Abarat
Clive Barker
YA Dark Fantasy-2002
From Storygraph:
“It begins in Chickentown, USA. There lives Candy Quackenbush, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future might hold.
When the answer comes, it’s not one she expects.
Welcome to the Abarat, a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day. Candy has a place in this extraordinary land: She is here to help save the Abarat from the dark forces that are stirring at its heart—forces older than Time itself, and more evil than anything Candy has ever encountered. She’s a strange heroine, she knows. But this is a strange world.
And in the Abarat, all things are possible. “
I’m physically mad about this book. Not because of the book itself but because I didn’t read it when it first came out twenty years ago. This book would have had a chokehold on me had I read it when I was a teen. I would have been insufferable.
As and adult, I can still revel in the appeal and have the rest of what was finished of the series coming in.
On the surface we’re met with the makings of a pretty standard portal fantasy. Candy Quackenbush is a disillusioned teen in the middle-of-nowhere, America when the chance for adventure presents itself in the form of the many-headed John Mischief and his tiny attached brothers. But the instant we’re introduced to Mendelson Shape, the man who’s chased John from the Abarat to the Hereafter (our world), the darkness of the novel and the world in which it lives begins to emerge.
And this horror presents as a sort of creeping dread, building slowly as the book progresses, to the point where you almost don’t realize it’s happening. It’s a tension that lives so deep that it’s not until Candy reveals the extent of her childhood abuse that you sort of break out and realized just what she’s been through to get here. And what’s more to come if Lord Carrion’s obsession with her comes to blows.
Golden Ruin
Emma Kennedy
SF, Western, Romance-Oct. 4th, 2024
UPCOMING RELEASE!
From Storygraph:
“In the aftermath of a chaotic gold rush and the resulting war, a mega-corporation emerges, seizing control of the nation’s gold and the technology produced from it. Those defeated scattered to the coasts, left to fend for themselves. The once vibrant California now contends with radiation, harsh elements, and bandits.
Cassidy moves to one of California’s last two surviving towns for one thing: to save her life. Suffering from a mysterious illness, Bell Valley is her last chance at finding a cure. Despite her best efforts to keep her distance, she’s drawn to the town and its locals. New beginnings are hard — even harder in the wastelands, and it doesn’t help that her enigmatic boss, Willa, wants nothing to do with her.
But as things start to change between the two of them, Cassidy is being tracked by a man with a dangerous bounty on her. Will she be able to save herself before it’s too late?
Stardew Valley meets Westworld in this emotional adventure in the wastelands. “
I received this as an ebook advanced reader copy.
Kennedy is marketing this as a sci-fi western as short-hand, but I would pinpoint it more as a light sci-fi romance with a touch of cyber-punk sensibility that happens to take place in a “western” setting. If only because it’s missing the ropin’ and ridin’ and some of the tonal qualities of a traditional western. (Cyber-western?) Not a detriment to the story itself at all, just a note on marketing so as not to lead to the wrong conclusions.
Suffering from a mysterious illness, Cassidy ventures in the wastelands of California to track the one doctor she thinks can help her. Leaving her old life behind, she finds new family in a diverse cast of characters and, in particular, Willa, the woman who gives her work on her farm.
A story of identity, grief, and medium-stakes danger unfolds on the backdrop of a world destroyed by corporate greed. While the technological implications seem light, at first, they way they unfold in the story reveals their depth of their roots in growth of the story.
While I’m not crazy about the ending, it doesn’t pull from the overall story.
Wolverine vs. Deadpool
Liefel, Laguna, Lim, Hama, Kubert, McDaniel, Stephenson, Kelly, et al
SF Action, Comic Book Trade-2024 (New Release)
From Storygraph:
“The Merc with a Mouth takes on the Mutant with the Muttonchops in their greatest battles – and occasional team-ups! Katanas and claws clash in their brutal first meeting, but when someone targets Weapon X survivors, Wolverine must ride to Deadpool’s rescue! Doctor Bong tolls for our heroes, then things get hairy over a werewolf! And when a bounty is placed on Logan’s head, guess who tries to collect! An assault on a Hydra base will have them at each other’s throats, while Wolvie plays straight man to Wade’s wisecracker in a showdown with a Shi’ar robot. But things really go off the deep end in the main event -one ultimate, over-the-top, slicing-and-dicing slobberknocker! COLLECTING: WOLVERINE (1988) 88, 154-155; DEADPOOL (1997) 27; CABLE & DEADPOOL 43-44; WOLVERINE: ORIGINS 21-25; WOLVERINE/DEADPOOL: THE DECOY 1; MATERIAL FROM WOLVERINE ANNUAL ’95, ’99”
I actually love comic book/superhero media even if I’ve never been able to keep up with individual issue releases. I’m very very picky, but I have my favorite characters and arcs and teams. One of those is the X-men, a seed planted with the 90s animated series. And I developed an appreciation for Deadpool as a young adult even if I had less access to media about him.
So of course I saw the newest Deadpool movie. Duh. And while Wolverine was never my favorite of the mutants (that was always the woefully under represented Hank McCoy), I had exactly as a wonderful a time as I expected. I screamed a little bit when certain secondary surprise characters appeared. I was immediately insufferable and realized I needed more. Doing research on what trades were available is when I found out that this was releasing. I decided to sit on it, instead pilfering my local second-hand shop for trades. Then I saw it in person while running errands. The visceral throat noise that emerged from my body told me that I needed to acquire it.
This collection pulls from Wolverine and Deadpool main line comics and specials to give a sampling of the best fights and team ups between these two characters. Each section of the book is only one to a few comic issues of a series, so you’re being dropped into a much larger, already ongoing story. If you have a basic familiarity with general lore, you’ll usually do okay, but it can be overwhelming if you don’t have that knowledge.
That’s sort of not the point, though. Collections like these are character snapshots, little scene interplays. When you read these sorts of collections with any frequency, you kind of get used to it, and are able to appreciate them for what they are. And this one in particular is delightful.
They did a really excellent job of sampling for breadth and variety. It goes back as far as the 80s and covers a number of different artists and writers and the styles they bring to the stories. There’s also a lot of excellent variance in the tone of the characterization and storytelling. It shows all the different ways these characters have been approached over the years and how their stories have been told. From the extremely goofy “The Decoy” to the hyper-dramatic Rob Liefeld entries (that, admittedly, I only skimmed because his is not a style I’m overly fond of). I was particularly fond of the four part “The Deep End.”
This is a really good collection for new converts looking to get a sampling of what this relationship looks like, and a fun addition to an overall collection if you like these particular characters.
Pixels and Pins Studio 