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Archive for the ‘Death’ Category

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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Brian Level, Ryan Ferrier, Kate Sherron, Crank!–Silk Hills (2022)

Posted in Brian Level, Crank!, Death, Deer, Drugs, Graphic Novel, Guns, Huh?, Humiliation, Kate Sherron, Moths, Oni Press, Ryan Ferrier, The X Files, Violence, Yuck! on May 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.

[READ: May 9, 2023] Silk Hills

I haven’t been reading that many graphic novels lately.  My daughter made the excellent point that our local library has an excellent graphic novel collection but that it hasn’t been updated in quite a while.  So I was pleased t o see this book at work, especially since it was from Oni Press, a reliably weird publisher.

I don’t know any of the contributors: authors Brian Level (has written for Star Wars and Marvel) and Ryan Ferrier (has written lots of indie books and written for Marvel and DC).  Crank! is Christopher Crank who has done lettering for just about everyone.  Kate Sherron has a very distinctive visual style (which I see a lot of people don’t like).  I thought it was pretty cool and unusual–it reminded me a bit of Jeff Lemire’s style.

I have been listening to a book of short stories from The X-Files, and this book immediately made me think of the X-Files.  It’s also the kind of story that either should have been longer or should have had fewer hallucinatory passages and had more explanatory pages.

Beth Wills is a former Marine turned private investigator.  She lives in New York City but is sent to an unnamed rural community called Silk Hills.  It must be pretty far, as a gas station attendant remarks on her New York plates, but we don’t know exactly where Silk Hills is.

I enjoyed the interactions with Wills and the gas station attendant also a former military man (out six years). (more…)

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Jennifer Estep–Kill the Queen (2018) [audiobook 2018] (Crown of Shards #1)

Posted in Assassination, Audiobooks, Death, Fantasy, Jennifer Estep, Lauren Fortgang, Magic, Revenge, Romance, Supernatural, Trilogy, Unfinished series, Violence on February 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: February 2023] Kill the Queen

One of the fun things about the Chirp audiobook app is that it is constantly recommending books by authors that i have never heard of.  Since I have learned that I really enjoy listening to genres that I don’t especially enjoy reading, I ‘ve been thrilled with all of the unknown (to me) authors that I’m now exposed to.

I didn’t know anything about Jennifer Estep, but the blurb seemed promising.  And, yes, there was something cool about the cover–a medieval looking story but the protagonist is in leather pants.  I know–don’t judge, etc.  But whatever, I gave it a try.

The one bad thing about audio books is you don’t know how certain words are written.  The narrator (Lauren Fortgang–absolutely excellent with a great diversity of voices at her disposal) kept saying Bolognian.  But I now see that it is written Bellonan,  Oh well, no harm.

As the book opens we meet Evie.  Her parents were once King and Queen.  But they were killed when she was young and she had been orphaned and taken in by the Bellonan people.  She was more or less relegated to the level of hanger-on.  Since then, she has been dismissed and even mocked by her more prominent cousins (Evie is 17th in line for the throne now).

She spends her time as an apprentice to a metalsmith.

As mentioned, there’s some anachronism about this story.  It is fantasy with the whole swords and gladiators thing running through the story.  There is also magic.  I rather like the way the magic is presented in the book.  Certain people have it.  Certain people can accentuate it with magical objects.  But some people have none or, as in the case of Evie, they are mutts and their magic is diluted. (more…)

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Toranosuke Shimada–Robo Sapiens : Tales of Tomorrow (2019) [translation] Adrienne Beck (2021)

Posted in Death, End of the World, Graphic Novel, Huh?, Robots, The Future, Toranosuke Shimada on January 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: October 2022] Robo Sapiens : Tales of Tomorrow

I received this book at work and was intrigued to read it (Manga style right to left).  It is a collection of connected stories that form a solid plot.

The premise is fairly straightforward–it is the future and robots are now “cyber-persons” with A.I. brains with their own culture.

The story opens with a robot salvager relating Simon Chan’s case.  Chan was over 120 years old and only called on the main character because the story had to be kept hush hush.

His request was straightforward–find a robot that he has lost fifty years ago. But the realty was more difficult–in the last fifty years it was probably scrapped.  But Chan was insistent–Letitia is still alive.

The back story is that Chan and Letitia were the IT couple of the day fifty years ago.  But when he lost her to an accident, he went into seclusion. A year later he returned to the public eye with a robotic Letitia–this was long before such a thing was accepted.  The story has an interesting twist involving the true identity of Simon Chan.

The second story is one of romance between characters who believe they are robots and are visiting the site of a robotic graveyard, Robot Hill.

Story three is a nearly wordless story about chromobots travelling through time to caveman days. (more…)

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Lindsay Buroker–Battle Bond [Death Before Dragons #2] (2020) [audiobook 2020]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dragons, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Lindsay Buroker, Magic, Morality, Murder, Supernatural, Tigers, Urban fantasy, Vampires, Violence, Vivienne Leheny, Werewolves on September 4, 2022| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: September 2023] Battle Bond

I had listened to a couple of different Buroker stories before getting to this second book in this series.

But as soon I started this one, Vivienne Leheny’s narration dragged me back in.  I could listen to just about anything she reads.

So this book picks up where the previous one left off.  Val Thorvald is a 40 -something elf/human assassin.  The elf part helps her heal faster than humans, but she is just as flawed as any other human (some critics say far more flawed).  She is still driving the government loaner Jeep that she requisitioned after Zav (before she got to know him) threw her old Jeep into the upper branches of a very tall tree.

Val has an ex-husband and daughter.  She has left them so that they will be safe.  Her ex-husband kind of understands, but her daughter doesn’t want anything to do with her.  This gives her much angst.

Val has no real friends, so she relies on her magical tiger companion, Sindari, for companionship and some great banter (he knows what’s what).  She “won” Sindari in a battle.  I enjoyed that she is ethically conflicted about “owning” a tiger, but Sindari seems to like her, so I guess it’s okay.  Sindari lives in some other realm but comes when she calls him through a magical charm.

Most of the other characters have returned: Val’s mom is a cool hippie (who once married an elf) with a dog and a guy who lives in a trailer on her property.  That would be Dimitri, a large, imposing dude who make delicate wood works (which can also be used as defensive weapons).  There’s also Zultan a vampire with a massive YouTube presence.  And then there’s Nin, a woman who runs a small food truck and makes magical weapons in her spare time. She’s awesome.  And Val’s boss Willard is still around, providing sage wisdom, hi tech help and other good things.  Willard is still recovering from the magical cancer that the dark elves infected her with.

But this story focuses on dragons.

A dragon, Dob, has come to Earth to harass Zav.   It turns out there’s a power struggle on the home world and Zav’s family has been in charge of things for a long time.  This dragon hopes to prove that Zav is not behaving according to dragon standards.  He is also underhanded and violent–unafraid to harm anyone.  He has kidnapped children. And hikers.  By the middle of the book he has taken over a large but remote area of the wilderness.

The politics of Zav’s homeworld are unfolding in  the story and more will clearly be revealed as the stories progress.  It’s good that Buroker doesn’t throw a ton of world building at us, but gives us glimpses of things.

There are dark elves causing trouble in this book as well.  This involves Nin.  They say that her weapons are encroaching on her business.  Translation: her weapons are much better than theirs but there are more of them to bully an independent woman.  Val helps her.  The discussion of payment is pretty hilarious with Val not wanting to take money but Nin, being a businesswoman, insisting on paying something (which turns out to be food).

The relationship between Val and Zav is expanding (I wish I didn’t accidentally hear a spoiler when I listened to another series) and the humor between them is getting much funnier.  Zav brought Val a poster of himself for Val to practice her axe throwing and Val continues to try to teach him contemporary slang–I love the way Leheny deals with these section–her inflections are perfect.

There’s some really cool moments in the story as well–Val rescuing the children in an abandoned building.  Val and her friends getting stuck under a house of evil cat-shifting humans.  They are memorable and you can really visualize the scenes.

The ending of the story is pretty dramatic.  Val winds up crossing a line (in Zav’s mind) and it instantly puts friction between them.  And what she has done puts her own life in danger.

Buroker must spend all of her time writing as all of these items have come out in roughly the last fifteen years.  I’m not going to listen to everything she’s written I don’t think, but here’s what I’ve started.

Death Before Dragons
almost all written in 2020!

  • Mist and Magic — Book 0.5
  • Sinister Magic — Book 1
  • Battle Bond — Book 2
  • Tangled Truths — Book 3
  • Elven Doom — Book 4
  • The Forbidden Ground — Book 4.5
  • False Security — Book 5
  • Storm Forged — Book 6
  • The Box — Book 6.5
  • Secrets of the Sword I – Book 7
  • Secrets of the Sword II – Book 8
  • Gifts — Book 8.5
  • Secrets of the Sword III – Book 9

 

 Legacy of Magic
1-3 written in 2022, the rest in 2023
this is a spinoff series set
in Death Before Dragons world.
It features a new heroine with a new mystery
and threat that she must deal with, but
it also brings back some of the
characters from the original series.

  • Hammered — Book 1
  • Betrayed — Book 2
  • Trolled — Book 3
  • Tested — Book 4
  • Wrenched — Book 5
  • Fused — Book 6
  • Legacy of Magic Short Stories — Newsletter bonus
  • Wanted — Book 7
  • Cursed — Book 8
 Tracking Trouble
2023-2024 (#5 not out yet)
Another urban fantasy series set in my Death Before Dragons and Legacy of Magic world!

  • Marked by Magic — Book 1
  • Bound by Blood — Book 2
  • Driven by Destiny — Book 3
  • A Goblin Christmas — Book 3.5
  • Pursued by Peril — Book 4
  • Tested by Temptation — Book 5

 

Key to this Linday Buroker audio-verse
Red means I’ve listened to it
Green means I’ve downloaded it
Blue means it’s available on Chirp
Black means it’s not available or is a short book

Dragon Gate
2021-2022
(these books are HUGE)

  • Kingdoms at War — Book 1
  • Art of the Hunt — Book 2
  • Broken by Magic — Book 3
  • Chosen for Power — Book 4
  • Sky on Fire — Book 5
  • Orbs of Wisdom — Book 6

 

 A Witch in Wolf Wood
2021-2022
Set in the made-up town of Bellrock, Washington
bookish introvert heroines and surly werewolf heroes.

  • Mind Over Magic — Book 1
  • Spell Hound — Book 2
  • Any Witch Way — Book 3
  • Hoot and Howler — Book 3.5
  • Moment of Tooth — Book 4
  • Charmed and Dangerous — Book 5
 Agents of the Crown
2018

  • Eye of Truth–— Book 1
  • Blood Ties — Book 2
  • Duty Bound — Book 3
  • Elven Fury — Book 4
  • Dragon Tear — Book 5

Haven’t decided on these series yet

Swords & Salt [3]
2013

  • A Question of Honor— Book 1
  • Labyrinths of the Heart— Book 2
  • Death from Below— Book 3
 Chains of Honor [4]
2015
You may want to start with the Chains of Honor Prequels,
three novellas that were originally published as the Swords & Salt series.

  • Warrior Mage — Book 1
  • Snake Heart — Book 2
  • Assassin’s Bond — Book 3
  • Great Chief — Book 4

she also has these series:

The Emperor’s Edge Series (9 primary works).

Forgotten Ages /Encrypted series, set in the same world, approximately eighteen years earlier.  (2 primary works)  PLUS:

  • Swords & Salt series, set in the same world, after the events of EE.
  • Chains of Honor series , set in the same world (Nurian Empire)

also

Dragon Blood Series  (8 primary works)

Heritage of Power (5 primary works) is a sequel a few years after this series

AND THESE SCI-FI SERIES

Fallen Empire Series (8 primary works) SCI-FI

  • Fractured Stars Series (1 book, three stories) stand alone but in this same world

Sky Full of Stars (3 primary works)  sequel

Fallen Empire Universe Series (13 books for kindle only) same world

also

Star Kingdom Series (10 primary works) SCI-FI

AND THESE STEAMPUNK SERIES

Flash Gold Chronicles Series (5 novellas)

AND THIS SERIES TOO

Rust & Relics Series (2.5 books)

 

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Stuart Gibbs–Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra [Charlie Thorne #3] (2022)

Posted in Adventure, Charles Darwin, Children's Books, Cleopatra, Death, Feminism, History, Julius Caesar, Robbery, Scientists, Smarty Pants, Stacy Schiff, Violence on July 4, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: Hiatus.

[READ: July 4, 2022] Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra

This is the third book in the Charlie Thorne series.  And there will clearly be a fourth.

Sarah brought this home and was very excited about it.  I was pretty excited to read it as well.  Our excitement was justified, because Stuart Gibbs has created a great heroine, an intriguing mystery and a thoughtful historical quest.

One of the things I liked best about this book was the historical information about Cleopatra.  We all know all about Cleopatra.  Except  that everything we know is incorrect!  The course of (male) history has been very unkind to Cleopatra–she was an amazing woman and ruler and has been historically described as little more than an exotic temptress.

In the acknowledgements, Gibbs, heaps praise on the book Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff.  I have just checked out the book and the first chapter is fantastic.

The Prologue is set in Alexandria, Egypt in 30 BC.  Cleopatra was being held prisoner by Octavian–Julius Caesar’s nephew.  Cleopatra and her husband Mark Antony were united in a war against Octavian–but they had lost.

Octavian lied about how he would treat Cleopatra after Mark Antony’s death.  She discovered this and was preemptive about her own fate.  She did not kill herself with an asp–rather, she drank poison and burned down her mausoleum.  And her great treasure was destroyed wit her.

Staying in Egypt, the book shifts to the present day.  At the end of the last book Charlie has escaped from the CIA as well as the Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel.

Now she is sneaking into a party in Giza, Egypt, at the penthouse of Ahmet Shah, the oldest son of a wealthy shipping magnate.  Ahmet has a ton of security because he has a ton of expensive things in his house.  But one thing that Charlie wants is not expensive–it is information. (more…)

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Valérie Mangin–Yuanyuan’s Bubbles [by Cixin Liu] (Graphic novel #4 2021) [originally written 2004; translated 2021]

Posted in Barack Obama, Bubbles, China, Cixin Liu, Death, End of the World, Graphic Novel, Nicholas Blackburn Smith, Steven Dupré, Supernatural, Talos Press, Translation, Valérie Mangin. on June 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: June 23, 2022] Yuanyuan’s Bubbles

This is the fourth of sixteen graphic novels based on Cixin’s Liu’s stories.  This story, originally called 圆圆的肥皂泡, is the most straightforward one yet.

It is full of hope and shows that play is just as important as other scholarly pursuits.

When Yuanyuan was born, the one thing that made her happy was bubbles.  Her mother was a scientist and rather serious.  While her father often chided her mother for being too straight-faced.  But her mother had serious work to do.

Their city–Silk Road City was having severe drought.  If nothing could be done about it, the whole city would have to be abandoned.  Yuanyuan’s mother’s idea was to drop ice bombs with plants in them from a plane.  The project worked–the water helped to keep the seedlings alive.

However, in a rather dramatic early moment, the plane went down and Yuanyuan’s mother was killed.  Yuanyuan’s father was affected by the death of his wife and insisted that Yuanyuan grow up to be just like her mother–serious and thoughtful.  But Yuanyuan had other ideas.  She was still obsessed with bubbles.

Even her teachers noticed her attitude.  But her grades were excellent. Indeed, one of her teachers explained to Yuanyuan’s father that “in this new era, being a  little more relaxed and carefree isn’t a weakness.”

Her father still wants her to take things more seriously, but in the meantime, Yuanyuan has discovered a formula for creating the largest bubble in the world–it’s breaks the world record!

Yuanyuan becomes very successful–her formulas for creating elasticity in bubbles is greatly in demand.  Ultimately, her father asks her for a loan to help keep part of their old city alive.  But she says she cannot.  She is using her funds for her next project–a bubble that can envelope a city.

That’s actually not what she intended, but the bubble does settle onto the city, forcing everyone to figure out how to survive with their oxygen being cut off.  Everyone is furious at Yuanyuan, but she only sees the possibilities–what is she made bubbles that could carry water from he sea to their desiccated city?

No one thinks she can do it.  People make fun of her.  Even her father is disappointed in her.  But she won’t give up.

As with most of these graphic novels, I feel like the story suffers a but from being truncated (I assume it was truncated a lot).  And yet the general tone and tenets of the story come through clearly.  And it’s very cool.  It was translated by Nicholas Blackburn Smith and then written for this book by Valérie Mangin.

The story was illustrated by Steven Dupré and he does a great job creating the images of the bubbles.

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