Movie Review: Captain America: The Winter Solider

It felt a bit odd to be seeing a "summer blockbuster" movie long before it was summertime (even if it was unseasonably warm the day I saw it) and it looks like this summer is going to be another light one for me movie wise. There are a few that have caught my eye but not much so I'm glad that I at least enjoyed this film so it's off to a good start for me!

Captain America: The Winter Solider

Book Review: Fire Horse Girl

So, I'm not 100% sure how I got this book. I remember seeing it on Unshelved's bookclub list and entering a contest there to try and get a copy myself. Didn't hear anything so I assumed I hadn't won a copy and then one showed up at my apartment on my birthday which left me quite happy. Until I realized a few days later that I had never had the book sent to my apartment and that UPS had somehow magically known to send it there instead of my PO box, they had even put a second shipping label on top of the original one. I'm still happy I got the book, I'm just now very confused how it happened, I guess I got lucky that I had them reroute a package of mine a couple of weeks earlier and they were able to look up my address again?


Fire Horse Girl by Kay Honeyman

Summary: Jade Moon was born in the year of the Fire Horse and she embodies all the traits of it: stuborn, reckless, and headstrong. Partially because of this horoscope, and partially through Jade Moon fulfilling it, she's lonely and frustrated so when a cousin arrives at their house with a plan to go to America for a new start eager to take it, no matter what problems they might find there. 

The Good: Bit of a different setting than I normally come across which was nice (although I did have to make sure I read this and The Broken Lands far enough apart that I didn't accidentally mix up Jin and Jade Moon), I liked how it was set in San Francisco in the 20s and the author kindly provided a list of sources which I'm going to check out since I realized that I really have no idea what the history of the west coast is like. And it was that not exactly novelty but different-ness about Jade Moon's situation, the setting, and how her new life in America turns out that kept me interested in the book.

The Bad: The pacing felt a little weird to me, although I think part of that was because the book flap talked about Jade Moon going to America and the cover showed that she was going to crossdress and as a result I expected both of those events to happen sooner than they did. Even taking that into account I felt like the story just lingered in a number of places for too long which is funny since it's not a very long book, if you were to pace it a bit more briskly it would have been a very short novel. As hinted at earlier, the characters aren't exactly original and they're a bit too flat to be compelling. I'm not surprised that this is Honeyman's first novel because in some ways it really feels like a first novel, there are some great parts and some needs work parts, nothing terrible but it's not a book I expect to win many awards either. 


In the end I'm going to give this book 3 out of 5 stars, it's the kind of book I'd check out from the library, read once, and not feel the urge to own/re-read. In fact, I think I'm going to swing by the local library and donate this in the hope that this book gets more use that way than it would just sitting on my shelves.

Manga Review: Heroman (volume one)

Another manga that I won in a contest recently, this time Alexander Hoffman of Manga Widget was giving away a few volumes of various Vertical Inc series and I obviously ended up with the first volume of Heroman. I was familiar with the title thanks to the anime (which I think technically came first) but held off watching it back then since people were predicting that it would get picked up and dubbed fast and I prefer to watch shows set in the US with dubs. Well, no license yet (it's still streaming on Crunchyroll for those interested) so there's no point in waiting any longer and I've never read any of Stan Lee's works, although I would love to know how much of the writing here is his or if he provided the basic plot points and scenarios and if someone else is responsible for adding in the details and putting it all together.


Heroman (volume one) by Stan Lee, Bones, and Tamon Ohta

  
Summary: Joey Jones is a sweet, hardworking boy who lives with his grandmother and is decidedly not one of the cool kids at school. It seems that even getting his hands on a transforming robot and helping save the town several times over isn't helping with that but it's certainly catching the eye of the girl he likes.  

The Good: While formulaic the story did manage to move at a much quicker pace than I was expecting and it was nice to see that the girl Joey is crushing on, Lina, already seems to like him back (especially since it's more common for it to take the girl a while to notice the nerdy guy in American fiction). The side characters get a reasonable amount of screentime and I was impressed at how well the story makes the eponymous Heroman feel, well, not just like a robot, especially since he doesn't talk at all. 

The Bad: This book just didn't grab me at all. The pacing seems a bit odd, like it's trying to cram in down time for the characters while still moving the plot forward as fast as it can and it's a balancing trick that doesn't quite work. Also, after a full volume of characters, many of which with a lot of page time, I just can't care about any of them since they all still feel so flat. Even Joey, who fares better than the rest of the cast, is still only a mash of character traits without any reasons behind them to make me care. This could obviously change quickly depending on how the story progresses but, well, after this volume I have no motivation to pick up the next one. 

The Art: Man, Joey has one of the most feminine looking designs for a guy I've seen in quite a while, heck if he was a girl that might've made the series a bit more interesting since that would have been a little more different. Regardless, there's nothing really special about the art here. It has a nice level of detail and that artist (whom I think is Ohta but I'm not 100% sure) knows how to use screentones well so everything looks fine, but it just doesn't have that special thing that makes the art stand out and grab me. In that respect it feels rather generic, maybe it works better in the anime where it's full color.


So a 2.5 out of 5 for this volume and I'll probably take the anime off of my to-watch list now as well (or at least file it under "if you and a friend really need something to snark at this might work" which isn't a good place to be filed). Maybe this would work better for a younger audience who hasn't seen every story trope out there done to death already, there's no age rating on it but I'd say it's probably 10+ or maybe 12+, but that's not me so I guess this series just isn't for me.  

TV Series Review: Veronica Mars (season one)

I had my way I would've started watching this show right after Life on Mars just for the fact that both shows have "Mars" in the title but sadly neither my school library nor Netflix streaming had the show available for me. But the college library near my home did so I spent all summer watching the show bit by bit (curse their two-dvds-at-a-time limit) and wow do I wish I had watched this show years ago.

Veronica Mars (season one)

Summary: In the town of Neptune there are only two kinds of people, the millionares and the people who work for them. Well, and Veronica Mars, daughter of the town's sheriff which gave her an in with the popular crowd, until her boyfriend dumped her, his sister/her best friend was murdered, and her dad was driven out of office by going after their father and he rallied the town against them. Now Veronica is stuck between those two worlds and instead of being on the pep squad she now assists her dad with his private detective business while she takes on cases of her own from classmates on the side. But recently some new things about her friend Lily's murder have come to light, among others things, and Veronica is finding out that her town has even more secrets that she would have bargained for.

The Good: This show does an amazing number of things right, from the balance of when Veronica is at school and when she's out (I've seen so many stories forget that high school students are, you know, in school for almost 40 hours a week), broke plenty of stereotypes and tropes all over the place and made the show feel a hell of a lot more realistic that way (from the cult one to the episode involving a substitute newspaper teacher). Veronica is an interesting, I'd even say  likable, character but it's very obvious that she's already broken by the time the series starts and that she's trying to figure out how to put herself back together, which I personally prefer to a story that spends more time breaking it's characters than putting them back together. The other reoccurring characters were surprisingly well fleshed out, there are adults who don't stay on the sidelines in order to let the younger characters tell a story, Lily's death has affected over half the cast (one or two of which might be even more broken than Veronica) and Lily herself ends up being very well fleshed out for being, well, dead before the story even began. The show also does a very good job at weaving in details about the overarching mystery in the smaller cases Veronica and her dad take on and it all ties itself together in the end very well.

The Bad: Since this caught me really off-guard I'll say it up front, the ending to this season is a bit abrupt in places and, according to wikipedia (I was convinced something was wrong with my disc so I had to look things up) the remaining threads will be wrapped up in the next season. So while everything comes together, what's revealed in the final episode isn't itself wrapped up (and for once I was mistaken about the episode count so the show was even able to catch me off guard with the ending). That's my only real complaint about the series, since Veronica will still be in high school in the next season there's more than a chance that various side characters will show up again and get more character development (I was confused why wikipedia listed Mac as a main character when she didn't have a lot of screen time compared to many other characters), overall the show made very good use of it's runtime when it came to developing characters. 

The Audio: The show's catchy opening theme is actually the shortened version of an already existing song "We Used to be Friends" by The Dandy Warhols which surprised me, the lyrics fit the show so well ("we used to be friends/a long time ago") that I had assumed it was created specifically for the opening. The rest of the music didn't stand out to be as much, although I did like the music used in the ending credits as well, but given how catchy this opening is I think I can be excused.

The Visuals: The actors do look a bit old to be highschool students but only people who are around high school students on a regular basis are going to notice that, I didn't until I saw someone who looked very similar to Lily Kane and realized that she was technically older than Lily is in the show yet looked much younger.

I could have written even more things about this show I loved (like how Veronica likes multiple guys and she's NOT portrayed as a whore, or the subplot involving her mom) but I didn't want to go on even longer, let it suffice to say that I fell hard for this show and I was wondering why I didn't try out this show earlier. A look at the show's air dates clears that one up, it would've started airing late middle school/early high school for me and even if I had seen the show then I don't think I would've connected with it as strongly. But in any case, this is a great, engaging, gripping, smart story that I really recommend to anyone who has any tolerance for realistic fiction/stories involving high school students. I should probably include a trigger warning for rape so just be careful if that applies to anyone (I'd be willing to post in the comments which episodes to look out for if anyone wanted me to).

Comic Review: Koko Be Good

Another book that I came across at the library, interestingly enough even though I've heard good things about this publisher (First Second) for a few years now it's only been within the past year that I've started finding their books at the libraries as such (which I will take as a good sign that the libraries are now starting to pay attention to them and will get more of their releases). Maybe I should keep an eye out for them in bookstores too, although the ones I go to barely have any non-superhero Western comics.....

Koko Be Good by Jen Wang
 

Summary: Jon hasn't quite figured out to do with his life but when his girlfriend offers him a chance to come with her to Peru and do missionary work there he decides that this sounds like a good thing to do. Koko on the other hand doesn't do "good" things until she runs into Jon one night and, envious of how collected he seems to be, decides that she'll try to be good as well. But figuring out what you want to do and trying to do good are both hard tasks, especially if you haven't quite figured out who you are.

The Good: There are hundreds, thousands of coming of age stories (I consider it to be a genre unto itself) and it's really hard for me to get excited or interested in those stories after seeing so many (even though, given where I am in my life I should easily be able to sympathize with them). This story is one of the better examples I've seen in the genre and I think part of the reason it worked was because it felt a little more low-key than usual. While Koko is over the top in trying to create a new identity to be happy, Jon is much more low key and knows from the start that he isn't sure of what he wants to do, he's just going along and willing to try something he knows might not work out in the end. I think it was good that his girlfriend was a major influence in him, the scenes where she cautions him about going along with her (showing that even she isn't totally sure this is what she wants to do) really helped flesh them both out and it was great to not see another instance where one half of the relationship is completely confident and sure of themselves and drags the other half along, here with both sides hesitating felt a lot more true to life. I was surprised that Koko's friend Faron was developed as much as he was as well, originally I had thought he was going to be just a foil to Koko but in the end Wang showed us a chapter in his coming of age story as well and I'm amazed she was able to fit three such stories into one so smoothly.

The Bad: While I liked Jon a lot and was surprised by how much I liked Faron in the end as well Koko just never grew on me. I never understood her motivation to "become good" (I know that it was supposed to be that she was envious of Jon's life and tried to emulate him but the story only told that, never showed it) so all of her attempts to do good just felt awkward to me (they were supposed to feel awkward but they also managed to feel awkward in a way I don't think Wang intended). I was also leery at bits that Jon would dump his girlfriend and go for Koko (since the rule is that if you have two straight characters of opposite genders in a story they're gonna fall for each other) and, while that didn't quite happen, there was some chemistry between them that I didn't understand. In short, despite the fact the book is named after her and her adventures I just never understood half of what Koko did and, while the story wouldn't have worked if she wasn't present at all, half the time I didn't see the need for her.

The Art: Like the cover, the art is colored in various soft sepia tones and I absolutely loved how it looked. I liked the art style a lot as well, it had a lot of energy and the pages flowed well, but the coloring was what sold me on the book. It really reflects the mood of the story, even with all it's action it's rather introspective and calm and the best thing a visual work can do is to enhance and add to the mood already created by the story which it succeeds at marvelously here. Like I said, the art really sold me on the book and it makes me want to go and pick up my own copy as well, I don't know if I would have had the same reaction if the art had been any different.


I was very pleased with this book, especially since I just picked it up on a whim since I was in that section of the library anyway, and I'll be keeping an eye out for a copy of it in a store near me. It doesn't appear that Jen Wang has published any other books (aside from being in a volume or two of Flight and honestly it seems like every indie comic artist in the US has been in there at one point or another) but I'm going to also try to keep an eye out for their future works and see what they do next.     

Book Review: Lament

Way back in August Maggie Stiefvater was doing a signing not that far from me (the same store I saw Scott Westerfeld in actually) and, since it's generally considered polite to buy a copy of the author's book at the bookstore (and I really didn't like Shiver) I got a copy of Lament which is from a different series and that I had read years ago and remembered liking quite a bit. I was hesitant that I might not like it anymore since it had been four years and that plus my habit of putting books I own at the bottom of my to-read list (after all, my books don't have due dates/fines) it took me a really long time to get around to actually reading it. It seems like I waited the right amount of time though since the second book in this trilogy has been out for a while and the third one is being written so hopefully there won't be another year wide gap between reading those two.

Lament by Maggie Stiefvater

Summary: Deirde is an up-and-coming harp player who has a fairly normal life with a few quirks. Her life gets a bit quirker after a local music competition, strange boys appearing, clover blankets her front yard, her dog reacts to things only the two of them can see, so she's only half surprised to find out that faeries exist and they have taken a possibly deadly interest in her.

The Good: I really liked how Luke was upfront from the beginning that yes, there is something supernatural going on and is willing to try and see how much he can say to give Deirdre a fighting chance at surviving all the weirdness going on*. And I liked how James, Deirdre friend, also noticed that something odd was going on at how he was a bit special himself. I’m used to seeing a major supporting character, often a male love interest, become magical/powerful as the story goes on as a way to keep them in/so they can keep up but it’s unusual to see them like this from the beginning and I also loved the scenes when the two of them sat down and tried to figure out just what was going on.   

The Bad: There was a character death and a betrayal by another character which both caught me off guard, even though I kinda thought I remembered something like that happened, and while both of the events had a bit of foreshadowing they still came off too suddenly for me. Also rather curious how this is going to tie into other books in the trilogy since the story here was neatly wrapped up (and it sounds like the second book has little to do with these characters) yet the first words in the third book are apparently "Luke Dillion". Not a bad thing per say but something that always makes me nervous, I've been seeing a lot of odd sequels (admittedly in anime) lately that I'm extra wary of them these days.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see that yes, I still liked this book and still enjoyed it a lot more than I did with Shiver. Maybe it was because Shiver is primarily a love story and this one isn't, that could be it....

*he actually reminds me of Mark from Guardian of the Dead (by Karen Healey) in that respect and I really LOVE when characters admit something strange is going on, considering how obvious it is to the read it can be frustrating to read about genre blind protagonists all the time.

Comic Review: My Boyfriend is a Monster 1: I love him to pieces

Sorry for the delay posting this, school and sewing projects just piled on me yesterday and I had no time to sit down and write this. Actually, going to get a post up either later tonight or tomorrow about that, I'm having to change my schedule up again in November, partially for NaNo and partially because I'm afraid that I'm still going to have crazy amounts of homework to deal with.

As for the book, I found it at the local library, looked like a cute zom-rom-com (I do believe that's an actual genre too) and read through the whole thing in about one half hour sitting. It might be part of a series, since I've found a number of similarily titled books on Amazon (all made by different people however) but I read it as a standalone and it worked just fine like that.

My Boyfriend Is a Monster 1: I Love Him to Pieces by Evanne Tsang, Illustrated by Janing Görrissen

Summary: Dicey may be the star of the baseball team while Jack is on track to be the school valedictorian but they get along surprising well when they have to work together on a health project. Well enough that they start getting interested in each other, too bad their first date is the day the zombie apocalypse breaks out in town.

The Good: I like stories that purposefully subvert the jock and nerd stereotypes since honestly those tropes never seemed that true to me and it's just hard to take a story that builds it's characters off of them seriously. So it was fun to see Dicey and Jack get along the way that regular classmates would and then grow more interested in each other as the story went along. They also held their own pretty well in the zombie apocalypse and it was a cute, quick story in that respect.

The Bad: There were some illogical moments in the story though, why didn't Jack/his parents want him to get evacuated and instead wait in the town for the government officials to come? Clearly it was so the story would get to the "my boyfriend is a monster" part but that part felt dumb to me and, since it was the reason a lot of other things happened, I felt like it weakened the story overall.

The Art: The art actually looks a lot like what I would find in a webcomic, there's a bit of manga/anime influence to the characters but it's clear that the artist isn't trying to imitate that style and there is a lot of Western influences in the art as well. I really liked the art style, it was the cute but not too cute style I like, lots of nicely inked details and backgrounds and actually didn't clash with the story despite it's slightly cutesy appearance.

It's not a super special story or one that does anything different but it was cute and mostly worked so I enjoyed it. It's odd to call a zom-rom-com fluff reading but that's what it was for me, a little fun thing to read when I needed something to do and enjoyed doing it as well.   

Comic Review: Journey Into Mohawk Country

Still having trouble with my google account but I've at least worked out a way to log on here, it only involves four steps and two websites which is three more steps and one more website than it should be. It's funny how much effort you're willing to put into something, sometimes you won't want to put in any effort and sometimes you'll put in tons since you know you'll like what you get in the end. Here I'm perfectly willing to walk to the local library (about 15 minutes each way for me, not bad at all) if it gives me access to more comic books yet I hate taking those extra few minutes to log into this blog. And this wasn't even the greatest comic I've read this year, just an average one, although this could be explained by just how much I love that I can even go to libraries and have the chance to read awesome and not so awesome things.

Journey Into Mohawk Country original text by Van de Bogaert and art by George O'Connor

Summary: With text taken directly from the translations of Van de Bogaert's journals, an Dutch explorer early in America's colonial history, O'Connor adds to the story with images

The Good: At this library the young adult and middle grade comics are all put in the same place and I feel like this work was aimed at middle grade readers and that I would've liked reading this back in the fifth grade when we were just starting to learn American history. Actually, all of the American History classes (and World History sadly) I've had since have always focused on the same pieces of history so it was nice to read something a little different, the Dutch colonization of America was never discussed much. It was very interesting to see a happy relationship between the colonists/traders and the Native Americans, one where both sides seemed to respect each other and be interested in each other, I only wish that's how things had continued during the rest of history.

The Bad: I'm sad that there aren't more historical comic books (either educational in nature or merely using a historical setting) for both MG and YA audiences, this book reminded me of how much I enjoy them. As for the story itself, as much as I liked O'Connor's additions to the story (I would have missed a few innuendos otherwise) there were times when he started adding in bits and I couldn't see where he had gotten the inspiration for them. At times it made me feel like I was reading two versions of the same story at the same time which isn't a good thing, basically I wish he was a little less creative in some of his interpretations.

The Visuals: The art is on the "cartoony" side but I think it would appeal to middle school kids which makes it a good thing. The art is consistent, colorful without feeling unrealistic and everything flows well. There are times when the font is hard to read so I wish they had either used a font that looks less like old fashioned handwriting or had simply made it bigger (each page was crammed full of panels so larger text could have presented a problem) but by and large it was readable and interesting to look at.

And okay book but I think that people much younger than me would enjoy it more and I think it would be a great thing for them to read so I'm happy with it. Been getting a lot of comics out of this library recently actually so I should be set for reviews for a while now, well, if I can find time to read them all that is.....

Book Review: Dust of 100 Dogs

Aka, the book my mom kept trying to steal from me when we were on vacation, no idea why she found this book so interesting based on the blurb on it's back cover. Then again, I don't know why I was interested by this book either, I remember coming across it in a bookstore years ago, thought it looked interesting and just now found it at my local library. I suppose part of the interest for me was because the blurb seems to give away the entire plot of the book so I was wondering what was left to tell.

Dust of a Thousand Dogs by A.S. King

Part of the reason I was initially attracted to this book (in the bookstore) was because of it's cool design. It's only three colors, very graphic and really fits the book well, plus that's a pretty neat font used for the title (also a little unusual to see the title placed in the lower right hand corner of the cover, usually it's right at the top). So the cover itself is eye-grabbing and really stands out compared to other YA titles.

Summary: Emer was originally born in Ireland at the time of Cromwell and saw her family home destroyed while she escaped and eventually became a pirate terrorizing the Caribbean. However, right after burying some treasure, she was killed and cursed to live the lives of 100 dogs before being reborn again as a human. It’s now the 1970s and she has finally been reborn as a human (named Saffron) who remembering every single life she’s had before and determined to escape her deadbeat family and reclaim her treasure.

The Good: It seems that the book gives away it’s entire plot on the back cover but proves that knowing what happened (the facts) isn’t the same as knowing how it happened (the reason), in a way it shows that you can still enjoy a story even if you know almost all of what is going to happen. The book uses a lot of flashbacks to tell the story and, in an unexpected twist, shows that Emer and Saffron are not the same person unlike most stories where a reincarnated person is exactly the same. Emer is certainly a part of Saffron but they are still two separate people, Saffron doesn’t mind her visitor/former self living with her and seems to have simply accepted that she knows all the things that Emer does. Because of all the flasbacks this story is more of a historical fiction work which covers two very different time periods, 17th century Ireland and the Caribbean and 1970s through early 1990s America which is an unusual combination for a book written only a few years ago*. Emer and Saffron carry the story so well that book is a really interesting and engaging read.

The Bad: A few things about the ending seem unexpected or just a bit too convenient for some of the characters (almost an inverse deus ex machina since it makes things harder for Saffron/Emer ). It also provides a much needed climax for the story since in the current timeline the story is already in the 1990s and most of Saffron's problems have been (at least temporarily) taken care of yet something still needs to happen at the end to wrap everything up. It’s not a plot heavy book, it’s very much a character book instead and at times it feels more like a very strange slice of life story. The interludes the include dog training advice/snippets from Emer's 100 lives as various dogs sometimes felt rather strange and out of place, the story would have functioned perfectly without them. 

I ended up liking this book more than I thought I would (just because I had no idea how much I would like it) and wouldn't mind buying a copy of it someday for an e-reader or such. Makes me wish I had more historical fiction to read as well, for some reason that genre just isn't as popular in young adult (or if it is it's something more along the lines of ROMANCE, INTRIGUE.... in the 1800s!), although it is entirely possible that in my years of wandering through bookstores and libraries that I've just missed all the historical fiction they have.

*by which I mean, it's rare to see what is technically historical fiction books that are only set a few decades ago (instead of some more "romantic" era).