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Paper Girls (Vol 4) by Brian K. Vaughan
This is the fourth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper Girls, and we are finally given enough glimpses of the larger plot to make sense of what’s happened until this point.
[SPOILER TERRITORY AHEAD – DON’T READ UNLESS YOU’VE READ VOLUMES ONE-THREE]
After being thrown into the distant past and battling cavemen and befriending fierce natives, the girls once again in their future (and our past), namely during Y2K before the millenium.
January 5th, 2019. Stuart Starosta´s rating: 5 | Brian K. Vaughan | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Criminal (Vol. 4): Bad Night Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Jacob Kurtz is the focus of Bad Night, the fourth volume of Ed Brubaker’s wonderfully disturbing noir series Criminal. His job is writing the newspaper comic strip that shows up in Criminal (vol. 1): Coward. The comic, based on Dick Tracy, is entitled Frank Kafka, Private Eye, and it’s as puzzling as the stories written by Franz Kafka, after whom he’s named. Frank is put on cases that go nowhere with leads that could never result in understandable clues.
December 29th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Criminal (Vol. 3): The Dead and The Dying Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
The Dead and The Dying, the third volume in the Criminal series by Ed Brubaker, continues the noir tales that began in volume one. In this series, we get the background on a few characters we’ve already met in the previous two volumes, and we are reminded that in the world of noir, the meaner you are, the more likely you are to end up on top,
December 15th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live by Rob Dunn
Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live (2018) is a mouthful of a title. Which is only appropriate as abundance is one of the major themes Rob Dunn highlights in this utterly fascinating book. The rich, fecund abundance of life not of the world “out there” (though that, too) but the world “in here,” where we live — our homes.
December 11th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Criminal (vol. 2): Lawless by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
In Criminal (vol. 2): Lawless, Ed Brubaker tells a noir story of family loyalty. One brother — a criminal — dies and the other seeks justice, doing what he can to be an avenging angel on the wrong side of the law. When we meet Tracy Lawless, he’s been in the military, and for some unexplained reason, he’s been thrown in the hole for eighteen months (we do get the explanation later in the book). When he gets out,
November 24th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Peter S. Beagle’s classic The Last Unicorn (1968) turns fifty years old this year, and it’s remained in the public eye and continues to capture hearts like very few fantasies of its age. Like a fine tapestry, this gorgeous fairy tale weaves together unicorns and harpies, wizards and witches, dark-hearted kings and brave heroes. Its lyrical language is embellished with whimsical humor and given heft by bittersweet life lessons.
A shy unicorn keeps to herself in her lilac wood,
November 19th, 2018. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Peter S. Beagle | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Criminal (Vol 1) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
In Ed Brubaker’s Criminal (vol 1): Coward, we get noir comics at their best. Until I first read the Criminal series about ten years ago now, I was still not persuaded that comics could be a great form of art. But once I read this series, I was convinced I should read more: I thought, if comics can be this good, then there must be many more out there like this one. And so my passion for comics began with the story of Leo,
November 17th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Batman: Year One by Frank Miller
Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) completely reinvented Batman as an angry and bitter older man coming out of retirement to stem a rising tide of crime in Gotham City alongside Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. This was a dark vision of a complex and troubled soul driven to fight crime to avenge his parent’s senseless death, and it resonated with a new generation of readers and gained comics greater credibility among mainstream readers. Just one year later Miller produced a four-part story arc called Batman: Year One (1987).
November 10th, 2018. Stuart Starosta and Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Frank Miller | Comics, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Let’s get this out of the way early. Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver (2018) is not perfect. It’s a little overlong, with a bit of a pacing issue about two-thirds of the way through. Beyond that, other problems include … no, wait. I forgot. There are no other problems. And I lifted up each and every page to check under them. Zip. Nada. Nothing. So yeah, the biggest problem with Spinning Silver is kind of like the problem you have when the waiter brings out your chocolate cake dessert,
November 9th, 2018. Bill Capossere, Tadiana Jones, Taya Okerlund and Nathan Okerlund´s rating: 5 | Naomi Novik | Locus Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 9 comments |
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
“Here is a small fact. You are going to die.”
It is Death who speaks the novel’s opening lines. And Death himself, for the duration of Markus Zusak’s bestselling novel, will be our narrator. It is 1939 in Nazi Germany and whilst he takes away an increasing amount of souls, Death muses on the unravelling of humanity.
Upon taking the soul of a young boy on a train, Death notices a girl. Her name is Liesel Meminger and she has just watched her brother die.
November 1st, 2018. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 5 | Markus Zusak | Edge, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.