Webcomic Review: Skin Deep

There are only a handful of webcomics that I tried out nearly six years ago when I got into the medium that I'm still following now, both due to me becoming bored of them and due to the comics actually finishing. Skin Deep is one of those rare titles although I remember that not because I had an immediate, deep connection with it (although the characters are also college freshman!) but because I remember getting a pop-up malware ad on the site and panicking quite throughly in my freshman dorm room (I think I went so far as to take the battery out of my laptop to make sure nothing was going in the background). Fortunately this didn't color my experience reading the comic or make me resentful, but I am glad that these days the majority of ads I see on webcomics are ads for other comics which are 100% less likely to give me malware.

Skin Deep by Kory Bing

Book Review: Helen of Sparta

This was the third and final title I got for free from Amazon during my prime membership trial and I was drawn to it because of the title like a lot of people were like the editor at Amazon (wait they have editors working with these books?). She wrote along the lines of "everyone knows her as Helen of Troy so why Sparta?" but actually, every story says that Helen came from Sparta, she's only associated with Troy because of her abduction. A story that makes that distinction from the start sounded interesting so why not check it out?

Helen of Sparta by Amalia Carosella

  

Book Review: Anansi Boys

Recently it's been a bit more convenient for me to get to my Maryland library system than the DC one so I've gone back through my ever-too-long to-read list and grabbing a few things from the early parts of it. I can actually specifically remember where this recommendation came from, back in the livejournal days I wrote about a book I had just read which was a collaboration between Gaiman and someone else and I thought it was pretty bad. It was a failed tv pilot involving people from alternate worlds but the catch was that every single one of them was essentially the same person, literally a group of chosen people that was all the same person. I mentioned that if this was my first exposure to Gaiman I wasn't sure what the fuss was all about so a friend of mine kindly posted a few recommendations for his best-loved books and they've sat on my list ever since.  

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Movie Review: Song of the Sea

Unusually enough for me, I actually saw this film in a theater in one of the last weeks it was in DC (the Angelica Pop-Up which was a nice theater but in a borderline sketchy part of DC, got nervous when a bus passed me heading for Capitol Heights, you do not go to South-West DC if you can at all help it). I really wanted to make the effort to see it on a big screen considering how much I loved the visuals in The Secret of Kells which was also made by Tomm Moore/Cartoon Saloon and the art in the trailers for this film looked gorgeous. But actually watching it made me realize that seeing something on the big screen just isn't that much of an improvement for me, it was nice but I feel like I could've gotten the same impression if I had watched it on a nice tv back home.

Song of the Sea

Audio Book Review: Strange Maid

 I received this from my library through the Overdrive program/app and holy cow that was the least intuitive app I have ever used and I cannot believe that people actually think this is a good program. I had to use a separate app for my computer and phone, unsure if they synced since I didn't want to even try it out after all the hassle it had already taken, and the program didn't even save my place when I stopped for the day. A third of the time I would open it up and it would start playing where I left off but I couldn't figure out the rhyme or reason for why it saved my place sometimes and not others (it's not because of the bookmark function). The book was also split up into ten sections for downloading/accessing but these sections didn't necessarily line up with chapter breaks, as would be logical and there seemed to be enough free space in the last section to allow for shuffling, left me wondering why this app was even designed this way if it wasn't either logical or elegant, one or the other I could understand but not neither! 

The Strange Maid by Tessa Gratton, narrated by Cynthia Holloway 

Book Review: City of Stairs

It's a little hard to tell but I think I've made some good progress on my books-to-read list which is always a nice thing. I've been able to knock off some stuff I've had on the list for years and found that by now my library systems have a surprising number of 2014 books. Not everything (they seem to have gotten in Children of a Hidden Sea and then promptly lost it) but enough things that I always have something nice to read these days!

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Book Review: Nobody's Princess and Nobody's Prize

As is a running theme on this blog, there are some books that have been on my to read list for entirely too long and it's just because I can't get a hold of them and I don't have the budget to blind buy. A lot of times they fall off after a while, I can't remember why I put them on in the first place or the summary starts to sound more stale but this one never did since it's about Helen of Sparta/Troy and, well I'm not named after her but I am interested in the legend*. There aren't as many stories about the Trojan War as there are about other parts of Greek mythology and Helen is always portrayed as either "madonna or whore," and innocent woman who is kidnapped and may-or-may-not have Stockholm Syndrome or someone who willingly deserted her husband and died for it. I was really hoping that these two books would do something different, originally I was going to review them separately but decided that it actually made more sense to talk about it in one review rather than rehash a lot of the same points two times. So there will be some spoilers but not anymore than you'd get if you looked at the summary for the second book before you read the first!

Nobody's Princess & Nobody's Prize by Esther Friesner

Book Review: The Boneshaker

A couple of years ago I read The Broken Lands and found myself regretting that it had taken so much time to get to the book since I whole heartedly adored it and yet never got around to reading the book it was a prequel to. My to-read list is so long I had nearly forgotten about it until I saw the author talking about the kickstarter she was doing (I believe it was either a companion novella to this or for another, unconnected novella she had written) that prompted me to check my new library systems to see if they had a copy and to reserve it. And so, here are my thoughts on it, and I am also so glad the library seems to have found their copy again, this is the second book in four months they've said I lost after I turned it in and I had to find the first one on the shelves myself.....

The Boneshaker by Kate Milford

My favorite books of 2013

I'm sure some people looked at that title and wondered if I got the date wrong, nope! Since I get so many books from libraries it takes a little while for me to get to everything and, since last December the list of books from 2013 I wanted to read was greater than the list of those which I had, I decided to revisit the idea halfway through 2014. I'm actually not done posting all my reviews of 2013 books yet, who knows if I'll ever be done, but all of the ones on this list I have reviewed previously so let's get started! Oh and, unsurprisingly, not only is this a short list but it's also all YA, I really am trying to read more broadly but I'm having a hard time finding adult fiction that simply entertains me as much as YA that's not straight-up non-fiction.

Book Review: The Lost Sun

Quick order of business, due to trying watching all the fall anime shows at once in order to get that round-up out I'm switching the order of the tv series and anime reviews this week to give myself an extra day, glad that this week I can choose just which series I want to watch on which days now.

In any case, this is another book curotisy of Random Buzzers, haven't gotten one from them in a while, and it was funny since I entered, forgot about it, when to Otakon and thought "oh huh, guess I didn't win, damn I wanted that book." Which of course means that according to the laws of humor that the book was lying on my bed for me when I got back that weekend, hurray!

The Lost Sun by Tessa Gratton

So originally I was going to say about the cover was along the lines of "it might be just me but there's something a little off here, I think it's the semi-transparent face against the woods that's not working" when I remembered, Soren isn't white! I don't recall the exact passages from the book but he's either black or biracial (and dark enough to not pass for white) and, well, that's not what you think when you look at this cover. So I suppose there's a bit of white-washing going on, lovely, haven't come across that in a little while.

Summary: Sorin Bearskin's father was a berserker, a warrior devoted to Odin and prone to fits of battle frenzy, and that's what he'll be as well, destined and doomed by his genetics. Soren fights this all the time but when he meets Astrid, the daughter of a powerful seer and a budding one in her own right, who not only needs his powers but doesn't fear them he finds himself going on a road-trip like quest with her to find a dead god and set the world back to rights.

The Good: What initially drew me to this book was the setting and it is quite meticulously done, it never feels like Gratton has merely replaced one part of our modern lives with something medieval (like, replacing phones with something magical) but rather like she spent a lot of time thinking about how much a different culture would have shaped this nation (so instead of court cases sometimes people get into ritual all out duels which is rather cool actually). Some of this pops up in the main conflict as well since instead of centering the story around some of the better known Norse mythological figures (Thor, Odin, Loki, etc) the story revolves around the disappearance of Baldur and I'm always baffled why he doesn't pop up more often in modern takes on Norse myths (considering that, if I recall correctly, his death helps trigger/triggered/will trigger Ragnarok) and appreciate that.* So for any fans of Norse mythology who are a bit tired of just seeing retellings such as the Marvel movies (or perhaps you aren't tired of those and just want me) then give this a shot, I'm looking forward to the next books just to see what happens next with the setting.

The Bad: This could very well be because I read the book in one sitting (not exactly because I wanted to, I was on a long train ride with nothing else to do) but there was something about it that just felt a little off. I truly did enjoy it, don't get me wrong there, but maybe it was how quickly I read the book that made it seem like everything was a bit too easy for the characters. I know why they succeeded when they did, the story makes that a plot point, and ultimately the real struggle in the book isn't Soren and Astrid's quest but rather Soren dealing with his past/future but I still wish that it had been just a little more difficult for them. And, saying this as vaguely as I can to avoid spoilers, I wasn't satisfied with how Soren's story wrapped up, like the rest of the story I felt like in the end it was resolved all too easily which made me wonder if the character's had had some major communication problems which is always a lame reason for a conflict.


So, great setting and world-building but the problems were resolved a little too simply at the end which was a tad frustrating. For that I give the book 3.5 out of 5 stars and can't wait to see what it does next!





*it also means that the title is a really awesome pun but apparently I'm in the minority for actually liking puns and wordplay

Manga Review: Olympos

So, on Wednesday I had my wisdom teeth out and, since this is a surgery that results in having four less bones in your body and several other bones quite sore as a result, they gave me some pretty strong painkillers to take for it. Painkillers don't last forever however and when you wake up in the middle of the night when said painkillers stop working you're not always at your most attentive. Which is my round-about way of saying that I accidentally took the wrong drugs on Friday (codeine is nasty stuff y'all) and spent the entire day out of it and even twelve hours after I took the damn thing I was barely lucid enough to get on twitter for half an hour and writing this review was way out of my range of capabilities. Funny enough I had considered writing a few reviews in advance just in case, I'd read this book already, heck when Yen Press announced it I looked it up online to see if it would interest me and read more of it than I meant to, so sorry folks, turns out that getting your wisdom teeth out is a bigger deal than a lot of people make it out to be.


Olympos by Aki

Summary: In the myths they say that the Trojan prince Ganymede was stolen by Zeus to become a cup-bearer for the gods but in these stories he was instead stolen by Apollo to ease his own boredom, something all the gods seem to have in excess. 

The Good: This might sound a little odd but I don't mind how much the gods have been changed up from their original incarnations and here's why; the Greek gods were first and foremost very human in their actions, hence why they were so petty, and getting bored is a very human thing. So, when you take immortal beings, which are still rather human like, and give them nothing to do of course boredom will result, it's an interesting take and I rather like it. 

The Bad: I remember when I first read some of this I really liked it but this time around, between which I had looked at a couple of other people's views and saw they were mostly lukewarm, I was just really bored. The story seemed dull, none of the characters really did anything, nothing essitentally changed by the end, it felt much more like a young creator trying to tell what would be a really hard story for an experienced writer to pull off well, it's just hard to write an interesting story that spends basically half of it's time naval gazing. So unless you happen to like stories like that, and I don't mind naval gazing a lot of the time, you should avoid this one.

The Art: The cover gives you a pretty good idea of what kind of art to expect, graceful pretty boys with little resemblance to either greek physique/clothing in general or the gods they're supposed to be (but the story does provide a reason for that which I'm okay with). The backgrounds are also basic however, it's clear where Aki's artistic talents lie, and it would have been nice to have had some more detailed ones, although given this is a story that's more about characters interacting than the setting, really it could have been set anywhere, it's not a deal killer. I did like however that Yen included the colored pages at the beginning of each volume, I do like how Aki works with color.


So, giving this just a 2.5 out of 5 stars and not really a recommendation given how dull it turned out to be. This is hardly the first time my opinion on something has really changed between when I first started consuming it and when I finished but, as always, I'm a bit confused how I had such conflicting opinions.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who: The Pyramids of Mars

And it's time for another classic Doctor Who serial, I really like how the serials that BBC decided to air complement each other so well. The Aztecs had one of the shows famous lines about not being able to rewrite time and in this episode when Sarah Jane questions if they really need to save the day since she obviously came from the future the Doctor shows her how much the future will change if they don't (and I really do think these two go together given the shows guidelines about what can be changed and what can't). In Tomb of the Cybermen we see the character Victoria and in this serial Sarah Jane is running around in some of her clothes (which are actually period appropirate for once!). And in Spearhead from Space the Doctor begins his long term relationship working for/with UNIT and here they were aiming to go back to them for a bit, and as usual end up in the right place but the wrong time by several decades. 


Doctor Who Classic: The Pyramid of Mars

Summary: While the Doctor and Sarah Jane were attempting to get back to UNIT after some adventuring they accidentally end up in what would become their headquarters a few decades too early, although knowing the Doctor and his relationship with UNIT that might have been on purpose. Also, knowing how adventure calls to the TARDIS it may also be no coincidence that they land in the middle of a plot to unseal an alien known as the Egyptian god Set from his prison on Mars. 

The Good: This was a fairly solid serial, it shows something that I've been thinking about a lot lately which is how it seems like in Classic DW the companions were always having their own side adventures instead of just tagging along with the Doctor (like they seem to do most of the time in Nu Who) and I like that, even if it's still a bit hard to see the companions as fully fleshed out characters when you only see a single story with them. Especially since in Sarah Jane's case my first experience with her was in Nu Who when she was completely and fully an independent adult whose a bit more jaded than she is here, honestly that made for some odd dissonance but that's my problem, not the show's. Other than that, while the twist on Egyptian mythology didn't work 100% for me it worked better than I would have thought if someone had just said "they were all aliens-" "suuuuure, because everything on Doctor Who is aliens-" "who sealed Set on Mars" and it's always a good thing when DW actually pulls off their bizarre set-ups.

The Bad: One thing I think I've said a lot over the years is how I don't like it when Doctor Who kills off a lot of it's one episode characters. Not because this is a family friendly show or such but because it always feels so pointless, the Doctor (and companions) rarely seem to be torn up over it and we never see how other people react to their friends and family mysteriously dying and that does frustrate me. I did feel like the story got a bit too overly complicated by the end but I guess that was the result of them needing to fill time. 

The Audio/Visuals: Oh dear, we’ve entered that weird era of British television where the shows were at least partially shot on a higher frame rate, here it’s really obvious to me that it’s not the usual 24 frames per second when the characters move around quickly. Even though I would love for us to move to a higher frame rate in general it’s still unusual enough to look jarring and, considering most of the special effects look cheesy to start with and I’ve heard it’s even harder to make them look good at higher frame rates, yeaaaaah. Weirdly enough there are some moments when the special effects look really good but by and large you can tell that most of their props were made of foam and for some reason that detail pulls me out faster than almost anything else. Also, there are some shots where the video looked a little distorted, like they were shot with a lens that was slightly fisheye, and I don’t think that was on purpose. I could be crazy and imagining something that wasn’t there, and it could be a result of aging over the years, but that didn’t really help the show regardless.


Yep I really can't wait until I'm back near my libraries that have a pretty good selection of classic Doctor Who (/the time to browse and see just what Netflix has for streaming), the more I watch of it the more I like it, bit sad that by the time the next classic serial rolls around I won't have BBCA anymore so who knows how I'm going to watch it. Actually, at this rate I won't have BBCA for the finale of the current season, that's going to be frustrating considering how spoiler laden the internet will be.....

Book Review: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Initially I was going to have a separate post for The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King but I realized that even if I post two book reviews a week in December I still wouldn't have time to do all of those and everything else. So I'm still going two book reviews a week in December (well, theoretically anyway, going to have some major catching up to do once exams are done) but I did decided to cram all three of these books into one post. Plus, I think that most people think of these books together, not individually anyway and it's a bit hard to say "well I hope they do this" when I've not only heard the stories before but seen the movies. So I guess this makes this review a bit more introspective than normal, oh well!

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Summary: Bilbo Baggins is growing old and decides that it's time for him to vanish from Hobbiton and leave most of his worldly possessions to his nephew Frodo including a certain ring. The years begin to pass and their old friend Gandalf makes a startling and scary discovery, Bilbo's ring of invisibility is in fact the long-lost ring of power that belonged to the dark lord Sauron who has slowly been gaining in strength since around when Bilbo was adventuring. So a council is called and they decide that there is only one thing that can be done, to send Frodo along with a company of others into Mordor to destroy the ring rather than risk Sauron finding it again and in an attempt to destroy him forever.

The Good: It was rather interesting to re-read these books since I remembered thinking in the past that you could draw some parallels to the real war that was going on as Tolkien read those but I had forgotten just how brutal the Scouring of the Shire part was (probably because it wasn't in the movies and I saw those marginally more recently than the books) and that made it a lot easier to understand Frodo's fate/choice in the end. Before I had never quite understood why he did what he did but after rereading that part I get it now and I think it also marks very well this end of a mythological third age that the books talk about. And I really liked all of the meta-commentary on the history/timeframe that these books are set in, Tolkien borrowed heavily from Norse mythology for a lot of his setting and since I don't come across that much fiction which does that makes this (in a very odd way) make it feel fresher than a lot of the epic fantasy I've read.

The Bad: I had forgotten this but in the second and third books (when the fellowship is split in two) the entire first half of the book focuses on one group and the second on the other which feels rather disjoined and I'm glad they changed that for the movies. I can see why Tolkien did that but whenever there is a story with a lot of different viewpoints I always prefer quickly switching back and forth between the people/groups rather than seeing how an entire event plays out for one group and then switching over to the other group to see how it went for them. I also wish some things in the setting had been fleshed out more (there was a one-off line about how orcs were inferior copies of either elves or ents which I thought was cool but wasn't ever touched on again) but maybe things like that appeared in some of his other writings later. 


On a funny note, starting with the first book the stories kept referencing an appendix and I figured this was part of the whole literary agent hypothesis which the book sometimes indulged in and never went looking for it. That is until I was flipping through the final book to see how many pages were left and realized there was over 100 pages of notes and dates for these things, oops, shall have to find time to read those later on. And I think that after all of this I need to finally make an effort and read the Simarilon especially since I really liked how Tolkien has set up this rather epic (in the classical sense of the word) setting and I'd like to explore more of it. 

Movie Review: Jade Warrior

EDIT: Sorry guys, I got distracted, started this one too late last night, planned to finish this and the anime review today and woke up at 6:15 to my toilet flooding and just didn't get enough sleep after that to deal with the rest of the day and write two reviews. So, anime coming Tuesday, hopefully everything will be back on track by Friday (and hopefully I'll be able to finally get my schedule for this semester settled, the first few weeks are always hard for me to readjust to and that hasn't been helping either). 

Here's a title I've been meaning to see for years since it's a favorite of a friend of mine, a combination of Finnish and Chinese mythology set in modern day Finland about a smith. You can't say that any part of that is a regular in movies (heck, I can barely think of any stories, across mediums, that have a smith as a main character and that's the most normal part of the last sentence) and I had found a copy of it at the local college library a few years back so I made sure to find some time at the very tail end of my summer to see how this movie even worked.

Jade Warrior

Summary: Centuries ago in ancient China a half-Finnish half-Chinese warrior named Sintai was tasked with killing a demon that threatened to enslave all of humanity and was to be rewarded with Nirvana if he succeeded. Along the way however he falls in love and realizes if can never come to pass if he kills the demon (since he cannot be with her in this life and won't have any other lives if he succeeds) which leaves him conflicted over what path to take. Now in modern day Finland the smith Kai is feeling the effects of his previous life and must now choose how to finish that same task laid before him. 

The Good: The plot sounds a bit complicated on paper (I'm afraid I might've said too much actually but that was as far as I could pare it down) but it actually flows well and neither story line spoils the other surprisingly enough. The movie has a lot of ideas in it which I found rather new and it takes a path with the romance that isn't often done which made me happy since not only was it different but it worked within the story.  

The Bad: Despite my earlier comments about the plot, this wasn't really a plot heavy story or even a character heavy story for me, it was more about atmosphere than anything else. I still enjoyed it but I think that would make it harder to recommend to people (right now I can see myself recommending it to fans of the wuxia genre or if someone is a big mythology buff but outside of those two niches I don't know if many people would like it). I know that often I say that I can't recommend a story to a lot of people like it's a bad thing and truthfully it's not technically a bad thing, but the fact that I don't think a story will interest people and it's not full of anything like, facts that only a hardcore history buff would know and a non-buff wouldn't get/enjoy the story because of it, I think does mean that it hasn't worked the way it should. That's simply my opinion however, although I really don't think that this film is going to interest most people unless they want to sit through a slow, mostly atmosphere film that's told a bit out of order and doesn't have tons of character development either.

The Audio: Due to some circumstances on my end I had a hard time hearing the movie (it was in no way shape or form the fault of the DVD, I just had a really loud fan blowing) and I honestly can't remember if there was an English dub for the movie (Amazon doesn't list on in any case) because I was watching the original audio. If I remember correctly the audio itself is something interesting it's half-Finnish and half-Chinese depending on what timeframe it's focusing on and movies that are bilingual are, while not unheard of, fairly uncommon and I can only think of a one or two others. Obviously I don't speak either of these languages so I can't say how good the acting was, and with the cast being a mixture of Finnish and Chinese this choice also makes some logical, filming, sense, but I still thought it was a neat idea and worked fine for me since both parts were subtitled. 

The Visuals: There were a lot of interesting settings in the movie, like Kai's forge and the desolate Chinese landscapes in the flashback, although there is some CGI used in points which seems rather obvious to me now (the joys of using a technology that is still advancing rapidly). I've seen a few complaints about how the fight scenes looked and, while I didn't see anything that seemed really off they certainly didn't grab me as much as the ones in say, Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. 


In the end I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would (given it's weird premise), can't really think of anyone I know to recommend it to and don't feel the need to re-watch it anytime soon. Although writing this review reminds me that I never saw all of House of Flying Daggers and other than this it's been quite a while since I saw a wuxia film.....

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Thistil Mistil Kistil, Toilet Genie, Transpose Operator

Still got another few days left, and dreading writing Saturday's epic-length post, I think by now everyone can see why I generally have to write reviews pretty soon after I finish a work. Well that and why watching eight or so different tv/anime shows a week doesn't phase me, although I have certainly found that it takes more effort to review the comics that either have a lot of different plot-lines or take a lot of breaks and I generally don't have that problem with anime. In any case, last year's T reviews.

Thistil Mistil Kistil by Sarah Schanze
Coal is a fallen warrior on his way to Valhalla but things aren't going as planned. As he is informed by a few angry gods his special pendant is not a replica of Mjölnir but actually a piece of it stolen by Loki. It turns out that Loki has also stolen small pieces from other weapons of the gods and so they appoint Coal to find Loki and track down where these missing pieces have gone off to.

This series definitely gets points for having a different setting, aside from Tolkien's works I can't think of that many stories that have heavy Norse influences* and the art also has a distinct look, I believe it was inspired by The Secret of Kells which was inspired by illuminated manuscripts of the time which makes it all the perfect choice. A really big reason I like the comic however is because of how Loki is portrayed. My first brush with Norse mythology, way back sometime in elementary school, had Loki as a trickster but not a "bad guy" so I've always been rather partial to that interpretation ever since which fits this Loki rather well. I really like the banter he and Coal have and I'm curious how to see how the other main characters who have yet to be introduced will fit in with the rest of the story. 



*you guys would not believe the stuff Tolkien stole, it's rather amazing.

Toilet Genie by Cari Corene
The first installment in the DOOR series, Skittlze was an average pug (loved her owners but rather dumb over all) who stumbles across a man chained to a toilet who grants her three wishes, the third of which turns her into a girl. Before Skittlze goes off to discover just how well this last wish will turn out she asks the man how he ended up being chained to a toilet which is an interesting story indeed.

This comic is a lot more "artsy" than most comics I read, both in the actual art style and in the way it's creating it's on overarching mythology, and I'll admit that it took me a few tries to really get into the story but now that there's a good chunk out I think it's easier to get into. Part of the reason I had a bit of a hard time was with the art actually, the character designs are very stylized but by now they've grown on me and I really like how the mythological parts of the story are done in watercolors instead of the normal coloring style. This story is one that's better to be read in chunks than in single page updates but when read together it's weaving together an interesting mythology and history and I'm curious to see where it goes next.

Transpose Operator by Roxy Polk
Sometime in the future everything went to hell and Earth is now a wasteland where the atmosphere kills you and there are mysterious androids running around with seemingly sinister plans. It's in this situation that our heroine wakes up, has no idea who she is or any knowledge of the world but she's determined to survive and find out anyway.


The protagonist of this story is one of the most badass characters I've ever seen, how many characters could wake up in a strange hospital, know absolutely nothing about themselves and the world, be chased by TWO groups of strange people and get through all of that without having a break down (and nearly managing to evade both of them wearing nothing but a hospital gown to boot!)? That's really what attracted me to the comic when I first came across it and even the horror aspects of the story, a genre I normally don't like, added to the setting and made me more intrigued. I've read plenty of dystopian stories and some of them have had horror elements as well, nothing says the future has gone wrong like disturbing medical experiments after all, but it doesn't mean it's any less effective here. Oh and it's total conincidence that the comic came off of hiatus today, I honestly did not plan that.
 

Movie Review: Thor

Sorry that last night's review was up late, I was actually out seeing another superhero movie with friends, I really love my school's one dollar movie night ("Bum a dollar. Catch a movie"). Actually, that was the whole reason why I didn't see that many movies in theaters this summer, I knew if I could wait a few months there was a good chance I could catch them at school with friends for a fraction of a price and for me superhero movies are ones that I have to see with friends, I just can't take them seriously enough when I'm by myself.

Thor

 Summary: Thor, god of thunder, is next in line for the throne in Asgard but his father Odin thinks, rightly, that he is too arrogant to make a good king. So he is exiled to Earth until he is deemed worthy to regain his powers all the while his brother Loki is maneuvering behind the scenes while he discovers his own problems.

The Good: The scene after the credits, while it's not important to the movie (it is important to the upcoming Avengers movie) was short but worth the wait, I found it more satisfying than the one at the end of Iron Man 2 (which ironically was the one foreshadowing Thor). I liked a lot of the side characters in this movie; Darcy was just a fun character in how she was never phased by any of the situations (also, anyone who tazes a god is good in my books) , Sif I was expecting to be the token female warrior (who isn't very competent and you wonder why they're there in the first place) but instead was very competent and even fought better than some of the guys in some scenes and the movie was actually very good in general at making all the warrior side characters seem capable and strong, just not as strong as the main characters of course. Heimdall, the gate keeper, was also an incredibly badass character and I just loved the one moment when all the S.H.E.I.L.D. men are completely unphased by everything going on around them, I just love little moments like that in movies and often much more so than the big dramatic ones.

The Bad: When I was first introduced to Norse mythology (in book form, not the Thor comics) Loki was usually protrayed either as a sympathetic character or at least a neutral one so naturally I get annoyed whenever he's made the villain of a story instead. I still don't quite get his motivation for it which made much of the plot feel very weak in the end. I also did not like Jane that much (she came off as a flat character to me) and found her romance with Thor a bit strange actually, I couldn't see any real reason for them to be interested in each other since Thor was also a flat character earlier on in the movie (which was expected however since this movie is his hero's journey). In short, I enjoyed the earlier half of the movie more than the later half which is odd for me but it was far from terrible.

The Audio: Honestly, aside from the nice touch with Thor using more old fashioned phrases I don't remember much about the audio aspect of this movie, I think I really need to start taking notes on these things since the music from movies just never seems to stick with me.

The Visuals: Even if the idea of a bridge made of rainbows joining the worlds is a bit silly, essentially everything in this movie looked good. There were points when I thought the rain during the fight in the rain scene look odd (probably because artificial rain lacks the variety that nature gives real rain) but other than that everything looked fine, even if it wasn't completely perfect, although I suspect the CGI will probably look dated in five or so years. 


So, a movie that was worth spending a dollar on especially since I got to see it with friends (whom I've already made plans with to see Captain America when it gets to my school sometime in November) and it was fun to see one of the people working the movie have to run down the auditorium, jump on stage and run behind the curtains to turn the lights back off for the after credits scene.

Book Review: Tyger Tyger

This is another book which was recommended to me from The Enchanted Inkpot (well, I believe so, when I went to delete it off of my "to-read" list it was rather high up on it so I've had the recommendation for a while). Not much else to say about it, except from the title I was expecting it to be a book dealing with an Indian setting/mythology (or maybe even something dealing with the British in colonial India) but apparently I was thinking of the wrong country that starts with the letter "I".

Tyger Tyger by Kersten Hamilton

  While the cover of the book makes sense (I'm assuming this is an image of the entrance into Mag Mell) the title doesn't make much sense to me. The poem "Tyger Tyger" is only mentioned twice throughout the entire book and doesn't have a lot of special meaning either time, it's a strange name for a book.

Summary: Teagan lived a happy life with her family, a normal life, but when they take in her cousin Finn strange things, things from fairy tales and her mother's past, begin to happen and Teagan has to go on a journey to salvage what parts of her life she's left with.

The Good: It was a nice surprise to learn that Finn was not a "bad boy" or even a "jerk with a heart of gold" character (as his status as the love interest would initially suggest) but it actually a nice guy and doesn't try to hide it. The revelations about Teagan's family was a nice twist but had enough foreshadowing that it doesn't jerk the reader out of the story or feel unbelievable and it also explains a few things.

The Bad: One problem with kind of setting is that, well, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Once the lead character learns how to see the supernatural they see tons of creatures everywhere causing tons of trouble and, more likely than not, killing people. So, why aren't there more unexplained deaths in these settings or a more superstitious public? The setting isn't just a backdrop for the characters to act against, it's something that should motivate and interact with them and, in this case and like so many others, it just doesn't work the way it should. Other complaints include that the characters actions don't always make sense (why are they even trying to enter Mag Mell if they know that they shouldn't be able to get in? Do they only do this so that they can show later that they can and that there is something going on that they don't know about?) and the relationship between Finn and Teagan ends on a rather weird note (due in part to Teagan having a sudden bout of insecurity about herself*).

The book is set to be the first in a series (don't know how many books) but honestly I don't feel an urge to read the next books, partially because it works really well as a self-contained story. Just take out the last few lines and there's no sequel hook at all, but it's also because for me this was only an okay book. Alright but not fantastic, if my grumbling over certain tropes hadn't already clued you into that, and with that, I'll be back Sunday with a new review folks, see you then!



*bit of a spoiler here but that's why this is in a footnote. One trope I really don't like these days is when the protagonist finds out that they're not quite human/not all human/not human at all and breaks down having an existentialist crisis because of it. It's perfectly understandable that a character would be thrown by the revelation and confused but when they start questioning everything about themselves, everything they've ever thought or done, because of this one thing, that's when it gets annoying. This applies to many other characters as well by the way but, it seems stupid for them to think that they're a different person just because they know more about themselves, they still have the same thoughts, emotions, feelings, hopes, desires, ect after all don't they? Just wanted to get that rant out, the tomato in the mirror trope is being used a lot these days and that part of the trope just bothers me every time it comes up.   

Webcomics that died and really shouldn't have

Wow, sorry for not updating yesterday, had some unexpected stress from school* which helped trigger a really nasty headache for me and I've noticed that I'm even snarkier then. And today's entry doesn't need any extra snarkiness because today dear readers, I talk about the dark side of webcomics. I've proven throughout the month that there are plenty of webcomics with good art, good writing, and keep a regular update schedule, even if they don't appeal to everyone. But there are plenty of webcomics out there that did have good art, good writing, and then suddenly, stopped. No word from the author why they stopped, no resolution, nada. Gah, so, here are the comics that were great, maybe even amazing, and then just died one day, anyone who wants to try them has been warned.

Chasing Rainbows
American manga fans probably know who the author/artist of this one is by the art style (Svetlana Chmakova for those who don't) and this was a webcomic she did from 2003-2006 (pretty fun to see how her art style has changed by now). The story starts with our heroine, Pam, agonizing over having to choose between two guys. A couple of pages later, it's revealed that whatever guy she doesn't choose is going to die, don't know how but he is. The rest of the comic dealt with some of the events that day (but not the accident itself, although what it's going to be is hinted at) and flashbacks showing how she knew each guy and what her relationship was with them. The story ends completely unexpectedly and hasn't updated in almost five years now, even though Svet said recently she was going to try and come off hiatus but she's working on a new project now so I'm not holding my breath.

Crowfeathers
Alright, the title mislead me here since it says Crowfeathers and other tales of the west so I figured that Crowfeathers was a short comic that was part of a collection and therefore a complete story. Nope, the author said they weren't happy with the story, planed on rebooting it and nothing has happened yet. It's true that the beginning of the story doesn't mesh that well with where the story has gone now but you could just re-do the opening (seen plenty of webcomics that have done that) instead of killing it completely. I really loved the mythology they were building up (sometimes I complain that authors don't get creative enough with the mythologies they draw on but this, combining traditional Christian imagery with Native American myths, is nothing but  creative) and really loved the sephia toned art. Gah.

Fallen
I knew going into this one that it had suddenly stopped updating at some point (just glancing at the front page tells you that much) but I saw so many people link to it on their comic pages^ that I had to try it. And so one day I finally got into it and, as I last recall, the comic had just explained something big and was about to explain more stuff and then it stopped, I believe this is the point where I started cursing. Heck, checking the date on the last news article I realized it hadn't been updated in four years and wondered if the author/artist had died, you'd think that they would have been able to post something more recently. But then in the past month, when I was sorting through all my webcomics, I clicked on the LJ link on the side and discovered something, the creator of this comic is the same Yuko that draws for Johnny Wander! AFSADFA, so they never just said "hey guys, not working on this anymore, bye?" Found this out after I reviewed Johnny Wander and I still do like that comic but geeze, this is going to annoy me for a bit longer.

Kemet Kids
Another series with interesting mythology (Egyptian this time, made me a bit nostalgic for those few years in middle school I would come across something Egypt-related almost everyday) and aimed at younger readers (more MG than YA) but it was still an interesting read but I think it didn't have that many readers since the comic just stopped one day. I think it was still in the early stages too, it was still just introducing the villains, poor comic that died before it's time....

Resonance
Another comic where the reboot killed it and, unlike Crowfeathers I'm not sure why it even needed a reboot. As far as I can recall (since neither the comic nor tvtropes have a plot summary about this series) it involved a kid discovering he was actually a demon and trying to find out more about his past (since apparently his dad was a super-powerful demon who went beserk, also means we have plenty of people trying to kill our protagonist). There were some demon hunters and mages also introduced in the comic but I don't recall any major plot revelations in the 270-ish pages before it restarted, no big explanations in any case, and then the comic restarted and didn't get close to where the story had been before. Sigh, there's a reason I freak out these days when a comic artist announces that they want to re-do the story....


So there you have it folks, comics that went out with a whimper and never a word on why they did. Actually, recently I saw a comic (not one I read) where the author announced that they weren't going to do any more of it and then wrote down what the plot would've been otherwise. THAT is what you do, heck, if I ever get started on doing a comic myself I'm going to make sure that, in case of an accident, a friend of mine could post the rest of the script so the readers aren't left hanging forever, it just seems like a sensible and nice thing to do to me.

Also, since I don't have any webcomic reviews to post tomorrow, I'm just going to go ahead and start posting regular reviews again tomorrow anyway. It is a day early but since I already have some written, and especially since the winter anime season is about to end and I don't want to get as behind on those this time, I might as well. See y'all tomorrow with a Harry Potter review!



*on the list of "things you can't do in college," I wasn't aware that "major and minor in the same general department" was on that list, working on it though!
^I have since learned that many comic artists are super slow to update these pages which rather puzzles me.

Webcomic Review: Shurb Monkeys, Skin Deep, Sorcery 101

Alright, got half of the "S" comics up today and look for another three tomorrow, which, weirdly enough, all start with "st". Yeah, I don't know how webcomic artists come up with names either but it is funny to see trends like that.

Shurb Monkeys
These days Shrub Monkeys is a journal like webcomic (sadly one that hasn't been updated much within the past year) but the first 25 or so strips are rather, random, didn't remember that until I skimmed back through them, wonder if the print books will be like that as well (actually, there are a number of rather random comics stuck in here that I'd forgotten about). In any case, these days the comic is about the adventures of it's artist and, since I enjoy random, slice-of-life shows, it's right up my alley and it doesn't require me to remember any important backstory so it's easy to read, even with the breaks. I also like the color scheme in the comic (white, blue, black, and purple), bit of an unusal choice and I'm sure it'll look great as a print comic, just wondering what they plan to do with the random/filler comics that pop up early on.


Skin Deep
Well, this comic is a little hard to talk about not because of hiatuses but because the comic has been on a short story for two years now (actually, the latest page of the main story line was posted back in August of 2008, there have been a couple of other short stories posted in the meantime as well as the current, erm, prequel side story thing that's posting right now). The basic idea to this story is that the creatures of legend and myth are in fact real, they have just developed some sophisticated magical clocking technology (using medallions) so they can blend in with humans. This magic does have an interesting side effect however, namely that people who are the offspring of a mythical animal/normal human relationship will be born human and remain so until they come into contact with one of these medallions, enter Michelle and her problem which kicks off the Orientations chapter (and there seems to be a similar problem going on in the Exchange chapter).  I have to admit that I like the Orientation plot line more than I like the Exchange one (the backstory being built up there is much more complex which I love), hence why I'm a little testy about taking so long to get back to it (the comic only updating once a week isn't helping out) but the current comic isn't bad at all, don't get me wrong there. And it is nice to have prettier art now, even within Orientation there was a big art shift and it's a very good looking comic now, sadly the latest chapters aren't available in print form yet. But, since it is a webcomic, it's all up on the website and I would recommend people check out the short stories as well (they don't add much to the main plot but they are pretty fun).

Sorcery 101
I probably need to completely reread this comic so I'll keep the review short. Set in an alternate world with magic (unknown to the general public however), vampires, demons, werewolves (which is apparently just another way of saying wolf demon), the story mostly follows Danny (an adult which is an oddity in the comics I follow) whose a former crown prince, a wannabe sorcerer and blood-bonded to a vampire whose currently teaching at a local private school. As for plot, there are a number of rivalries between, well, everyone but there's no central plot line in the story yet which is probably why I have a hard time remembering all of the episodic chapters. The story crosses over with As We Were (both by the same author, same artist as Today Nothing Happened) and Strange Someone (which I think was done round robin style, now completed) and those stories made things a bit clearer for me, but since Strange Someone takes place in the future it's a bit spoilerific. I'd recommend the whole set of comics to fans of urban fantasy, I just feel like I should really reread this before I say something wrong and make a fool of myself.


So, more "S" tomorrow and I'm almost done with the alphabet! Still got a couple of special days after that but expect a break sometime this week since I can afford to take another at this rate, plus I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to have a lot of homework this week which, sadly, takes priority.

Webcomic Review: Kagerou, Khaos Komix, Kinnari, Kiwi Blitz, The Knit Princess

Whew, I *think* I remembered every regularly updating webcomic that starts with "K" that I follow but I don't have my list with me so bear with me if I update this later. And yes this update already has five webcomics on it, what can I say, webcomic artists just love giving their creations odd names (I actually know of even more that haven't updated lately!).

Kagerou
While a lot of the comics I've reviewed so far have been rather short, even those comics have been around for a couple of years already but Kagero probably takes the cake since it's been around and updating (without restarting or any of that, it's been one continuous ride) for ten years. That's a really long time and, as a result, the archive is quite impressive but not nearly as impressive as the art shift (yes I want to buy these books, just holding out to see if the artist will be at my local con). So what is the story about? Well, Kano has somehow been pulled to another world and is charged with becoming the champion to protect a princess but this whole adventure could be going on inside my head. He's a young man with a traumatic past (that still isn't fully explored), has at least three other personalities (or possibly real people) living in his head, and there are some complications with the princess he's supposed to protect as well. On paper it sounds like a generic fantasy but in practice it's a colorful mindf*ck that really needs a character sheet and may require a reread every now and then. This one has a bit of an erratic schedule update by the way, what I do is follow the livejournal community for the series and get the updates that way and that's probably the best way to follow the comic (unless it has a twitter I don't know about).

Khaos Komix
A quick word, this one also gets a mature warning and the site itself provides a mature warning on the front page, there is quite a bit of sex in this series. I don't recall anything explicit in the series, I think there is some in the side comics however, but if you aren't okay with the idea of gay sex (and it's not subtle at all) you probably shouldn't be reading this.
Now that that is out of the way, this comic is mainly about a bunch of British teens coming to terms with their sexuality, some with more angst than others, and the story is formatted to follow one teen at a time. Each story builds on the previous one and each one starts in a slightly different place time wise (some earlier than the previous story, some in the middle of the previous story) and none of them end when all the issues are worked out, you still see the characters in the background of the later stories dealing with their problems. Judging by the archive, we've still got at least one more story to go now and I hope this story will have some happy endings in it. The art is alright in the story, I haven't reread it recently but some people have complained about art shifts in it yet I never noticed anything like that when reading it. So, the arts okay, the story is good, go read it if you're in the mood for something mature!


Kinnari
Part of the reason I love reading webcomics is because they're a bit more diverse than all the books/anime/manga/TV I spend my time viewing and this is a great example of that. Based off of Indian mythology, the story seems to follow Neel and Manu and, since the title comes from the word kinnara which means "slightly human," they are probably not what they appear to be. So far they've had prophetic dreams, been attacked, and had another adventure or two in the dreamscape but I'm having a little bit of a hard time following the plot. Partially this is because it only updates once a week and I sometimes forget to check but this is also a fairly new comic so the central plot hasn't made an appearance yet (I also wonder if my unfamiliarity with Indian myths is hurting me but so far there have been detailed author comments explaining the unfamiliar stuff). So I'm hoping for a little more exposition soon, otherwise I'm going to be confused for a bit longer.

Kiwi Blitz
I only discovered this comic recently, it's a newer comic compared to some of the others I read, but it's already out of the introductory phase and into the main plot, huzzah for fast pacing! Our protagonist is Steffi, a hyper young girl who loves battling in giant, animal shaped robots and when her dad (a robot designer) giver her her own kiwi shaped robot she decides to not register it for the fighting games and use it to fight crime instead. Aside from a few cusewords in German the comic is family friendly and I probably would have enjoyed it as a kid both for the plot and the very brightly colored art. The first volume is in print now but I'm on the fence about buying it. As I just said, the art is very colorful and fun but I'm not so sure if I want to reread it so I'll wait a little longer and see where the story goes before making a decision^.

The Knit Princess
There are webcomics about everything including knitting it turns out*, who would've guessed? The story is a fluffy, slice of life story that is going to be enjoyed more by knitters than anyone else (since almost all the humor is knitting based) although any craft person will probably snicker at the idea of projects moving around by themselves or pets messing them up. They recently got a new artist so there has been a dramatic art shift and I personally like the new art better (it's a bit simpler and the characters seem more energetic) but the writer is still the same so no changes to the humor.


 Sorry if this was kinda late tonight, it's been a busy day and I'm so glad I've only got one webcomic to review tomorrow, any guesses on what it is?



^Yes I recommend it, if I review it here during this review month that means I recommend it, it's just that I don't have a lot of shelf space these days so I'm picky about what I buy. Speaking of which, need to move some stuff around again, don't think I can squeeze another shelf in....
*I'm still trying to figure out if this or the webcomic about librarians is odder, Knit Princess probably takes the cake however since Unshelved is mostly realist.