Goodreads Book Review - The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading this after watching the movies makes it very hard to separate the two in my mind; as I read I'm seeing the scenes from the movie instead of imagining things myself, which makes it hard to give a completely unbiased review. That said, I enjoy the characters and the story line is engrossing.The action could stand to be a little more descriptive and a lot more fleshed out; all the action scenes fly by, and frustratingly tend to end with someone passing out and having the results told to them when they wake up. Isn't "show, don't tell," one of the first rules of writing? Minor complaints aside, it's a very good book.


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Goodreads Book Review - The Aeronaut's Windlass

The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Like Butcher's other two series, the first book in the Cinder Spires was a slow beginning for me. Part of it, I'm sure, is that I'm not much into the whole steampunk thing, so I guess a lot of the tropes that go with the genre were lost on me. But as always, I love Butcher's character work. All his characters feel alive, vibrant, and fully fleshed out, which makes it easy to care about them. I also enjoyed the overall plot he has going on here, although aspects of it, such as the love story that pops up, felt a little to rushed and unearned. What I think I loved more than anything else, was the way cats fit into the story. The characterization and lifestyle he gave them felt so spot-on to how cats are that it had me thoroughly entertained. In all, getting into this one was a little slow to me until about the halfway mark, where it really took off, and I'm looking forward to the next one. Meanwhile, am I the only one who caught a reference or two to the Codex Alera in here? Might they be connected?


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Panel of the Week: 10/21/15

Getting closer and closer... I swear, the idea of a weekly column seemed like a good one at the time! Anyway, the winner for the batch of comics from two weeks ago is a two-page spread that comes from Marvel's Weirdworld #5, written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Mike Del Mundo.

Weirdworld has been a weird book, part of Marvel's still ongoing Secret Wars event, filled with weird ideas and weird images and just, y'know, weirdness. In this final issue the battle for Weirdworld rages on, and it's fought between crystal warriors and magma men and swamp things and dragons and so on and so forth. Which isn't why this panel wins. Nor are the pencils and colors themselves why it wins, although they're great too. The reason this panel wins is that, in the midst of all the assorted aforementioned crazies duking it out, there are a pair of butterflies flying by with a nuke. How the hell does that make sense?

It doesn't.

It's just weird.

Panel of the Week: 10/14/15

I had intended to post this over the weekend, as it's a good one for Halloween, but the weekend got away from me, so this panel from The Walking Dead #147 had to wait until today. Which is fine, because it isn't really all that Halloweeny after all. Of course, the issue in question was written by Robert Kirkman and drawn by Charlie Adlard. There aren't really any spoilers in this one, so don't worry.

If last week's panel winner was a commentary on where things are in the Marvel Universe right now, well, an image of Rick putting a gun to Michonne's head has to be a similar sort of commentary on things in the Walking Dead comic right now, right? Unless all isn't as it seems... Anyway, it wins because it's a fairly shocking panel, in context or out, and the scene that follows is pure gold. And I absolutely love the cold, emotionless look on Rick's face, like he isn't afraid to do something, even if it is against Michonne. Just a bit chilling, huh?

Panel of the Week: 10/7/15

Every time I come close to catching up with this damn column, something happens and I fall off and next thing you know I'm almost a month behind. I'll get there one day, I promise. Anyway, the winner for the week of October 7th comes from Avengers #0, an anthology. The story the following image belongs to is a prelude to Uncanny Avengers Vol. 3, and is written by Gerry Duggan and drawn by Ryan Stegman.

I've chosen it not because the art is particularly great, because it isn't, or because there's anything in the dialogue that makes me love it, because there isn't, but because it's representative of the state of the Marvel Universe right now, and why I'm slowly starting to lose interest. What you can see from the above interest is that Captain America is now a retiree; mutants and, obviously, the X-Men, have been pushed aside for the Inhumans, marginalized to such an extent that they are now rendered unable to have children, something that completely invalidates the last three years of X-Men stories; and, oh yeah, Deadpool is an Avenger now, further proving that at this point he's even more overexposed than Wolverine ever was.

No wonder the number of indies I'm reading has spiked lately...

Goodreads Book Review - Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn't enjoy this book as much as Mr. Mercedes. It's not because the plot was weak or because I wasn't pulled in, because the plot was great and I was. The problem is that it felt like it was really two plots that were put together for no reason other than King wanted to do a sequel. The Mr. Mercedes characters don't show up until the book is halfway through, and then they spend the whole rest of the book playing catch-up and just rehashing ad nauseam what the readers already know. The complaint being said, the "A" plot of the stolen books and what two lovers of reading who fall on opposite ends of that spectrum do for those books is thrilling. I wish that plot had been expanded into its own book instead of being shoehorned into being the middle part of a trilogy it is only barely connected to tangentially. The tease throughout the second half of the book, especially at the end, of where the final part in the trilogy might go was interesting enough to make me want to read it despite this one's shortcomings.


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Panel of the Week: 9/30/15

No intro today. The Mets are on and I'm a bit buzzed, so let's get right down to it. The winner for the comics from the week of September 30th is the following panel from DC Comics' Justice League #44, written by Geoff Johns, art by Jason Fabok.

It's a double-page spread of the ongoing battle between the evil god Darkseid and the uber-powerful Anti-Monitor. This battle has been featured here before, but I'm in awe of this image: the power and violence of the fight, the cleanless of the lines, the cowering figures of the Justice League as they are buffeted by the force of the blows traded in the battle. It's pretty great.