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Just Finished
(I've completed 4 books and gave up on one. I won't highlight that one.)
"Ghost Roast by Shawnelle Gibbs is a lovely ghost story set in Louisiana. It follows Chelsea, a young teen, trying to adjust to a new school, new friends and also to her parent's divorce. Her mother works for the local historical society and works other jobs to help pay for Chelsea's schooling. Chelsea's father is a ghost hunter, a paranormal removal expert, whose business is struggling.
Chelsea gets in trouble on the last day of school as she follows her friends into a cemetery where they also drink and then get arrested by the police. Her parents ground Chelsea and she has to spend her summer working with her father. The story ramps up as her father gets a job trying to remove the ghosts from a haunted mansion. Chelsea's dad has all of the necessary technology to hunt spirits but little does he know that Chelsea has inherited the ability to both see and talk with ghosts from her aunt.
The story follows Chelsea as she tries to keep up with her school friends, deal with her parents who love her dearly and also adjust to a burgeoning friendship with one of the ghosts at the mansion, Oliver. Adding a twist to the story is that the original owners of the mansion were also slave owners, a cause of some tension between Oliver and Chelsea. This side story plays a significant role as the story develops and comes to its conclusion.
It was a most enjoyable and thoughtful story. The characters, even the ghosts, are well-developed. The artwork and penciling is beautiful, colorful, detailed. The story is well-paced and very interesting. I found myself drawn in easily and also found it difficult to put down once I got going. I look forward to reading more work by the Gibbs' sisters, Shawnelle and Shawnee. (4.0 stars)"
"Beyond the Black Enigma by Bart Somers is a pulp Sci-Fi space adventure from 1965. It's part of my Sci-Fi challenge, books from my bookshelf with less than 200 pages and the earliest published. This is the 9th book in the challenge. It's been quite a mix, from 2.0 star ratings up to 4.5. Unfortunately this one ended up being 2.0 stars.
Not to say it wasn't entertaining. It was a pure space adventure, would probably have suited the old movie serials you used to get at the beginning of the Saturday matinee? Anyone old enough to remember those? Each week you would get a 15 minute episode with a cliff hanger ending that made you want to see what happened the next week. Anyway I digress.
Commander John Craig of Alert Command is trying to enjoy some well earned time off after battling aliens on a strange planet when he is called back to duty. Two space fleets have disappeared into a sort of black hole, it's called... wait for it... The Black Enigma. Craig is to head into the Enigma on a one man space ship and try to find out what happened. Like James Bond, he is given a a case filled with the newest equipment to help him battle any bad guys. And off he goes.
He makes it through the Enigma, decides to check out a planet that might be inhabitable. He finds the fleet but there are no crews! Deciding to have a rest, he wakes up to discover not only is his ship gone but all of the fleet ships have disappeared too. Wandering through the woods, he finds a city and then later a village in the woods. He meets a tribe of people living in the woods, hiding from invaders from somewhere else. (Here is where we do get an interesting concept. The Toparrs are able to travel in time; from the past (where Craig landed), to the present where the Rhydd live and the future (where the Toparr live).) The Toparr want to destroy the Rhydd and also take their children and women to the future...
Got it? Oh I also have to say that Somers seems to like the letter R when naming his groups of people. It's like he had Siri then and asked Siri to give him alien sounding names.. LOL OK, you're right that was irrelevant. Anyway, Craig and one of the people he meets in the Rhydd village, a lovely lady named Fiona, yup, that's her name, are able to travel into the future to try and save the remaining Rhydd and the crews of the starships and also battle the Toparr. It's all a great adventure with lots of action. When I was a kid back in the 60s I used to read these $.50 pulp Sci-Fi books by the bucket load. Remember those books that were reversible, with a story on each side. I loved those. Some were great, some not so great. This sort of falls in the not so great but just entertainment category. (2.0 stars)"
"I bought Moon of the Crusted Snow by Canadian indigenous author Waubgeshig Rice firstly because the cover attracted my attention. The texture of it and the sparse photo of an SUV half buried in snow made me pick the book up as I wandered around my local book store. And then, reading the synopsis made me decide to give the book a try.
The story did not disappoint. "With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark." The community lives in northern Ontario. They wake up to discover that their communication is shut down, no landlines, no tv, no cell phones, no computer link ups. Then their power shuts off. Nobody knows why. The band elders crank up the town's diesel generator to provide some power until the hoped for link to the South opens again.
It doesn't happen. As winter snowfall begins and isolates the community even further, the band must start rationing power and food. No explanation is provided as to what is happening over the rest of the country, or even the world. When two of their younger residents show up from the town the south, Gibson, having traveled on snowmobiles, the situation becomes even more confused. The two boys tell the town that the situation is the same in Gibson, no power, panic, riots.
Then, a white man, Justin Scott, shows up on his own snowmobile, and gradually inculcates himself into the community, helping to split them up into separate groups. The story revolves around Evan Whitesky and his partner Nicole as they try to help the community work together to survive the long winter. The death toll begins to mount, both due to medical issues and also suicides as the situation drags on.
The story is told very matter-of-factly but the lack of knowledge about what is going on elsewhere, the sense of isolation felt within the community and the friction caused by the unwelcome 'visitor' make it a tense, unsettling story. Evan Whitesky is an excellent protagonist, a normal man trying to raise a family but forced into this untenable situation. Rice's ability to weave this plot and to provide a sense and a feel for the Ashinaabe culture makes for a fascinating page-turner of a story. I was drawn in from the very first page and could not wait to see how it was resolved. For a dystopic vision, it's not overly graphic or violent, rather it creates a sense of steady, rising unease and tension. Well-written and an excellent story. Now to read the sequel. (4.0 stars)"
"The Extinction Parade: War by Max Brooks, of World War Z and Devolution fame is the 2nd volume of his Extinction Parade graphic novel series. It appears that he has not continued with it after this volume. That's unfortunate.
Vol 2, like Vol 1, is set in Malaysia and follows two vampire females, Laila and her friend (I can't seem to find her name) as they battle the invading zombie hordes. In the first volume, the vampires realized that if the zombies succeed in shutting down mankind, the vampires will no longer have anything to feed off. So they must 'join' the human race in its battle against the zombies. But of course, they are really working with the humans, just emulating them and feeding off of the humans when they need food.
Laila and friend fight a non-stop battle against the hordes. They seem to be coming from China and all the countries around it so the battle seems to go on forever. They are also working mainly on their own and they come to realize that ingesting zombie 'blood' or being cut by zombies can be fatal for them. They try different methods to prevent being cut but nothing seems to work. Gradually they start meeting other vampires who have their own techniques; stomping rather than punching; using swords and knives; guns, etc. But for all of their strength, Laila realizes that not only do they are relying on scraps that they find in human ruins, but they really don't seem to have the will power to fight continuously. At least that the case of those they meet, who fight for a day or so and then wander off when they run out of bullets or their swords break.. Yada yada.
Finally Laila and a group she is with meet up with the army of the bloodline, led by an old friend, Nguyen. They are encouraged by the scope of his organization, a sealed bunker, weapons galore, etc. But they soon realize that what they are seeing are vampire just playing a game. They don't really have the know how to operate the systems or to repair them.
Laila and friend must try to find another way to defeat the zombies....
It's a gruesome, zombie / vampire battle throughout the pages, graphic, bloody (well, whatever zombie fluid is); colored in a dark and foreboding style. It's worth checking out even if it isn't finished. It lets you see more of Max Brooks' imagination and story-telling skill. (3.0 stars)"
Currently Reading
"Matthew, they thought, was just going through a phase of talking to himself. And, like many parents, they waited for him to get over it, but it started to get worse. Matthew's conversations with himself grew more and more intense—it was like listening to one end of a telephone conversation while someone argued, cajoled and reasoned with another person you couldn't hear.
Then Matthew started doing things he couldn't do before, like counting in binary-code mathematics. So he told them about Chocky—the person who lived in his head."
But in the second volume, Yang lays out the opposite side of the conflict. A girl whose village has no place for her is taken in by Christian missionaries and finds, for the first time, a home with them. As the Boxer Rebellion gains momentum, Vibiana must decide whether to abandon her Christian friends or to commit herself fully to Christianity.
Boxers & Saints is one of the most ambitious graphic novels First Second has ever published. It offers a penetrating insight into not only one of the most controversial episodes of modern Chinese history, but into the very core of our human nature. Gene Luen Yang is rightly called a master of the comics form, and this book will cement that reputation."
THIS WASN’T PAUL’S IDEA.
The last thing he’s interested in is exploring new countries or experiencing anything that might be described as “cultural enrichment.” But like it or not, he’s stuck with his brother, Theo, for two weeks in Taiwan, a place that—while fascinating to Theo—holds no interest to Paul at all.
While on a short trip to a local electronics store, Paul becomes hopelessly lost in Taiwan’s twisting, narrow streets, and he has no choice but to explore this new environment in his quest to find his way back to Theo’s apartment.
In an unfamiliar place with no friends—and no GPS!—there’s no telling what adventures he could happen upon. And who knows? Maybe it turns out he has friends in Taiwan, after all."
A rundown apartment in Koreatown. A Los Angeles winter. A strung out, worn out, wrecked and used government agent is scraped up off the pavement, cleaned up, and reluctantly sent out into battle one last time.
Ellison Nicodemo has seen and done terrible things. She thought her only remaining quest was for oblivion. Then the Signalman comes calling. He wants to learn if she can stop the latest apocalypse. Ellison, once a unique and valuable asset, can barely remember why she ever fought the good fight.
Still, you don't say no to the Signalman, and the time has come to face her fears and the nightmare forces that almost destroyed her. Only Ellison can unleash the hound of Tindalos. . ."
Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn't "optimal behavior". I's the type of behavior that results in elimination.
But Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with those of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots--or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him.
As a Conclave of the various species approaches--and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line--the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars."
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