Review Me Twice - 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

When I was listening to the introduction of this book, Clarke said that he wanted to write a book that would still be plausible when 2001 came around.  He didn't want the book to seem dated as the years went on.  And, other than the fact that he was referring to Russia as the USSR (and really, who could have predicted that), I'd have to say he did a pretty good job of that.

There's a lot in the book that is futuristic, but no so out there that it's unfamiliar to me as a reader.  Sure, we haven't been to Saturn, but the fact that they're getting there by rocket power makes it seem like it's something that we COULD do soon.

However, you know I'm all about endings and I felt this book left more questions unanswered than it answered them.  The book just kind of... ended in a way that made me feel like it was ending mid sentence.  I realize that there are sequels to the book, and maybe I need those to get some sort of satisfaction, but usually even when it's a series, there's SOME sort of ending to the book, and I just didn't feel like this had it.  I didn't feel that by picking up the next book, I was going to get the answers I was looking for.

In terms of the sci-fi books this month, I'd say this was the biggest disappointment.

I didn't like the movie, but I recognized that Kubrick tends to have a... let's call it a "unique interpretation." (I haven't read all of The Shining but I know it's different from the movie.) So I knew I should read the book separately.

I didn't like the book either. I don't know if I just couldn't force my brain to forget about the movie, or if I wouldn't have liked it in the opposite order, but it just didn't grab me.

One thing I did like is the same thing Cassy mentioned: continuing plausibility. For the most part, Clarke made good predictions based on at-the-time current knowledge.

Review Me Twice: The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore

I have one neutral comment, two negative things, and two positive things to tell you about The Power of Six.

The neutral comment is that this is the kind of series you want to read in succession if you want the full experience. Lore doesn't spend a lot of time catching you up to what happened in the previous book, but he does throw in enough information that you don't have to reread the first one if you remember the important stuff.

For the first negative thing, I need to address what I wrote about yesterday. I told you about how empathetic villains are the best villains. Mogadorians are not empathetic villains. They are a children's story's villains. I was hoping for a little insight into their viewpoint in this book, but I got none.

The second negative thing is that I don't really understand why the title is about Six. The point of view alternates between Four (who the first book was named after) and Seven... So you'd think this one would be named after Seven? I don't know, that's a little nitpicky. But I still think it's odd.

I did like very much that we get to see FIVE of the Garde in this book (though one doesn't show up until there's about 50 pages left). It's nice to be able to start piecing them together.

And I also like that I very much believe all the occurrences. I believe that the characters behave the way they do, because they behave like normal, real-life people probably would. (Besides the whole "being the saviors of an alien race" part, that's not quite as normal.)

All in all, I'd say I'm going to read the rest of the books eventually, but I'm not chomping at the bit to go grab them right this very minute.

This installment of the book was very action packed.  There was lots of fighting and things going on, which was cool, and kept me reading, but I was hoping for a little more back story, which we didn't really get.  The big deal is always the opening of the chests, which was a big thing in this installment of the books, and really, it didn't yield much in the "what the hell happened" back story.

Unlike Alex, I assume "The Power Of Six" was more talking about the power of the six of them left, not necessisarily the power of Six herself.  Because they did talk a lot about what would happen when the remainder of them would get together and what it would mean when their legacies actually developed and what would happened when the, the remaining six, found each other.  Also, this book had more of the Loriens in it than the other, so frankly, I thought the title referred to more of the fact that there were six left that Six, but I really didn't think it was enough to name the book after it.

Despite these complaints I DID like it.  I liked getting to know other Loriens, I like getting the little back story we did get and the predicaments they seemed to get themselves into.  I like how everything ties together and the things we're discovering.  At the end of the day, it's only book two of a decently long series, so I guess I can't expect all the cards to be put out on the table.

Favorite Book With Aliens

I actually talked about this series pretty recently (and, looking at the post I talked about it in, I get the feeling this post might end up exactly the same way), but I'm still going to put it out there.  I really love this series.  And there are SO MANY ALIENS.  She dates an alien in the first book.  She gets adopted by an alien  race.  She heals aliens, she lives with them, she fights with them.  You almost forget that she is human, there are so many aliens in this series.

And they're all described so well.  Viehl's strength is probably in creating fascinating alien races that are individual, with individual looks and strengths, and weaknesses, and languages.  Part of what I love about this series is not necessarily the characters, but the world building that he does.  I don't read a lot of sci-fi, so for me to recommend a sci-fi series twice in one year probably means you should go read it.

I loved the My Teacher Is an Alien books when I was in middle school. And it wasn't just because they are fun, silly, books... I thought it was just the coolest thing in the world that my 6th grade math teacher's math teacher wrote them. (I also thought my 6th grade math teacher was really cool. Shout out to Mr. Tyminski!)

I don't remember a lot of the details of the books, but I remember loving them. Another teacher, or maybe the principal or something, she's an alien too. I think the teacher's house was the spaceship? And there was a little fuzzy squishy creature that I always pictured as something like a Tribble. I seem to remember a scene similar to that one in Lord of the Rings where Merry and Pippin are separated (except with middle school students, and space, instead of hobbits and Middle Earth).

Why Artificial Intelligence Is Scary

When you read about a robot uprising (like the one in this week's review book, Robopocalypse), what you're usually really reading about is artificial intelligence taking over all the robots.

Most great horror revolves around the concept of losing humanity. Zombies are scary because they used to be human and they still mostly look human, but what essentially makes them human is gone. The same thing goes for vampires. And reanimated mummies, if that's your thing. Robots have the opposite thing going for them... they were not human, then we gave them what is the thing that makes us essentially human (however you define it: emotions, love, dreaming, etc.).

Another scary thing about robots is that we are responsible for them. Zombies are sometimes created by humanity (lab-created viruses are especially popular in the current literature) and anything arcane can be attributed to someone messing with magical objects or reading willy-nilly from spellbooks. But robots are 100% undoubtedly man-made, and so is artificial intelligence. We brought it on ourselves, so it was preventable, and that's part of why it's so terrifying.

It's scary for one other huge reason, too: they are meant to become smarter than us. With everything at a robot brain's disposal, it would be nigh impossible for them not to become smarter than humans. Their interconnectedness and enormous processing power allows them to think and experience and feel at a much greater rate than humans, making them superior to us in so many ways (combat, puzzle-solving, reflexes, and so on).

All I'm saying is, maybe you shouldn't beat the crap out of the printer when it jams. Someday it might hit back.

Aging Science Fiction

Good science fiction makes up crazy technology and implements it in the story somehow. Great science fiction predicts the future.

...No, I'm serious. Okay, remember when the iPad was released? And it took everyone about a nanosecond to realize, "Hey, Star Trek had these! I'm like Jean-Luc Picard! Awesome!" The reason that happened is because the writers for Star Trek were good at their jobs. They did research into what actual science was working on at the time and reached logical conclusions and wrote them into the show. It's like if someone wrote something now set in a world where all cancer is cured, and someday, when all cancer is cured, somebody reads that and realizes how ahead-of-the-curve that writer was.

That said, nobody's perfect. One of my favorite types of cartoons when I was little was the "house of the future" stuff. They were just as old as Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny, but usually those guys are pretty timeless. When you have 1950s and 1960s traditional ideas mixed in with the futuristic technology, it can be really entertaining in a way they didn't expect it to be when they created those cartoons.

This happens with other science fiction, too. Each short story in this week's review book, The Martian Chronicles, for example, has a date on it. We passed all those dates recently. We're both ahead of and behind Bradbury's expectations for us. Our rockets are more advanced than his descriptions, and - despite recent news out of Missouri - as a society, we're more friendly to minorities, and we haven't created a sanitizing society that destroys anything creative or unhappy in the world. But we also haven't put men on Mars (and we certainly haven't terraformed it) and we don't have automated houses.

Author Bio: Ray Bradbury

This week's review book is one of my favorites (as you've heard before), The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury was born in Illinois in 1920 and died in Los Angeles, CA in 2012. In other words, he was writing science fiction during a truly golden age of science fiction, and lived to see a great deal from his work come true, for better or for worse.

You probably know him better as the author of Fahrenheit 451, especially if you're a banned book enthusiast Cassy and I. Some of his other particularly famous works include Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, and I Sing the Body Electric.

A lot of his great works are in the form of short stories (for example, The Martian Chronicles is a collection of loosely connected short stories about Mars and the human relationship with it).

The New York Times called him the author who most greatly contributed to bringing science fiction into the literature mainstream, and I won't argue with that. There's a reason we all read Fahrenheit 451 in high school.

Review Me Twice - Trial by Fire by Josephine Angelini

So, kind of an exciting book this week because... IT ISN'T OUT YET.  I know, how did we manage this?!  Well, because I work at a bookstore, publishers send us copies of books that haven't been released yet so that we will, potentially, read them and then tell the customers about them.

So this week's read, Trial by Fire, came in this epic looking box.  I mean, this think was tripped out in all of its marketing glory, and the summary looked marginally good, so I decided to grab it and then thought it would really be cool for Alex and I to read it for the blog before it came out.

I actually liked this book WAY more than I thought.  The thing about the Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) that we get at work is that about 85% of them are absolute crap.  And Trial by Fire looked like it could really go either way (the packaging really made it seem like it was overcompensating for something.)

But the world building was amazing.  Angelini really drew you in and created this great new place that was magical and wonderful.  She created a character that you loved.  Lily had the potential to be REALLY annoying, but she wasn't.  Her relationship with Rowan had the potential to be really annoying... but it wasn't (though, a little stereotypical I will admit.)  I like that for once it was free of love triangles.  I love that there was a legitimate REASON that Lily came incredibly quickly into her powers.  I like that there weren't big gaping plot holes.

And I liked that there was still a little bit of mystery left to the book.

Now, I'm not going to say everything was perfect.  There were still a lot of the same old tropes (IE the everyone loves the main character trope), but even they weren't so bad as they could have been.  Angelini seems to integrate them with her story very well so they don't stand out so much as to distract from the story.

This is definitely one to pick up when it comes out on September 3rd!

When Cassy told me we were going to read a book that wasn't even out yet, I was curious. I don't read a lot of ARCs, because I don't typically read books without knowing anything about them. ARCs usually don't even have a summary on the back, so all you have to go on is visual cues from the packaging and whatever the author has put up on their blog.

But like she said, this one was a really pleasant surprise. The world (both worlds, actually) is great. The characters act like real people, which is something that kept occurring to me throughout the story over and over.

One thing that worried me was the world switching. You start in present-ish-day here-and-now, and after less than 50 pages, you're in a totally new world with different characters, different rules, and when I realized this, I inwardly groaned. I gave it a chance: I thought maybe we'd be going back and forth between the worlds, and that's an excellent place to introduce the alternate one. But once it looked like we were stuck there for the duration, I rolled my eyes. I just figured out what was going on here in world number one! Now I have to start over? I've been reading for a few dozen pages; I don't want to feel like I've picked up another book. BUT! It actually picked up really quickly and didn't really feel that way. It worked perfectly.

I also cringed when I finished the book, put it down, and thought, "Oh. I guess that's going to be a trilogy." Then I put the book back in its pretty packaging and realized that the side of the packaging had said "Worldwalker Trilogy" the whole time, so I'm just not super observant sometimes. But even without that glaringly obvious indication that this will be a trilogy, the ending makes it very clear that you aren't done here and there will be more books. Which, once I reflected on it, will be kind of awesome. There are some aspects of both worlds that I would really like to hear more about. Bummer is, since we read it early, we have to wait even longer for the sequel.



HEY GUYS!  If you life in the DC Metro Area, Cassy is going to be writing book trivia for 94.7 Fresh FM. 

On Sept. 2, tune in at 7:30 AM for Can't Beat Kelly and you can hear some book trivia questions that she wrote!!  So tune into The Tommy Show.  You can also listen to it here!

Favorite African American Literature

My favorite is not the book we are reviewing this week (Kindred) but it is by the same author (don't judge.  If you've read anything by Octavia Butler, your favorite would be by her too).  It's also not TECHNICALLY one book.  It's three books, but when I first read them, I read them in one giant omnibus, so I feel like it's legit one book.

Either way, Lilith's Brood a fantastic series that has all the things that I love in it.  Awesome strong lead female character?  Check.  Dystopian universe?  Check.  Interesting take on the Genesis story?  Check.  Aliens?  Check.  Really, what's not to love?

Butler has a great way of making the impossible seem real, seem plausible and this story is no different.  I LOVE Lilith, and I love what she does and the story is completely engaging from start to finish.  Plus, you get a strong female, African-American lead character, which is way rarer than it should be.

I really like Walter Dean Myers. He's one of those YA writers who really understands how to write for a YA audience... like they're humans, of course. And from what I hear, lots of other librarians and teachers and parents like him, too.

I've only read one book of his: Monster. I read it for a teen lit class. It's from the perspective of a teenage African American boy accused of murder, taking place from his cell and inside the courtroom.

If I remember correctly (and I might not) this book is one of the ones that shows up briefly in one scene of Freedom Writers where the teacher buys books out of her own pocket so her students have something they can actually relate to and care about reading. And that's what I think of it... there aren't a lot of books that schools and parents approve of that speak directly to an at-risk teen audience. (That's not to say that this book doesn't show up on annual banned books lists, but rather that it is usually seen as less offensive than some of the alternatives.)

More YA books need to be direct with their very real audiences, and this one sets an excellent example.

Favorite Short Story

I've mentioned The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury before as my favorite comfort book. It also contains my favorite short story. (Though, if we had to pick second place, it would contain at least three of the ten or so I would tie for that honor.)

My favorite is called "There Will Come Soft Rains," which is the title of a poem by Sara Teasdale to which the story refers. The two lines of the poem that really encapsulate the theme of the short story are "Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, / If mankind perished utterly." The story is about an automated house that continues to do its work (alarm clocks, weather reports, making breakfast, vacuuming, etc.) after the inhabitants (and, seemingly, everyone else) are dead. Human extinction became a really big theme after nuclear weapons became a real threat, and I think this poem and this story are excellent examples of the subgenre.

I don't read a lot of short stories, but while in a Major Authors class in college, I read one by Octavia Butler.  Now, this class gave me a huge appreciation and love for this author (Female, African-American sci-fi writer.)  She wrote a lot of post-apocalyptic books, which is something I love to read anyway.

She wrote a book called "Bloodchild and other stories" and, while I didn't read the whole book, I did read a story called "Speech Sounds."  It basically works on the premise that a disease has spread throughout mankind, rendering many of them unable to read, write, speak, understand speech, or any combination thereof.  Rye, our protagonist, can still speak, and meets Obsidian, a man who can still read.  

It's well written, and short, and by an author I love.  Pick something up by her if you have the chance.  And, just in case you want to read it, here's a probably legal copy of "Speech Sounds."

Review Me Twice: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

You already heard a lot of what I have to say about this book on Wednesday, since it's my favorite of the trilogy. So I'll try to say a few new things.

All I can say about the first point is that Cinna is my favorite character in the whole trilogy. If you've read this book, you understand. If you haven't, I couldn't possibly say anymore, for your sake. Go read it, and we can talk about it.

I love the idea of the Quarter Quell, because it just isn't dystopian YA semi-sci-fi until things get as bad as they can get, and then get worse. I was genuinely shocked the first time I read the explanation of the Quell, and I ate it up.

The other victors are great. Mags? Finnick? Wiress and Beetee? Even Johanna? Are you even kidding me? No one book should have that many characters you FEEL that intensely for (except Harry Potter).

My favorite moment of the first movie is when Katniss and Peeta are in District 11, and she gives them (Rue?) that sad salute and they return it, and the old guy who rebels... It isn't exactly like in the book (partly because it's in this book, not the first) but both versions, film and print, are so moving and sad and beautiful and important.

And the CLOCK. The whole concept, the fact that Plutarch tries to warn her in his super-Capitol way (hey look at my neat watch), and the arena. Don't you just adore the arena? I can't get over it. I just can't.

I like reading this book when I want to cry at a book. So, you know... if you're prone to doing that and don't like it, you might not enjoy this book.

How do I love thee, Catching Fire, let me count the ways.

Ok, so for real, there is so much to love about this book.  I love Cinna because HOW DO YOU NOT?!  He did so much for Katniss and the uprising and he did it in such an underhanded, stealthy way!  

Like Alex, I think the arena is just amazing.  The idea behind it, how the characters interact with it, how it ultimately ends up being their salvation (or not, as the case may be.)  

I didn't cry during this one (I think I came close, but managed to keep my shit together), but that doesn't mean that it's not cry worthy.  Because it TOTALLY IS.

This is also the book where we meet most of my favorite characters.  I LOVE Finnick.  I mean, I can't even convey the amount of love that I feel for Finnick, and it only gets better in Mockingjay.  This is the book I realize how much I love Haymitch as a character, that everything he does, he does it for Katniss, does what's best for her.  And even the characters that are only around for this one book, pull at my heartstrings.

Basically, it's amazing, like the rest of the series.

Review Me Twice - Cinder by Marissa Meyer

So, here's a secret that you may or may not have known:  I LOVE fairy tales   I love what they were supposed to be, how they came about, their history, their transition into children's literature and I love retellings of them.  I love to see how people re-purpose the tales to fit their own imaginations (because, really, that's kind of the POINT of fairy tales: to be bent to fit your specific needs, but still conveying the same general message.)

Meyer has taken a fun, interesting and exciting new twist on the Cinderella fairy tale   Cinderella as a cyborg? Yes, please.  Taking place in the future (but not too distant future)?  I'm totally all for that.  Meyer is an excellent writer.  I think her pacing is one of the best I've seen in awhile.  She knows just when to drop you information, just when to hold it back and just when to drop it all and run with it.

The characters were interesting and fleshed out.  The world she created was also great for what she needed. She managed to make it like our world, but not, which allows the reader to be engulfed in it easily, without a lot of confusion about what's going on.

I like that Cinder is a little tomboyish.  She's not the dainty girl that needs to be saved by the handsome prince.  She's her own, independent girl, who's going to do what she's going to do.

My only, ONLY, hang-up with this book, is that it's extremely predictable.  There's some major stuff that you figure out pretty early on.  And it's stuff that you're not necessarily supposed to figure out.

I can't wait to read the next book in the series.  It's going to be fabulous.

My Bottom Line 5 Out of 5

I loved this book. I like the characters, I like the plot, I like the implications for the future books, I like the setting, I like the science, I like everything.

Usually, Cassy is the one to say that something was really obvious the whole time; I don't always pick up on things like overly heavy foreshadowing, because I'm not looking for it. (In fact, I might actually block it out on purpose; I don't like figuring out the big twists and surprises before I get to them, so I don't try to guess.) But the Big Twist in this one is not much of a twist, because it really is very obvious.

And I've been thinking about that for a while now. Sometimes, I think the author doesn't intend for the Big Twist to be a Big Twist... at least, not for you, the reader. I think sometimes, you're supposed to know about it and the character is the one who is supposed to be surprised. It's like the author has given you a little gift of knowledge that is unknown to the main character. I think this happens when the character's reaction to something is more important than the information itself, which is a case I think can be made for Cinder.

At any rate, I will definitely be reading the sequel and eagerly anticipating the other two books.

World Building

World building refers to constructing the context of the setting of your fiction... in other words, building a world for your characters to live in. It usually involves defining the geography, climate, language, religion, economy, demographic, and other major aspects of the world you are writing about.

On the left, you have the "bottom-up" approach, which means starting with small details and working your way up to big ones as needed. This is an easy way to run into inconsistencies, but it also means you don't have to spend as much time and effort on world building, because you can focus only on what is relevant to the story. On the right is the "top-down" approach, starting with the big stuff and working toward the smaller details. You might start with a map of the entire world, then define the countries and their details, then states, cities, families.

Sometimes, all it takes to do your world building is one small change to the world we know and exist within. Often, the only change required is to add an "impossible" character to the world: Captain America, Sherlock Holmes, the Watchmen, pretty much any superhero, Miss Marple... etc. The key to this type of world building is to determine how much this character's existence will affect the world at large. For most superhero stories, this means the world knows about and accepts superheroes as a reality. For more "normal" characters like detectives, the only real change is that these detectives can solve famous mysteries, giving us an answer at last. This style of world building can easily be accomplished with a bottom-up approach (because you only have to change a few details in one small place - a city or just one kid's life like Peter Parker or Steve Rogers - and identify major world changes on an as-needed basis).

Then you have larger changes to our world. Some of these, like Harry Potter, take place in the approximate present. In his case, the world building happens parallel to our world; J K Rowling created an entire world that is presumably hidden in plain sight. Another (easier) way to do this is to set your story in the future. The further in the future your story is set, the more drastic the changes you can make. V for Vendetta and Hunger Games both use this tactic to create a somewhat familiar, but simultaneously totally different, worlds.

Sometimes (more so in science fiction than in fantasy) you can use multiple worlds for your setting. Doctor Who keeps coming back to a somewhat familiar Earth (cell phones and metros and fashion, but major historical events are altered, obviously) but takes us to hundreds of other planets (and times) and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy starts off on the Earth we know and love, but since it is destroyed to allow for construction of a bypass (you've got to build bypasses, after all) Arthur goes off gallivanting around the galaxy.

And finally, you have the brilliant writers who are capable of creating a world from scratch. It almost goes without saying that J R R Tolkien was a genius at world building, to the points that (1) his setting is better than his story, and (2) most fantasy that has come after him is set in places extremely similar to Middle Earth in many respects. (Ever wonder why almost every character in high fantasy is Caucasian and speaks with an English accent? That's Tolkien's influence.) Other great world builders of fantasy include Frank Herbert, with Dune (which I've never read, but I still know of Arrakis, home of the spice) and Terry Pratchett, creator of Discworld (which, unsurprisingly, takes place on Discworld, pictured to the right of Dune, atop the great turtle A'Tuin). These were most likely accomplished with a top-down approach: create the world and its major characteristics, then define smaller pieces as you go.

Which, naturally, brings us to Game of Thrones, this week's review book. The world in which it takes place is not named, but it is full of fantastic creatures, supernatural beings, harsh climates (winter is coming), and knights and kings and horses and swords.

By Its Cover: The Lesser Evil, Pt. 1

Yesterday, we reviewed Shane Smith's graphic novel, The Lesser Evil, Pt. 1. Today, we'll take a look at the cover:

I really like this cover. The colors (or general lack thereof), the geometry, the placement of the title and author name... It is very appealing to me. If I saw this on a library or bookstore shelf, I would approach it. (Like I said yesterday, it's not my type of fiction, so I might not have gone further than that, but it at least would have caught my attention enough to make me curious.)

I also really like the font. It isn't too futuristic/spacey and it isn't overly complicated; it's simple but interesting, and gets the job done (which is to tell me, from a reasonable distance, what the book is called).

Beyond that, though, it is not immediately apparent what the book is about. It doesn't need to be; not every book calls for that. I feel like this book doesn't call for that, so the fact that the cover isn't explicit is perfectly fine.

I agree with Alex about the fact that the stark colors really do wonders for this cover.  It's simple, not overly complicated, but it gets your attention.  It's interesting.

While it doesn't EXPLICITLY tell you anything about the book, I like that the cover kind of foreshadows the drawing style of the book.  Contrasting black and white.  I think it's well done.

Review Me Twice- The Lesser Evil Pt. 1

I really like a lot of things about this book.  I like that it's in black and white.  It's very stark and makes it interesting because a lot of graphic novels are done in color.  I also like that a lot of the characters are very... alive.  They're stopped, but often in mid-motion, which gives you a good sense of how they move and act, outside of their words.  Sometimes I feel like GN characters are posed for every frame, but I never got that sense in this book.

However, some of the assets can be downfalls.  While I liked the black and white motif, it was very hard to tell the difference between characters for most of the GN.  It was very dark and shadowed and really made the whole thing harder to read. 

The drawing in it was definitely talented, but I feel like Smith's talent lies more in the backgrounds than the people.  There were some amazingly detailed drawing of cities and ships and all sorts of things.  And while I did like the "mid-motion" feel of the characters, they were also very blocky in a way.  (If you ever watched the show Reboot as a kid, Smith's characters drawings were very much the same feel, as if they could only move in certain planes.)  It doesn't necessarily take away any from the book, but it does encourage that "I can't tell the difference between characters" problem.

The story line is good too, though not my particular cup of tea.  It's very political and really shows the power struggle going on in this universe.  But the drawing gets in the way of this story line.  Since it's so hard to tell the difference between the characters, it doesn't help when you have so many of them.  And names weren't used that often, making it that much worse.  I do LIKE the story line however (and would probably appreciate it lots more if I were politically inclined at all.)

While the concept of this graphic novel was good, I feel like these are a few, but vital, reasons that are keeping it from being great.  Also, a side note, if you're going to read it, pick up a hard copy of it.  I think part of my "hard to see" problem may have derived from the fact that it was an e-copy of the book.

One of the most important things in designing/writing a graphic novel is layout. (Remember yesterday?) The juxtaposition of one thing to another makes all the difference in the world. Choosing whether to use a wide shot or a close-up or cropping certain things can be difficult. But Shane Smith does this very well. Many of his pages use the same format (four wide-length, short-height panels of equal size per page) but this gives the more impact to the pages that are different.

I agree with Cassy that his drawing forte comes in backgrounds, not in people. I sometimes got a weird Uncanny Valley vibe that you get from emotionless faces. (Sometimes I heard the dialogue in my head in the Xtranormal voices. That's not good. It's robotic and distracting.)

There was a great mechanism closer to the end of the book where a character is using a letter to express his feelings and also explain the next few steps of the plot. It was much better than, for example, just going through the motions of the narrative ("we went here then we did this then this happened and I told someone how I felt about it"). That was very well done, I thought.

This is absolutely not my type of fiction. I never would have picked this book up on my own. Yes, I like space settings, but not so much the political story lines. (I admit it: I don't like Star Wars. Sorry.) That said, it wasn't bad. It's a cohesive story with well-built characters (in the literary sense, not the visual sense, as I mentioned before).

I would like to take a brief moment to thank Shane for sharing his book with us. If you have published a book that you would like us to review, email us at ReviewMeTwice [at] gmail [dot] com, or tweet us @ReviewMeTwice.

Favorite Time Travel

Because this week's review book, The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom, deals so heavily with the concept of time, we are talking about our favorite time travel books today.

Mine is Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

The first part of the book deals with Zaphod's experience with the Total Perspective Vortex, which has little - if anything - to do with time travel, so I will skip it. After that ordeal, everyone goes to the restaurant at the end of the universe.

The titular restaurant is Milliways, which exists at the end of the universe regarding both space and time, and is therefore only accessible through time travel. (Unless you're Marvin, the paranoid android, who gets there by his powers of extreme patience.) It's very expensive, but you can afford to eat there by depositing a penny in a bank account during your present time, and the interest will compound enough to pay your bill by the time you arrive for your reservation.

After the scenes at Milliways and several other things happen, Arthur and Ford find themselves back on Earth, but in prehistoric times. They got there on a Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet B ship, which contains a bunch of hairdressers and telephone sanitizers that turned out to be the real ancestors of modern man (not the Neanderthals that they find there).

One of my favorite scenes in the entire series takes place in this setting, with Arthur trying to coax The Question out of a bag of Scrabble tiles. (This question being the one that goes with Deep Thought's Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, which was the disappointing: 42.)

Arthur manages to spell out "what do you get if you multiply six by nine" before he runs out of tiles. (You may notice that 6 x 9 is actually 54, but in base 13, 6 x 9 is actually 42. Adams swore he didn't mean to do this, and the math was meant to be incorrect.) A Neanderthal spells out "forty two" but this goes unnoticed, and is meant to be an indication that the Neanderthals were part of the Earth computation (built by Deep Thought to find the Question) but the Golgafrinchans were not.

This whole situation brings us one of my favorite quotations ever:

"Six by nine. Forty two."

"That's it. That's all there is."

"I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe."

 

My most favorite time travel book is something very different from Alex's (which... I've noticed that our favorites are usually pretty different. Which is kind of the point of this blog.) I really love The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

 

Henry can time travel, has been able to since he was six years old, but he has no control over when it happens or where he goes.  The only thing he knows is that he's going to travel somewhere in his own timeline.  Frequently, he runs into himself.  He also can't take anything with him.  So he has to steal money and food and even clothes.

During his time travel, he meets Clare.  He's an adult when he begins to visit Clare (who is just a young girl herself), but the first time they meet in the present, Henry doesn't even know who Clare is, despite the fact that she has known him most of her life.

The story, however, is not so much about the time travel.  It's more about the fact that Clare frequently doesn't know where her husband is and she can't participate on his adventures.  She has to deal with the fact that it's something only he can experiance.  Also, there are a lot of times that time traveling takes him away from her when she needs him. 

One of the scenes I love best is when they get married.  Henry, stressed out and therefore increasing the chances he'll jump, ends up traveling just an hour or so before their wedding.  However, a future version of himself travels to the past.  It's a future Henry that marries Clare (which she knows the second he gets to the altar, though no one else does), and later they have a small, private ceremony when he returns.

The book is incredibly well written, sweet and even a little heartbreaking.  It's a book you should really pick up and read.

What is Steampunk?

This week we're reviewing Boneshaker, which is a steampunk novel.  Steampunk has actually had a pretty recent uprising, though it's been around, technically, since the 80s.  It is a piece of work that takes place usually in the 19th and very early 20th century and is a mixture of history and industrialized west.  It's like a genre mashup (which, if you recall from this post, is becoming ever more popular). It can be either post-apocalyptic or just an alternate form of history.

The major steampunk influences are actually a little surprising: H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Mary Shelly are the forerunners of steampunk, the first authors to mix the industrialized west into their novels.  Technically, they aren't TRUE steampunk because, well, they were writing about their own time periods, not history, so it's a little different.

Literature is a HUGE medium of steampunk now.  Some big ones are Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan or Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials.  Both of these take history and combine it with machinery.

This is Westerfeld's Novel.  See all the neat gears?
Can't you just hear the clunking and whirring from there?
Steampunk has a lot of fun, anachronistic onomatopoetic opportunities.

So where did the term steampunk come from?  It was actually in response to this unknown sub-culture rising.  Cyberpunk was huge in the 80s and here comes this movement, based very much on the Victorian age with a dash of gears and machines thrown in.  K.W. Jeter (a sci-fi author) actually coined the term, in a very tongue in cheek letter that he wrote to Locus magazine:

Dear Locus,

Enclosed is a copy of my 1979 novel Morlock Night; I'd appreciate your being so good as to route it Faren Miller, as it's a prime piece of evidence in the great debate as to who in "the Powers/Blaylock/Jeter fantasy triumvirate" was writing in the "gonzo-historical manner" first. 

Though of course, I did find her review in the March Locus to be quite flattering.Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like 'steam-punks', perhaps.

—K.W. Jeter (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Now, we see steampunk everywhere.  Will Smith did the movie Wild Wild West, SyFy's mini-series Tin Man and of course, the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentleman.

Steampunk is also a huge cosplay movement.  People dress up and get some really intricate costumes.

This is pretty typical steampunk outfits: browns and grays and gears.

Steampunk has really permeated pop culture.  It's in books, movies, even music.  People have steampunk weddings even. If you have several hours to kill and nothing better to do, you could get trapped under an avalanche of results by searching for steampunk on Etsy. It's become it's own culture and movement.  And are we surprised?  It lets us recreate history in a unique way and has a fascinating style to go along with it.

Review Me Twice- Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

This week, we're reviewing Peeps by Scott Westerfeld.

This is - in my experience - a unique book. It seamlessly combines non-fiction with fiction, without confusing the reader as to which is which. There are occasional chapters that are entirely about a real-life, completely true parasite that exists in the real world. (If you're the kind of person who can't even hear about blood without getting queasy, this is absolutely not the book for you.) It's like edutainment, except without terrible songs and cartoons.

See, Peeps are vampires... sort of. They were infected with a parasite that causes the symptoms attributed to vampires. For example, they are repulsed by everything they used to love (which typically includes the sunlight, lending to the vampire characteristic of not being able to go out during the day).

Our main character, Cal, is infected but not a full Peep (he's a carrier of the parasite, in other words... like a daywalker in typical vampire lore).

As far as the actual story goes, it is interesting and not particularly predictable, and I enjoy it quite a bit. But the chapters about parasites really appeal to my nerdy side, and I don't think I'd love this book as much as I do without them.

I have not read the sequel, The Last Days, but I have read the first chapter or so (it is published in the back of my copy of Peeps as a teaser to get you to buy it) and I wasn't terribly impressed.

I have read Peeps no less than four times (it might have been five, but I've lost count; so I'm going with four.)  If you haven't noticed, we've been pretty heavy on the vampires this week, and with good cause: Peeps is a vampire book.

But not in the traditional sense.  I've read a lot of vampire books in my time.  I've done a lot of the Anne Rice series (Interview With a Vampire) and the Anita Blake series, Dracula, and even (wait for iiiiiitttt) Twilight.  What they all have in common is that they follow a lot of the same lore.  The vampires are afraid of stakes and sunlight and crosses.  Even Stephanie Meyer put some age old tropes in her novel, despite trying to avoid them.  Her vampires need blood and avoid humans and never age and (even if it's for very different reasons) avoid sunlight.

So what makes Peeps different?  Well, Westerfeld takes all of those old myths and legends and applies science to all of them.  He turns vampyrism and turns it into a parasite that needs meat because it's constantly consuming calories of its host, explains away an aversion to crosses and sunlight (people with the parasite reject everything they love so the parasite is preserved) and even explains why people who are parasite-positive (as they're referred to) have amped up abilities.

The other thing I think Westerfeld does really well is make Cal (our main character) relatable.  He's nineteen which makes him old enough that he's gotten over the usual adolescent annoyances, but still hasn't quite come into his adulthood.  At the same time, he's forced to be a grown-up in a lot of ways.  That makes Cal really easy to relate to for all ages, grown-up or otherwise.  The first time that I read this book, I was just around his age, which I think is part of the reason I liked it.

I could go on for days about my love for this book.  It's funny, and witty and makes great NYC references and the more that I read it, the more I catch onto.  Really, I just think you should pick it up and see for yourself.  It's easily Westerfeld's best.

Unless you have an aversion to bugs.  Then... well that would be my only caution to you.  It's got a lot of bug references.

My Bottom Line 5 out of 5.

It's Comfortable

Everyone has that book that they read over and over and over again.  It's your comfort book; the book you go to because it's an old friend and sometimes, you just need something familiar.  Today, Alex and I are going to tell you about our favorites.  Our favorite book that makes us feel warm and fuzzy.  I won't go so far as to say it's our favorite book (because, I don't know about Alex, but I have a hard time picking just one) but it's a book that we come back to often.  

While Peeps is a book I do continually revisit, I figure I probably shouldn't pick that one since we're reviewing it this week.  Instead, I'm going to throwback to a classic: Pride & Prejudice.

It's interesting, because the first time I read this, I actually wasn't a big fan.  I was in high school, when you're forced to read a lot of things that you're probably not really ready to read.  I got lost in the language and it was just a little rough.  However, I took another shot at it in college, in between my senior year.

Really, Austen knows how to weave a love story.  It's exciting and romantic and the language is poetry and I love nothing more than curling up under a blanket and reading about Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.

If you ever get the chance, I really recommend picking this up.  It's a wonderful read.

There is one book I used to tell people I read at least once a year. Now, it's more like I read parts of it all throughout the year. It's called The Martian Chronicles and it's by Ray Bradbury.

It's a collection of short stories, in chronological order, about man and Mars. The stories are beautiful and amazing and creative, some sad, some happy.

The reason I got this book in the first place is the penultimate* story in the book. It's called "There Will Come Soft Rains" and it has been republished in high school English textbooks for ages, because it is packed with fantastic examples of imagery. It's a story-slash-description of a high-tech house that has outlasted mankind, and continues to do its prescribed jobs without anyone to do them for. I loved the story when I read it in school, and I unfortunately didn't think about tracking down its original source until after the school year when I read it. It took a while, but I finally found it somehow, and I was completely taken with the entire book.

That's probably the story I re-read the most often (to the point that I have large sections of it memorized word-for-word) but I also really love one that I believe is called "Earth Men." It's about the third expedition of Earthlings to come to Mars (the first two having met mysterious demises, as far as these men know) and they are met with something less than enthusiasm from the native Martians. I can't possibly give away the big twist, but it's amazing and you should read it.

My copy is nearly ten years old, and it's holding up pretty well for a well-loved paperback. It's in my car, so that whenever I want to read a story or just kill a few minutes, I can pick it up and start from anywhere. Despite the depressing nature of most of the stories, this is my warm-and-fuzzy book, and I love it.