Review:
It's the final volume of this series. The Bird Clan kidnappers decide to kill Ruiying because they think the Rabbit Princess is the only one who matters, but thankfully Ruiying is saved by an older Bird man. As all of this is going on, King Yawen's wrath is rapidly growing stronger. If something isn't done soon, he may completely lose control to the point that even his closest friends won't be safe.
Review:
Tyler Page was an intelligent boy, but he was often hyperactive in class and had a tendency to do things without considering the consequences. His mom initially made a doctor's appointment for him because of some headaches he'd been having, but issues at school turned it into a broader evaluation of Tyler's behavior and family situation. His mom confessed that there were some problems at home - Tyler's father was prone to sudden bouts of anger - so family therapy was proposed. As Tyler's parents tried to talk about and work through their issues, Tyler went to group therapy with other children and was eventually diagnosed with ADD (now referred to as ADHD). He was put on Ritalin and showed some improvement, but his medication still needed occasional adjustment and it was never a miracle cure.
In between scenes from Tyler's childhood, there are brief informational pages about ADHD, what we know about it, some of the benefits and drawbacks of labels, misconceptions about ADHD, and more. The author also briefly touches on ADHD in adults and women and how the way it presents can be very different from the way it presented in him as he was growing up.
Review:
Lydia travels with Edgar to his holdings near Ireland in order to find the sword and Merrow Star he's been seeking. However, Lydia still doesn't know if she can trust Edgar and now, via Huxley, her father is also in danger.
It's been ages since I last saw it, but I think the events of this volume are where the anime ended.
Meh, this was okay. Nothing about this particular volume really stood out to me. I did kind of like Nico - grumpy, put-upon, and trying to keep Lydia alive.
Review:
Yu is an average teen who's failing his classes, has no friends, and skips school to work out on a climbing wall. One day, he happens to find an abandoned and surprisingly well-made Spider-Man suit - and when he discovers that it includes web-slinging tech, he comes to the conclusion that it might actually belong to the real Spider-Man. When he gets spotted trying the suit on, he feels obligated to uphold Spider-Man's honor and fight nearby crime. However, he really is just an ordinary teen. Can he keep this up without getting himself killed? And what happened to the real Spider-Man?
Review:
This book is structured as a reconstruction of the events leading up to sports writer Harper's sister's disappearance. Harper's sister, Willow, was grieving after the death of her young son when she discovered the words "Clifford Island" written in his room. Wanting desperately to know what sort of connection Clifford Island had to her son, Willow takes a job as the island's new youth ministries director and starts to dig into the island's mysteries. It's a strange place: it has hardly any internet presence, so it's difficult to find out anything about it. The whole island seems to be stuck in the mid-to-early '90s - teens wear slap bracelets, no one has a cell phone, no one has newer cars, etc. People even seem to be weirdly fixated on the OJ Simpson car chase, watching it every day as though it were breaking news.
The story alternates between scenes leading up to Willow's disappearance, as she investigates what makes this island tick and at the same time finds herself strangely at home in this bizarre place, and scenes in which Harper talks to folks on the island in an effort to figure out what happened to his sister. Both Willow and Harper find an ally in Lily, a Clifford Island teenager who's frustrated with the island's rules and doesn't believe in the reasons behind them.
Review:
Ruiying learns more about the Dragon Clan and starts to become closer to King Yawen, although she's relieved to hear that he isn't ignoring the other princesses. She meets and befriends the Rabbit Princess, who wanted to become a bride candidate so that she'd have the opportunity to study medicine - although the Rabbit Clan is known for its medical knowledge, women in the clan are expected to be beautiful and submissive dolls.
Review:
In the world of this series, thirteen clans rule the land (think animals of the Chinese Zodiac). The Rat Clan is the weakest, while the Dragon Clan is the strongest. The Dragon Clan has summoned a princess from each of the other clans in order to find the Dragon King a bride.
Ruiying isn't interested in becoming the Dragon King's bride - she just wants access to the Dragon Clan's incredible library. However, when the Dragon King, Yawen, encounters her, he instantly declares her his fated mate.
Review:
I could have sworn I'd kept at least a few notes about this, but apparently not. I'll have to work from memory. Unfortunately, I honestly don't remember much about this other than that it was just okay.
The main character, Brittany, works at a bar and has a serious crush on her boss's brother, Logan. If I remember right, Logan was interested in her when they first met, but she was married, so he didn't say anything. Now that she's divorced, there's nothing standing in their way except their own issues.
The romance itself didn't make much of an impression on me - it probably didn't help that I haven't read any of the other works in this series (this novella was a freebie I acquired at the last Book Bonanza). The most memorable bits, for me, were the matchmaking romance author who literally wrote the main characters of this novella into her latest book (I'd think that would feel super weird in real life, but what do I know?), and the fact that Brittany and Logan got caught having sex behind the bar by Logan's brother, Brittany's boss, and this was treated as more mildly amusing than anything.
Anyway, this wasn't bad, I guess, but it didn't prompt me to look up any of the author's other works.
Review:
I'm trying to make myself read more nonfiction. Thor Hanson seemed to be a well-recommended science writer, and biology- and evolution-related topics interest me, so I decided to give this a try.
Near the end of the book is this quote:
"'Feathers are already incredible in every way!' [Dr. Kimberly Bostwick] exclaimed at one point. 'We just need to be able to see it.'" (260)
I felt like it summed up the primary appeal of this book for me. Looking at what we know about the evolution of feathers, the way they function, their use in flight and mating displays, and more, Hanson highlighted all sorts of ways feathers are amazing. If I'd ever been inclined to think they were ordinary and boring, this book would have convinced me otherwise. As it was, I hadn't realized how many aspects of feathers I'd never thought much about.
If I could have changed one thing about this book, it was the black-and-white illustrations. It's not possible for books like this to include illustrations featuring everything interesting in them, for sure, but the pictures in the chapter on feather coloration were so disappointing as to feel like a waste of space. If you're going to include pictures specifically designed to highlight the colors in an artist's reconstruction of a feathered dinosaur or the color of tevau (feather money coils), those pictures really need to be in color themselves.
All in all, this was a fascinating read, and I plan on trying more of Hanson's books.
Review:
Kirie, a high school girl, is the primary narrator of Uzumaki. Through a variety of connected stories, she describes how her hometown of Kurouzu-cho gradually becomes completely contaminated by spirals. It all starts with her boyfriend Shuichi's father, whose obsession with spirals begins to twist his body and mind. Then Shuichi's mother is affected, then one of Kirie's classmates, and then her own father. It gradually spreads to more and more people, and affects more and more aspects of their lives.
The premise doesn't really sound like much, but Ito's artwork elevates it to something truly horrific. Aside from a few instances here and there that I, for some reason, found more amusing than horrific (the spiraled hair incident, for example), Ito somehow manages to transform something simple and ordinary into an infinitely deep well of dread.
Review:
Nadia Owusu is the daughter of a Ghanaian father and an Armenian American mother. When she was two, her mother abandoned her family and only occasionally reappeared. Nadia's father, a United Nations official, remarried. In addition to the two daughters he had with his first wife, he had a son with his second wife. When Nadia was 13, her father died of cancer. Nadia and her siblings opted to stay with Anabel, Nadia's stepmother, although Nadia and her younger sister Yasmeen's relationship with Anabel was complicated, to say the least.
Years later, during an argument, Anabel told Nadia that her father hadn't died of cancer, but rather of AIDS. Nadia was left feeling like the foundations of her life, already filled with cracks, were dashed to pieces. Her father, who she'd always felt closest to and who she'd put on a pedestal, had potentially had secrets she didn't know about. Throughout the book, Nadia examines her relationship with her father, the things he told her, and the various other "aftershocks" of her life.
Review:
This is one of the freebies I got at the last Book Bonanza. (This is another one I finished a while back and should have reviewed sooner, or at least taken more notes on. My memories of it are a bit fuzzy.)
This alternates between true crime podcast snippets about Dunia Ahmed, a pharmacist in New York who went missing a year ago, flashbacks to Dunia's life not long before she disappeared, and flashbacks to Dunia when she was 5 years old. Part of what makes Dunia's disappearance so intriguing to the podcast's audience is that there were several unexplained attempts on her life just before she disappeared. For no apparent reason whatsoever, total strangers suddenly tried to kill Dunia and then committed suicide when they failed. Previously, the only thing causing Dunia problems was her ex, who kept sending her threatening messages, but the people who tried to kill her didn't seem to have any connection to Dunia's ex, or any other part of her life. Meanwhile, in the flashbacks to Dunia's childhood, we learn that she was prone to sleepwalking and that her mother once had an exorcism performed on her.
What was going on with Dunia, and where is she now?
Review:
This book is set up as though it were a series of statements taken from a group of employees working with and around a variety of artifacts and occasionally visiting a nearby planet. (I think - it's been a while since I read this, and my memories are fuzzy.) The statements were taken over a period of 18 months, after which the committee assigned to evaluate the employees came to a decision about their overall fate. Some of the employees were human, while others were humanoid (human, but created artificially?).
Review:
This starts with a multi-issue story in which Deadpool has been hired to kill Peter Parker, CEO of Parker Industries. Deadpool is trying to emulate his hero, Spider-Man, and not kill people...or at least stick to only killing bad people...so he tries to confirm that Parker (who he doesn't know is Spider-Man) is really the evil guy he's been told he is. Part of his plan is to hang out with Spider-Man and see if he can get some inside info. Unfortunately, Deadpool's efforts leave Spider-Man seriously out of sorts and questioning his way of doing things.
The story's flow was a bit jumpy, and I'm out of the Marvel loop enough not know pretty much any of the background details like how Deadpool got married to Shiklah, who Shiklah is, and how Peter Parker became a CEO. Still, I had fun with the first half and Deadpool's efforts to convince Spider-Man that he'd turned over a new leaf. The way the storyline wrapped up seemed a bit too simple, considering how thoroughly emotionally rocked Peter was, though.
Then Deadpool and Spider-Man spend some time on the set of the Deadpool movie (starring handsome Hollywood movie star Donald Dryans), which was mildly amusing.
After that was a faux-1968 issue of Amazing Spider-Man in which Deadpool was working for some rich guys trying to rig an election in an overly complicated way. Then there was an issue in which Deadpool and Teller (of Penn & Teller) had to switch places for a while. After that was a holiday special in which the god Saturn slaughtered people celebrating Christmas because they were ruining his own holiday, Saturnalia. The volume wrapped up with an issue in which a bunch of girls at a boarding school used Deadpool to perform a ritual designed to summon Deadpool's heartmate and resurrect their evil headmistress in the person's body. Deadpool's heartmate turns out to canonically be Spider-Man.
The last bunch of issues varied in overall enjoyability. My favorite of the bunch was probably the last one, with the schoolgirls.
I bought this collection because I heard it had good Spidey-Pool content, and for the most part it delivered. Story-wise, it was occasionally a bit confusing and got darker than I expected. Overall, I enjoyed this, although it reminded me why I've mostly left Marvel and DC comics behind. I don't know that I'd have liked this as much if I weren't already primed to enjoy Deadpool.
Review:
A couple hundred or so years ago, desperate colony ships left Earth in search of a new home. The place they found, Proxima b, turned out to be to dangerous to settle, so their descendants are heading back to Earth. Things don't look good. They can't go back to Proxima b, they likely don't have enough food, oxygen, and fuel to make it back to Earth (which may not even be habitable, anyway), and they keep getting caught in the crossfire of what seems to be some kind of enormous alien war.
Jacklyn Albright is the acting captain of the Calypso, barely holding herself together, much less the ship. Her mother committed suicide, her sister is dead, and her father, the ship's captain, hasn't left his quarters or spoken to anyone in over a week. Then things go from bad to worse. There are glitches in the ship's systems, something keeps making banging noises inside the ship's walls, and a crew member is found horribly mutilated.
