Conor Broekhart was made for the air. Born in the middle of a hot air balloon crash, he has ever since sought to reenter the atmosphere. As the student of a French aeronautics expert, not to mention a family friend of the king of the scientifically-curious Saltee Islands, he’s in a perfect position to make his dream of inventing a powered flying machine come true—until he’s framed for a murder that rocks the Saltees to their core. Imprisoned in the unforgiving dungeons beneath Little Saltee, Conor must now face despicable prison guards, manipulate dangerous gang members, and keep himself alive, all the while trying to escape. For he holds a secret that could change the fate of the Saltee Islands, and a certain murderous marshal doesn’t want it to be heard…
Eoin Colfer’s Airman is a fun, adventuresome romp through 1800s Ireland and the air beyond.
While the novel can appeal to readers of historical fiction, it is better read as an adventure scientist tale a la Indiana Jones. Attentive readers can learn a lot about the science and early history of powered flight from the story,but Airman is most interested in taking its readers on a daring journey from the depths of inhumane dungeons, into the atmosphere itself, and everywhere in between. It’s the kind of story in which the best scientists know how to swordfight, plans are secretly recorded on dungeon walls in bioluminescent moss, and gangs of spunky, witty street urchins are effortlessly assembled to aid the heroes. Which is to say, the stuff of Hollywood movies rather than history class. Still, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The novel succeeds at many other elements of the adventure scientist subgenre, with energetic action scenes and a memorable cast of colorful, properly exaggerated characters, even if some of the characterizations are obvious. (One character is named Bonvilain. Guess whose side he’s on.)
The only thing that I truly disliked about the story was its approach to the history of its setting. In Airman, the Saltee Islands are an itty bitty group of islands off the Irish Coast that became a sovereign nation because a king, in a supreme act of royal sass, decided to put a complaining subject in his place by forcing him to rule over the useless plot of land. This promptly came back to bite said king, for massive amounts of diamonds were then discovered in the Saltees, and since the new king was awesome, he used this newfound wealth to create a utopia, where poverty was minimal, people lived happily and scientific innovations were always welcomed and encouraged. In reality, the Saltee Islands are one big HA HA NOPE. A quick visit to the islands’ website, http://www.salteeislands.info/, reveals that the only interesting things that the Saltees ever did were be a bird sanctuary, have some pirates, and trick ships into thinking they’d be fun to ram into. Which are all neat in their own ways, but not Benevolent-Ruler-Diamond-Mining-Utopia neat. But then again, this does fit Airman cleanly into the same genre of fiction where biblical artifacts can melt faces off Nazis, so historical accuracy isn’t really a requirement.
Overall, Airman is an entertaining read, especially for readers who are looking for a fun bit of historical escapism. Fans of historical fiction and adventure will definitely find something to like in it. For similar reasons, steampunk fans may also want to give it a try. (Even though it isn’t steampunk, its historical period and energetic approach to science echo elements of the best steampunk titles.)
Reviews
Lizzie Newton: Victorian Mysteries, Volume 1 – Book Review
Lizzie Newton is equal parts Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes, a budding mystery writer who does more than write mysteries—She solves them, too. No one wants to believe this of her, though, because this is the Victorian era, after all, and women don’t do that sort of thing. This is why Lizzie must hide her talents behind a masculine pen name and send her deductions through her lawyer-in-training fiancé, Edwin. But this doesn’t stop her from traipsing onto crime scenes as she sees fit, prodding corpses, and showing up everyone who thinks she’s wrong with a cute grin and the power of logic and science.
I didn’t expect much of Hey-jin Jeon’s Lizzie Newton: Victorian Mysteries Volume 1 simply because I’d never heard of it before. Now that I’ve finished it, I can’t help but wonder why. It’s a true gem of a comic.
What’s most impressive about Lizzie Newton is the number of things that could have gone wrong in the comic compared to the number of things that it did very well. The illustration on the cover—wide-eyed Lizzie, smiling sweetly in a frilly dress—led me to expect the adventures of a vapid girly-girl who stumbles clumsily but adorably into her solutions because that’s what happens in manga where the protagonist is a cute girl. Lizzie is anything but. While she is absent-minded, it’s in an intellectual way—She’s so distracted by the thrill of solving a mystery that it never occurs to her that it is NOT OK to poke her finger into the bullet hole in a corpse’s head before the police even arrive to investigate the scene. And though she is, for all appearances, a cute Victorian lady with limited practical sense, there’s a real brain behind that bonnet, and a personal collection of books and scientific equipment to back it up. She’s a perfect combination of “feminine” cuteness and “masculine” logic, without being an exaggeration of either. Her relationship with Edwin is also refreshingly positive. Edwin himself is a capable (as opposed to amusingly bumbling) companion. Though he does, of course, become exasperated with Lizzie’s absent-mindedness, he’s ultimately supportive of her investigative hobbies and does what he can to make Lizzie’s discoveries known—in her name. In fact, in addition to portraying a female protagonist who is productively interested in science (as opposed to using science for comedic, explosive effect), the comic makes a notable effort to say, “You know that famous male scientist who discovered that thing? Yeah, half of that work was done by an un-credited woman” (in this face, Ada Lovelace, who wrote the language for the Analytical Engine that preceded Charles Babbage’s unfinished Difference Engine). Yet none of these feministic elements are ever preachy. Lizzie Newton is definitely a Girl Power/Girl-Who-is-GASP-Interested-In-Science book, but it’s more interested in its amusing characters and the details of its plot to dwell on the social concerns that it brings up.
Plot-wise, it’s an interesting whodunit, though the process Lizzie follows to solve the mystery is more interesting than the mystery itself. I never really cared about who may or may not have killed whom in the story, but that was mostly because 1) they were background characters anyway, and 2) the rest of the comic is more interesting.
The art in the book is also worth a mention. The detail that artist Ki-ha Lee puts into costumes and settings is reminiscent of Yana Toboso’s Black Butler, as is the occasional tonal shift between dark, dramatic illustration and funny chibis. In fact, I’d go as far to say that this manga is what Black Butler would be if it involved a detective and an actual point. Tonally, the two are almost identical (even if their stories are ABSOLUTELY dissimilar). The care put into the artwork also recalls Kaoru Mori’s Emma, which was noted for its artist’s obsessive interest in Victorian details, even if her character designs were a bit blah. Lee’s designs lean more toward Toboso’s distinct, expressive characters. Either way, the artwork is lovely and enough reason, on its own, to read the book.
Lizzie Newton: Victorian Mysteries, then, is an excellent manga for readers who enjoy a good mystery with wonderful art, a dash of scientific investigation, and a sneaky lot of girl power spunk. (Note: The back of the book claims that it also contains “a spot of Jane Austen,” which it doesn’t, unless you count the fact that Lizzie shares a name with one of Austen’s protagonists. Also Jane Austen was Regency, not Victorian, so GET YOUR LITERARY PERIODS STRAIGHT, MARKETERS. Anyway, regardless, Austenites are likely to enjoy it because frilly dresses and pride-and-prejudice-smackdowns and stuff.)
Ender’s Game – Movie Review
IN SHORT: Aliens invaded and kicked our butts. Now it’s our turn to show them who’s boss by unleashing our most terrifying weapon … children.
WHAT IT IS: A phenomenal sci-fi adventure with brains, beauty, and thrilling action.
WHAT IT IS NOT: This is not your typical YA movie. Ender’s story is not a cheerful one. Don’t expect much in the way of humor, romance, or people smiling. This movie is grim and down-to-business.
WHAT I THOUGHT: OMGLOLBBQ! I love this movie! As a huge fan of the book, I loved pretty much every minute of it. I even didn’t mind the changes and cuts they made. Well, at least not too much.
Ender’s Game has inherited the best from the novel and streamlined it into a truly spectacular package. Now, that’s not to say it’s perfect. It does feel rushed at times, as if the movie is straining to hold in as much book-awesome as possible. For example, Ender’s progression through Battle School is ridiculously fast, and I really wish we’d seen more of him in command of Dragon Army, but oh well. Cuts had to be made somewhere, and the end result is still thoroughly enjoyable.
Here’s the story of a boy being molded into the perfect weapon. Through one trial after another, Ender teeters on a knife’s edge between genius commander and psychopathic killer. Asa Butterfield’s performance really had me believing in the character. When you see Ender’s eyes during the Giant’s Drink, you know this isn’t a kid to mess around with.
Plus, there are the space battles. Oh man, there is some lush and vibrant eye candy saved for the movie’s climax. The battles are colorful and fun to watch, but they also give a sense of tactical depth. Instead of the chaotic melee of most movie space battles, these play out with precise formations. I love all the fighters zipping about, each so hazardously close to the next. They’re a delight to watch.
Overall, it’s hard for me to judge this movie impartially. I love the book, and that colors my views on the movie. I know for a fact I enjoyed this movie more because I’d read the book beforehand. However, that doesn’t change my opinion in the slightest.
VERDICT: Strongly recommended.
Dredd 3D – Movie Review
IN SHORT: In a dystopian future, a vicious gang leader locks down a skyscraper in order to kill two judges. Unfortunately for her, these “judges” come packing some serious heat.
WHAT IT IS: A tight, exciting action movie that entertains from start to finish. Dredd 3D is a great example of a compact, focused, well-executed story that knows what it wants to be and accomplishes it.
WHAT IT IS NOT: Well, it’s not kid friendly. That’s for sure. It’s not slasher gore, but it is a graphic movie that earns its R rating. The movie also lacks depth. The characters and the world they inhabit are interesting, don’t get me wrong, but they’re clearly not the focus. The action is.
WHAT I THOUGHT: Let’s just get this out of the way. Dredd 3D is a fantastic action movie. My first reaction after finishing it was to watch it again. It’s been a while since I saw a pure action movie that just hit all the right notes. Dredd 3D is that action movie.
The mood of the movie is well done. Here is a dystopian future where hundreds of millions live within one massive, unbroken city stretching across the eastern coast of North America. The city seethes with the energy of too many people crammed too tightly together. Its scattered law enforcement can barely hold the chaos at bay. Even though we only get glimpses of this future outside the main story arc, it still manages to feel believable.
The action is exciting, well paced, and very violent. It’s a fun movie to watch. However, all of that focus on action is going to take its toll elsewhere. Judge Dredd, the titular character, isn’t much of a character. He’s more an unstoppable, bullet-spewing force of nature than a human being. His emotional range includes: the scowl, the intense scowl, and the super extra scowly scowl.
There are some brief moments where the movie humanizes Dredd, such as when he stuns two kids holding him at gunpoint instead of shooting them dead (his normal response to problems), but these moments are few and far between.
His sidekick, the rookie judge Anderson, fairs much better. Her story arc is a predictable progression, but it is fun to watch her grow from an unsure newbie that Dredd views with contempt to a capable partner he respects. Her journey is the most interesting in the movie … probably because it’s the only character arc actually in the movie.
To sum it up, Dredd 3D doesn’t try to be a whole lot of things. It sticks to a few core ideas and gets them right. In the end, that’s why it succeeds and why it’s a blast to watch.
VERDICT: Strongly Recommended.
Ral & Grad Volume 1 by Tsuneo Takano and Takeshi Obata – Manga Review
Fifteen years ago, a child was born at the cost of his mother’s life, and through that child, a dragon appeared. This dragon obliterated the landscape and was followed shortly by a horde of Shadows–dark beasts that enter and possess bodies via those bodies’ shadows. The only way to contain a Shadow is to keep it out of the light, and so, to protect the land, the child and his dragon were sealed away into darkness. But in these fifteen years, the Shadows have grown ever more destructive, so much so that the only defense against these Shadows might be the dragon that heralded them in the first place. And so, the boy Ral, and his dragon Grad, are released from their prison and begin a quest to defeat the Shadows.
The description on the back of the book makes this Ral & Grad Volume 1 sound like a heroic fantasy adventure, but here’s how everything really goes down:
Ral is released. He promptly kills his father because OMG what kind of parent would imprison his son for fifteen years (never mind his apocalyptic tendencies), and upon seeing his kind lady tutor for the first time, realizes that women’s bodies are fascinatingly different from men’s. At which point he rips open her dress, feels up her boobs, likes them, and decides that he will help fight the shadows–to protect women. Specifically, to protect their boobies.
This is the motivation for the entire volume.
Think this is exaggeration? This is an actual exchange that occurs in the comic:
It’s safe to say that this book is aimed at pubescent boys who have just had the same realization as its main character, realized (hopefully) that it’s not proper to go around grabbing every boob that they see, and are looking for some sort of fantastic way to satisfy that sexual frustration. Here, this book satisfies. Ral gets away with all his boob-grabbing because his intentions, his tutor insists, are basically innocent (She never taught him about women, so he’s naturally curious!), and all the girls he meets are intrigued by this and, at least in one case, flock to get naked and take baths with him.
The obvious thematic problem in this manga is that all female characters are reduced to nothing more than their exciting girly bits. None of them have any characteristics beyond “cute/sexy” or “sympathetic” (i.e. “totally understanding that Ral just wants to grab their boobs”), and at no point does the comic make a serious suggestion that girls might not like to be groped by random strangers. In fact, it does quite the opposite in suggesting that groping leads to naked lady baths. Refreshingly, there is one valiant male character who calls Ral an outright pervert, but Ral’s response is that, for said character’s nobility, he’s only protecting his princess of choice because he wants to get at her boobs, too, and there ends up being truth to that. (Really, though, I suppose this can be said of any man who willingly enters a relationship with a female, regardless of his level of valiantness). Anyway, hardcore feminists are going to hate this book. (Not that it’s actually aimed at girls, but whatever.)
This is especially true of hardcore feminists who are hoping for a plot. The story in Ral & Grad is a flimsy one. Granted, story isn’t the point of this comic, but bear with me. The very catalyst of the story doesn’t make any sense because, after Ral and Grad’s initial imprisonment in the prologue, there’s nothing to suggest that their evil (or at least destructive) alignment has changed (except maybe under the guidance of Ral’s tutor, but Ral himself doesn’t seem incredibly intelligent or socially adept, so one has to wonder what exactly she was teaching him in the first place). After that the story slopes into a gather-a-party-and-go-on-a-journey style story that is mostly pictures of hot ladies punctuated by cool Shadow battles, which is really all this comic aims to be.
It’s the art that makes it readable for people who aren’t hormonal teenage males. The comic is illustrated by Takeshi Obata of Death Note and Hikaru no Go fame, and said illustrations are stellar. His Shadow designs are reminiscent of Tite Kubo’s distinct Hollow designs from Bleach, with a bit of creepy Death Note Shinigami thrown in. Panel arrangements are dynamic, and battles are a whirling blast to look at, and the detail of the character designs themselves compensates somewhat for the utter lack of depth elsewhere. Commendably, he also renders most of the female characters sexy without making them look like strippers, with the exception of the antagonist, whose sensuality is so flagrantly over the top that it’s hilarious.
Really, the same can be said of the comic as a whole. I’m the sort of reader who takes minor offense at unnecessarily scant clothing on female comic characters, but oddly, I’d be okay finding this comic under the mattress of my future hypothetical teenage son. There are several reasons for this: First, for all his interest in boobs, Ral doesn’t seem to have much interest in actual sex. That said, this book is far from being porn or a rape fantasy. Second, the tone of Obata’s art is very tongue-in-cheek. While the story itself does not seem self-aware of how ridiculous it is, the art definitely does, which is why characters’ expressions are goofily exaggerated at several strategic moments. It’s as if the very art is saying, “Hey, reader, don’t take this too seriously.”
It’s worth mentioning, though, that said future hypothetical Holoboy reader would be well-schooled in treating girls respectfully, and Ral & Grad would be understood as a piece of ridiculous escapism. A reader who has no prior inclination to see girls as anything more than boobs, meanwhile, is going to find no encouragement to do otherwise in Ral & Grad, which is one of the book’s most uncomfortable implications.
Gender issues aside, I found Ral & Grad a hilarious read. It’s not a manga that I’d actually spend money on, nor is it one that I’d actively recommend, but it’s definitely one that I’ll check out from the library just to show its absolute absurdity to my manga-reading friends. (My friends who don’t read manga would probably just find it weird and never invite me to their house again.)
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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor – Book Review
Sometimes there are books that you like. And sometimes there are books that you love so much, you want to run around the library screaming their praises and wondering why they’ve only been checked out twice because OMG THEY ARE AWESOME and why wouldn’t anyone want to pick them up because OMGTHEYAREJUSTTHATAWESOME,YOUGUYSdssfhsjfjkseyrkjhs !!1!!1@
This was my reaction to Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor.
In Akata Witch, Sunny is a girl who just doesn’t fit in. She’s composed of dramatically conflicting opposites. She was born in bustling New York City, but now lives in quiet Nigeria. Though she looks African, she differs in one big way—She’s albino. Because of this, she stands out everywhere she goes. She’s also super-sensitive to the sun, so much so that she can’t play soccer during daylight—which is even more frustrating because it’s her favorite sport, and she’s a fantastic athlete. She’s a fantastic student, too, but her teacher seems determined to punish her for it by having her strike the hands of students who don’t score as well on their work. The other students hate her. They call her “akata witch,” “akata” being a word meaning “bush animal” (and being equivalent in insult to a racially-charged term familiar in the US). She hates being different. But one day, she has a vision of the end of the world, and she learns that she may be different for a reason: She is a Leopard Person, and a special one at that.
Leopard People go by many names throughout the world, but all are people with magical abilities. Sunny is a special sort of Leopard Person known as a free agent—a Leopard Person without Leopard relatives, who, thus being a seemingly random creation, possesses magic of unpredictable strength. She must learn to use her magic well and fast, for the area has been riddled with a series of mysterious and gruesome child murders, and she may have a closer connection to them than she realizes…
Much of my love for this book, I actually attribute to Pottermore.com. I read chapters of Akata Witch between messing around on chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on said site because—let’s face it—as exciting as J.K. Rowling’s Big Announcement was a few years ago, Pottermore is all kinds of boring unless you’re a fanatical Potterhead. But I am only a moderately fanatical Potterhead, and in my 20s, so Pottermore is boring. (Now can we please have the Harry Potter MMO that everyone wanted Pottermore to be? Thanks.) Anyway, breezing between chapters of Pottermore and Akata Witch led me to the following series of realizations: “OMG Leopard Knocks is totally Diagon Alley! OMG These textbooks are like mini-monsters, too! OMG The juju knives are totally wands! They’re even divas about who gets to use them! OMG the Leopard People love brainy people like Hermione! OMG The Zuma International Wrestling Finals are totally Leopard Quiddich! OMG The Funky Train is totally the Knight Bus!” (You laugh, but admit it—you’d ride the Funky Train if you had the chance, solely because of its name.)
With these similarities, one would think “Oh, this book is just a ripoff of Harry Potter!” But the truly magical thing about it is that it’s not. The similarities between Akata Witch and Harry Potter, ironically, evolve into distinct differences because of the way Okorafor treats them. In fact, in addition to borrowing many of the things that I love about Harry Potter, it takes a lot of things that I hate about Harry Potter, and then turns them on their ear and does them better. It even takes the things Harry Potter does well and does them better. “How?” you may ask. And then you may add, “WHAT IS THIS BLASPHEMY?” But read on…
Let’s start with one of its subtler similarities, which is the series’ integral and vivid sense of setting. Harry Potter crossed hundreds of cultural boundaries to gain its popularity, but ultimately it remained a very British series. Take away the scarves; heavy, snowy winters; and dark, castle-like boarding school and you simply do not have the same reading experience. That said, just as Harry Potter could not take place in a non-British-inspired setting and still render the same story, Akata Witch could not be set anywhere but Nigeria and work. It is the African elements, combined with the sheer imagination surrounding them, that make this novel a great read.
As for the similarities that Akata Witch improves upon, the biggest is this: Both series clearly value the pursuit of knowledge. Harry Potter would have died in book one if Hermione Granger’s brain hadn’t been there to save him, and Sunny’s friend Orlu perfectly expresses the Leopard People’s opinion when he says, “Knowledge is the center of all things.” This is why the Obi Library is a respected place and why its Head Librarian, Sugar Cream, is the most revered and powerful Leopard Person in Nigeria. That’s about where Harry Potter’s appreciation of knowledge ends—“Libraries are awesome and can teach us things that help us when we’re getting into wizard trouble!”
Akata Witch values its library, but also takes its love of knowledge further than that. It’s reflected even in the Leopard People’s system of currency. When a Leopard Person learns something new, chittim—that is, the money used by Leopard People—magically materializes in front of them. The more a Leopard Person learns about magic, the more chittim they earn, and the only way to earn chittim is to continue to learn. But it’s not the chittim, or the awesome result of an all-nighter that Leopard People value. It’s the very process of learning itself, and the practical, and sometimes even moral value of the magical discovery that was made. All of the characters are expected to study, too, for reasons further explored below. They can’t be hapless heroes leaning on a Hermione crutch. And the mini-monster textbook mentioned earlier? It doesn’t move and growl because it wants to look cool and wizardly and foreboding. It moves because it wants to be read.
As for an element that I (and many critics) dislike about Harry Potter—One common complaint about the series is that Harry tends to break the rules and benefit from it, or either have the rules bent so they don’t apply to him. First year students aren’t allowed to fly on broomsticks? Pssh! Harry does it and gets a place as the youngest person ever on the quiddich team! Akata Witch doesn’t pull that. When Sunny uses her Leopard abilities in front of a lamb—a huge no-no, just like it is for wizards and magic—she doesn’t get a threatened punishment that is then revoked for Plot Reasons. She gets flogged, and then she loses her highly sought-after chance at becoming Sugar Cream’s mentee. Some of her companions suffer similar punishments for similar foolishness. Of course, while it hurts to see pain befall our heroes, I liked that there were actual consequences for infractions, rather than fortunately-placed plot twists. It adds a realistic sort of tension, in contrast to the tensions present because of the fantasy elements.
There’s also the whole Boy Who Lived-slash-Chosen One thing—a common element in many fantasy novels— where a particular character is, for whatever reason, destined to defeat a particular baddie. I hate Chosen One storylines no matter where they show up because in real life, I’ve only met, like, two people to whom I would confidently entrust the fate of civilization. Even that’s reaching a bit (‘cause, you know, saving all of humanity is a HUGE task for one person). Also, neither of these people were angsty, hormonal, pubescent teens, despite what YA fantasy novels would lead me to expect. (Granted, this is where suspension of disbelief comes in handy when reading YA fantasy.) Expectations of realism aside, there’s also the lack of suspense inherent in the typical Chosen One storyline. We know who’s going to live and defeat the baddie because the story type has already told us. Sure, Harry Potter had the whole and Neville-Longbottom-having-a-similar-backstory-and-therefore-being-a-candidate-to-defeat-Voldemort thing to keep us on our toes-slash-distract us to the end. But come on. Harry Potter’s name is in the title of the series. Of course he’d be the Chosen One. Of course he’d live and beat the bad guy. That’s how Chosen One stories work. (But maybe I’m just spiteful because I was Team Neville.)
Akata Witch doesn’t pull this either. While it’s said that Sunny and her companions’ abilities complement each other in a fortuitous, Chosen One-like way, they are frequently reminded of their absolute mortality: “There will be danger,” says their mentor, Anatov, “Some of you may not live to complete your lessons. It is a risk you take. The world is bigger than you and it will go on, regardless.” And as for that subliminal reader assurance that this rule won’t apply to our protagonists, that surely some mentor or deus ex machina will come to their aid? That hope is shot down by something as innocent as the Leopard People’s favorite sport, about which Sunny asks: “Why didn’t they stop [the match]?” And her mentor replies, “Because life doesn’t work that way. When things get bad, they don’t stop until you stop the badness—or die [italics mine].” Leopard People don’t get rescued, even if they are the protagonists. They take care of themselves, and if they get themselves into bigger messes than they can handle, they’re dead (which makes the act of studying magic a whole lot more appealing). Because the novel doesn’t play the protagonists up as prophesied victors, too, readers fully believe that death is a possibility for Sunny and friends, which makes reading about the danger that they put themselves in all the more suspenseful.
Now, I’ve placed a lot of emphasis on the book’s Harry Potter-like successes, but the novel does possess several great points on its own. For example, though the Leopard People have almost constant access to money (as long as they’re learning), they do not place great value in money, viewing it more as a tool to achieve goals than a goal to be reached in itself. (Granted, this is a theme that has been seen before, but it’s still refreshing to see it approached in a way that isn’t flagrant anti-consumerism). Leopard People also take traits that “lambs”—that is, non-magical people—view as imperfections and view them as strengths. Sunny is albino, Orlu is dyslexic, and other friends Chichi and Sasha were both notorious for being hopeless troublemakers in lamb school, before it was realized that they were actually gifted students bored with the unchallenging world around them (like teens falsely diagnosed with ADHD). All of these traits, regarded as flaws in the lamb world, contribute to their strengths as Leopard People, and it was cool to see characters with “disabilities” benefit from them in a semi-realistic way. (Kudos to Rick Riordan for giving Percy Jackson dyslexia, but to this day I haven’t met a dyslexic teen whose brain can understand the writing of their first language without effort, much less Ancient Greek.)
Of course, the book has flaws as well. The main conflict in the book revolves around the child murders mentioned earlier, and though child murder is awful, and though the crimes become a special concern for Leopard People late in the novel, Okorafor doesn’t spend much story time making us fear the ritual serial murderer Black Hat Otokoto. She’s more interested in showing us Sunny’s entry into the Leopard People world—which, in its defense, is hugely interesting—but I do wish that more time had been spent on the larger threat hanging over the characters’ heads. Ultimately, though, that flaw is overshadowed by the novel’s wonderfully imaginative world-building, and it’s not going to stop Akata Witch from being one of my favorite YA novels of the past several years.
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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.
Pacific Rim – Movie Review
IN SHORT: Giant alien monstrosities invade Earth through an interdimensional portal deep in the Pacific Ocean. The solution to this problem? Giant frickin’ robots!
WHAT IT IS: Giant robot versus giant monster porn at its ABSOLUTE FINEST!
WHAT IT IS NOT: Anything that remotely makes sense. Seriously, just check your brain at the door and have a good time.
WHAT I THOUGHT: This is the most fun I’ve had at the movies all year. In fact, I’m hard pressed to recall a recent movie I enjoyed more than Pacific Rim. It’s an absolute blast that should not be missed.
This movie has an unabashed, unquenchable sense of fun. It never lingers on the non-fun for very long. For example, the main character’s brief emo I-don’t-want-to-be-a-pilot phase is beaten out of him by his commander in three sentences.
The movie sets out to entertain, and it achieves this objective marvelously. The fights are tense and exciting, full of delicious visual eye candy. The giant monsters, named Kaiju, are powerful, formidable foes with plenty of variety and dangerous tenacity. Despite the ridiculous premise, I felt the dread of impending human extinction and became emotionally invested in the struggles of our heroes.
The giant robots, called Jaegers, are cool and fun to watch in action. Each one has a distinct feel in terms of design and combat execution. My only complaint is they feel a little too generic. Unlike classic giant robots such as Evangelion, Battletech, or Gundam, there’s no real way to look at a Jaeger and say: Aha! That’s a Jaeger! Notice the [distinguishing feature]. But this is a minor quibble, and does not detract from the movie.
The characters are, almost without exception, likable and fun to follow. Heck, even the hothead jerk pilot ends up being likable. There’s even a small fart of a love story thrown in, but it’s so small it never detracts from the movie. The story stays firmly focused on what works best for a giant robot / giant monster beat ‘em up.
That’s not to say the movie is flawless. Far from it. The plot is absolute nonsense, even by the standards of other giant robot franchises. In most giant robot fiction, we get some sort of excuse for why we need the giant robots, such as how normal weapons bounce off Angel AT fields in Evangelion. Here, it’s just “to fight monsters we created monsters.” Seriously, how exactly is a giant robot better than, say, a thousand cruise missiles? And while we’re at it, how is building a giant wall around the ENTIRE PACIFIC OCEAN more cost effective than building more Jaegers? Seriously, if I start poking holes in this plot, we’ll be here all day.
Also, the way the Jaegers fight is just painfully stupid at times. The hero Jaeger, Gypsy Danger, has two huge plasma cannons and two very deadly swords (post upgrade). You’d think that the pilots would soften up their target at range with the plasma cannons and then close in with swords for the kill, right?
Um, yeah. The Kaiju don’t have guns, and we’ve got these plasma cannons. So let’s just wade in close and start punching them. Wait, that’s not working? I guess we should use this big Kaiju-slaying sword, then.
Seriously, why weren’t they using the sword from the beginning?
Oh, and did I mention the Jaegers need two pilots? Apparently, controlling a humanoid combat weapon is too much mental strain for a single human to handle. It takes two pilots doing a mind-meld sort of thing called a drift. For, you know, plot reasons I guess. Granted, from a story-telling perspective, drifting is very effective for revealing a pilot’s history. It’s also absolute nonsense.
So, yeah. Let’s just recognize the plot for what it is: an excuse to have giant robots brawling with giant monsters. And frankly, I’m perfectly fine with that.
VERDICT: Strongly Recommended.
The Friday Society by Adrienne Kress – Book Review
Caution: Contains one spoiler.
Anyone who has ever spoken to me at length about steampunk will know this: While I do love steampunk, I’m a bigger fan of the idea of steampunk than I am of most steampunk books. My main complaint against them is that they tend to treat the pseudo-Victorian aesthetic as a decoration, rather than an integral part of the world of the story. Occasionally, though, I happen upon a steampunk novel that takes that decoration and rocks it.
The Friday Society by Adrienne Kress rocks hard in all the ways that steampunk should.
In the novel, Cora is assistant to a mad scientist, with all the science brains and cool tech knowledge implied; Nellie is assistant to a magician, armed with sparkly dresses, sneak tactics galore, and a parrot sidekick; and Michiko is a Japanese assistant to an English fight instructor, who knows more about katana combat than her present charlatanic master. When heads start rolling in the London streets—the first right at their feet, in fact—they take it upon themselves to solve the mystery with sassy, street-smart girl power and more than a little technological mayhem.
These are combinations that could not exist outside a steampunk novel and still make sense.
At its heart, The Friday Society reads like Kress said, “OK—I’m going to take everything that is awesome about steampunk, trash the rest, put it in a blender with some glitter and Japanese swordplay and see what happens.” Which is why there is almost no affected fake-Victorian language in this thing, and why the novel foregoes the tedious details of Victorian manners and society to toss an explosion at readers in the first sentence. There are also magical gravity-defying minerals and a super fancy gun that can be worn like armor until an electromagnetic pulse calls its pieces into weapon form.
The protagonists, too, are sneakily developed, looking like stereotypes on the surface—the tomboy, the girly girl, the samurai—but revealing some clever variations on their types as the novel progresses. Michiko, for example, is the stoic, silent, samurai sort one would expect—but only because she doesn’t know enough English to use the language and so stays quiet to avoid making herself look foolish. Cora and Nellie take it upon themselves to teach her the language, and ultimately, it is these three characters and their interactions that make the novel worth the read. Stylistically, it aspires to read like a steampunk cousin of sassy fantasies like The Princess Bride or Stardust, a feat largely accomplished through the girls’ banter. Though they never actually reach Princess Bride levels of wit—though, really, what other than The Princess Bride itself can do that?— its sense of humor was close enough and uncommon enough in steampunk novels that it kept me reading.
However, even though the strengths outweighed them for me, the book does have some weaknesses worth mentioning. There’s an attempted romantic storyline that falls absolutely flat—but this is a book about girls kicking butt, so that’s ok. The story also involves a secondary murder mystery that I found completely throwaway once it was solved, and once readers find out the eventual bad guy’s motivation, it is frustratingly feminist (that is, feminist in a negative way). BTW THIS IS THE SPOILER PART. WATCH OUT. This seems odd to say about a book that is unabashedly about girl power, but when the antagonist’s reason for murdering everyone (and then some) comes down to “THE MEN DIDN’T THINK MY IDEAS WERE GOOD BECAUSE I WAS A GIRL SO I’LL SHOW THEM >( ” it’s a bit anticlimactic, and not entirely believable. (A younger me was a tomboyish girl who wanted to excel at boy things like science and blowing things up, but I was never motivated to do such things because people told me I was too girly to succeed at them. I simply wanted to do them because I wanted to do them.) Finally, the novel makes a noble stab at having a diverse cast—Michiko is trained by a local Japanese expatriate, and Nellie works for an exotic Oriental magician—but most of the multicultural characters in the novel ultimately fall into convenient stereotype. Nellie’s magician, though interesting, exists only to be exotic and mysterious, and Michiko’s mentor reads like he popped out of The Karate Kid.
Taken as a whole, though, The Friday Society ranks among the best steampunk novels I’ve encountered in the past year. It’s not flawless, but it’s still the most entertaining piece of steampunk quirk that I’ve read since Phil and Kaja Foglio’s classic Girl Genius.
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BZRK by Michael Grant – Book Review
Conjoined twins Charles and Benjamin Armstrong have a vision of a utopian future—a future in which war, hunger, even minor conflict is nonexistent. They wish to see human society perfected. Which sounds pretty sweet, except that they hope to achieve it by sending brain-manipulating nanobots into the minds of the most powerful leaders on the planet, and then rewiring their brains to serve their cause. Which involves doing the same to the rest of the world. BZRK is not about to let that happen. Armed with sets of biots—microscopic bug-like creatures that can alter brains as well as the nanobots—this guerilla organization is ready to fight for the free will of the human race.
I like to picture Michael Grant’s BZRK as the summer action movie of YA books. It’s noisy and fast-paced with colorful characters and just a tiny hint of deeper substance, asking questions like “Is world peace worth the cost of free will?” A tiny, tiny hint. After all, The Matrix asked deep questions like “What is reality?” but no one watches The Matrix solely to have their intellect teased. BZRK is the same kind of entertainment.
That said, BZRK would make a ridiculously fun action movie (and, in fact, has already been optioned). Look at the very premise: The battle for humanity’s freedom is being fought, secretly, INSIDE PEOPLE’S BRAINS by MICROSCOPIC GENETICALLY ENGINEERED BUGS against ARMIES OF NANOBOTS and the uniquely skilled people who control them LIKE THEY’RE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME. On top of that, the leader of the bad guy camp is a set of twins conjoined at the face, who run a massive technology corporation disguised as a line of gift shops. The whole cast of “twitchers”—that is, the people who control the biots and nanobots—is made of characters with definite action-movie eccentricities. One, for example, is physically unable to feel pleasure due to the makeup of his brain. Another has a QR code tattooed in a snarky place that leads to a snarky video. Another rewired the brain of a hot girl so she’d be his girlfriend. Oh, there’s a normal guy, among them, too, for readers to relate to, but he is also really attractive and therefore separate from us, in his own fantastic action movie world.
Though the technology of the story is cool (and terrifying—Never again, after reading this, will you have a headache and not think “OMG THERE MIGHT BE BIOTS BATTLING IN MY BRAIN RIGHT NOW”), the characters are a mixed bag of epicness and mediocrity. What the novel has in abundant character distinctness, it absolutely lacks in character development. When I tried to recall any major transformations that happened in this book, the only one I could come up with was this: One character gets her legs blown off. Which does not a dynamic character make, at least in terms of characterization. (The scene itself is certainly a dynamic one, what with pieces of characters flying everywhere.) An attempt at development is made between Noah and Sadie, two protagonists new to BZRK who have been paired together, had biots grown from their DNA, and told to keep each other’s biots alive—to help out when the other’s brain is under attack. Their inevitable physical closeness—they’re crawling all over each other’s brain meat, after all—suggests to both that physical closeness of a more intimate, hormonal, and emotional sort is bound to occur, and both are conflicted about this idea. They’re hesitant about romance, but at the same time, have already been placed close by technological necessity. The conflict here was interesting to read about, but in this novel, it never develops beyond mere uneasiness. BZRK is going to be a series, so I imagine that their relationship will be better developed over the course of the larger story (which is what I anticipate of the character development in general). However, it was disappointing that this interaction was no better developed than any of the other character interactions. This will be a difficult hurdle for some readers to jump; if you’re looking for characters to relate to and care for, you’re probably going to find it hard to care about this book. But you’re also probably not the audience this book is aiming for, either.
Mediocre characterization aside, one of my favorite elements of the book was the incredible diversity of its cast. Nearly every globally significant culture is represented amongst the characters, good and bad. Granted, at the beginning of the novel, character introductions came so quickly and ferociously that the diversity seemed almost pandering, especially when the book reaches the American character who looks Chinese but has a Russian name. And who, you find out later, is also a gay model. So maybe it is pandering. But in a book like this, a diverse cast makes logical sense. When the threat being combated is a global one, it’s only natural that the team assembled to fight it would consist of something other than a bunch of white guys and one random other race thrown in for flavor. So kudos to Michael Grant for acknowledging that.
Ultimately, there’s little more to BZRK than cool technological action and ridiculous characters, which is fine by me. I wasn’t expecting intellectual stimulation from a book that sells itself on brain bugs. My only genuine complaint about the book, then, relates to its ending. It’s not a bad ending. In fact, it definitely satisfies on the action level. But, like many series books these days, it doesn’t conclude the story so much as suggest that there’s more to come. This makes sense for a series book, but I do miss the days when novels—even series novels—were complete self-contained units. I can’t complain too much, though, because when BZRK Reloaded arrives at the library, I’ll be the first to check it out.
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Epic – Movie Review
IN SHORT: A race of miniature tree elves are about to choose their next leader in a really stupid way. Hordes of personified tree rot plan to crash the party.
WHAT IT IS: Fun and visually striking, Epic took me on a ride I genuinely enjoyed from start to finish.
WHAT IT IS NOT: Don’t expect much depth beneath the flash. We’ve seen these characters before by different names in different movies.
WHAT I THOUGHT: With a title like Epic, I was expecting more, I don’t know, epic-ness? Is that even a word? But I suppose it’s better than calling the movie Didn’t Suck.
And that’s generally my feeling towards the movie. The characters were likable. The plot was zany, but entertaining. The action was good. The villain was serviceable. Art direction was very cool. Voice acting was solid. The comedic relief was absolutely hilarious (I loved the slug character)!
Yes, this movie genuinely didn’t suck.
Now, that’s not to say it blew me away. While I liked the characters, there really wasn’t anything exceptional about them. They’re all characters we’ve seen before, familiar and not overly complicated. But that’s okay. They weren’t annoying. They didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment of the movie.
I also appreciated the complete absence of a Hollywood Environmental Message™. I generally don’t like it when movies get preachy at me. It’s something of a pet peeve, and honestly, this was my biggest fear going into the movie. Being an engineer who works in Evil Corporate America™, a lot of movies portray people like me or people I work with in a really bad light.
So kudos this time for not making us out to be the villains! Again. For like the millionth time. Seriously, we’re just normal people trying to get by like everyone else.
So, yeah, fun movie. Not deep. Not really all that epic. But fun.
VERDICT: Recommended.
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve – Book Review
The people of the future no longer live on the ground. In the time between our period, theirs, and the pivotal Sixty Minute War, they’ve moved onto enormous mobile cities known as Traction Cities, which carry them around the world to escape the geological dangers created by the Sixty Minute War…and also away from other cities. For the Traction Cities abide by the code of Municipal Darwinism, in which the bigger, stronger cities keep themselves running by devouring the smaller cities and their resources. As one character says, it’s a “town-eat-town” world.
In the midst of this municipal Survival of the Fittest are our protagonists, Tom Natsworthy, Katherine Valentine, and Hester Shaw. Tom is a third-class apprentice in the Guild of Historians, located on the impressive Traction City of London. Despite the difficulties of his work, he loves London and cheers it on when it chases and captures the smaller city of Salthook. In the course of the following city-wide celebration, he encounters Thaddeus Valentine, the dashing head of the Guild of Historians and a hero among Londoners, Tom included. More importantly, though, he encounters Valentine’s daughter, Katherine, with whom he is immediately smitten. He doesn’t have much time to be smitten, though, for in the flurry of activity, an assassin approaches Valentine with a knife, intending to do exactly what assassins do with knives. However, Tom is not about to let that happen. He rescues Valentine, in the process being knocked off of the London Traction City, and afterward finds that the assassin is actually Hester Shaw, a girl with a hideous scar and a story to tell—one that will change Tom’s impression of his beloved Traction City forever.
There is more plot, but all of it is a spoiler.
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve is the first in The Mortal Engines Quartet/The Hungry City Chronicles/The Predator Cities series (This is another of those series that gets a new identity every time it’s rereleased), and is among the books that I consider the most perfect examples of steampunk. It has action, adventure, a unique and well-realized setting, political intrigue, character twists and turns galore, and on top of that, a whole city inhabited by airship pilots and all the epicness that ensues when a bunch of airship pilots find something to do battle over (among other awesomeness. There are Traction City pirates, too. And a pet wolf named Dog. And also a thing called MEDUSA which, avoiding spoilers, is terrifying for the characters involved with it, but thrilling to readers who want some exciting steampunk action).
The whole concept of Municipal Darwinism is what gives this novel its strong base. While the idea of a moving city is not original to Mortal Engines, the idea of a city chasing and eating another city is, and brings an interesting level of conflict to the world of the novel. This was one of those settings where, as with many sci-fi settings, my first reaction was “Ooo, I’d totally love to live on a Traction City and travel all over the world and chase other towns!” And then I realized that I live in Spartanburg, which as cities go is not that big, and as Traction Cities go means that it would totally be eaten by one of its many larger surrounding before it could even finish chasing the little towns around it. People who live in Spartanburg are even called Spartanburgers. We sound like food. We’d be doomed from the start. And we’d be doomed while on the run from the earth itself, since one of the results of the pseudo-nuclear Sixty Minute War was unpredictable geological upheaval. You want real stress? Try running from the ground you’re running on.
Of course, to the characters in the novel, all these novelties are old hat. They’re so used to Traction Cities that the whole idea of a static city seems weird and barbaric to them, as does the Anti-Traction League, a group of protected nations determined to maintain their static cities, and who occasionally perpetrate alleged terrorist attacks on Traction Cities…in protest of the activities which the Anti-Traction League finds barbaric. This contributes to what I found to be one of the most satisfying elements of the book. While it has adventure and explosions and everything else that I find entertaining in a novel, it also presents some interesting moral and ethical questions, and explores all sides of every side presented in the novel. Though the story in the novel has a clear set of antagonists, the world of the novel is composed of several different shades of moral gray, many of which change shades over the course of the narrative. Allegiances and animosities that the readers have at the beginning are changed in nearly every chapter when readers happen upon haunting new information. Questions about the world itself arise—how ethical is it, exactly, for a city to eat another city, even when the limited availability of natural resources necessitates it? What are the moral implications of resurrecting the dead as memory-less half-machines (another technology that plays a significant role in the plot)?
This is a novel that makes the reader question everything it presents as awesome in the first few chapters, and for that, I love it. It’s simultaneously a fun adventure novel and a thinking person’s novel. Because of that, I cannot wait to read the remaining three books in The Mortal Engines Quartet(/The Hungry City Chronicles/The Predator Cities).
Top image found here: http://fav.me/d1r6f62
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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.
Beasts of Burden, Volume 1 by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson – Book Review
In Animal Rites, the first volume of graphic novel series Beasts of Burden, Pugsley, Jack, Ace, Whitey, Rex, and the Orphan are 5 dogs and a cat living fairly normal lives…until they encounter a ghost in Jack’s doghouse, a coven of witches, a werewolf, and several other supernatural oddities. Eventually, they combat so many paranormal dangers that they are invited to become apprentices of the Wise Dog Society, a group of dogs (and now one cat) devoted to defending their territory from paranormal threats.
This description might lead one to think that the story illustrated in the pages of this book is a fun little happy-go-lucky read. I mean, it’s got talking animals in it, right?
True, Beasts of Burden is a talking animal story. But it is not a talking animal story that you want to show your little siblings. Not unless you want them to grow up traumatized, anyway. In which case, go for it. You will succeed dramatically.
This series is billed as horror mystery. It fits that genre quite nicely, and with more originality and skill than many entries in the genre. One would expect a story like the one in the description—the adventures of a bunch of canine paranormal investigators—to be illustrated in a rather fun, cartoony style, and possibly to show up as a Nickelodeon series sometime in the near future. Instead of that rather trite approach, readers are instead given lavish watercolor illustrations to gaze at, not of anthropomorphic, but realistically-rendered creatures, with some liberties taken to allow for facial expression. The art in this book is marvelously expressive, and gorgeous to skim.
Whether it remains so upon a closer look is entirely up to the individual reader, as the art of this book puts the “gore” in “gorgeous.” If you are the sort of animal lover who cries when you see cute puppies in sad situations, you may as well steer clear, because this book will leave you traumatized, too. And if you are a curious animal lover, but iffy about the animal horror content, let me present you with this image from the third story: a pack of zombie dogs getting run over by a truck in vivid, splattery detail, then being left in the road because the drivers don’t want to handle the hassle of cleanup and owner contact. If that makes you uncomfortable, you might as well stay away, too, because the horror only gets worse from there. And for horror readers, this is a treat.
Before you think me an absolutely heartless person for saying so, let me say that I’m the sort of animal lover who can’t go to a pet shop without wanting to adopt all the cats, and then coming up with a list of sad things that might happen to those cats should I not adopt them, and then leaving the pet shop sad because I already have enough cats and they don’t want any friends anyway. So I am a fan of animals. However, I am also a fan of well-done horror, and this book is definitely that. Any artist can illustrate lots of blood and gore and call it horror, but only a skilled artist can make the reader care about the characters that it’s happening to, which is the key to the success of this volume. This book is great horror not because it’s disgusting (which it is) but because it has an emotionally wrenching effect on the reader, largely fueled by the art and its careful juxtaposition of the mundane with the horrible, as well as its well-designed, emotionally sensitive panel progressions. This level of artistry is makes the work one worth appreciating, perhaps even admiring.
This isn’t to say that being able to appreciate the work renders it an easy read. There were moments—many, many moments—when I cringed, or had to take a break from reading, or said to myself, “OMG. Did that really happen on that page? I have to look again. Yep. It totally did. It’s a book about talking animals, and that totally happened. This makes Watership Down look like Peter Rabbit.” (By the way, I have not actually read the Watership Down novel. I have seen the animated film, which is significantly less graphic than this comic, but still contains rabbits killing each other and doing otherwise disturbing things that would have messed me up as a child viewer, but thoroughly entertained me as a giddily morbid high schooler.)
Animal Rites, then, is a graphic novel best appreciated by lovers of well-executed horror, and by readers who can stomach animal tragedy. Everyone else will probably find it too sad or gross to read. Due to the genuinely graphic nature of this graphic novel, I don’t recommend it for younger teens, even precocious ones. Older teens and above who are looking for an intelligent and affecting horror experience, though, will find a rewarding read in this.
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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.