Book Review: Zombies vs Unicorns

Considering my overall impression of the Mars anthology was only lukewarm at best it may seem a bit odd that I decided to read another anthology immediately afterwords, the only explanation I can offer is that I'd been meaning to read this book for years (I followed Justine's blog back when she was still able to update and might have been around for the original blog post). So, knowing full well that just because an anthology is hyped well and has a lot of authors in it that I like doesn't mean that it's going to be good (I'm looking at you Geektastic) I decided to give this one a shot anyway.

Zombies vs Unicorns edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier

 

I'm curious how the paperback cover works since the hardcover book here has the black dust jacket with cut-outs of a zombie and a unicorn which can be removed to show a mural of unicorns and zombies fighting each other printed onto the book cover itself. I think the dust jacket idea is clever although I'm not that fond of the art style used for the images themselves, it's a neat idea regardless however.

 

Summary: Originating from a debate in the comments of author Justin Larbalestier's blog, she and Holly Black head up this anthology which compare zombies and unicorns with 12 stories from well known young adult authors who try to prove why their side is better.

 

The Good: I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that not every story in the anthology involved romance, I simply like a break from it sometimes, and that there were two LGTB romances in the anthology as well (oddly enough both zombies, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Alaya Dawn Johnson and "Inoculata" by Scott Westerfeld), a very nice change of pace overall. There are some stories in here which I’m confused if they were written to be parodies (all unicorn stories, Meg Cabot’s "Princess Prettypants" and Naomi Novik's "Purity Test")*  but they ended up being so genuinely hilarious that in the end I ended up not caring, I had fun reading them. Fun actually sums up a lot of the anthology, given my bad track record with anthologies I really wasn’t expecting much out of this one yet I enjoyed it and can see why so many other people have as well.

 

The Bad: I’m simply not a big fan of dystopias, for reasons that deserve their own post someday, and since a number of the zombie stories were set in dystopias I didn’t like them as much (which may sound harsh but as I’ve said before, it’s not plot but setting that’s the most important part of a story for me and that’s extra true with such stories like these). None of the stories were bad however, there were just some not to my taste and only about half of them stuck in my mind only a month after I read them which speaks volumes on it's own.

Probably the best anthology I've tried in the past few years but since it had been at least six months between whatever my last anthology was an the Mars one that's not as grand a statement as it sounds. Not sure if I would want a copy of my own for rereading but I'd certainly recommend this to many of my friends, it's a fun book with variety that I can see appealing to a lot of people.

 

  

*so zombies do romance and unicorns do comedy? No wonder I like unicorns better

Book Review: Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd

This is a review I probably should have written earlier since it’s going to be much harder now. Which isn’t to say that Geektastic is a forgettable book, it’s just hard to remember each and every story in the anthology (so thank you to the reviewer on Amazon who critiqued each story, really helped me out there). I did read all the stories in there but instead of reviewing each one I’ll write about the anthology as a whole and bring up the ones that illustrate my points.

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci

 I like this cover quite a bit because, no those aren't the characters on the cover (although that interpretation would work in a few cases) but those are supposed to be based off of all the authors. After each story each author has a quick bio with their 8-bit avatar next to them so you can figure out whose who. Neat idea and very unique.

Summary: Various authors write about nerdy people, pursuits, and some stories that don’t seem very nerdy at all.

The Good: When most people think about something that could be called a geeky activity they probably think of online gaming, Dungeons and Dragons, or comic book reading. Some of the authors here thought outside of the box so we had stories about a baton twirler and star-gazing (which people would probably call geeky, it’s just not on the top of their list) as well as stories about LARPing and Quiz Bowls. I enjoyed all of those stories partially because of the settings but mainly because those were also the stories with the best written characters (well, the female lead in “The Stars at the Finish Line” came off as a bit tsundere but with all the anime I’ve seen that hardly bothers me anymore).  Of those authors I was only familiar with one of them (Garth Nix, who also wrote my favorite story “The Quiet Knight”) but I’ll keep any eye out for these others in the future.

The Bad: I was really disappointed by this anthology to be completely honest. I had fairly high hopes for it (after all, if you don’t like one story then you go read another one by a different author) and all the authors were being as nerdy as you can imagine in their blurbs for it. But I barely connected with any of the stories and found myself yelling at the book more often than not. No you will never find a one hundred plus group of Jedis and Klingons fighting in a con with the 501^st stepping in to mediate (believe me, I go to anime cons where the maturity level is lower and that would never happen there). What was up with the story about the guy, the money, and the crazy ex on a train? I thought this was nerdy fiction, not, well, whatever the heck that was, altered sense of perception fiction? And why oh why was there romance in almost every story? In a regular YA anthology I wouldn’t expect to find romance in every single story yet I did here, why? The way I see it, geeks simply don’t care about romance quite as much as everyone else, so why did eight stories focus on romance and another four have a strong romantic theme in it? Combine that with a lot of clichés (the afore mentioned Jedi/Klingon fling, “girl becomes geek and finds happiness” story, “I met someone online but there’s a problem” story happened twice) plus four that I just didn’t get and I really did not like this anthology.

The Art: Yes, I get to talk about artwork here since between every story there was a short comic done by either Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O'Malley and these comics were by far my favorite parts of the book. I enjoyed O’Malley’s more (surprising since I really didn’t like Scott Pilgrim that much) and nearly every comic of his had me giggling while agreeing at how true it was. Larson’s comics were also amusing but they didn’t connect with me as much as O’Malley’s did. I still enjoyed them more than most of the stories in the book and wish the two of them had put out an entire book of just nerdy comics instead.

One final comment on the book, since I think I already made my opinion on it clear, why no anime/manga fans? Oh sure we have one character mention Ranma ½ once (people, there were other manga in the 1980s/90s besides Ranma, but that’s actually a rant for another review) and another say that they received an anime-esque picture but that was it. And I think that sums up what I thought about most of this book, these authors just don’t get the 2000 onwards nerdom. Sure we have Trekkies and other old school fans (heck, my school has a jedi club) but you also a new generation of Whovians, a constantly changing group of otaku, gamers who play tabletop and video games, LARPers, and half a dozen other subgroups of nerds (my school also has a Quidditch team and funny enough I didn’t see any traditional fantasy/sci-fi reading geek stories in here). These authors, geeks though they may be, came off as unknowledgeable of what geeks are really like and who wants to read something by someone who has no idea what they’re talking about?