Inkspot Fancy

One of the interesting things about reading the trade collection of a webcomic that you don't get so much with a more traditional comic collection is seeing things in greater context. Regular comics come in chunks of 20-32 pages usually, allowing for the story to be read as chapters. But for web comics, they're often released as individual pages.

For a gag-a-day, that's fine. But for story-driven comics, it can really make for a choppy storytelling flow. So you can let a few build up and read them as a chunk. But seeing the whole thing in one book, it gives the story all the context that can leak out in normal online presentation.

I loved Gunnerkrigg Court when I was reading it online, but there's so many things that reading it in book form make stronger. For instance, a lovely parallel between the stories that are being told about Annie and Kat by others - as the denizens of the forest begin telling myths and tall tales about Annie, the robots of the court are crafting something far more cult-like.

In this fifth volume, things are changing for our heroines. Kat is dealing with personal life issues she didn't see coming, as well as her ongoing quest to understand the advanced robots of the court. Meanwhile, after the disappointment of the announcement of the court's medium in the last book, Annie has come to terms with her new role, and is helping the court medium learn as well.

As always, the stories are funny and heartbreaking by turns, as we learn the truth about Rey's feelings about what he nearly did to Annie, the story of how Mort became a ghost, and just how much Annie and Kat mean to one another. Gunnerkrigg continues to be an absolutely stellar read, well worth the time for anyone who loves their fiction with a little magic and a lot of heart.

Hero is the second book in the Woodcutter Sisters series, and where the first followed Sunday, this one followed Saturday (and as the next book stars Friday, so I guess we're going backward along the days of the week?) who's off on her heroic journey.

And like the first book, I liked it okay, but I wish I loved it more.

Perhaps realizing that the first book was pretty stuffed both with references and characters, this one is well slimmed down, and I think that makes it a stronger book than the first one. She gets kidnapped pretty early on in the book, and for the majority of the read, you only have Saturday, the evil witch and her familiar (who kidnapped Saturday), and a cursed young man named Peregrine and his friend, a chimera named Betwixt, who are also both being held on the mountain, where time stands still and a dragon slumbers in the stone and ice.

Like the first, this is a well-written tale, and as I said, it addresses many of the problems I had with the first one, plus Saturday is more the sort of character I usually love. So I feel like I should have enjoyed it a lot more - but I actually think I preferred the first one.

I can't really put my finger on why, either. I just didn't like Saturday as much as Sunday, and I didn't like Peregrine much at all. Betwixt was awesome and the baddies were interesting for their roles, but with this small a cast, not connecting with either of the leads really cut into the enjoyment.

Peregrine, I think he just didn't have enough thoughts and personality that weren't in service to the plot. He thinks about being stuck in the mountain, and he things about the girl he left behind, and then once Saturday gets there he thinks about how much he loves her and how pretty and perfect she is. I never felt like I had a solid idea of who he was.

And it's so sad to me, since I love the no-nonsense way he goes about dealing with Saturday and the Witch and his life in the mountain in general. But while he's doing so, he's thinking about one of those two things (yes, I know I listed three, but basically one transitions into another, so they don't really overlap).

And Saturday sort of felt the same. Everything was "I broke the world" or "being a hero" or "no magic" or "I totally don't really love Peregrine, no totally not." That last is the sort of thing that maybe other people can tolerate better than I can, but this was so love-at-first-sight-must-convince-myself-otherwise and it just dragged on and on and ON...

Meh.

So I'm basically in the same place I was at the end of the first book. I don't dislike the book. Overall, I liked it okay. But there were large aspects that I disliked. It felt... shallow. The characters lacked depth, the plot lacked depth - only the setting got truly loving, detailed treatment, and it's no surprise that that's my favorite part. The mountain is beautiful and cruel and dangerous.

Also (since I spent WAY too much time here being negative) the writing is great, and the pacing is solid. The way that Saturday and Peregrine's conversations go can get quite clever and hilariously pseudo-antagonistic made me a happy me. The friendship between Betwixt and Peregrine is just great and wholly believable.

Also, the backstory of the witch and her time at the top of the world was pretty interesting, and the nods to the traditional three-tasks fairy tale was great! Like I said, there's enough here that I am definitely moving on.

If you didn't like the first one, I think the second is a much more solid offering technically. I just wish there had been more TO it. The book is actually somewhat short, and I feel like that space could have been used within the story. But that's just me.

I liked it enough that I will probably move on to check out the third book eventually.

Jesus, you guys, this book is so cute.

1. CUTE.

Wendy is off on her first solo (sort of) mission for Fairy Tail. I say sort of because Carla, as one could expect, isn't about to let her go on her own. So the two of them set off to a village which is facing a strange phenomenon that they need help with. But when they get there, they find people are missing, and the spirit of a dragon killed long ago is the main suspect. Fear and suspicion are running rampant.

But in the midst of all this, Wendy encounters another girl her age, named Yoshino. She also has magic, and the two girls quickly become fast friends while trying to work out what's happening to the village.

Yoshino is a happy girl, and she doesn't for a moment believe a ghost is responsible for what's happening. I guess this makes sense - her father was injured by one of the ghost's attacks, and I imagine in part, she just wants to find whoever's behind it. But it might also be that she mostly seems to be a rational child, in her way.

If you've read Fairy Tail, you'll notice a change in the art here. For lack of a better way of putting it, it's very shojo. Features are softer and cuter. Rui Watanabe is the artist here, and their art captures the look of Fairy Tail while giving it a sweet, lovely look. You get pretty regular bubble frames and overlays, and comedic chibi asides. It's very... cute. :)

The story feels very Fairy Tail, though you'll probably work out at least part of what's going on pretty easily, and the book neatly ends this arc while offering a clear way forward for the next volume. It's a lovely little side story to Fairy Tail's monstrous main story.

With the TV series coming up soon, Marvel re-offered Alias, and I decided to give it a go. After all, I'd read Jessica Jones before, in the original Young Justice series, and I liked her there, so maybe I'd like this one too?

Yup!

Jessica Jones is a former superhero who decided to move into a second life as a private investigator. She doesn't regret it much. No, seriously. She doesn't miss it, she swears. She wasn't right for it and who would know better than she? But her actions give lie to that at every turn - she clearly hates snooping around people's personal lives sees her own personal life (such as it is) as a train wreck and yet she keeps trying to help people at every turn - even to her own detriment.

The tales in this book were really interesting - a variety of folks come to her for help, and somehow, stuff keeps going wrong. Her superhero friends are sort of there for her, but also sort of not. She's in a weird limbo place for superheroes and it makes for a slightly different read from the norm.

This is a Brian Michael Bendis book, and that means a certain kind of dialogue. If you know the name, you also probably know if you like that style or if you hate it. Me, I usually like his writing, but in this one the choppy dialogue even got to me a little bit. It wasn't bad but it could get irritating to follow at times.

But this is a great character who wouldn't be out of place in one of today's awesome urban fantasy series, and I am definitely looking forward to both more of this comic series and the TV show!

Zhen, an assassin, known as a Wolf, is hired to take out a horrifying official known for torturing young women to death. When the Wolf finds his target, he also finds himself drawn to the alluring women the villain is eyeing as his own next target. He figures he can take care of two things at once - kill him and save her. Except she doesn't need saving - as it turns out, she's actually a fellow assassin from a rival family who can take care of himself.

As it turns out, it takes both of them to get out of that predicament, and once they're free, they have some hot forest sex. As you do in that situation, I guess.

Thus begins their on-again-off-again relationship, a push and pull neither of them wants to admit to wanting at first. And it's interesting to me because a lot of this feels like some of the other samurai-style books I've read, with shades of House of Five Leaves and Usagi Yojimbo in the world and action. Except that there's sex at the end of each mini story. :)

This is a pretty interesting book, but not a terribly compelling one. If you want samurai action, there's better out there. If you're in it for the sex, well, it feels like they could have some a little more, but it was pretty decently done and the end up in some inventive positions. Since I'm not well-read in this genre I can't really talk too much about that, but I can say I've seen worse.

So, I can't really recommend this, but it was an interesting read, and I don't feel like I wasted my time.

Disclaimer up front - this is my sister's web comic. So when I say I really enjoy this entry, you can keep that context in mind. But I really do like this book, and I feel like this series is improving with each volume.

First, let me say this - this is a cold open, so if you want to start here, don't, and if you don't remember where we were, go back and reread the last couple chapters of the last book, or the previous chapters online. It might otherwise be pretty confusing. Tren and his friends have been captured, and while the person who did it might be more friendly than the last person who took them prisoner, he still seems highly untrustworthy.

While the rest of the cast has varying reactions (Jaith's reaction to all the botheri in the city is adorable), Tren himself is learning a lot more about himself - why he can't cast magic (or at least thought he couldn't), where the spell comes from and what his new captors want of him.

But just because the villain of the piece is in jail doesn't mean he's out of the picture. Power will always sing its siren song, and old prejudice runs deep.

Overall, this continues to be a really entertaining fantasy tale, with some unusual and engaging worldbuilding and I do rec it if that sounds like your cup of tea.

Sometimes you know you're done with a series because it brings you more negative than positive. You're bored, you don't care, you actively disliked the last book. That's when it's easy. You can feel the reasons why you should stop wasting your time and money.

But other times, it's less straightforward.

Other times it's like realizing a relationship isn't working. It's not bad, but it isn't working. You're not really hurting one another, but you're also not doing anything for one another either. And to bring it back to books, it can be harder in those cases, because you still enjoy reading it on some level. But you're not looking forward to it. It's like food that you eat because it's there, not because you actually want it. You might still like the taste, but there are better reasons to eat and better things to eat.

So many metaphors!

Long way of saying, this is where I left off collecting Hayate the Combat Butler. Book 17 gives us a lengthy backstory about Hayate and a young woman he was a butler for back in elementary school. The girl lived in a mysterious castle, had many impressive skills, seemed to know some magic or at least have some magic items. The book left off in the middle of this backstory, and at the end I found myself mildly curious about what would happen next. This was huge backstory stuff and I just... eh.

That being said, it is a nice volume - the story is interesting and cute, if a little weird (there's always been magic in the story, but usually not played quite this straight). It's not a bad volume, there's nothingw rong, I'd just gradually lost passion for reading this, and this was the point I finally realized it.

Investing in the stock market may be one of the most hyped occupations in the world for stakes and glitz, but oddly enough, this little book makes it sound both approachable... and mundane. In a good way.

"How Buffett Does It: 24 Simple Investing Strategies From the World's Greatest Value Investor" is one of those books that's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Author James Pardoe has gone through a number of sources, primarily annual reports written by Buffett about his company, and has culled investment thoughts and strategies out of them to build a plan based on Buffett's own investing strategies.

And, as it turns out, that investment strategy is pretty simple. He favors something called value investing, which again, is just what it sounds like - you find value in the companies whose stock you want to buy, and you buy them, and then you hold onto them because if you did your research and are right, then the company is strong and will stick around and profit - and you get to profit as well.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but this book does a good job of breaking everything down into really easy-to-digest chunks. In fact, that might be one of this book's real weaknesses. It's very simplistic, even a little repetitive, despite being very short - 154 pages of relatively large type and small pages, combined with a cartoon occupying a full page at the start of each of the chapters dedicated to the previously mentioned 24 strategies.

Still, it's a nice little book. It's got some common sense that flies in the face of what media sometimes tells us about stock market investing and it's written in easy-to-understand, plain language. It's very short and very basic, so if you're REALLY interested in investing you'll probably want to start here and then go somewhere else. But it helps establish a wide set of rules and a base investing philosophy.

So, you know those young love stories? Two people admit their feelings for one another and begin a new relationship, but poor communication and insecurity lead to misunderstandings between them? Yeah, this is basically that, in spades.

A shy art student is nursing a longtime crush on a baseball star when out of the blue, the baseball star comes up to him and asks him out. What to do! Especially when his under-emotional expressions sometimes give lie to the surprising volume of feelings he's expressing in his head. So some of the confusion just comes from that through the series - Satoru (the art student) just not being very good at either showing or speaking his feelings. And then you have the baseball player, Keigo, who has his own communication issues, and the both of them are very concerned about the fragility of their growing relationship, so they're constantly seeing rivals where they don't exist.

I'm not much for romance (heck, this book was a gift to me), but I thought this was enjoyable. The characters are cute together, complex enough to drive the plot and dedicated to one another in a way I found refreshing. It was clear that no matter how concerned the boys might be about not being enough for the other, they actually both loved one another very much. Even the one person in this book who actually IS trying to break them up can't really see that, though, so I guess I can't blame the boys for not realizing it. Being in a new relationship is a fragile, nervous time.

If this sort of light romance sounds like your thing, go for it. I don't know if I'll be moving on though since, while I was okay here, I'm worried that too much of these constant self-doubts and "omg he's going to leave me" may wear thin after a while. We'll see. :)

Nearly have my September reading slate filled, and next month is October, so you know what that means! Horror books!

So, rec me things! I prefer Lovecraftian horror, and haunted houses are a particular love of mine. Looking mostly for novels or comic books, though if there's a manga series you REALLY think it awesome and horror-oriented (like Uzamaki, which I was recced last time I asked for these) feel free to suggest that as well!

And thanks in advance :)

One of the biggest problems with a book you can't put down is that once it's done, you have THAT MUCH LONGER TO WAIT until you get the next one. I suppose you could say it's a good problem to have, but it also REALLY sucks at first!

Toby is gaining something of a reputation thanks to her actions over the past eight books, so when the threat of war comes to the kingdom, she gets involved in spite of herself. The leader of the kingdom is young and new, but I think she has a good head on her shoulders once she focuses. So, with backup in the form of fiance Tybalt, squire Quentin, fetch May and regular minor recurring character and alchemist Walther, she heads up to the offending land as a diplomat hoping to head off the war.

Yeah. Toby Daye, diplomat. If you're familiar with this series, just let that sink in for a few seconds.

The Kingdom of Silences might be one of the creepiest things McGuire has ever crafted in this series - in any series I've read of hers, actually, including Feed. It's a totalitarian place, focused on an unnerving sense of "purity" - not just on blood purity (May is reduced to tears when she finds out how changelings are treated, and Toby is clearly also bitterly angry - especially when that attitude is extended to her. But that's not all. The court is also terribly homogenous as far as what sort of fae are there, and how they're kept in line (there's fear, but there's not JUST fear). And then there's Walther's particular connection with the kingdom and some of the people there.

Basically, we find out pretty fast why the kingdom declared war, and it's every bit as despicable and horrible as we imagined from the start and from the way the court is kept. But Toby being Toby, she keeps trying to do her job, and Tybalt is there to back her up. There's way less action in this book than in previous ones, but it's replaced with a horrible tension. And I don't mean horrible like badly written, but like that underlying sense of dread that comes from wondering what is going to happen next - or basically, what the leader of the Kingdom of Silences, Rhys, is going to do next. There comes a point where you realize there's pretty much nothing you can't see him doing to get what he wants, and that's terrifying.

Now, it's definitely not my favorite book in the series, and I don't even think I like it as much as the last one within its world. It has a few flaws. For instance, one of the problems I had with the last book was that two of my favorite characters got backseated, and it happens again here. May and Quentin are both there, and of the two May feels more like she has an impact on the story. But Quentin... *sigh* I think he was in the book more in the form of Toby worrying about getting him hurt or found out than in him actually *doing* things. I can't remember a single thing he did in this book was indispensible to the tale, making him a superfluous addition who felt like he was there solely because he had to be as Toby's squire. I found it disappointing, since it felt like a step backward for his character.

But that doesn't stop that the book as a whole is relentless and gripping even as it's horrifying. Even a couple fantastic new character in the Portland King of the Cats and another blodynbyrd aside from Luna can't really break up the thick fog of what-happens-next that had me in a stranglehold.

In all, don't start here. You could probably get on that way, but you're going to miss a lot and some of the things they can do aren't really explained so well in terms of their impact on characters and plot previously. But maaaaan, if you are in this series already, I think this is a fantastic book, and as mentioned at the start, I had a really hard time putting it down.

I did it again. I unwittingly started at book 2 of a series AGAIN! Ugh. And in this case, I think I'd really suggest starting at book 1. I'm used to this by now, and I found it a little tough to follow at the start. Not impossible, but if you can come into it with the info from the previous book about who all these people are and why she's with them, I bet it helps.

In this book, we find Princess Ulga in company with a number of other princesses, heading off to learn princessly arts in preparation for meeting the Queen. But there's some plans riding the undercurrents of this world, and they have no idea what's waiting for them (but to be fair, I don't think the baddies know what's waiting for THEM either!)

I think I kind of love Princess Ulga, derisively called Princess Ugg by another of the princesses. She's fierce, smart, she works hard, she's brave and she knows herself. She's unwilling to return cruelty for cruelty, but for all this she feels real, not like some too-perfect Mary Sue.

The highlight of this book is definitely her interactions with her fellow princesses, as well as the queen. It's clear that in most of these instances, she and they are learning from one another. I love this because there can be a tendency in a story like this to make one "right" way and one "wrong" way - nature is good and tech is bad, magic is good and science is bad, wild is good and rigid is bad. But this seems to understand that the best of the world is in a balance of strength and kindness, of speaking and listening.

Plus, I just love how Ulga deals with kidnapping - both her own and other people's.

Like I said, I haven't read book 1 yet, so maybe it's horrible. But I have a hard time believing that a road that leads to this fantastic book could be THAT rocky. This is a fabulous fantasy adventure with a wonderful protagonist. If you like that sort of story, give this book a try. For myself, I can't wait to read book 1, or for the release of the third volume!

When a search for a new home leads to discovering a huge, wildly expensive home which apparently had been owned and maintained but not lived in for decades, a journalist decided to look into the history behind them. What he found was a remarkable woman whose life was one of secrecy and incredible generosity.

Huguette Clark, daughter of a man who made an outrageous fortune in mining, is an interesting subject for a book. A woman who married only briefly, maintained friendships for a lifetime and allowed herself to take joy in her hobbies rather than forcing herself to abandon them as she grew older, she was eccentric in a good way. She loved to paint, adored her doll and cartoon collection, and threw herself into the meticulous creation of complex story houses of famed fairy tales. She didn't talk to most of her family, but maintained close relationships with the family she chose. She valued her privacy so strongly that others took advantage of that cruelly. She owned a beautiful home each on the West Coast and the East Coast, as well as two immense apartments in NYC, but she lived out the last years of her life, perfectly healthy, in a hospital room.

Unfortunately, while there's a lot of interesting stuff about her and her family and friends, I feel like there was more book than there was information. While she's a fascinating figure, that paragraph above tells you maybe half of the interesting stuff there is in the story. As a result, the book hits a point where it starts to feel sort of samey. Once her mother died and Huguette really withdrew from society, the story for a while falls into a pattern of introduce someone from her circle, give a little of their history, and detail how much money Huguette gave to them and for what. It also ran on a bit long in other areas, but that was really the biggest offender.

Honestly there are also times when the numbers in play were just so immense that I simply had a hard time grasping what the amounts were. It all started to blur into "a lot." She gave a lot to friend 1, then she gave a lot to friend 2, then she spent a lot on a French doll. She started with a lot, her homes cost a lot to maintain, she dropped a lot on a new violin...

To give you an idea, there's a home early on in the book that has 121 rooms in it. Can you honestly conceive of what a home with 121 rooms looks like? I thought about the biggest home I'd ever been in, a modest mansion in the town I grew up in. Total number of rooms? 35. I cannot conceive of what 121 rooms is. The home also required 7 tons of coal per day to power and heat it. 7 tons. How much coal is 7 tons? And so it goes with the cash, the checks, the prices of the jewelry and paintings and instruments. The numbers are so big that they just become sort of nebulous. And yet, because Huguette's life became sort of stasis-y at some point, these numbers become more and more important to the story.

But this was a good read for the first half and for the last few chapters. Huguette seems to have been a simple person - not simple-minded, but just finding joy in simple things. She loved her dolls and dollhouses, music and art, and she loved her friends and making them happy. That she had such a remarkable pool of money from which to fund her interests is just another facet. I recommend reading it if you ever heard about Huguette Clark and wondered about her life, because it IS interesting. Just maybe be prepared to skim in the middle.

Hayate the Combat Butler Vol. 14

This is a volume of revelations and surprise information! Hayate gets to meet some of Sakuya's quite interesting family (you can see where she gets it from), Hinagiku braves her fear of heights in her quest to confess something vital, and Azumamiya, the coward from many books ago, finds himself without his dependable butler and seeks a replacement in Hayate.

I think, aside from the inclusion of the pervert butler, my favorite part of this book was the mountain hike in which Azumamiya tries to function without his butler. It's funny because he wants to take the easy way out and just replace the guy for a while with someone equally competent, but you can see as the event goes on that in his own way, he's trying to be stronger and more independent. He just doesn't have a worldview that really lends itself to that sort of thing.

It sort of matches with Nagi, in a way, even though she really scorns this kid. She is also struggling with some of who she wants to be and relies on Hayate for a lot of things. And it's likewise cute to see her still trying hard when he's not around.

That being said, the bit with Hinagiku is sort of hilarious just for disappointing her expectations in a good way (even though it's pretty clear to the reader what's going to happen).

Hayate the Combat Butler Vol. 15

While this volume gives us an experience with both a pool and a sauna (and neither one is particularly vacationy), this volume was enjoyable for the introduction of a new character with her head in the clouds.

Fumi is a new student at the academy where most of our other characters attend classes, and as she encounters some of our series regulars, she gets some odd ideas. Her imagination is outsized to her body, but she's well meaning and seems to have big goals. I hope there's more of her in some of the books I haven't gotten ahold of yet!

Also in this volume (aside from the previously mentioned unvacationy sauna and pool stories) is Hinagiku trying something new to find love and Nagi learning a lesson about not throwing things away too quickly.

The Nagi story was actually very sweet. She gets it into her head that she wants an RC car, but once it arrives, she keeps finding learning to make or use it is too much work for her. If she can't do it immediately, she loses interest. But that tendency to discard stuff quickly comes back to haunt her and, while funny, also makes her more seriously consider her impact on the things around her.

The Hinagiku stuff... that's just plain scary. :D

Thought about music today and decided to write a post about it on my website. :)

http://www.inkspotfancy.com/2015/08/play-me-a-sad-song/

The basic premise - the music that affects me emotionally seems to fall into certain categories, and very few of them are happy ones.

What about you all? Do the songs that stir your emotions tend to be of a particular type? What are some of the most impactful songs to you?

People who have been following my reviews for a while might be thinking, "Lissibith? Didn't you already review this book?"

Well, yes and no, my long-remembering friend. Because what I read and reviewed before was the Power Man and Iron Fist Essential collection. And this? This here is the Epic collection. I trust you see the difference.

Well, regardless of if you can, I absolutely did. You see, the difference between the Essential and Epic collection is that the Epic books are in Glorious Full Color (tm), and for that I was totally willing to buy this book again. You see, I love a good buddy book, and even moreso when it's in comics. From Marvel team-ups to Booster and Beetle or Kyle and Guy, superheroes are just exponentially more fun when you get the right pairing, that combination of easy familiarity and genuine deep concern that infuses both fight scenes and their down time.

And Power Man and Iron Fist are my second-favorite such duo in anything ever. Part of it's just the very different ways they approach problems, and how they usually both respect (to an extent) the other's way of doing things, but I think the awesome supporting cast definiely helps.

This book chronicles some of the duo's time as Heroes for Hire - superheroes who can be put on retainer or paid for help with specific things. There's a mix of honest and shady folk who come to them, and from all different economic strata, and it makes for a refreshing change from the city-, country- or world-threatening doings of many other super heroes. From protecting ancient relics and fighting alongside X-Men to revisiting the terrible experiment gone wrong that gave Luke his powers, their stories are all over the place, and I love the ride.

The book is not without its flaws. There's more than one instance of people referring to Luke as a "buck" early on in the run, but thankfully they work THAT out of their system very quick. I don't think it lasts beyond the first issue or two in this collection. Longer lasting is a somewhat misogynistic streak Luke has, but he doesn't let it get in the way of doing his job and he mostly respects the strength of the women in his life.

But mostly it's great vintage superhero fun at its best. And in COLOR!!!