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Read in June, Part 2 (Catch Up Post!)

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Read in June 05

Nanjing: The Burning City – Ethan Young.  A harrowing account of a conflict I had never even heard of.  Through clever use of comic conventions we are placed on the side of the Chinese as Japanese forces invade and pillage Nanjing.  It is clear from the start that there are good people on both sides, but in the heat of war do the distinctions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ even matter?

Guardians of the Galaxy: All-New Marvel Treasure Edition – Brian Michael Bendis et. al.  A frustrating read partly because it’s a completely unwieldy size (in height and width, not depth), and partly because it gives us the beginning of three different version of the Guardians and then leaves us hanging.  The first version was my least favourite, and seemed almost like it took place in an alternate reality – mostly because it kept referring to a war with the Phalanx which… is that recent?  I thought we left them behind in the ’90s!  The middle version was pretty decent though I question the inclusion of Iron Man who doesn’t seem like a decent fit.  And the third version was easily the best because Skottie Young is awesome and it features an army of ex-girlsfriends set on taking their revenge against Rocket Raccoon.  Yaass!

Nimona – Noelle Stevenson.  FINALLY!  After years of hearing amazing things about this, I finally read it and it’s just as good as everyone says.  If you like fun, feminism, LGBT representation and kick-ass characterisation you should pick this up right away.

Faith, Volume 1: Hollywood and Vine – Jody Hauser, Francis Portela & Marguerite Sauvage.  Another one I’d heard so much about before picking it up, and another one that lived up to the hype.  See the marketing of Faith is all about her being a plus-size superhero.  Which she absolutely is BUT the comic is about so much more.  Sure, Faith is plus-size but the beautiful thing is that no one ever even makes a vague reference to that in the comic.  Basically, she’s a woman trying to build a life for her whilst also battling evil.  As you do.  (I really loved it.)

 

Read in June 06

Saga, Volume Seven – Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples.  Oh, Saga *clutches at heart*  Hazel’s back with her family – yay!  But absolutely nothing is happy or even just okay – boo!  Another wonderful volume but a bleak, bleak, bleak read.  I really need to read all the volume available in one sitting to really grind that sense of desolation deep into my soul.

Doctor Strange, Volume 3: Blood in the Aether – Jason Aaron et. al.  Although I didn’t enjoy this walk through Marvel villain memory lane as much as the action in previous volumes, I am still digging this incarnation of Doctor Strange.

Trees, Volume 2 – Warren Ellis & Jason Howard.  It had been so long since I read the first volume of this, that I was a bit hazy going in but I caught up quickly.  We follow Dr. Creasy who survived the awakening of the Svalbard ‘tree’ as she travels to the Orkney Islands where there are shenanigans – political and alien.  Do we get any answers?  Not a single one, but it’s still a compelling read.

The Dark Days Pact – Alison Goodman.  Despite not enjoying the system of magic in the first Lady Helen book, I liked enough about the story to pick up the sequel.  The Dark Days Pact places a lot more emphasis on Reclaimers and Deceivers, and, for me, suffers for it.  There are some really well done action scenes, but I’m still not convinced by how the relationship between the ‘good’ guys and the ‘bad’ guys work.  There’s a lot of politicking in this book, some interesting, some not so interesting (oh, hai there unnecessary plot device to further separate our main characters).  I continue to like Lady Helen herself, and to feel that her struggled against expectations is really well dealt with.  I also quite like a lot of the supporting characters.  Lord Selburn though… I mean, I assume he’s going to turn out to be IMPORTANT but he’s just freaking annoying at this point.  Oh man, there was so much I enjoyed about this book, but the bits I didn’t like, I really didn’t like, and they made the book drag really badly in places.  DESPITE THIS, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT 😀

 

Read in June 07

All-New X-Men Inevitable, Volume 3: Hell Hath So Much Fury – Dennis Hopeless et. al.  So Madelyn Pryor is in this.  Okay…  Meanwhile, Beast loses the run of himself and experiments with magic, and Iceman goes to a gay bar.  Underwhelming.

Cream Buns and Crime – Robin Stevens.  Cream Buns and Crime compiles all the Murder Most Unladylike short stories that have been released so far, and pads the books out with tips on how to be a detective.  The short stories, I enjoyed immensely.  The rest, I just wasn’t interested in though I think I would have felt different if I had been the book’s target audience!

The Bookshop Girl – Sylvia Bishop.  Property Jones grew up in the bookshop she was abandoned in several years ago, growing to love both her adopted home and family.  But Property is hiding a big secret – she can’t read!  This was such a charming, funny, touching read, beautifully illustrated by Ashley King, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Baker’s Magic – Diane Zahler.  Please ignore the drab cover and pick this up, because Baker’s Magic is worth your time.  Featuring an orphan, a princess, an evil wizard, a lot of pirates, endless and glorious amounts of baking, and a quest to save a kingdom, this book will draw you in from the start and wrap you up tight until you turn the last page.

 

Read in June 08

Limbo – Dan Watters, Caspar Wijngaard & Jim Campbell.  The ’80s meets voodoo meets hardboiled crime.  This was a beautifully coloured comic, but it just wasn’t for me.  In a nutshell, a man wakes up with no idea who he is.  Hints are dropped that he was a bad guy in his previous life.  Now that he’s forgotten everything, is he still that man?  I mean… yawn.  We’ve done this before.  Still, the voodoo elements were really well done and, like I said, the colouring was excellent.

Spider-Man/Spider-Gwen: Sitting in a Tree – Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Latour, Sara Pichelli & Robbi Rodriguez.  Honestly, I don’t see it and I thought the age different was much bigger than we were told it was.  But.  It’s fun.  Gwen’s relaxed attitude to dimension hopping made for a nice counterpoint to Miles’ near-panic.  And man, do I want a fizzy drink from Gwen’s universe!

Marvel Tsum Tsum: Takeover! – Jacob Chabot & David Baldeon.  For a glorified toy advertisement, this was surprisingly well done.  I’d never come across Tsum Tsums before this, but the story and the super-adorable illustrations kept me turning the pages quite happily.

Read in May, Part 1 (Catch Up Post!)

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Read in May 01

The Rabbit Back Literature Society – Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen.  This is such an odd book.  Magical realism meets books about books meets murder mystery meets strange and unusual happenings meets illuminating flashbacks meets what is going on??  When Ella is invited to join the elite Rabbit Back Literature Society, she gets a lot more than she bargained for.  The head of the society goes missing, there seems to be a virus affecting the books at the town library, and she becomes embroiled in something known as ‘The Game’.  Please, click on the link and read the blurb because this is a wonderful, twisty turny read that defies summation (seriously!  I can’t condense what makes it so brilliant into a few sentences – I’ve been trying!).

The Women Who Shaped Politics: Empowering Stories of of Women Who Have Shifted the Political Landscape – Sophy Ridge.  Or, more correctly ‘The Women Who Shaped British Politics’.  Or, even more correctly, ‘The Women Who Shaped English Politics’.  Ridge admits to her omissions and biases in the opening paragraphs of this book, but it’s still a bit hard to overlook the absence of non-English politicians at times.  I also found it hard to swallow that after acknowledging Constance Markievicz as the first female MP in Britain (which then included Ireland), the book went on to state several times that Nancy Astor was the first female MP.  Now, Markievicz didn’t take her seat but that doesn’t make her any less the first female MP which makes Nancy Astor the first female MP who actually took her seat.  These things aside, I enjoyed The Women Who Shaped Politics immensely.  It got across an awful lot of information without getting bogged down and it really is a good overview of some of the female figures who have played a prominent role in British political life.  A good introduction for people looking to dip their toes in the complicated landscape of women in politics.

The Dark Days Club – Alison Goodman.  I’ve mentioned before how I’m right into Regency high jinks, right?  The Dark Days Club takes Regency high jinks, supernatural shenanigans, and a forbidden romance, slams them all together and comes out the other side as a hell of a read.  Lady Helen is a sympathetic main character, torn between duty to family and duty to the crown, and the book doesn’t sidestep the limitations placed on women during this time period like some others (*cough* I’m looking at you Lady Julia Grey *cough*).  The only thing I struggled with was supernatural element which I never connected with, finding it forced and not terribly convincing.  Luckily, the rest of the book more than made up for this weakness and if you’re looking for a fun Regency read, look no further.

The Other Typist – Suzanne Rindell.  A story of the jazz age, The Other Typist follows Rose, an every-day sort of girl who meets Odalie, an extraordinary sort of girl who utterly transforms Rose’s life.  But is everything quite as it seems?  This was a random pick from the library which I ended up absolutely loving.  From the start, it’s clear that Rose is an unreliable narrator and as her life starts to fracture she becomes more and more selective about what she chooses to see.  And the ending!  Read this tale of glamour and obsession, read it now and know that wherever you think this book is heading, you’re wrong.

 

Read in May 02

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2: Prelude – Will Corona Pilgrim et. al.  A truly dismal collection of seemingly random Guardians of the Galaxy comics and not a prequel to the new movie at all.  Nice false advertising there, Marvel.

Guardians of the Galaxy New Guard, Volume 3: Civil War II – Brian Michael Bendis et. al.  For the life of me, I can’t find a finished version of this cover anywhere online so you’ll have to put up with one that says ‘Subtitle TBC’.  Anyway, Captain Marvel calls the Guardians for help, only she doesn’t tell them what’s going on so they jump straight in and everyone looks like an arsehole.  Seriously, that’s the best summary I can come up with for this random, largely pointless installation in the Civil War II saga (I get that it’s hard to work company-wide events into a single title but was Bendis even trying with this one?).

Guardians Team-Up, Volume 1: Guardians Assemble – Brian Michael Bendis et. al.  Given that this is basically a random selection of issues where various members of the Guardians team up with other Marvel heroes, this has its ups and downs.  A highlight is definitely the Gamora and She-Hulk crossover, and the Rocket Raccoon team up with the Pet Avengers was surprisingly witty but at the end of the day it’s a pretty transparent cash grab.

Avengers Standoff, Volume 2 – Nick Spencer et. al.  Not as good as the first volume but still a surprisingly enjoyable read (well, for a non-Avengers reader at any rate).

 

Read in May 03

Indelible – Adelia Saunders.  Magdalena can see people’s secrets, Neil hasn’t quite figured out what’s really important, and Richard is searching for the mother he never knew.  Three characters, three stories that slowly wend their way into one beautiful, aching whole.  The magical realism element (Magdalena can see the history of a person written on their skin) is what drew me to this, and that aspect of the book is as thoughtful and wonderful as I’d hoped, but there’s so much more to the story than that.  We move back in forth in time and location, learning just a little bit more each time until things finally start to click into place.  A slow-burn of a read, definitely, but one worth your time.

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls – Hope Nicholson (ed).  I didn’t realise this would be a straight up romance book.  I thought, as did Kelly Sue DeConnick according to her introduction, that it would be more wide-ranging, so I struggled with this.  Individually, the stories were fine (some were better than others, obviously), but they didn’t fit together.  There was no thematic arrangement that I could see, instead they’re just presented at random which led to a jerky reading experience.  They were also quite repetitive – ‘I was a geek and I didn’t fit in and then I found love and it either went great or terribly’.  Here’s the thing, I was a geek but I fit in just fine, so reading story after story where being a geek seems to mean automatic exclusion was tiresome.  There’s some really lovely, honest stuff in here but overall I was massively disappointed.

The Boy on the Bridge – M.R. Carey.  GO READ THIS BOOK!  Seriously.  This takes place in the same universe as The Girl With All The Gifts, a book where M.R. Carey took zombie tropes and made them wonderful again, but it’s not a direct sequel.  Technically, you could read this without reading The Girl With All The Gifts, but both books are so freaking good that it’s worth reading them in publication order.  I read the second half of this sitting in my garden and cried so hard at the ending, in front of all my neighbours, and it was worth it.

Aliens: Life and Death – Dan Abnett & Moritat.  This referenced a lot of events that I’m not familiar with, but it was a fun sci-fi horror romp with a dash of LGBT representation so I forgave it pretty quickly.

Read in April (Catch Up Post!)

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I’ve previously said that March was the month in which I finally read all the comics I had out from the library.  Yeah, that wasn’t strictly accurate.  But I read some novels too – honest!

 

Read in April 01

John Constantine, Hellblazer, Volume 14: Good Intentions – Brian Azzarello et. al.  Even for Hellblazer, this was dark.  Constantine in America has never really worked for me, but this run sees him locked up in a maximum security prison.  Nothing good happens – for or to anyone – but, man, is it a good read (that’s sadly let down by the poor interior art).

John Constantine, Hellblazer, Volume 15: Highwater – Brian Azzarello et. al.  Can we take a minute to discuss the terrible cover art?  So far in these collected volumes the cover art has been gorgeous (see Volume 14 for example) so what the fuck happened here?  There’s some weird neo-Nazi stuff in here, and I remain unconvinced by the mere idea of John Constantine in the US of A, but it was a solid enough read.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 04: Original Sin – Brian Michael Bendis, Ed McGuinness & Valerio Schiti.  Not having read a lot of Guardians of the Galaxy before, I had no idea about anything this volume referred back to.  Cancerverse?  Everyone died?  No clue.  And once that was all dealt with, the story moves on to Flash Thompson who I’ve never heard of before in my life.  So that was all very confusing.  But, hey, Venom was there and it turns out there’s a whole planet of Venoms so that was a bit fun.  Which sums up my experience of this volume – confusing but a bit fun.

Guardians of the Galaxy, New Guard, Volume 01: Emperor Quill – Brian Michael Bendis & Valerio Schiti.  I was vaguely aware that Kitty Pryde had been dating Peter Quill, but I didn’t realise it was still a thing.  And I certainly didn’t realise she’d left the X-Men to go galavanting about the galaxy.  And the Thing is there too, an initially confusing addition until you’re reminded that way back in the day he worked with experimental spacecraft.  So, okay, two random characters and the remnants of the Guardians.  Odd.  There’s pretty much no set-up to the New Guard and the Spartax storyline is dull as dish water, but, hey, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever read.

 

Read in April 02

Guardians of the Galaxy, New Guard, Volume 02: New Galactic Order – Brian Michael Bendis and Valerio Schiti.  Hey, look, there’s Angela!  And she’s up to stuff.  Just like the rest of the Guardians.  So Gamora decides to punch her.  Obviously.  And do you know something?  I remember absolutely nothing else about this volume, so that’s probably not a good sign.

Marvel Universe Guardian’s of the Galaxy, Volume 03 – Joe Caramagna and Various.  Even allowing for the fact that this is stills from a cartoon turned into a comic aimed at kids this was dreadful.

Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman.  I’m going to say upfront that this book didn’t suit my mood when I read it, which is why I only gave it three stars on Goodreads.  That said, it’s an excellent introduction to Norse myths and legends, split into stories that give us an overview of the Norse gods from their beginning to their end.  Gaiman manages to keep all the characters and locations separate and distinct, and retells events in an almost lyrical way that harks back to the oral tradition that transmitted these stories in the first place.  It would be a glorious thing to read aloud, I think.

Inhumanity – Matt Fraction, Olivier Coipel et. al.  With the exception of Medusa’s excellent hair, I have no interest in the Inhumans.  Marvel are determined to make me take an interest, but I’m not falling for it Marvel, and this volume hasn’t changed my mind.  It has increased my interest in Spider-Girl though, who has an interesting arc in the middle of all the madness, so it wasn’t a totally wasted read.

 

Read in April 03

X-Men, The Hidden Years: Worlds Within Worlds! – John Byrne and Tom Palmer.  I love these little pocketbook reprints.  I’ve read so many storylines I would have missed otherwise thanks to them, and this is no exception.  I’ve read a handful of Hidden Years issues before but nothing major.  To be fair, I don’t think I was really missing out on anything but that’s not the point 😉  This volume features Polaris, a Dazzler who’s not the Dazzler and Kraven the Hunter (who I’ve only ever been able to take seriously in The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl).  So, something for everyone basically.

Earthling – Aisha Franz.  A dark, melancholy look at the lives of two sisters and their mother, Earthling is beautifully illustrated but something about the writing never fully connected with me (which could be a translation issue).

All We Shall Know – Donal Ryan. <3 <3 <3  After reading his debut novel The Spinning Heart, Donal Ryan was catapulted into my favourite authors list.  All We Shall Know has elements in common with The Spinning Heart – broken lives, broken dreams, a broken economy – and it’s just as good, if not better.  Ryan takes a simple story (a woman carrying a child that’s not her husband’s) and drills down into it, revealing complicated characters that aren’t always sympathetic but who keep you turning the page compulsively.  There’s a lot of sadness in All We Shall Know, and a lot of humour.  There’s defiance and perseverance.  And there’s the realisation that sometimes we can never really know everything about ourselves, never mind anyone else.  Recommended!

Ink and Bone – Rachel Caine.  Despite picking this up after reading some really good reviews of it, I was still surprised by how much I ended up loving it.  I’ve been burned by a lot of books about books that people have raved about but that I ended up finding underwhelming.  (Poor me, I know.)  But this one?  Take one part Egyptian mythology, one part steampunk, one part giant world-controlling library, one part revolution, one part heart-shattering scene that is about war and how awful and terrible and pointless it is, and, like, fifteen parts awesome and you have Ink and Bone.  PLUS, it has LGBT representation which isn’t even blinked at/made a big deal of/noteworthy in the world the characters inhabit.  If I could draw pink sparkly hearts around this review, I would.

 

Read in April 04

Paper and Fire – Rachel Caine.  Luckily, having put off reading Ink and Bone for so long, I had the sequel available to dive right into.  It’s almost like I planned it, right?  To sum up Paper and Fire, I present to you the following sentence – THE WELSH ARE COMING!!!!  Having previously lived in Wales (and in England), I have a lot of love for this storyline.  But even if you totally don’t understand why it’s exciting in any way, Rachel Caine uses the advancing Welsh army to show us the horror and futility of war.  She doesn’t mess around with it either.  People die.  Mistakes are made.  Is there such a thing as a good guy?  And all of that is really just a secondary plot.  Although it’s not quite up to the standard of Ink and Bone, please imagine more pink sparkly hearts here.

The Women in the Walls – Amy Lukavics.  And then there’s this book.  This book gets no pink sparkly hearts.  The Women in the Walls has a fantastic concept and a blurb that promises SO MUCH.  Unfortunately, the characters (both main and secondary) are so painfully unbelievable that I still cringe thinking about it.  The horror elements are all there but due to a few things (terrible characters, nonsensical activities, a truly underwhelming denouement) they never come together.  Avoid.

The Darkest Part of the Forest – Holly Black.  I know a lot of people don’t enjoy Holly Black but I always find her spin on YA tropes entertaining as hell and The Darkest Part of the Forest is no exception.  Hazel and Ben live in a town that’s unremarkable in every way.  Oh, except for the guy in a glass coffin in the forest.  And sure, sometimes tourists go missing, but tourists will be tourists, right?  Probably best not to look into that one too deeply.  Featuring a fairy prince, a knight errant, and a teenage girl who (bet you didn’t see this one coming) just might be more than meets the eye.

 

Read in April 05

The Lost Work of Will Eisner – Andrew Karl (ed.). A really well produced and researched book, but not one that I found particularly interesting.

The Rules of Civility – Amor Towles.  Once I got over my judgemental disbelief at the main character being called Katey Kontent (I mean, c’mon), I raced through this tale of the roaring ’20s.  I honestly don’t know what to say about this but click on the link, read the blurb and read it.  You probably won’t regret it.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend – Katarina Bivald.  Let’s get this out of the way immediately – The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is not a believable book.  The whole storyline is based on a series of events that are outlandish, to put it mildly.  But it doesn’t matter because The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is so fucking charming my heart is clenching (with joy) just thinking about.  Sara travels to America to meet her penpal Amy, but the welcome she receives isn’t quite what she expects.  And then there are lots and lots of books, and awkwardness, and more books, and a romance, and a bookshop.  If you’re looking for a fun, funny and charming book, look no further.

 

 

Read Last Week (06 – 12 November)

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I unexpectedly met my Goodreads reading challenge goal of 200 books this week.  Go me!  I read 211 books in 2015, though, so I still have something to beat.

 

Ghosts - Raina TelgemeierGhosts – Raina Telgemeier.

A wonderful story about family, illness and loss.  Catrina and her family move to a new town that has an unusual connection with ghosts.  While Maya, Catrina’s younger sister is determined to actually speak to a ghost, Catrina is determined to keep them away from her family at all costs.  If this had been a ghost story that had really been about the fear of losing a sister, I would have unreservedly loved this book.  The ghosts, however, are connected to the town through the Day of the Dead, which made things a little more complicated.  It’s difficult for me to judge how Telgemeier dealt with this particular aspect of the book, though I felt uncomfortable with it at times, but there are a lot of reviews that accuse her of a lack of accuracy.  Definitely a read with positives and negatives, this one.

 

Space Dumplins - Craig ThompsonSpace Dumplins – Craig Thompson.

With humanity split between the haves and the have-nots, Violet and her parents are very much have-nots.  That doesn’t bother Violet though, she’s too busy making friends and learning how to fly spaceships.  When her father goes missing and his employers claim to have never even heard of him, Violet sets out to save him.  This is a ridiculously fun romp through a richly imagined universe, with some important things to say about family and friendship.  Although aimed at kids, the story is still pretty complex and the humour is pretty wide-ranging (there are a lot of jokes about poo, as seems to be the norm in children’s literature these days, but some of them are actually funny).

 

Supergirl, Volume 4: Beyond Good and Evil - Kelley Puckett & Drew JohnsonSupergirl, Volume 4: Beyond Good and Evil – Kelley Puckett & Drew Johnson.

It’s never ideal to jump into a story four volumes in, but even taking that into account, Beyond Good and Evil doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  The story telling is choppy, rushing from a to c without stopping at the really important point of b.  It opens on a story that could have had a lot of emotional resonance – Kara looks at flashes of Kal-El’s life and begins to understand what it was like for him growing up on Earth.  Sadly, Kara doesn’t get much time to process what she’s seen, being confined to making faces in the background.  We then skip to her apartment, where Superman asks her to do something and, even though the artwork (and dialogue) completely fail to indicate this to the reader, she fails.  I’m still not sure how she failed.  But it’s bad, and she’s a bad superhero.  Something she underlines by saving a boy from a burning building the wrong way.  You’ll have guessed by now that I did not love this TPB.

 

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Volume 1 - Brian Michael Bendis & Sara PichelliUltimate Comics Spider-Man, Volume 1 – Brian Michael Bendis & Sara Pichelli.

It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally gotten around to reading the origin story of Miles Morales aka Spider-Man, and it definitely lived up to the hype.  When Miles is bitten by a spider, he gains new super-powers.  Which is cool and all, but what the hell is a kid at grade school supposed to do with super-powers?  The core of the story is Miles’ struggle with himself as he deals with his new abilities, and it’s really deftly handled.  The origin of the spider sets up a nice B-story with the potential to run for a long time, and the elephant in the room that is Peter Parker is fully embraced.  Miles himself is an awesome kid, and his supporting cast are admirably diverse (and fun!).  I totally get why people keep campaigning for a Miles Morales movie now, and I want one too.

 

Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, Volume 1: Revival - Brian Michael Bendis & David MarquezMiles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, Volume 1: Revival – Brian Michael Bendis & David Marquez.

This was a two year jump into the future after Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Volume 1 which took a bit of adjustment.  As did the fact that Peter Parker seemed to come back.  I’m assuming that the comics really did bring Peter back (an idea I’m not sure I’m on board with) but in this volume no one’s really sure if it’s him which leads to the funniest two page spread I’ve read in a while – clone!!!!  There’s so much Peter Parker in this TPB, but it’s still very much a Miles Morales story.  Phew.

 

Snowpiercer, Volume 1: The Escape - Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc RochetteSnowpiercer, Volume 1: The Escape – Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc Rochette.

I don’t know what to say about this really.  I did not enjoy it.  At all.  In an Earth that’s permanently frozen, a train runs on a track, never slowing, never stopping, keeping the last of humanity alive.  Okay, you might think, that sounds interesting.  And you’re right, it does sound interesting.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t make a single bit of sense.  We get a throwaway reference to Snowpiercer originally have been planned as a luxury train for rich people, but nothing that explains the construction of an endless track, or the addition of quite so many carriages.  Inside the train, society is strictly divided, with the rich living comfortable lives in the front carriages, and the poor living desperate lives in the rear carriages.  One passenger manages to escape from the rear carriages, which is where our story starts.  He won’t go back, which is where our story ends.  In between we get lots of nonsensical plot, poor dialogue and horrifying examples of misogyny.  There are no women in positions of power on Snowpiercer, but it’s okay because there are lots of naked women doing whatever the rich passengers at the front of the train want.  Even our heroine, who’s supposed to be a political activist, strips off almost immediately when locked in a room with the hero.  I gave this two stars on Goodreads, but I’m seriously considering downgrading it.

 

Snowpiercer, Volume 2: The Explorers - Benjamin Legrand & Jean-Marc RochetteSnowpiercer, Volume 2: The Explorers – Benjamin Legrand & Jean-Marc Rochette.

With a different writer than Volume 1, I was hoping for a plot that made a little bit more sense and a whole lot less misogyny.  I was disappointed.  For some reason we move to a second train that knew Snowpiercer was there (though Snowpiercer thought it was alone) but still managed to crash into it.  So the train is now half Snowpiercer and half Icepiercer, but still subject to exactly the same societal structure as Snowpiercer.  Okay.  Our hero this time is an ‘Explorer’, someone who is sent outside the train to forage for goods during scheduled stops (which are a thing now).  The explorer storyline had potential, but instead we’re treated to a rehash of the plot of the the first volume that somehow makes even less sense than the first.  Avoid.

 

Through the Woods - Emily CarrollThrough the Woods – Emily Carroll.

This has been recommended to me by so many people since it came out, so I almost jumped for joy when the library finally got a copy in.  And it’s so freaking good.  SO GOOD.  A compilation of short stories, it’s deliciously creepy, unsettling, lyrical, beautiful and sinister.  There was one story that I didn’t love as much as the others, but the book was so good overall that I don’t even really care.  I want more, so much more of this type of work!

 

Superman/Wonder Woman, Volume 1: Power Couple - Charles Soule & Tony S. DanielSuperman/Wonder Woman, Volume 1: Power Couple – Charles Soule & Tony S. Daniel.

I’ve not read widely in The New 52, but what I have read has been pretty subpar.  I hate this version of Wonder Woman.  I hate the inclusion of the Greek Gods.  None of it works for me.  I’ve never particularly been a fan of Superman, and this version has done little to change my mind.  And then we have the relationship.  Wonder Woman and Superman?  Really?  Charles Soule has to contort himself and the characters all over the place to try to get this particular dynamic to work and I’m not sure he pulls it off.  There are some interesting moments, but nothing that made me buy into the concept of Clark loves Diana forever.

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