Well I had a rather charming surprise at my new local library, they have quite a bit of manga! I'm starting to think that my local library was a bit crap for having so little (that or it was so throughly spread out between the branch libraries I never got a chance to see what they really had) and this library not only has manga but it has quite a few longer running series that I had always wanted to try and some older books like this one. I didn't think I'd have a chance to read this one any time soon since, to the best of my knowledge, Chromatic Press hasn't started selling new copies yet and I'd have to wait for those to trickle down into the libraries. I will note however that for some reason this particular book was missing some pages, I don't think I missed anything terribly important story wise, I wouldn't be reviewing it if I had, but if it seems like I did feel free to chime in in the comments!
Off*beat (volume two) by Jen Lee Quick
Summary: Tory continues to try and get closer to his neighbor and classmate Colin in order to figure out what exactly is going on in Colin's sometimes mysterious life.
The Good: In the effort of full disclosure, I'm having a bit of trouble remembering where volume one ended and volume two began which in one way is a good thing, it shows just how cleanly this story flows, but does mean this is going to be a shorter review. I'll admit that I liked this volume a bit less since it felt more like build-up, being able to read chapters from volume 3 immediately afterwards was a relief especially since it showed that Quick really does have a well plotted out story in mind. One thing I do remember liking a lot about this volume is how even though Tory is absolutely convinced that Colin is part of a secret government project the story presents it in such a way that as a reader I was never sure if he was right or completely crazy. I think that presentation was on purpose and that's something that's quite tricky to pull off correctly and I thought it gave the story an extra level of interest.
The Bad: I'm so happy I don't have to say "and then it ends forever so we have no conclusion!" since that would be a pretty big negative against the series. The third series is already being serialized in Sparkler Monthly and picks up immediately from where the second volume ends and honestly that takes care of both my biggest problem with the series and that also starts rounding out the characters a bit more which was my other large complaint about the series. People will probably disagree with me but I just found Tory and Colin a bit too flat, Colin spent the first volume barely interacting so it was hard to see what his actual personality was (other than "quiet" and "a bit sullen") and Tory is so obsessive with his stalking that it's as if that one quirk defines his entire personality. Like I said, the third volume is definitely the start of the final act so both of those problems start to fade and that leaves me with no real issues with the series at the moment.
The Art: No big changes here from the first volume, Quick continues to draw in a style that looks a little rough but grew on me over time. I also feel a bit weird critiquing it since I started out reading her later work (Witch's Quarry) so I know that all the problems I have with this work (faces are a bit too similar, backgrounds can get rather simplistic and overly reliant on screentones) are improved upon in her other works yet I hope the art for the last volume isn't too different since a radical style change would be even worse. And, in writing this review, I just realized that the CP editions have new covers and just wanted to quickly mention that I like the new ones (with new logo) better than the old TokyoPop ones, much more focused composition.
So, if you enjoyed the first volume of Off*Beat you'll enjoy this one even more and then should run over to Sparkler Monthly to read the rest. Otherwise, if you're a fan of lite-BL stories where the relationship isn't the main focus then you should give this series a shot, I was pleasently surprised to see that it was as good as I had been told anyway.
I have to admit, I'm really curious what must have been in the water a few years back when writers suddenly started going "you know what we haven't had in a while? SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES, we should make some!" I suspect that stuff like this is actually part of a cycle, which would also explain weird coincidences like having multiple films in one year based on a certain fairy tale that hasn't been on the silver screen in a number of years, although that didn't make me any less leary when it was announced that there was going to be another tv show based off of Sherlock Holmes, set in the US, and they were making Watson female ("oh great, romance ahoooooy!"). I did change my feelings a tiny bit when I heard that an Asian-American actress had been cast as Joan Watson, the fact that a show was willing to give a non-white actor a leading role gave me some hope that they actually knew what they were doing, and then the first episode leaked and tumblr adored it. Well, not some of the Sherlock fans, but a lot of people did and that sealed the deal, I was going to give this a chance after all and pray that it turned out amazing.
Elementary
Summary: Joan Watson is a sober companion in NYC who helps recovering addicts transistion back into everyday life and her latest client is a British man who is recovering from a heroin addiction, Sherlock Holmes. He's less than thrilled about having a sober companion especially since he's already come up with his own plan for how to transition back into everyday life and stay focused, by working as a consulting detective for the NYPD which means that Joan needs to tag along and in the process discovers that she has a talent for noticing the details and fitting them into the larger puzzle as well.
The Good: Well to cut to the chase, I loved this show. It completely avoided the biggest thing I was worried about, changing Watson to a woman in order to have a romance with Holmes, entirely and instead we got a really good series with a mixed gender leading couple that weren't a couple at all, I liked that! Plus it had a fairy diverse cast of returning characters AND even though things such as prostitution came up several times none of the characters ever made "prostitution is WRONG" comments, the characters just dealt with the cases making it one of the least problematic things I've seen in a long time. The show also managed to have a small overarching story that set everything in motion and ended the story but at the heart of the story it was about Sherlock and Joan and how the two of them grow which was pretty amazing. This is one of the most human versions of Sherlock I've seen, even if he makes a lot of misteps by the end he's apologizing when he realizes, or has it pointed out to him, what he's done wrong and from the first episode Joan is not afraid to call him out on it. Also, I think this is the first time I've seen a Sherlock Holmes story where Watson goes beyond being the audience's point of view character and rises to become a detective themselves, something that amazes me because it's so obvious in retrospect. It was a rather pleasant surprise to see that this series wasn't just about Sherlock getting over his addiction and becoming a better person at the same time but that it was also about Joan moving farther away from her own past and finding something she really took pleasure in.
The Bad: I am a little worried about what the series will do next, if it had ended her I think it would have had a perfectly fine ending and as such I wonder how they'll make the characters continue to change. I saw a snippet of an interview, I think with Lucy Lui (Joan) who said that they were trying/hoping to do more multi-parters in the second season which would be a great idea but I'm also worried that now that the show has proven to be successful more people will try to meddle with it (since I'm told that's what happens with successful shows, everyone wants a finger in the pie and then too many cooks ruin a good stew after all). But, even after being burned by Once Upon A Time's second season I'm going to remain optimistic that the show will continue to be as good and won't simply cover the same ideas over again.
The Audio/Visuals: This being a series that is a procedural crime drama in current day NYC means that there wasn't a lot that could go wrong with the look or sound of this show so I had no problems there. Although again, the show is so contemporary that as long as nothing looked like something I could never, ever theoretically see in the US I wasn't going to have a problem and nothing came even close to that.
So, giving this 4 out of 5 stars and heck yes I'm watching the second season. Unfortunately it's only sort of streaming online, much like certain deals on hulu, CBS only streams the last four episodes (to air) on their site (and none on hulu at all) so at this point I would recommend that people sit tight and hope that it shows up on Netflix soon. Heck, as soon as it does I am shoving several people I know to that page and having them watch it immediately, fingers crossed that this happens sooner rather than later.
A few years back I read Boneshaker by Cheri Priest and was pretty meh on the book in general. And then shortly afterwords confused since I saw people talking about a book called Boneshaker that was completely different from what I read, turns out it was this book by Kate Milford. I'm still a little surprised that Milford's book kept the same title since I can't have been the only person confused by these two but in any case I wasn't that interested in the book and the cover art was just odd enough to keep me uninterested. The cover for the prequel however grabbed me a bit more and something about the synopsis made me curious and, well, while some might disagree I think it's best to read a series chronologically so this was also the most logical place to start!
The Broken Lands by Kate Milford, illustrated by Andrea Offermann
Summary: It's the 19th century New York and, while the Brooklyn Bridge isn't quite finished yet the city of New York and Coney Island are becoming more and more joined regardless. And as any afficando of fairy tales knows, a crossroads, especially as one so massive as the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River, is a source of power and some, people, have come calling to NYC to take it over for their own purposes. Cities have protections however for these times but out villains already know about those and seek to twist them to their own dark needs. Sam is only a cardshark living on Coney Island and Jin is even less connected to the city but when both of them end up in the wrong place they become determined to do what they can to save the city and keep all of it's people safe.
The Good: There is just something about the way that this story unfolds which makes it work and it's one of my favorite books so far this year. Maybe it's the setting, I suppose you could call this book urban fantasy and it does a remarkably good job at focusing on both the mundane (urban) parts of Sam and Jin's lives and on the fantastical elements that have worked their way in. Often when I read urban fantasy I see stories that would rather focus on the magic and how another world, in a sense, lurks behind street corners and focuses on the fantastical instead of the ordinary. That's fine but here the city of New York is so pivotal to the story (and the time, the story is set roughly during the Reconstruction after the Civil War which isn't a time period I see many books set in, especially middle grade/young adult) that if the story had tried to focus more on the magic than the normal then it would have been hard to see where the characters got the motivation to save it. Much like the setting, the story balances out the page time that both Sam and Jin get quite nicely and both develop very well (and the development also feels very natural given that the story takes place over about a week, it's not too much yet with the circumstances the two face it's believable that they do change). After looking at the summary for Boneshaker I was sad that I didn't see either of their names in there since I would love to read more about their adventures and I'm crossing my fingers that they do appear after all.
The Bad: There were some moments towards the end where things just seemed to work out too well for both Sam and Jin which threw me out of the story a bit. Yes good/advantageous things will happen to characters in stories, that's what happens in real life. However, it was just the way that some things right near the climax occurred that frustrated me, other than that this was a really good book and I don't have any major complaints about it. I am curious to find out how it connects to Boneshaker, once I was completely finished with the book I looked up a summary for it but couldn't figure it out which also makes me wonder what purpose this story served then.
So I didn't give the illustrations their own section this time since 1) I don't have the book with me so I can't really talk about them without looking at them and 2) while okay I didn't feel like they added anything really important to the story that was worth mentioning. That doesn't mean I didn't like them, technically the ones in Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series didn't add anything either and I loved those, so I just didn't really have anything to say. Regardless, I give this book four stars out of five and now that I've finally reviewed it I'm going to go ahead and get a hold of Boneshaker and hope that I like it just as much.
