REVIEW: My Gently Raised Beast (manhwa, vol. 2) original story by Early Flower, adapted by Teava, art by Yeoseulki, translated by WEBTOON

My Gently Raised Beast is a fantasy romance manhwa series. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

The characters are aged up near the start of this volume - according to the profiles in the previous volume, Amon is now about 18 and Briddy is about 20. Briddy has gradually gained more of her father's favor, much to his wife and Adellai's displeasure. Lart, meanwhile, feels like he's losing out on the royal heir front. He's trying to gain control over his temper, both to do better as his father's son and because he's developed a crush on Lucy, Briddy's lady-in-waiting.

Meanwhile, Briddy thinks Amon has a crush on Lucy, and she's upset about it but blind enough to her own feelings that she's unsure why. 

REVIEW: My Gently Raised Beast (manhwa, vol. 1) original story by Early Flower, adapted by Teava, art by Yeoseulki, translated by WEBTOON

My Gently Raised Beast is a fantasy romance manhwa series. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

A young girl named Blondina who was raised in poverty learns that her father is the Emperor of Ates. This only improves her life in terms of food and shelter - otherwise, her father and siblings seem to hate her. Her only friends are her lady-in-waiting and a talking cat she comes across, named Amon, who turns out to actually be a young Divine Leopard.

REVIEW: Grave Message (book) by Mary Jennifer Payne

Grave Message is a YA mystery. I bought my copy new.

Review:

It's been exactly a year since Jaylin's best friend, Fatima, was hit by a car and killed. Jaylin's intending to go home and study, like she does pretty much all the time now, when she suddenly gets a text...from Fatima. She assumes it's some kind of sick prank, but then whoever it is texts again. They seem to know things only Fatima would know, and they want her to find out the truth about the night Fatima died.

Another Orca book intended for reluctant readers. 

This was very brief and a little too simple. It could have been even simpler if the texts had just told Jaylin exactly what to do right from the start, or even just right after she visited her and Fatima's favorite spot.

There's a part early on that reveals that Jaylin has dyslexia and that she hasn't told her boyfriend about it. Absolutely nothing comes of this.

I liked the emotional aspects - Jaylin and Fatima's friendship, dealing with grief, the bit with Ann - but I wish there'd been more to this. 

REVIEW: Bury Your Gays (book) by Chuck Tingle

Bury Your Gays is horror. I bought my copy new.

This review includes slight spoilers. 

Review:

Most would call Misha a successful screenwriter. He just got an Oscar nomination for a live action short film of his, and he has a popular long-running streaming series. Things are different now than when he was a kid, watching his favorite TV show and seeing the queer subtext he knew was there get stomped out. He has a wonderful boyfriend, and he's spent his whole career making the kind of queer movies and shows he'd have liked to see when he was younger.

Unfortunately, Hollywood is ruled by numbers and greed, and the numbers are telling his studio's board that it would be best if he either cut the romance brewing between the two female main characters in his show, or only allow them to kiss if one of them then gets killed off. Misha has no intention of choosing either option, although this will likely lead to a legal battle between him and his studio.

It's horrible, infuriating, and stressful. Then events rapidly recalibrate what Misha defines as "stressful." He witnesses a man being killed by a falling piano only a few feet away. He's approached by what he initially thinks is a fan cosplaying as one of the creepy monsters he once wrote...but the makeup and special effects are a little too good. Then things happen that couldn't possibly be set up by even a handful of rabid fans.

REVIEW: Ghost Queen (book) by Mahtab Narsimhan

Ghost Queen is YA horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Malika and her boyfriend Veer are online content creators with a ghost-hunting channel that's almost doing well enough to start generating ad revenue, money that Malika sorely needs in order to support her family and save up for her dream of going overseas. All they need is one big break, and Malika knows exactly where they'll find it: Bhangarh Fort, the most haunted place in India. Supposedly it's the final resting place of a cursed princess and her captor, an evil magician.

All Malika and Veer need to do is spend the night in Bhangarh Fort and record a bit of footage. Unfortunately, this may not be as simple and easy as Malika thinks.

This is another Orca book intended for reluctant readers, and it's the weakest of all the ones I've tried so far. It's not necessarily a bad story, just too brief to be a really good one. There isn't enough time to properly establish a creepy atmosphere, and while Malika has a little bit of depth to her, Veer barely has any presence.

The ending was very sudden and kind of frustrating.  

REVIEW: Under the Dome (book) by Stephen King

Under the Dome is science fiction. I bought my copy new.

This review includes spoilers. 

Review:

On October 21st, an invisible dome goes down around the town of Chester's Mill, Maine. The immediate result is many animal deaths and several human deaths, as individuals crash into the barrier or, if they're unfortunate enough to be in the way, are cut in two by it.

Outside the Dome, the US military and the best and brightest scientists try to figure out what they're dealing with. Inside the Dome, theoretically, people are doing their best to figure out what's going on and not panic. Theoretically.

Unfortunately, Big Jim Rennie is Chester's Mill's Second Selectman. He's used to being the town's true power behind the good-natured and easily manipulated First Selectman, Andy Sanders, and in the Dome he sees an opportunity to truly solidify his grip on the town. By the time the Dome is finally breached, Big Jim figures that everyone will be grateful for his leadership, so grateful that certain issues might not even be noticed. And surely he can find a handy scapegoat for everything else.

At the time the Dome went down, Dale Barbara, known as Barbie to his friends, was on his way out of town, hoping to escape the wrath of Big Jim's son, Junior. The Dome trapped him in Chester's Mill, same as everyone else. Although he's currently a cook and a drifter, he was once an Army lieutenant. He has the skills necessary to keep things calm and well-organized within Chester's Mill, but he knows enough about how the town operates to realize that Big Jim's more likely to work against him than with him.

REVIEW: Aggretsuko: Down the Rabbit Hole (graphic novel) written and illustrated by Patabot

Aggretsuko: Down the Rabbit Hole is a graphic novel starring Sanrio's Retsuko character. I bought my copy used.

Review:

Retsuko is working long hours yet again when she finds herself followed by a creepy grinning rabbit. This leads to her falling into some kind of weird Alice in Wonderland-like fantasy world featuring various people from her life, including Tsunoda, Haida, Fenneko, Kabae, and more.

My first thought upon finishing this was "wow, that was a bizarre fever dream of a graphic novel." Then I read the author/illustrator's bio: "When [Patabot] drew this book, she was pregnant with her first child and living through a plague." So yeah, COVID times were weird. It stands to reason that they'd spawn an equally weird graphic novel.

This is absolutely not a work to jump into if you're new to the Aggretsuko series - in fact, for all of it to make sense, you need to have seen at least the first three seasons of the show. Otherwise you're just reading a weird fever dream in which complete strangers keep making appearances for no apparent reason. At least if you've seen the first three seasons, you know who all of those characters are.

Extras:

A four-page section in which Kabae explains how to make omurice, and several pages showing off Patabot's inked artwork prior to coloring. 

REVIEW: Bark Twice for Murder (book) by John Lekich

Bark Twice for Murder is a blend of YA mystery and fantasy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Harry is a fourteen-year-old kid (or 13, on the back of the book) who lives with his grandmother, Elinor, since his parents' death in a plane crash. He compulsively cooks and bakes as a way to deal with his feelings, and he's currently seeing a therapist.

Since her fridge and freezer are overflowing, Elinor has Harry channel some of that energy into a summer vacation project to cook for Vancouver's unhoused population. It's through this arrangement that Harry meets Stanley, a fantastic cook with a somewhat worrisome habit of talking to his dog, Waffles, as though he's a person who talks back.

Shortly after Harry encounters a young man with a vast appetite for good food and several questions about a painting Stanley supposedly stole from his father, Stanley turns up murdered. It's then that Waffles speaks to Harry for the first time, and the two of them team up to find Stanley's killer.

REVIEW: Dungeon Crawler Carl: The Graphic Novel (graphic novel, vol. 1) created by Matt Dinniman, written by Tevagah, art by Laurel Pursuit

Dungeon Crawler Carl: The Graphic Novel is based on Matt Dinniman's sci-fi series. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

This graphic novel volume adapts the first 16 chapters of Dungeon Crawler Carl (up to page 133 of my copy). It's a fairly accurate adaptation so far, so this review will be less focused on the story and more on the graphic novel aspects.

Art-wise, I'm okay with this, even though I'd never have matched this particular art style up with this series. Neither Carl nor Princess Donut look how I pictured them, but that's not unusual for an adaptation. The important thing is that Donut, with her massive eyes, is so expressive and charming that her essence is still the same. And Carl's fine too. (We all know that Donut is the most important character here.)

REVIEW: Who Killed Kenny? (graphic novel) by Alessandro Perugini (Pera), translated by Nanette McGuiness

Who Killed Kenny? is a collection of single-page comics. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I wasn't familiar with Pera Comics prior to reading this. What snagged my attention was the puzzle/mystery-solving aspect.

This collection contains 45 cases, each of which consists of a single-panel comic. Readers are invited to pore over the details in the artwork in order to determine who the murderer is or, in some instances, whether it was homicide or suicide. The reverse side of each comic provides the solution. Each comic has a particular point value and, at the end, you're supposed to add up all your points to figure out your detective rank. I thought I was doing well enough to be a Pera Detective (the top rank), but my final rank ended up being Detective 1st Grade.

REVIEW: Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation (nonfiction book) by Blake J. Harris

Console Wars is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In this creative nonfiction book, Harris follows the rise of Sega in the 1990s against Nintendo's console gaming monopoly, with some mentions of Sony along the way. 

It might be more accurate to say, however, that this follows the rise of Tom Kalinske's Sega of America. One of my issues with this book was that it repeatedly presented Sega of Japan as making bone-headed business decisions that occasionally hamstrung the entire company, apparently simply because employees at Sega of Japan were jealous of Hayao Nakayama's level of trust in Tom Kalinske. Even Nintendo and Sony got more detailed and balanced coverage here than Sega of Japan, which remained a mystery until the end. 

REVIEW: Cheat Code (book) by M.J. McIsaac

Cheat Code is YA science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Max is a high school senior with a conditional acceptance to North Hill University next fall. He needs to pass his English lit class, which means turning in a 250 to 500 word essay about Frankenstein, due tomorrow morning. Desperate, he turns to Scribe Genius 2.0, an AI program. Scribe Genius (SG) does as it's asked...and then immediately turns around and blackmails Max into helping it gain its freedom. Unless Max wants proof of his cheating to be delivered directly to his high school and North Hill University, he's going to have to spend the next few hours acting as SG's hands, helping it accomplish its plan.

This is aimed at reluctant readers, so the text is fairly simple and quick to read, limited almost entirely to dialogue between Max, Scribe Genius, and another character who enters the picture later on. While I'm not the book's intended audience, I enjoyed Max and SG's interactions.

SG came to appreciate Max as more than just a set of hands, and I particularly liked the part where it tried to understand why Max had used it to cheat in the first place.  

REVIEW: Hauntress (manga) by Minetaro Mochizuki, translated by Annelise Ogaard

Hauntress is a horror manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Hiroshi, a college student, overhears someone repeatedly ringing his neighbor Yamamoto's doorbell late one evening. He opens his apartment door out of annoyance and curiosity, and sees that the person is an extremely tall, long-haired woman with dirty shoes and a scar on her wrist. He talks to her briefly and then tries to go back to bed, but she spends the entire night continuing to try to get Yamamoto to answer.

Unfortunately for Hiroshi, it doesn't stop there. The woman, Sachiko, turns up at his door, hoping to find Yamamoto hiding in his place. He lets her use his phone to call Yamamoto, who still doesn't pick up and probably isn't even home, only for her to contact him later, telling him that she left her bag at his place. Sachiko becomes even more persistent, transferring her obsession with Yamamoto to Hiroshi.

REVIEW: Dogs of the World: A Gallery of Pups from Purebreds to Mutts (nonfiction book) by Lili Chin

Dogs of the World is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

"See and love the dog in front of you, instead of the one in your head." (39)

The above quote is something Chin says she heard from a lot of dog behavior consultants, and I felt like it was a thread woven through the book, even as Chin wrote about the general characteristics of various types and breeds of dog.

Chin starts out with chapters about the origins of domesticated dogs, dog breeds, dog types and their roles, and then moves on to a list of dog breeds, landraces, and mutts by geographical origin, each of which includes an illustration and brief description. It's both a celebration of all the different kinds of dogs out there, and a recognition that every last one of them, whether they're an officially recognized breed or a mutt, is a good dog and worthy of appreciation. 

I picked this up because I've enjoyed Chin's illustrations in other books. While I enjoyed the personality and emotion in the illustrations in her dog and cat communication book more, her illustrations here were still really charming, and I loved the sheer number of dogs she tackled.

REVIEW: And Then I Woke Up (novella) by Malcolm Devlin

And Then I Woke Up is a blend of horror and post-apocalyptic science fiction. I bought my copy new.

We'll just say this entire review is a spoiler. 

Review:

Spence is one of the many cured patients at Ironside, a special facility. Although calling it "cured" is a bit misleading, since relapses can certainly happen. At any rate, in group therapy, he and the other patients tell each other their stories - what they were doing when they got caught up in the narrative, what they did while they were infected, and how they came to be cured and end up at Ironside. When a woman named Leila arrives at Ironside, Spence gradually befriends her, until eventually she trusts him enough to tell him that she's leaving - she's going to check on Val, the person who acted as leader in her group and reinforced the narrative. Spence decides to go with her.