The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Books new (in stores and/or online) on 10/31/12. Happy Halloween, everyone! American Vampire #32 Writer: Scott Snyder, Artist: Rafael Albuquerque Despite the beginning being a bit of flashback for those who missed the early plotlines, this issue fits in a lot of action, twists and plot developments. Hattie reveals her plan and her allies (little bit of monologuing there), and Pearl struggles to counter her. A strong installment, and I’m eager for the resolution of this arc. Batman: Li’l Gotham #1 Written by Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs, Art by Dustin Nguyen Hey, look, a digital comic. Fancy. And AWWWWWW. It’s so CUTE! It’s half-size, like most digital-only books, but it’s a super-cute little story about Bruce teaching Damian the meaning of Halloween. Really. And the art is awesome. You’ve got 99 cents burning a hole in your pocket? Give it a shot! Captain Marvel #5 Writer: Kelly Sue DeConnick, Artist: Emma Rios, Colorist: Jordie Bellaire Closing out the fi...

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Robert A. Heinlein, 1966 Hugo Winner – 1967 Premise: Manuel “Manny” O'Kelly lives on the moon. A lot of people do, in fact. However, the moon is still being run like the prison colony it started out as, and there is talk, especially among people who were born there, about governing themselves. Manny doesn't intend to get involved in politics, but it turns out that he has the lynchpin necessary to make an idea of revolution a reality. I have mixed feelings about this book. I mean, on the plot level, it was an interesting little piece about a moon-based revolution and a computer with a sense of humor. It heavily explores the idea that we'll re-play all our previous frontier problems in space. The lunar civilization bears more than a passing resemblance to early Australian colonies crossed with stories of the Wild West. The 'loonies' look after themselves and sometimes each other and have no problems enforcing brutal frontier ju...

Dog Wizard (The Windrose Chronicles, Volume Three) Barbara Hambly, 1993 Premise: Sequel to The Silent Tower and Silicon Mage . Joanna again returns to Antryg’s home dimension, but not willingly this time. Antryg follows in search of her, but he finds his former colleagues are less concerned with the fact that he’d escaped his death sentence than with who or what is causing severe disturbances in the Void. Disturbances that threaten to unhinge the world of magic, and trap both Antryg and Joanna between dimensions. This is a tremendously misleading cover, just FYI. This book is set about 6 months after Silicon Mage , but the publication dates are five years apart. As such, Dog Wizard is less “Part Three” and more “the continuing adventures of.” Some characters recur, but the tone and the emphasis is a bit different, and the plot is relatively unconnected to the previous books. It was a pretty fun book, though. This book spent much more time with Antryg, getting into his ...

Been super busy the past few weeks and I’m re-evaluating the sustainability of my budget for comic issues, but I do have several weeks worth of new comics to talk about: To sum up: The Best: Sword of Sorcery The Good: Captain Marvel, Batman Inc. The In-between: Wolverine and the X-Men The Bad: Star Trek/Doctor Who, Uncanny Avengers Batman Incorporated #4 Writer: Grant Morrison, Artist: Chris Burnham I don’t really understand the last few pages, but other than that this was a strong action-oriented issue in which the (male, un-rebooted) members of Batman Inc. go up against the League of Assassins. Pretty fun stuff, although the characters I actually like were under-used in favor of the D-listers. Captain Marvel #5 Writer: Kelly Sue Deconnick, Artist: Emma Rios, Colorist: Jordie Bellaire A lot of great moments in this issue. I might not be completely on board with the “jumping through time” plotline yet, but there’s a lot of good stuff to be had. Carol trying to int...

JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told Various, 2006 Premise: A collection of iconic Justice League stories from throughout the history of comics. I picked this up at the library on a whim, because I like the Justice League, and I like zany classic comics. Some of these were a little corny and boring even for me, though. Some, on the other hand, were pretty great. The first story is “The Super Exiles of Earth”, in which the Justice League has to reveal their secret identities to each other to defeat a bunch of evil duplicates. It’s a little zany, with stilted dialogue and a really silly, forced resolution. The second story is the one where Snapper Carr betrays the League in the name of “normal” people. It has some nice Batman stuff, but a really silly ending as well. There’s another one based on secret identities, where each Leaguer thinks he’s actually one of the others. This is a neat idea, but the plot involves Doctor Light setting traps for them based on their mixed-up m...

Mockingjay Suzanne Collins, 2010 Premise: Final book of The Hunger Games. ( Book One , Book Two ) The revolution is finally at hand, as the Districts try to bring down the government of Panem. Can Katniss become the symbol that the rebel leaders want her to be? If she does, what will happen to her friends still in captivity? I've had a surprisingly hard time sitting down to write this review. It's not that I'm unsure how I feel about the book: I loved it. It's rather that it was such an experience to read that I'm not sure I'm up to articulating my response. Mockingjay had some of the same world-building weaknesses that have characterized this series. However, since this one was more limited in scope (focused mostly on District Thirteen and very specific sequences in other areas) and concentrated on what the characters didn't know, the world didn't bother me as much. I liked the expanded/combined cast of characters building off of the second...

This Immortal Roger Zelazny, 1966 Hugo Co-Winner – 1966 Premise: Conrad Nomikos is a rather secretive fellow, when you get down to it. How he became Commissioner of Arts, Monuments and Archives for Earth is just one of many things he doesn't discuss. Neither does he discuss his feelings about the Vegans, an alien race who is “helping” the shattered remains of humanity, maybe. When he is called upon to escort a Vegan representative on a tour of historical sites, he grumbles about it, but he doesn't realize that the mission could change the fate of the entire planet. Wow! This was easily one of my favorite Hugo-winners to date. I really enjoyed the style, the story, the characters, the mystery and more. This Immortal is set in a future when the Earth is at a particularly low point. After some sort of catastrophic incident, several space colonies were cut off from Earth and by now the planet itself is mostly inhabited by mutants, gangs, clusters of survivors, and an ad...

Locke & Key: Volume 3: Crown of Shadows Writer: Joe Hill, Artist: Gabriel Rodriguez, 2011 Premise: Sequel to Welcome to Lovecraft and Head Games. Dodge begins to move more directly against the Locke siblings, and he seeks out the Shadow Key to help him do so. Kinsey discovers some of the pros and cons of taking things out of one's own head, and Tyler and Bode find yet another Key, this one nearly 3 feet long. Meanwhile their mother, while oblivious to the magic going on under her nose, is not blind to the other problems in her family and her life, but is having trouble dealing with them. Now this is more like it. There is much more supernatural stuff going on in this volume, much more action, much more plot movement. I do appreciate that the lengthy set-up does help the story feel fully realized, but it was lengthy. The artist gets to completely go nuts in this issue, creating tons of awesome shadow creatures. One issue is almost entirely gorgeous action splash pag...

This week: Two great books that taste great together! Action Comics #13 Writer: Grant Morrison, Artist: Travel Foreman, Colorist: Brad Anderson What fabulous craziness is Morrison up to this month? Why, just The Phantom Zone and officially bringing in a great classic supporting character, that’s all! WOO! Also the Phantom Stranger is there, but whatever. The important thing is (spoiler, highlight to read) KRYPTO! Who’s a good doggie?   YAY and Awwwww! I also just really liked the style of this issue: the evocative captions and the gorgeous art. AvX: Versus #6 Writing and Art by just about everyone, including Kieron Gillen, Jim Cheung, and many more. HA HA HA HA HA. I bought this because I’d read bits of it online. It’s fabulous silliness. Hope and Wanda have a beat-down! Cap and Cyclops have a fight consisting of nothing but smack-talk! Snarky editorial captions! Pixie and Squirrel Girl reveal the dark secret of AvX! (so to speak) All the science dudes fight a...

Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné: Volume 2) Michael Moorcock, 2008 Premise: This is the second collected volume of stories, following Elric: The Stealer of Souls . These stories include several more Elric tales, a few other stories set in that world, and more stories on the theme of the Eternal Champion. I am beginning to think maybe some other reviewers had the right idea when they criticized these collections. I loved the first one, and I love the idea of reading the stories in publication order. There was a set of volumes that tried to arrange the stories in a in-world order of continuity, and that made little sense to me for a character who was written over so many stories and so many years. (I have a Annotated Sherlock Holmes that I have never read most of, because the idea of putting those stories in “continuity” order rather than publication order seems incredibly foolish to me.) Well, I'm second guessing myself now. This...