A complete list of books read in 2014. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Marjorie Liu
- Hollow City – Ransom Riggs. The use of photos in this book seemed much more forced than in the first one. It felt like the story was being forced to conform to the photos rather than being a fluid thing.
- Night School: Legacy – C.J. Daugherty. I still don’t have a clue what’s going on with these books. In this one, I found that the positives stopped outweighing that sense of uncertainty. I also feel that instead of being a critique of the photo of David Cameron and the Bullingdon Club, this started to be an endorsement of that upper class ‘we hold all the power’ mentality.
- The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains – Neil Gaiman & Eddie Campbell. An excellent story with some very atmospheric artwork.
- Constantine, Volume 1: The Spark and the Flame – Jeff Lemire, Renato Guedes & Ray Fawkes. Although I enjoyed the tone of this, I’m not a fan of Constantine in the USA. I just can’t quite forgive them for that even though I know that there are plot reasons for the change.
- Constantine, Volume 2: Blight – Jeff Lemire & Renato Guedes. See above.
- The Rime of the Modern Mariner – Nick Hayes. I picked this up at random and ended up really enjoying it. The story was lyrical and captivating and the artwork was sublime.
- Neil Gaiman’s Murder Mysteries – P. Craig Russell. I know it’s not terrible informative to say simply that this was good, but it was!
- Wonder Woman, Volume 1: Blood – Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang & Tony Akins. I’ve never read any Wonder Woman before and this seemed like a good place to start. Overall I quite enjoyed it and will definitely try to pick up more volumes.
- Dark Satanic Mills – Marcus Sedgwick, Julian Sedgwick & John Higgins. I am so sick of this type of post-apocalyptic, religion-dominated nonsense. Such a disappointment.
- Clive Barker’s Next Testament – Mark Miller & Haemi Jang. This was surprisingly amazing. A guy managed to reincarnate Jesus but it turns out that spreading peace and love are the furthest things from Jesus’ mind. Dark, twisted and a lot of fun.
- Joe Hill’s The Cape 1969 – Jason Ciaramella & Nelson Daniel. Pretty unmemorable actually.
- The Martian – Andy Weir. Loved it. I picked it up after seeing reviews on quite a few different blogs and I’m glad I did. It’s the type of sci-fi I really enjoy – not set too far in the future that society has been utterly transformed, but far enough that things are slightly different. The research that went into this book is astounding and definitely kept me engaged with the story even when I wasn’t particularly fond of the main character (I found him personality a bit irritating from time to time, but nothing that put me off too badly!). One thing that disappointed me was the cover. I’d seen an excellent cover with the Martian surface in the background and the figure of an astronaut in the foreground, but the one I got was a close-up of a white face when there’s nothing in the story to confirm that the main character is white.
- Sheltered, Volume 1 – Ed Brisson, John Christmas & Shari Chankhama. Excellent! A total twist on the post-apocalypic trope beloved in popular media at the moment. There’s another volume waiting for me at the library so I hope it continues to be brilliant.
- The Great Pacific, Volume 2: Nation Building – Joe Harris & Martin Morazzo. There seemed to be a massive gap in time between the first volume of this and the second, which was a bit jolting. It’s an alright story, but to be honest it doesn’t grab me and I probably won’t pick any further issues up.
- Spaceman – Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso. I wanted to like this so, so much but it did absolutely nothing for me, especially since it was written in a version of English that had evolved over the years into, well, nonsense. I’m not one for dialects/language evolutions in sci-fi, really.
- Wolverine: Three Months to Die – Paul Cornell, Ryan Stegman & Gerardo Sandoval. I honestly don’t even remember what happened in this.
- Ultimate Comics Wolverine: Legacies – Cullen Bunn & Davis Messina. Or this.
- Wolverine Weapon X, Volume 3: Tomorrow Dies Today – Jason Aaron, Ron Garney, et al. Or this. Oh, dear.
- Alice-Miranda on Holiday – Jacqueline Harvey. Yay Alice-Miranda! Like the first book in the series, these continue to be the highly-entertaining and amusing adventures of a delightfully busy-bodyish small child. Charming.
- First Term at Silver Spires – Ann Bryant. I thought this was a fairly decent boarding school story, with quite a bit to say about always being who you are instead of trying to fake something you’re not, but I was disappointed to see that the rest of the series is written from the perspective of different characters to this one, so I most likely won’t pick any more up.
- Alice-Miranda Takes the Lead – Jacqueline Harvey. See above.
- Alice-Miranda at Sea – Jacqueline Harvey. See above.
- Happy! – Grant Morrison & Darick Robertson. I was unimpressed with the first few pages of this given that they featured the usual nonsense of gangsters and prostitutes, but then it got amazing. And ridiculous. Amazingly ridiculous. Recommended!
- Ghosted, Volume 1 – Joshua Williamson, Goran Sudzuka & Miroslav Mrva. Rich guy puts together a team to steal a ghost and nothing is quite what it seems. Not bad, not amazing. Just… okay. (You can tell at this point that my local library system bought in a huge selection of graphic novels all in one go!)
- Mind the Gap, Volume 1 – Jim McCann, Rodin Esquejo & Sonia Oback. Girl in a coma tries to figure out who tried to kill her only to discover that everything she thought she knew about her own life might not be strictly accurate. I was intrigued by this one and enjoyed it quite a lot. I’ve got the next few volumes out on loan waiting to be read, so fingers crossed!
- Fatale, Volume 1: Death Chases Me – Ed Brubaker, & Sean Phillips. I think it’s time for me to admit that I just don’t like Ed Brubaker’s work. I want to, but I’m always totally underwhelmed. Plus, I’m so, so tired of the ‘sexy woman has sex with people to secure her own safety’ bullshit. Women with supernatural powers do not need to prostitute themselves to be awesome.
- Saucer Country, Volume 1: Run – Paul Cornell & Ryan Kelly. This was so random and so excellent! It’s like The West Wing meets The X-Files, with a political candidate deciding to run for President at the same time that she’s abducted by aliens. There’s a subplot where someone finds out that she thinks she’s been abducted and they’re trying to use that knowledge to sabotage her campaign that I could honestly do without, but overall this was weird and wonderful.
- Occult Crimes Taskforce – David Atchison, Rosario Dawson & Tony Shasteen. The main character being modelled after Rosario Dawson is really distracting in this. Instead of adding to the story, it detracted from it hugely for me, because I just couldn’t buy into the scenario. Story-wise it had some promise but remained just okay, really.
- Five Ghosts, Volume 1: The Haunting of Fabian Gray – Frank J Barbiere & Chris Mooneyham. A pretty poor effort. You could see that the creators thought their concept was really cool, but it just never really made too much sense or worked for me at all.
- Mara – Brian Wood & Ming Doyle. Amazing, amazingness! An intriguing mix of science fiction, the superhero genre, and a strong, female character fighting to discover who she is outside of the confines of what society has set for her. Recommended!
- Deadboy Detectives, Volume 1: Schoolboy Terrors – Toby Litt, Gary Erskine & Mark Buckingham. I don’t think there’s an incarnation of the Deadboy Detectives that’s not adorable. Get it read!
- Suicide Squad, Volume 1: Kicked in the Teeth – Adam Glass, Federico Dallocchio & Clayton Henry. I’m not a big DC reader, so I didn’t know much about the Suicide Squad until I read this. And it was pretty awesome. I’ll definitely be picking up more volumes.
- Daken Dark Wolverine, Vol 1: Empire – Marjorie Liu, Daniel Way, Giuseppe Camuncoli & Mirco Pierffedericci. I understood about 20% of this but even if I’d understood more, I don’t think I’d have cared about the storyline or characters.
- Supernatural: The Dogs of Edinburgh – Brian Wood, Grant Bond & Dustin Nguyen. I wasn’t expecting much from this but ended up quite enjoying it. Sam travels to Edinburgh at the request of an old friend and then things get nicely uncertain and spooky.
- Ladybird, a Cover Story – Ladybird. Cuteness, everywhere! There were loads of covers that I’d never seen before, but the ones that I had brought back instant memories.
Despite some weeks in February feeling interminably long, I’m still quite surprised that it’s over. And look – I read things!
- Hipster Hitler – James Carr and Archana Kumar. This was a gift for my last birthday and I feel bad it’s taken me this long to get around to it. Enjoyable pun-filled goodness.
- Wolverine: Sabretooth Reborn – Jeph Loeb & Simone Bianchi. Not amazing but not terrible either.
- Astonishing X-Men: Unmasked – Marjorie Liu & Gabriel H. Walta. Glad to see Iceman getting some character development again. But more Northstar, please!
- The Girl With All the Gifts – M.R. Carey. As previously mentioned, I LOVED this. Go read it immediately!
- X-Men: Primer – Brian Wood, Olivier Coipel & David Lopez. See my last post for thoughts.
- Revival: You’re Among Friends – Tim Seeley & Mike Norton. See my last post for thoughts.
- Revival: Live Like You Mean It – Tim Seeley & Mike Norton. See my last post for thoughts.
- The Little Women Letters – Gabrielle Donnelly. Although the characters in this never really rang true for me, I thought this was alright. Nothing spectacular, but the letters from ‘Grandma Jo’ made it more than worthwhile.
- Deadpool: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly – Brian Posehn, Gerry Duggan, Scott Koblish & Declan Shalvey. Yay for Deadpool! Must play the game soon.
A complete list of books read in 2011. Continue reading