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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Kami Garcia; Gabriel Picolo–Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven (2021)

Posted in Beast Boy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Death, Gabriel Picolo, Graphic Novel, Kami Garcia, Raven, Supernatural, Teen Titans on July 17, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: May 20, 2023] Teen Titans: Raven

Kami Garcia has written (and Gabriel Picolo has illustrated) a trilogy of books about Raven and Beast Boy from the Teen Titans.

I only know about Teen Titans from teen Titans Go! which I think is hilarious and (which I realized years after watching it) has nothing really at all to do with the actual Teen Titans who are serious (and kind of dull in a DC comics way).

But these stories are interesting and seem to be breaking out of the darkness that DC is under with these lighter (but not nearly as light as Teen Titans Go!) origin stories.

As with all comic book characters, origin stories are canon.  Until they need to be modified for the new series. I don’t know what the actual origin stories of either of these characters are, but I enjoyed these quite a bit.  I also rather liked this book because on the cover Raven looks like Miss Calendar from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

At the end of each of their books, they were heading to Nashville to meet Slade, a mysterious figure who says he has answers.  They are in the same cafe and when their orders get mixed up (Beast Boy is vegetarian), they wind up talking.  Beast Boy falls for her instantly, but she is very suspicious and blows him off. (more…)

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Kami Garcia; Gabriel Picolo–Teen Titans: Beast Boy (2020)

Posted in Beast Boy, Death, Drugs, Gabriel Picolo, Graphic Novel, Kami Garcia, Raven, Supernatural, Teen Titans on July 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: May 20, 2023] Teen Titans: Beast Boy

Kami Garcia has written (and Gabriel Picolo has illustrated) a trilogy of books about Raven and Beast Boy from the Teen Titans.

I only know about Teen Titans from teen Titans Go! which I think is hilarious and (which I realized years after watching it) has nothing really at all to do with the actual Teen Titans who are serious (and kind of dull in a DC comics way).

But these stories are interesting and seem to be breaking out of the darkness that DC is under with these lighter (but not nearly as light as Teen Titans Go!) origin stories.

As with all comic book characters, origin stories are canon.  Until they need to be modified for the new series. I don’t know what the actual origin stories of either of these characters are, but I enjoyed these quite a bit.

This story begins in Georgia where teenaged Garfield Logan (Beast Boy) has a bucket list that mostly includes gaining weight and muscle.  As he leaves the house, his parents ask him if he has taken his Aminotrianidol, to which he says yes, just like every day.  This is a supplement that they say he absolutely must take every day.

Garfield and his friend Stella drive to the county fair to watch their friend Daniel ‘The Tank” Tanaka win a hot dog eating contest.  Stella is an online gamer with thousands of followers.  Garfield is bummed because he doesn’t have a thing that he’s good at. (more…)

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Kami Garcia; Gabriel Picolo–Teen Titans: Raven (2021)

Posted in Amnesia, Beast Boy, Death, Gabriel Picolo, Graphic Novel, Kami Garcia, Raven, Set at School, Supernatural, Teen Titans on July 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: May 20, 2023] Teen Titans: Raven

Kami Garcia has written (and Gabriel Picolo has illustrated) a trilogy of books about Raven and Beast Boy from the Teen Titans.

I only know about Teen Titans from teen Titans Go! which I think is hilarious and (which I realized years after watching it) has nothing really at all to do with the actual Teen Titans who are serious (and kind of dull in a DC comics way).

But these stories are interesting and seem to be breaking out of the darkness that DC is under with these lighter (but not nearly as light as Teen Titans Go!) origin stories.

As with all comic book characters, origin stories are canon.  Until they need to be modified for the new series. I don’t know what the actual origin stories of either of these characters are, but I enjoyed these quite a bit.

This story begins in Atlanta where teenage Rachel (Raven)’s foster mother is planning to adopt her.  But there is a car accident and Raven’s mother is killed. (more…)

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Jodi Taylor–A Symphony of Echoes [The Chronicles of St Mary’s, #2] (2013) [audiobook 2014]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dinosaurs, Fears, Feminism, Fire, Funny (ha ha), History, Huh?, Jodi Taylor, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Supernatural, Thieves, Threats, Time Travel, Violence, Zara Ramm on July 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2023] A Symphony of Echoes

This is the second book in a something-teen long series.

I sometimes wonder if I enjoy a series more for the narrator of the audio books than the quality of the books themselves.

I didn’t think that at the time of reading this, because I was swept up in the comedy and adventure and (yes, I’m saying it, time travel).  However, while looking for a cover image, I read a scathing review of this book and felt that I did agree with many of the criticisms.  I guess I just didn’t care.  And I wonder if that’s because Zara Ramm gave great voice to the lead character Max and also did an amazing job with all of the different characters (male and female from all over the place).

Book 2 continues the time travelling saga of the historians of St. Mary’s.  Like the other stories there are several seemingly random adventures that the crew must go on.  The first, in this case, is with a soon-to-be-retiring historian named Kalinda Black.  She wishes to go to Jack the Ripper times and suss out what actually happened.

Things go horribly wrong when Jack the Ripper (in some form or another) hops a ride with them back to St. Mary’s.  It’s confusion and chaos trying to fight a near invisible enemy.  And that’s before anyone realizes that Captain Farrell is missing.

It is, of course, the dastardly duo of Izzie Barclay and Clive Ronan, set in a future St. Mary’s.  In a sign of things  to come, Max realizes that they cannot kill Ronan because of time paradoxes (I am not about to go into details of that) and that Izzie is much harder to kill than it seems when Max shoots her and dumps her in an elevator.

Because the future St. Mary’s has been decimated by Barclay and Ronan, Max stays on as interim head. (more…)

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Jodi Taylor–Just One Damned Thing After Another [The Chronicles of St Mary’s, #1] (2013) [audiobook 2014]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dinosaurs, Fears, Feminism, Fire, Funny (ha ha), History, Huh?, Jodi Taylor, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Supernatural, Thieves, Threats, Time Travel, Violence, Zara Ramm on July 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: July 2022] Just One Damned Thing After Another

This is the first book in a something-teen long series.

I sometimes wonder if I enjoy a series more for the narrator of the audio books than the quality of the books themselves.

I didn’t think that at the time of reading this, because i was swept up in the comedy and adventure and (yes, I’m saying it, time travel).  However, while looking for a cover image, I read a scathing review of this book and felt that I did agree with many of the criticisms.  I guess I just didn’t care.  And I wonder if that’s because Zara Ramm gave great voice to the lead character Max and also did an amazing job with all of the different characters (male and female from all over the place).

As we meet Madeline Maxwell (Max), she is in a bad way.  She has few prospects and fewer coins in her pocket.  She’s pretty desperate until she gets a surprise visit from a former teacher who tells her about a job with poor pay and worse conditions.

This leads to a job as a historian at St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research.  The cool thing about St. Mary’s is that historians travel to the past to “confirm” details of things that happened.  Essentially University researchers get to experience historical events first hand, including all of the dangers involved.  The Institute is a part of University of Thirsk. (more…)

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Bella Mackie–How to Kill Your Family (2021)

Posted in Bella Mackie, Funny (ha ha), Murder, Prison on June 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[READ: June, 2022] How to Kill Your Family

This looked like the perfect book to read over Fathers Day weekend.

But it’s not an instruction manual for the average person.  No indeed, the reason Grace Bernard is planning to kill her family is twofold

Her mother died when she was young.  She learned while she was growing up that her biological father Simon wanted nothing to do with her (or her mother).  He promised them the world, because he pretty much owned the world.  He was part of a very wealthy family who bought and sold companies on a whim.  He was also very publicly (un)happily married with a child and this affair with Grace’s mother could not go public.

As the book opens, Grace is in Limehouse prison.  Ironically, even though she has already killed people, she is in prison for a murder that she did not actually commit–and had no intention of committing.

Grace is surprisingly, hilariously, above everyone else.    Her cellmate Kelly is pretty trashy.  She runs scams online.  She frequently gets caught, but she’s right back out there to do it again.  She drives Grace crazy.  And Grace looks down on Kelly and everyone like her–there’s some really funny lines of abject dismissal in the book:

She’s attractive, is Kelly. Big pouty lips, which I suspect are the result of cheap filler but look all right from a distance, and lots of red hair.  Sadly, her limited intelligence means she was easy to find when a man finally plucked up the courage to stop sending her money and contacted the police.  She’d had the money sent to her boyfriend’s account, the stupid cow, and has wound up doing an eighteen month stretch as a result.  Not an elegant crime, I warrant you, but I have no sympathy for her victims either. If you are delusional enough to believe that anyone wants to see a grainy iPhone picture of your flaccid little friend, you deserve to get bled for it.

(more…)

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K. Eason–Night Watch on the Hinterlands [The Weep #1] (2021)

Posted in Adventure, Advice, Aliens, Duology, Feminism, Funny (ha ha), Gender, K. Eason, Magic, Multiverse, Political Humor, Sci-fi, Science, Violence on June 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[READ: April 2023] Night Watch on the Hinterlands

I absolutely loved K. Eason’s The Thorne Chronicles (How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse).  I had no idea that she had a new duology out until this book came to my desk at work.

I had audiobooked the first duology and loved the world that Nicole Poole read to me.

But now I was jumping in to the print version.  Shockingly for me I haven’t been reading many books this year.  I have gotten so into the audiobook world that I’ve been listening far more than I’ve been reading.  And in some respects it was hard to get into this book because there’s a lot of made up stuff here and you really have to get into the world and the vocabulary and it was a bumpy start for me.

This book is set in the same world as the Rory Thorne books.  Yes, that is true.  But it is set far in the future so there is no overlap with characters or anything like that.  So that was a bit of a bummer.

There’s a lot of “hard” science fiction in this story, which is probably more of the reason why it was hard to get into it.  I accepted the new world, but you have to learn so much to get up to speed with everything that it can feel like a slog even if you are flying through the pages.

There are two main characters in this book.

Lieutenant Iari is a tenju templar (which you have to learn about and which I don’t think I fully did, but tenju are rather large humanoid race with tusks).  She was orphaned during the Expansion War and joined the templars because she believed in their mission.  The war is over now and her primary purpose is to stop The Brood.  Brood are deadly, seemingly invisible monsters that have come through a rip in the Void (which you have to learn about).  The rip is called The Weep, and I feel like I never quite got the hang of how or why the Weep happened.  The one thing that was clear was that the vakari inadvertently created The Weep during the war. (more…)

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Floor de Goede–Dancing on the Volcano (2012) translation (2022)

Posted in Floor de Goede, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Humiliation, LGBTQ, Oni Press, Photography, Romance, Travel, Volcanoes on June 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.

[READ: June 2023] Dancing on the Volcano

I feel like I haven’t really enjoyed that many books from Oni Press lately.  Although this one was pretty great–welcome back!

In 2004. Floor de Groete started a site doyouknowflo.nl where he published a daily comic.  he wrote about himself and his boyfriend Bas.  He loved doing it but he wanted to talk about more than just his daily life. So in 2012 he wrote this full graphic novel.  And now it is getting translated into English by Laura Watkinson.

The first chapter shows Floor (I love that he makes himself so very tiny) with a very large man, Sander.  They are working together to write an article about a volcano.  Floor is supposed to take pictures, but he is also greatly missing Bas.  It’s the first time they’ve been apart.  Sander, loves this trip and doesn’t care about Floor’s feelings at all.  Floor is easily aggravated and not afraid to let Sander know it.  Flo keeps thinking about how there’s only a few days left of the trip but he keeps missing out on all of the amazing things that Sander is enjoying (which makes him even more angry). (more…)

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Peter Swanson–All the Beautiful Lies (2018) [audiobook 2018]

Posted in Drinking, Feminism, Guns, Maine, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Peter Swanson, Sarah Mollo-Christensen, Sex, Sexism, Unlikable main character, Violence, Yuck! on June 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: June 2023] All the Beautiful Lies

I loved Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders.  I hated the characters in The Kind Worth Killing (but I loved the twists).  So I had this third book as a kind of final litmus test for if I would listen to anymore books by him.

And the answer is no.

Once again, Swanson’s twist and surprises (and the ending) are really good.  But if possible, he made main characters who are even more horrible and unlikable.  How was that possible?

There’s a few spoilers in this review, although none that reveal the twists or who the murderer(s) is/are.

I’m just going to get this over with, so yes, there’s a spoiler here.  One of the main characters is a pedophile.

It’s bad enough when, at some point in the middle of the book, we learn that he is happily going to essentially make a new life with the daughter of his second wife (step-daughter, so not incest, but Jesus Fucking Christ).  And then we find out that this guy was introduced to sex when he was a teenager by a bored housewife.  So he is basically “paying it forward.”

How did Swanson even write these words?   How did his moral compass allow these words to pass his fingers onto the page?

I mean, the blurb on Goodreads starts with this:

Harry Ackerson has always considered his stepmother Alice to be sexy and beautiful, in an “otherworldly” way. She has always been kind and attentive, if a little aloof in the last few years.

I mean, who reads that blurb and wants to read more (I go into my books totally blind, so I had no idea this was coming). (more…)

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Peter Swanson–The Kind Worth Killing (2015) [audiobook 2012]

Posted in Airplanes, Drinking, Feminism, Guns, Johnny Heller, Karen White, Kathleen Early, Keith Szarabajka, Maine, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Peter Swanson, Sex, Sexism, Unlikable main character, Violence on June 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: June 2023] The Kind Worth Killing

I had enjoyed Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders so much that I wanted to get more audio books by him.  I had heard that he was creating a sequel to one of his popular books, but I didn’t know which one.  It turns out it was this one.

So this seemed like a good one to start with.

As it opened, I absolutely hated it.  It may have been Johnny Heller’s voice, which I did not like.  Although it also sounded familiar and I wondered if I knew him from reading a children’s book and I didn’t like him in an adult role.

Why did I hate it?  Because within the first few minutes, his character, Ted Severson says something to the effect of, “My wife cheated on me.  So I have to kill her.”  I mean, who the hell thinks like that?  And who bases an entire book on that?  That is psychopathic.

Interestingly, I have read many complaints about Swanson’s bland characters, and while I’m not sure they are bland, exactly, they are certainly deadpan or flat or disinterested.  At least that’s how the narrators read them.

So when Karen White took over as narrator for Lily Kintner’s parts, I enjoyed the book more.  Lily was a flat character, but I found her dispassionate voice to be kind of interesting.  (more…)

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