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GRAPHIC NOVEL WEEK Some people prefer to take the 'off the beaten path' tours and see some unconventional sites. That's what happens here in the graphic novel Disaster, Inc., written by Joe Harris and illustrated by Sebastián Píriz. In 2011 one of the worst earthquakes in Japan history caused three of the four nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to melt down, releasing enough radioactive material into the air and ground that the area may be a hot zone for the rest of time. So a tour to the area is not officially authorized or sanctioned, but a daring few can't resist the lure of visiting the place. What they didn't realize until it was too late was that the Fukushima Daiichi area was once home to the samurai, who patrolled and protected the region.  The leaked radiation has awakened the long-dead samurai who are still looking to protect their territory. This doesn't bode well for those who've intruded in the area. Ghost/zombie samurai? A ra...

Charlie N. Holmberg's The Will and the Wilds is a fantasy that feels deeply rooted in mythology and the tradition of storytelling. Enna lives with her father at the edge of the wildwood - a border to the land of monsters. She was raised to exercise great caution when dealing with Mystings - a part demon, part fae creature. Enna's grandmother kept a journal of her knowledge and experiences with Mystings, and Enna refers to it often for guidance. The Mystings have gotten bolder and one tries to kill Enna just outside her home. Ignoring it will only serve to have more encroach on their home, so Enna feels her only option is to call her own Mysting to protect her home. But making a deal with a Mysting is possibly more dangerous than having one try to kill you. The Mysting Enna calls upon, Maekallus, agrees to help Enna for a very simple payment ... a kiss. But with a Mysting, a kiss has the power to steal one's soul. But for Maekallus, a kiss, given willingly, will break a spe...

Sometimes I read a 'classic' author and I wonder why the heck anyone thinks it's still worth reading, and other times I will read a 'classic' author and realize that the author is still relevant and accessible and well worth reading.  This collection of early short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald fits comfortably in the latter category. Oddly enough, I'm not a huge fan of Fitzgerald's novels, but I've long admired his short works. I feel as though his short fiction really captures the era - the jazz age (coined by Fitzgerald) - better than any other author of the time.  I see it in the characters who always seem to be on the verge of crossing from innocence to experience within the confines of the stories. Sometimes this transformation is not too subtle (remember, these are Fitzgerald's early short stories) as in the first story "Babes in the Woods"  - the second section of which opens with "Isabelle and Kenneth were distinctly not inno...

Vikings and Valkyries - these two words can conjure up a lot of images, especially today with the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But the real Vikings and Valkyries (real Valkyries?) were much more interesting, and although the Vikings we are referencing here were alive more than one thousand years ago.  Even so, we're still learning about how they lived, worked, and fought.  In 1878, in the Viking village of Birka, the bones of a Viking warrior were discovered.  The figure was determined to be a warrior based on what had also been buried with the figure: an axe blade, two spearheads, a two-edged sword, a clutch of arrows, their shafts embellished with silver thread, a long sax-knife in a bronze-ringed sheath, iron bosses for two round shields, a short-bladed knife, a whetstone, a set of game pieces (bundled in the lap), a large bronze bowl (much repaired), a comb, a snip of a silver coin, three traders’ weights, two stirrups, two bridles’ bits, and spikes to...

 Ellie Matthews is a criminalist, in a personal relationship with FBI Agent Vic Manetti. The two have just started running together, but their first competitive race is cut short with the discovery of a body of a runner murdered the night before. The local sheriff's department asks for Ellie's help again (her last case was quite personal) and she's teaming up with Detective Nick Baxter, despite a very strained personal and professional relationship between the two. Ellie is struggling in her personal life - with her relationships with Vic Manetti and Nick Baxter, and with alcohol. She'd turned to the bottle in the last book and now she's trying hard to keep her head straight, but the killer will be working to get under Ellie's skin. If everyone is to survive, Ellie will need to stay sober and keep her wits about her - which may be more difficult than it sounds. Author Caroline Fardig's Java Jive series was a top-notch cozy mystery series (one of the very few...

This is definitely one of the more original fantasy stories I've read in awhile. In a remote community in the mountains is a village. Sometimes the children born here are born with two hearts. A child born this way is called a 'striga' - considered to be demons. When discovered, the child is abandoned at the edge of the forest. The mother of the child can then choose to either leave with the child - given both a faint hope at survival, or stay with the village, almost certainly ensuring the death of the striga. Salka, age nineteen, is recognized as a striga and is led to the edge of the forest and sent away. Her mother, Miriat, chooses to join her and live a life in poverty in another village. Salka is encouraged to settle in and appreciate what little she has - following her heart, her demon heart, will only cause problems and pain.  But Salka is a very independent spirit and finds that it is her nature to follow her heart. There was a poetic quality to the book that I qui...

In the not too distant future, it will become nearly impossible to kill someone. 99.9% of the time, when someone is intentionally killed, they come back - their bodies disappear from where they were "killed" and reappear at their home, naked, in bed.  Only death by natural causes or true accidents are otherwise permanent. No one knows how or why this has happened, but it has definitely changed everyday life in many ways - including the creation of a job as "Dispatcher" ... someone who 'kills' people for pay so that they can be reset for whatever personal reason they might have. (Let's say someone is in surgery and something goes wrong ... 'dispatch' them so that the don't actually die, allowing doctors to try again.) But while some old problems have gone away, some new problems arise. What happens when a 'dispatch' goes wrong and the target actually dies? Who is responsible?  And if you wanted to really torture someone now you could t...

One of the things that makes reading Grady Hendrix absolutely delicious is that Hendrix gives us a really normal story with really normal people but then things start to slide sideways. It's a slow process - so slow you probably can't pinpoint exactly when the slide began (and probably, the slide began before the first pages of the book - we just don't realize it). And then at some point, the characters, and the readers, realize, "Whoa, this shit's gone crazy!" but it's too late to backpedal or to erase the picture in your mind of something rotten, putrid, scary, gross (or all four) that you just witnessed/read about. And then you and the characters are in a full-blown horror novel that's probably only going to get worse, but like an accident on the side of the road, you can't look away even if you wanted to. Yeah, that's what's totally great about a Grady Hendrix novel. The story: Patricia Campbell, once a nurse, gave up her career to marr...

I really do enjoy short stories, and when a book is a collection of short works by one of my favorite fantasy authors I'm really interested. Laughter at the Academy is a collection of short works by Seanan McGuire, author of the October Daye series, Wayward Children series, Ghost Roads series, InCryptid series, and more ! Like nearly every collection or anthology of short stories I've ever read, there are some stories I really liked, some that didn't do anything for me, and some that were a pleasant enough way to pass some time but maybe not particularly memorable. My two favorites were "Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves" and "The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells." "Down, Deep Down..." bears a resemblance to Into the Drowning Deep (as written by Mira Grant - McGuire's pseudonym) - one of my favorite dark fantasy novels.  In the short story, we are in the future where all-female submarine crews see women being modified to become mermaids. ...

Everyone in the Arizona Territory who eyes an easy way to make a payout knows that Vulture City is the home to a prosperous gold mine. Nearly every stagecoach attempting to deliver the gold to the railroad at Maricopa has been ambushed on the trail--a trail known as the Gunpowder Express. No one wants to ride the stagecoach and the gold from the mine is piling up. Newt "Widowmaker" Jones is in town and, having been taken advantage of by some of the town's locals, needs to make some money. Riding shotgun on a coach that's sure to be robbed is foolish at best, but since he's given his word that he'll get the locker full of gold to the railroad, where the Wells Fargo agents would take responsibility for it, he was going to do everything he could to live up to the promise.  Looking to cash in on this particular run was one bad hombre - Irish Jack O'Harrigan. There are plenty of places one might try to rob a stagecoach along the Gunpowder Express trail, and Iri...

Invaders from a parallel world, the Tai Kao have decimated the Dhai nation with their constant onslaught. The Tai Kao leader, Kirana, establishes a base in the temple of Oma and instructs her advisors to see if they can find a way to close the portal between the worlds. But it doesn't go well.  Now, with all the connected worlds at war, only one will survive. What will the desperate people of the different worlds do to survive? I am not suited for this kind of book. I find that I do not read certain fiction well.  Books with names and places and terms that don't roll of my tongue, or in which I spend more time trying to remember who is who because the names are so unfamiliar, simply frustrate me. I do not read African fiction and mythology well.  I do not read Middle Eastern fiction well. And I do not read a lot of epic fantasy well.  Even Tolkien was a huge struggle for me and it was only after repeated attempts - an absolute commitment to understanding it - and wat...

This is a story of Nik, an art student, and his girlfriend Jennifer, a dancer. Like many eccentric artists, Nik is obsessive - especially when it comes to painting his dancer girlfriend. On the day Jennifer goes missing, Nik's world falls apart.  With few clues to Jennifer's past, Nik begins a cross-country trip to find her and encounters a Dickensian cast of characters and a little Truth about Jennifer, himself, and love along the way. My first reaction was - this was a fast read! I'm not sure if that's a good reaction or not, but at least it wasn't a slow, dragging read. My second reaction was - I enjoyed this. Author Suzanne Alyssa Andrew's writing is crisp and gentle and her language just pulls a reader in. Although Nik and Jennifer are the focus of the story, the book is told from the point of view of the people Nik meets on his journey. Thus, the 'circle of stones' are the people we meet. This is a 'concept' book and I generally don't l...

Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality is not your ordinary Finishing School.  It is also a secret training ground to turn qualified young ladies into spies. Second year student Sophronia uses the skills she learns to listen in on teachers and sneak into places where she doesn't belong. But then what 15 year old student doesn't do that? The difference is she's highly trained in it.   This year Sophronia will need to work alongside some of our supernatural friends, werewolves and vampires, to help stop a conspiracy taking place in London. And when she's not fighting she's honoring her dance card. I wasn't particularly keen on the first book in the series (that was a long time ago and all I remember was that I didn't like it much), but I found this to be an amusing, entertaining quick read. Sophronia seemed more playful, more her age, than I remember previously, and despite her dignified training, she knows how to make the b...