated all of chromosomally male creatures on earth (humans, monkeys, chinchillas, whatever), except for one human, Yorick, and his monkey, Ampersand. Yorick has no idea why he's still alive, but he's more worried about finding his girlfriend slash possible fiancée than pretty much anything else.

Of course, there are other players in this new world — at the beginning of the comic we are introduced to a woman with an amulet that too many people want to get their hands on, an Israeli army officer who gets a quick promotion after all the dying, a scientist with a cloned fetus that dies during birth (the fetus, not the scientist), a secret agent known only as 355, a group of "Amazons" who cut off their breasts and fight with bows and arrows and generally want to kill men and also women who don't follow their path, and a majority Democratic government under siege by the wives of the Republican congressmen who died.

There is a lot of stuff going on here, and I am intrigued to see how it plays out in the future, but I'm not terribly thrilled with the characters or the storyline thus far, probably because everything is in big-time Exposition Mode. I think I'll give the next volume a chance and see what happens.

Recommendation: Good for fans of apocalyptic and other generally problem-ridden universes, and those with an eye for pop-culture references.

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 5, by Tsugumi Ohba

Another one of these Death Note books... in this one things get rather more wonky than they have been previously, which is to say VERY WONKY.

Light gives up his Death Note (that thing that lets him kill criminals), and with it his memories of using said Note, which leaves him wondering if he could ever have been Kira — could he kill people in the name of justice? He thinks probably not. Mmhmm.

And he does it in a pretty strange fashion... he lets L (the guy trying to find Kira) see him locked up, with no one dying, then after he doesn't remember anything anymore a third Kira starts killing people, so now L thinks maybe the power just gets passed around? And maybe Light was Kira but now he's not? Which seems like not the right way to go about it, but okay. Also, L is a jerk and spends too much time testing people and eating cake and not enough actually solving crimes, so far as I can tell. What will the next book bring?

Recommendation: Um, well, you'll want to start at the beginning. But I would definitely recommend this series to anyone who is intrigued by ethical dilemmas and doesn't mind being very confused very often.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 4, by Tsugumi Ohba

Not much to say here... this series is really addictive and also confusing beyond belief. In this book we have shenanigans with the second Kira, who has the ability to learn anyone's name just by looking at that person (thus being able to kill said person more easily than Light can), more "I have to say this or L will suspect that I'm Kira, but also saying it might make him think I'm Kira too so, um, crap," and then a ridiculous ending that I for one did not see coming and which can only make the books after this even more confusing. AND it was less boring and repetetive than the last one. Good work, everyone!

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Foiled, by Jane Yolen

I've started to really like these graphic novels... they're often cute and quick and brimming with delightfulness and pretty pictures.

This book definitely had the pretty pictures, but I'm not really sure where Yolen was going with the story.

The plot, as far as I can tell: Aliera is a high-school outcast and a top-notch fencer. Her mother has bought her a new weapon from a tag sale, and it's pretty awesome except for the giant ruby-looking thing on its handle. Also, there's a new and also very hott kid in school, who is Aliera's new lab partner, and Aliera is all tongue-tied around him. He's weird, but cute, and the crushing is on. And then he asks Aliera on a date and some WEIRD stuff happens. Like, super-weird. Like, I would have read an entire book about the weird stuff and been delighted, but it doesn't fit with the beginning of the book at all.

Sigh. It's really pretty! And I can sort of draw some meaning from the story, like that people aren't always what they seem. But I'm still confused about this book. Maybe someone can explain it to me?

Rating: 6/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2010, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Stuff As Dreams Are Made On...

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.