Quick hits: Greg Rucka’s A Gentleman’s Game is a stomach tightening thriller, especially its climax, and never uses clumsy phrases like “stomach tightening.” The book made me care about its heroes and villains and guess (wrongly) at how complex but visceral situations would play out. This bears repeating, it made me eager to see how [...]
Escapist fantasies take many forms: superhero books, scifi stories, swords and sorcery tales, and romance novels. They don’t all do the same things, but they can scratch the same itch. Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere has something in common with Chuck Palaniuk’s Fight Club they both follow pushovers, bored and worn down by the world they submit [...]
Born in Alabama but currently living in Kansas City, Jason Aaron is the comic book writer, co-creator behind the gritty crime thriller Scalped. Earlier this year, he announced that Scalped (which has already run four years) would end its story and its run at issue #60. During its run of over four years, this story [...]
The chapter titles and dialogue in “Soon I Will be Invincible” hit all the oldest and most beloved superhero clichés: “I will get you next time” or “We meet again.” Austin Grossman knows and loves the comic book world. He runs through its tropes, plot contrivances and double-crosses with all the majesty of a caped [...]
Marjane Satrapi is best known for her autobiographical graphic novel work, “Persepolis,” which was later made into a film. Her latest project, “The Sigh,” goes in a new direction: Rather than stories from Satrapi’s life, “The Sigh” is a fairy tale about a woman in a fantastical world who’s trying to save her lost love. It’s told [...]
Generally, Murakami is easy to read. That doesn’t mean the works careen through a jumble of cliffhangers rushing toward an unearned payoff. His characters are soulful thinking people* who consider the world around them. But they don’t spend an entire book sitting around considering. That’s what makes the books easy to read, they move. They [...]
Australian author Max Barry recently published the science fiction thriller/dark comedy “Machine Man.” The novel is the second incarnation of a story he originally published online as a serial, one page at a time. Rather than a reprint of the online content, the novel “Machine Man,” is a distillation of Barry’s original idea: a future in which [...]
Let’s get the Twilight comparison out of the way first. No, these vampires don’t sparkle. They’re smart, what they do isn’t pretty, and the vileness of the act of drinking human blood is out there in the open. Illustrator Raphael Albuquerque knows how to draw a beautiful woman, a western vista, and a hideous creature of the damned. [...]
Last week, I reviewed The Magician King, fussing and moaning and worrying about sequels. Dune Messiah embodies the core of those fears. It’s an unnecessary slog through what happens after all the mammoth problems and conflicts of the previous book have been resolved. One of the central themes of this space epic is dealing with [...]
American Gods is as good a book as you can hope to read. It tells a massive story with the scope and gravitas to encompass gods and nations, but it remains so specific that you feel as if your friends are living it. The locations are real. Gaiman lovingly describes the Great Lakes states. Peru, [...]
