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The Mark of the Golden Dragon Review
This is one of Jacky’s shorter adventure being under 400 pages but is stuffed to the brim with exploits as only Jacky can do.
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The Wake of the Lorelei Lee Review
The irrepresible Jacky Faber is back at it again. Her debt to the Crown seems all squared away until the dasteredly Biffil and Flashby team up to bring Jacky’s good name to the dirt of the gallows. Luckily, her many friends (and admirers) come to her aid during the trial. Not enough to get her free but instead of the hangman’s noose, she and her beloved new brig the Lorelei Lee are being transfered to the Crown’s possession to bring convicts to populate New South Wales, Australia!
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Raising the Horseman Review
Another book for the October season, the town of Sleepy Hollow revolves around All Hallow’s eve and hauntings all year round thanks to the town’s illustrious Van Tassel family and the legend of the Headless Horseman. It’s a small town, and a bit of a tourist trap not the natives like outsiders much despite relying on tourism.
Kat Van Tassel, the teenage descendants of the First Katrina feels stifled in the place. Every woman in her family is called Katrina, and they’re all expected to stay in Sleepy Hollow tending to the hearth and providing the rest of the town with jobs, crops and celebration. But Kat wants to travel, she wants to go to college and maybe become a writer even though she hasn’t confided that dream to anyone. But she’s torn with following her dreams and her family’s, hell the whole town’s, expectations that she’ll stay at home and marry her childhood best friend like all the Katrinas before. That fate of being trapped in this tiny town terrfies her more than all the ghosts in the graveyard.
It is during one fight about her desire to go to college that her mother gives her the First Katrina’s diary and Kat realizes how much her ancestor’s life and her current life converge to one and she wonders, is history repeating itself, will she travel Katrina’s same fate?
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An Illustrated History of Notable Shadowhunters & Denizens of Downworld
This illustrated history promises to give you a behind the scenes peek into your favorite Shadowhunter and Downworlder characters from Clare’s hit fantasy series. Which it somewhat succeeds.
I’ll admit the amazon summary may have oversold it as I was eagerly flying through the pages to see a complete Shadowhunter family tree as I am often confused by its many tangled branches. It was not in there so that was slightly disappointing.
The behind the scenes peeks are just little trivia tidbits like Camille Belcourt’s brief time working as a supernatural milliner or Jace’s talent at playing piano. Not much in new insights to the world or their psyches.
What really makes this book shine compared to the Shadowhunter Codex which provides a much more comprehensive guide and history to the world is Jean’s art.
Her flower cards inscribed with the flowers’ meaning that often has a symbolic relationship with the character associated are just gorgeous to look at. It’s the whole point of the book.
If you want more adventures in the series, this book will disappoint but if you want to collect them all and enjoy Jean’s art, this book is for you.
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Book Highlight: Young, Fearless, Awesome
This delightfully inspiring book encourages kids to chase after their dreams and break boundaries no matter their age through the stories of these icons.
Some you probably know like Anna Frank and Greta Thunberg but it also features some new ones like Samantha Smith who wrote to a Soviet leader and became a peace ambassador (and yes I now realize that Golden Girls episode that dealt with the same exact storyline was based on real life) and Carlos Acosta, the first black principle dancer for the Royal Ballet.
It also shows some kids that were important subjects to course cases like Claudette Colvin in Browder v. Gayle that brought an end to bus segregation in Montgomery. There’s also Ryan White whose name is given to the Ryan White CARE Act to fund AIDs diagnosis and treatment.
Though it is primarily for elementary school students, it doesn’t shy away from the harshness of some of these activists’ lives, for example, Igbal Masih was a child slave who escaped and fought for children’s rights only to be murdered for his activism when he was twelve. It’s tragic but important that his story is known and all that he accomplished in his short life.
The book also poses questions at the end of each section such as what to do if someone is being bullied, following your passion despite parental pressure etc. Modern day problems that are answered with quotes or reasonable assumptions based on the person’s life as to how they would tackle the issue. It also features a quick quiz of which activist you are most like.
While I enjoyed all the people featured here, I couldn’t help but feel that Tawakkol Karman was a bit out of place. It’s a book about young activist but most of her important protests and non violent resistance during Arab Spring occurred when she was adult. Arguably, she still fits because she was the youngest person to recieve the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, but it still felt out of place as all the others are in their teens or at least 18 when they made their big differences which was in the theme of the book.
Anyway, that’s a minor quibble as it is overall, a very informative and inspiring
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A Carribean Heiress in Paris Review
Originally I was going to put this with the rest of my reads for Hispanic Heritage Month post, I loved it so much I had to spill all my thoughts here and now.
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Heartless Review
Meyer steps away from the sci-fi landscape of Luna society and Earth to step into a world of magical realism where Victorian-era human characters chat with talking candles and animal beings in this tale of hearts stolen and broken.
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Archie’s Weirder Mysteries Review
As I have mentioned before I absolutely love Archie’s Weird Mysteries, the comic strip and the tv show so I had to get my hands on this one.
As promised, it amps up the creep factor with alien crash landings, time travel dreamscapes and a descent into obsession in these three stories with a twist.
The first story or case file as they dub them, Betty Cooper Alien Hunter by Frank Tieri features the blond-haired girl next door with a big dose of badassery most familiar to those Jughead: The Hunger fans. Instead of accusing people of vampirism and warlock magic, she is on the hunt for a fourth shapeshifting alien that has blended into Pop’s. Sabbatini’s art brings to mind Cameron’s Alien franchise wiith its shifting tentacles and blood splatters when Betty and Pop get their suitably action hero moment in the spotlight. Plus it still retains the Archie humor with some deadpan insults of Pop’s meatloaf.
I’ll admit the second case file by Ron Robbins-Bingo Wilkin Day– confused me a bit but then again time travel always confuses me. This features the surprising pairing of Trev, Ethel and Bingo as they use Ethel’s AI invention S.N.A.X. to vividly dream their way back to the 90s. Why? Because it was one fateful day where music star Bingo was signing autographs at Pop’s Record Store when a mysterious wizard offered him a potion to immortality. He accepted but now Bingo’s desperate to be his real age.
Bobillo’s art changes from muted pastel of the cynical present to the solid color schemes of the 90s provide an excellent distinction between the two eras. That combined with the excellent twist that puts the whole ending into doubt turns it from a blast to the past to making you question everything. Also Dr. Sam Masters is apparently a wizard?!? I can’t say much more than that but if you like trippy tales, this is for you.
The final case story, A Wrinkle in Time pays homage to the Twilight Zone and Josie and the Pussycats in Space. In the year 2050, Josie and the Pussycats are still world-superstars and Alexandra is still looking to scheme her way into the spotlight when horror of horrors, she gets a wrinkle. From there, Joanne Starer hilariously details Alexandra’s descent to madness and epic jealousy as she takes more drastic measures to get rid of the aging process while hearing all about Josie. As any fan of the Twilight Zone knows, this wish ends up backfiring at the worst moment. While it doesn’t feature much of the Pussycats, if you enjoyed the Space cartoons’ aesthetics, you’ll enjoy Jampole’s art here. It was also enjoyable in how it combined the humor and the horror all at once.
This was a great return to the Weird Mysteries that I so enjoy with a bit more gore and cursing that is sure to please any Archie Horror fan too. I loved this as the start to spooky season.
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Book Highlight: Paperbacks from Hell
It’s spooky season so my big suggestion for getting your horror fics is to delve into the horror history of the 70s-80s with Grady Hendrix’ Paperbacks from Hell. Clearly written by a fan who knows his horrors and pulps, Hendrix’ tone is full of vivid narrative energy. Whenever I read I feel like I’m on a rollar coaster as his steady rhetoric of gore, demonic babies and killer moths ebbs and rises as he explains the origins and trends of the horror market.
Beginning in the 60s, there was the three punch of Rosemary’s Baby, The Other and The Exorcist, all which spawned popular movies and brought new life to a genre that was previously populated by musty Hammer Films monsters. Now, writers were going into the occult, going into LSD and sex and gore were splattered all over the table because Hendrix intones the writers of paperback followed no rules except one: Don’t be boring.
He pulls in the disparate threads of history that you would realize make sense if you thought about it. Gothic romance influenced the cover art of early horror paperback with its fleeing heroines and dark castles. The Satanic Panic and Helter-Skelter murders brought a deluge of cult freaks to the massess. Each trend and the wild subgenres and imitators are explored and analyzed in eight chapters-Hail, Satan, Creepy Kids, When Animals Attack, Real Estate Nightmares, Weird Science, Gothic and Romantic, Inhumoids and Splatterpunks, Serial Killers and Super Creeps.
Not only that, each page is filled to the brim with lucious and creepy cover art of which he takes the time to put full page asides for such notable artists like Jill Bauman and Jim Thiesen and discuss the distinct characteristics of the choke-crazy William W. Johnstone novels compared to the steady Southern drawl of Michael McDowell’s Blackwater series.
Though he does humorously poke fun at some of the more ridiculous tropes and scenes that defy science, physics and other established natural rules as these authors attempt to out-gross others, he also points to the underlying truth these horrors are founded on. Marasco’s Burnt Offerings speaks to the economic fears of the middle-class, Satanic possession points to the loss of self and who you think you are, and other interesting tidbits of what terror reveals about human nature.
So while I know I’ll never be able to sleep if I read these paperback nightmares, it does offer a steady pile of interesting stories to look into next time you spot a dusty antique pile. You might not be able to rid yourself of images of Gestapochauns and golem creatures, but at least you’ll be entertained.
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The Lunar Chronicles: Wire and Nerve Review
This graphic novel continuation of the Lunar Chronicles puts Iko in the spotlight which is a relief as the android realizes she is the forgotten Earthen hero of the war.
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Rachel Reads & Reviews 