What happens when what you’ve always known yourself to be is locked away from you? What happens when a secret that’s been a secret for hundreds of years suddenly isn’t a secret anymore? (A word of warning, regarding secrets: Here there be spoilers for the first two books in the series. I’m sorry. I can’t discuss this one without discussing them, at least a little bit.) Ex-libriomancer Isaac Vaino doesn’t have an answer for the second thing at the beginning of Jim Hines’ Unbound, because he’s […]
Read a Book, Ya Idjits!
I’m going to guess there aren’t too many places outside fan fiction where you’ll find Supernatural mentioned in the same breath or sentence as Hamlet. Let alone Aristotle, Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant (who’s a real pissant), or Thomas Aquinas. Or Simone du Bouvoir. Or many other philosophers. Just so we’re clear: yes. I mean *that* Supernatural. Not the idea of the supernatural, or defining the supernatural, though certainly some chapters address those topics and I think a great many philosophers have covered that ground. For those people who […]
A New Year, Same Old Crazy
(Several words of warning: There are very mild spoilers for the book down toward the end, but nothing an astute reader couldn’t figure out from the description and the genre.) I figured that, as it’s a whole new year and all, that it was time to pay a third visit to Lil Littlepage-Eller, Boris, and the rest of the free-form asylum also known as Crazy, VA. So far, the Lil & Boris series has been a nice series of comfort nibbles with inhabitants I’ve always described […]
Chaos, Confusion, Twain and Tesla
The Five Fists of Science, by Matt Fraction (Art by Steven Sanders) is one of those books. I really wanted to like it, and it has a promising premise, but in the end it’s more a fun concept than a good story. Is it a graphic novelette? Yes. Is it steampunk? Sort of. Is it a superhero comic? Maybe? Lovecraftian? Yes, that. Is it an Alternate History with Famous Personages? Yes, also that. Plus, I think there was some influence from Godzilla and also possibly […]