Tag: Fantasy-ish

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Saga, volume 2 by Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples

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So I’m trying to space out my reading of Saga because I think it would be all too easy to binge the nine currently published volumes of this awesome series and then pout, sulk and bemoan the lack of new chapters. Still, reading this has just gone and reawakened all my enthusiasm for this story and the family at its heart. At the very end of volume one Alana, Marko, baby Hazel and Izabel had just received a surprise visit from Marko’s parents, and this volume picks right up where it left off.   What struck me most reading this second … Continue reading Saga, volume 2 by Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples

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The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson

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This story is all about Calamity. Calamity who was once called Chastity. Calamity whose mother just went missing one day and was never seen again. Calamity whose girl friends at school called “Charity Girl”. Calamity who got pregnant at fifteen by her gay best friend. Calamity who became estranged from her father and raised her daughter alone. Calamity who has just buried said father and, at fifty-three years old, is experiencing the first signs of menopause. Calamity who carries around her hurts like little fires that need to be kept burning at all times. She is a massive character. She … Continue reading The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson

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Saga, volume 1 Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples

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Oh the glee! Don’t you just love that feeling when you read (or watch) the first in a series, enjoy yourself thoroughly and get to anticipate everything you have still to read (or watch)? I’m wallowing in that feeling right now. After finally buying volume one of Saga at the end of last year (thanks to Dragons and Zombies making it sound exactly like something I’d want to read – you can read her thoughts here, here and here on the first three volumes) and being all in a hurry to get on with it, I only picked it up … Continue reading Saga, volume 1 Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples

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Agyar by Steven Brust

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I read this after reading Little Red Reviewer’s intriguing and brilliant review, which you can read for yourselves here. And before I say anything more I will second her injunction: if you plan to read this DO NOT read any blurbs for it, not online, nor on the book’s jacket and definitely, definitely don’t Google it.   OK, with that out of the way … I don’t understand how this book isn’t better known. At worst it should be on reading lists in colleges and universities to show how something can be really well done, not misdirection exactly, but the … Continue reading Agyar by Steven Brust

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Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

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I regret not taking notes while reading Welcome to Night Vale. I don’t actually know if they would have helped, but I’ve tried to write this piece four times so far, and got no further than saying, in a number of different ways, that it’s an odd book. In the absence of notes that may have helped me get some sort of perspective at least, I guess I should just start with that … Welcome to Night Vale is an odd book. It reads a little like something by Douglas Adams, written with that same straight-faced-ness while relating wildly fantastical … Continue reading Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

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The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

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I first came across Claire North in her earlier incarnation as Kate Griffin, creator of blue-angel-possessed magician Matthew Swift. The series quickly became one of my favourites. I’d never read anything like it before as I don’t really go in for urban fantasy so much, (because of all the kissing … and the manly-yet-sensitive werewolves/vampires that sparkle in the sunlight and wear revealingly tight black tee-shirts – snooze), and Griffin has kind of spoilt me for most other urban fantasy now. After reading the Matthew Swift books, and then the associated Magicals Anonymous books and the books Griffin wrote under … Continue reading The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North