Capsule Book Reviews
Dec. 18th, 2017 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroWeird Me: The Complete Collection by Kelly Phillips - An autobiographical comic collection about a Weird Al superfan, who led the early charge to get UHF released on DVD, among other things. It's much more about her and her experiences than it really is about Al, but that's okay by me, because while I wasn't quite at her level, I had a similar experience in my youth and I can strongly identify with a lot of what she went through.
The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag - A YA graphic novel by the artist of Strong Female Protagonist, which hits a similar tone (coming-of-age, being “different”, with extremely obvious queer themes) in a totally different setting. Aster is in a family where boys become shapeshifters and girls become witches, no exceptions—but he’s clearly got a gift for witchcraft. It goes exactly where you’d expect but is nonetheless very nicely done.
The Way Into Chaos by Harry Connolly - I got this in a Humble Bundle a few years ago and finally decided to clear it off my backlog. It opens with a world where the “Evening People” arrive once a generation, and after humans perform for them, they grant a magical “gift”. A setting that promptly goes pear-shape when, instead of the Evening People, the portal produces bear-monsters. Credit in that there are two viewpoint characters, and after we spend the first chapter meeting a war-weary soldier-turned-swordmaster and learning his hard past, we spend a chapter with a character who thinks that guy is an asshole. The worldbuilding is very deep and the cast includes a very good balance of well-rounded female characters. I figured out the midway twist about the monsters less than a quarter of the way into the book, but I'm going to have to read the rest of the trilogy to learn if my other suspicions are accurate.
The Way Into Magic by Harry Connolly - The second book in the series, and definitely an “interim” book—in the sense that the entire trilogy could have / should have been one 1,000-page book and this can't stand alone at all. It picks up where the first leaves off, teases out a few more mysteries but provides a few revelations, and ends on multiple cliffhangers.
The Way Into Darkness by Harry Connolly - The third book, where stuff actually gets resolved. The final twists come through (I had predicted the one about the Evening People, at least), the full extent of the worldbuilding is explained, and while there's a lot of work to be done, the world will survive. This had a couple of spots where it could have used a little more editing and it leaves a bunch of hanging threads, but I found the resolution satisfactory. Moreover, they make it through a full fantasy trilogy with both low and high-level politics and though there's plenty of death and gore, sexual violence is never mentioned or threatened. Who knew such a thing was possible?
The Last Colony by John Scalzi - Another fun Scalzi story, though remembering details of the first two Old Man's War books helps a lot. Not quite as silly as some of his other books, and some of the pacing is a little wonky (and the werewolf plotline gets unsurreptitiously dropped), but still clever and a fun read. I wonder how much of this he had planned out when he wrote the first two books, and how much was just, "Hey, how can I follow up on this thing...?" One confession: I had to look up a picture of the Obin because I just couldn't come up with a mental image of them.
The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag - A YA graphic novel by the artist of Strong Female Protagonist, which hits a similar tone (coming-of-age, being “different”, with extremely obvious queer themes) in a totally different setting. Aster is in a family where boys become shapeshifters and girls become witches, no exceptions—but he’s clearly got a gift for witchcraft. It goes exactly where you’d expect but is nonetheless very nicely done.
The Way Into Chaos by Harry Connolly - I got this in a Humble Bundle a few years ago and finally decided to clear it off my backlog. It opens with a world where the “Evening People” arrive once a generation, and after humans perform for them, they grant a magical “gift”. A setting that promptly goes pear-shape when, instead of the Evening People, the portal produces bear-monsters. Credit in that there are two viewpoint characters, and after we spend the first chapter meeting a war-weary soldier-turned-swordmaster and learning his hard past, we spend a chapter with a character who thinks that guy is an asshole. The worldbuilding is very deep and the cast includes a very good balance of well-rounded female characters. I figured out the midway twist about the monsters less than a quarter of the way into the book, but I'm going to have to read the rest of the trilogy to learn if my other suspicions are accurate.
The Way Into Magic by Harry Connolly - The second book in the series, and definitely an “interim” book—in the sense that the entire trilogy could have / should have been one 1,000-page book and this can't stand alone at all. It picks up where the first leaves off, teases out a few more mysteries but provides a few revelations, and ends on multiple cliffhangers.
The Way Into Darkness by Harry Connolly - The third book, where stuff actually gets resolved. The final twists come through (I had predicted the one about the Evening People, at least), the full extent of the worldbuilding is explained, and while there's a lot of work to be done, the world will survive. This had a couple of spots where it could have used a little more editing and it leaves a bunch of hanging threads, but I found the resolution satisfactory. Moreover, they make it through a full fantasy trilogy with both low and high-level politics and though there's plenty of death and gore, sexual violence is never mentioned or threatened. Who knew such a thing was possible?
The Last Colony by John Scalzi - Another fun Scalzi story, though remembering details of the first two Old Man's War books helps a lot. Not quite as silly as some of his other books, and some of the pacing is a little wonky (and the werewolf plotline gets unsurreptitiously dropped), but still clever and a fun read. I wonder how much of this he had planned out when he wrote the first two books, and how much was just, "Hey, how can I follow up on this thing...?" One confession: I had to look up a picture of the Obin because I just couldn't come up with a mental image of them.
