Writing 52+ reviews is hard. Writing 52+ reviews is harder when I’m supposed to be writing my dissertation, and not reviews. Oops! Well, anyway, here we are. The Gone-Away World is a very strange book. It’s also a very good book, but it’s a good book that took me awhile to get into and appreciate. Harkaway’s prose is witty and often nonsensical, filled with non-sequiturs and descriptions that seem to mean absolutely nothing, and yet somehow conjure a well-staged — if surrealistic — scene, and […]
I love everything about this.
I was a pretty big fan of the first Ms. Marvel starring Kamala Khan, but it seems now that Wilson has Kamala’s origin story out of the way, it’s really just time to have some fun. I LOVED this. Kamala is adorable. I love her stupid face. She’s sweet and funny and enthusiastic and deadpan and so determined. A lot of it is that Kamala is so young. She’s only sixteen and full of notions about what a superhero should be. She’s still learning her […]
Completely ridiculous.
I would be dishonest if I said this volume wasn’t a bit of a letdown after how much I loved Higher, Faster, Further, More. I still love the art. I still love the characters. I still love the sense of humor. But the three stories that make up this particular volume were just so lightweight. Almost bordering on the absurd. One of these would probably have been okay, but three in a row knocked this down a star. I need a little bit of pathos with my […]
Spark of Hope in New YA Novel
This new YA novel has the makings of another multi-book blockbuster like Harry Potter or Hunger Games, but it’s not derivative or formulaic. Sabaa Tahir makes beautiful use of her cultural background (the child of Pakistani immigrants in the Mojave Desert, an outsider who did not feel particularly brave growing up) and vivid imagination to create a world that is dominated by dark spirits and a powerful militaristic elite. The Martials (who remind me of the Spartans) have ruled ruthlessly for 500 years; they’ve enslaved […]