The Immortals strikes me as a combination of Castle and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I liked Castle until the romance ruined it. In The Immortals, there’s a relationship developing between Selene (aka Artemis) and Classics professor Theo, but it’s not quite clear until towards the end what exactly it’s turning into. Selene is an avenger of wrongs against women in modern day Manhattan as an unlicensed private investigator, and Theo is the academic rock star with a bit of a past who gets pulled […]
Devil in Details and Missed Chances
I liked Sandman Slim most of the time. It’s got an interesting premise of a not-fully dead human resident of Hell getting back to Earth, and trying to get revenge on the people who got him sent there. There’s also some interesting side-characters like Vidocq, Candy, and Dr. Kinski (in a very different version than the Coop stories). The various denizens of Hell who show up occasionally are pretty interesting, as is the gradually revealed backstory behind Stark’s trip to Hell in the first place. […]
Watered Down Pratchett Doing Columbo
Fifth Ward: First Watch is pretty standard in a lot of ways. It’s a standard fantasy story of the sort which largely takes place in a vaguely medieval city in which a variety of difference races interact including humans, orcs, elves, and dwarves. It’s also a standard buddy cop story in which the naive young trainee is paired with the gruff experienced veterans, they get on each other’s nerves a lot, but eventually through a series of trials become friends and partners. As is not […]
Evil Cupcakes meet Samuel Beckett
I guess I’ve been on a superhero update kick of late, but that’s ok. I’d picked up Heroine Complex in a bookstore before, but this time I actually went through with the purchase. Overall, I don’t regret the $7.99 I spent. This is a really female-centered story, which makes it an interesting twist on the genre. After a vague large-scale supernatural event, some humans have developed supernatural powers, and now some people make a living as such, or in Evie’s case, as the personal assistant […]