We Used to Live Here

 We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer, 312 pages.

Eve is a chronic people-pleaser, so when a family shows up politely asking to show their kids around the father's childhood home she reluctantly agrees, despite her misgivings. Everything starts pretty normal, except that the fifteen minute tour keeps getting longer, and the family doesn't seem in any hurry to leave. Soon little things seem to start changing, and Eve can't tell what is her anxiety and what is something much more sinister. The horrors keep multiplying, and Eve is increasingly unsure what she can trust. 

This book was an atmospheric master class. It was deeply unsettling even before there was anything concrete to be scarred of, which did a great job putting me in Eve's head. That being said, I do wish I understood better what was going on by the end of the book. Vaguely unsettling is very effective for building tension, but it's not a very satisfying payoff. This novel was clearly inspired by Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves, and while I didn't find the archival-style material particularly effective in this case, I do still think fans of that book will enjoy this one, as well as fans of the podcast Rabbits. Even feeling slightly disappointed in the tail end, I did still find this a really cool universe-slipping horror novel, and genuinely scary. 

Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib

Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib by David J. Schwartz  416 pp.

In an alternate version of Earth, there exists magic and demons and parallel dimensions and colleges that teach magic and government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Magical Affairs, among others. In this version of Earth the FBMA was started by Aleister Crowley. The heroine of the story is Joy Wilkins, an FBMA agent sent undercover as a professor at the community college to investigate the disappearance of a faculty member and a demon trafficking operation possibly connected to those committing terrorist attacks. Joy is a bit disabled in that she is face blind and has to rely on her ability to see auras to recognize people. But this doesn't always work because people's auras change. She finds herself in the midst of an ancient magical war and doesn't know who to trust; her agency boss, the members of the mysterious organization, The Thirteenth Rib, a trickster god who has taken the place of another professor, or any one of the many magical and possibly sinister people she encounters. This book has a variety of different characters, plenty of action, and intrigue. This book was originally published as a Kindle serial before coming out in paperback. I took a chance on it when the Kindle version was on sale for only a dollar or two because the title intrigued me.

The Manhattan Projects (Volume 1 - Volume 3)

The Manhattan Projects  (written by Jonathan Hickman, illustrated by Nick Pitarra)
448 pages

Where do I start?  This series takes place in an alternate reality or highly fantastical and fictionalized version of the post World War II era.  As you probably know, the Manhattan Project was the top secret government R&D... project... to develop the atomic bomb.  It brought together some of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century from all over the globe.  In Jonathan Hickman's comic series, these scientists are not only geniuses, but incredibly eccentric and downright mad: Robert Oppenheimer is actually his evil twin, a cannibal with split personalities, Joseph Oppenheimer; Enrico Fermi is an alien drone in human guise, sent to monitor the potential threat of a human race spreading out into the stars; Albert Einstein... well, that's him on the left.

When not enjoying science and whiskey, Einstein likes to channel his inner Bruce Willis

The basic premise is that these historically based super-minds don't stop at atomic weaponry, but plan to take humanity to the next stage of evolution and galactic presence with their research.  In their quest for progress, they must contend with well established alien empires, as well as Earth's pre-existing power structure which consists of kings, presidents, commercial conglomerates, and the Illuminati.

This series is weird and over-the-top.  The artwork is good, and the action shines when there is actually a tangible threat to the scientific cabal's plans.  The first volume is the weakest of the three, being a little inefficient in its character development, and the plot doesn't hit its stride until the middle of volume two.  Generally, I feel that at times the series tries so hard to come off as original and/or provocative that it simply becomes goofy.  For example, in the first volume, the Japanese army  uses "death buddhists" that mentally power a gateway from point A to B, called a "torii".  At no point does the author attempt to explain what death buddhists are, or... ANYTHING about them.  Nor is there an explanation for Yuri Gagarin's talking dog, or why the Russian minister in charge of Star City is a talking brain in a vat.

And yet I  read on.  This series has my continued curiosity because it's ultimately fun and, I dare say, stimulating reading, full of violence and very odd, yet mostly effective humor.

Crewel/Gennifer Albin

Crewel by Gennifer Albin (Crewel World vol. 1); young adult, science fiction, fantasy; 368 pages

I was really, really excited about this book when I first heard about it (several months before it was published).  Post-apocalyptic setting!  Dystopias!  FIBER ARTS!  I built this book up so much in my head that I think I was a little disappointed with it by the time I actually read it--and that's not fair to the book, since this was a good story, and very well written. 

There were lots of things about this book that I loved:  for one, the world-building is really well done, and Albin actually goes places some of the other YA dystopias I've read haven't.  Arras is a charmed world that's held together by Spinsters, women with the ability to weave and change the fabric of reality.  The mysterious Guild rules over this country, and in an effort to control the women who control the world, have established some of the strictest gender-laws I've encountered outside of historical fiction.  The characterization is also good:  Adelice is fiercely against the establishment, but it makes sense given her history with the Guild.  And while there are a few moments where she seems painfully naive, that also makes sense once you stop to think about how sheltered her life has been up to this point (see the aforementioned gender laws, one of which includes gender segregation until the age of 16). 

Now for the less-exciting:  the plot felt pretty similar to lots of other books in this genre I've read recently (the beginning, especially, was highly reminiscent of the first part of The Hunger Games, when Katniss arrives in the Capitol).  I also though the foreshadowing was a little much, but that might just be an English Major getting too fussy.  I was pretty happy with the ending, and now that I feel like we've gotten past the necessary setup, we can get into the more original part of the story.  I'm looking forward to reading book two!

The Golden Compass/Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials book 1); Philip Pullman; Young Adult/Sci-fi/Fantasy, 399p

Okay, this is a re-read. I read and ADORED the His Dark Materials trilogy when I was the target audience, and now I'm reading through it again, which just happened to coincide with banned books week. And oh, the hullabaloo over this series. Whatever, I'm not here to talk about people's religious feathers getting ruffled.
The aspect of this book that completely captured my heart initially was the worldbuilding, but upon this reading I really have to appreciate the way Pullman writes children. Lyra is the most realistic, self-centered, viciously stubborn protagonist I've seen in a children's book maybe...ever. She's fantastic. As for the worldbuilding, Lyra's  home in the multiverse is just as dark, mysterious, and compelling as it had been upon my first reading. Pullman does a fabulous job of exposition, dropping little hints that this world is just a bit different in fundamental ways from our own (and not just in that people have external souls in the form of animal daemons), and the vocabulary, oh my gosh the vocabulary. I have a lot of fun just researching all the cognates going on. (Yes, I am a huge nerd.)

Anyway, this first book starts off with the basic sort of child unknowingly stumbles into a greater destiny trying to save her friend plot, but wow, WOW does Pullman hit the reader with a suckerpunch to the heart. There are parts of this book that are tremendously unpleasant, and that sort of....artful brutality is one of the aspects that make this one of my favorite books, still, after all these years. I'm about halfway through the second book now, we'll see if I can get that review in under the wire for this month. :)

Zot!

Zot! 1987-1991: the complete black and white collection by Scott McCloud  575 pp.

This mammoth collection contains 5 years of Zot! comics plus commentary by the author. I was entirely unfamiliar with this comic since in those years I was busy caring for my then small children, not reading comics. The beginning editions were so-so. Girl (Jenny) meets superhero (Zot) from an alternate Earth in another dimension. Superhero fights bad guys on his Earth and takes girl and her friends on escapades on the alternate Earth. In later editions McCloud explores the lives of Jenny's Earth friends. Zot has been trapped in our dimension and attempts to fight the crime that is found everywhere with disastrous results. On his world the crime is confined to acts by specific evil individuals he can fight one on one. In our dimension he learns about poverty, racism, drug abuse, and street crime. These editions also cover other weightier topics like divorce, alcoholic parents, gay-bashing, coming out, and teen sex. The section titled "Earth Stories" is by far the best part of the book. McCloud's commentary covers the evolution of the comic.

Side note: I kept seeing the name of the editor, cat yronwode, in this book and it took quite awhile for me to figure out why I knew that name. Eventually it dawned on me that while I'm not sure I've actually met her, she does attend a con in California that I have attended and owns a little shop there.