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Book Review: The Walking Dead, Book Six by Robert Kirkman (Series, #6) (Graphic Novel)
Summary:
The group continues to slowly lose their collective minds, although it is quickly made evident that they haven’t gone as crazy as some groups when they find themselves stalked by living cannibals. Toss in a preacher who failed to protect his flock and what turned out to be a pack of lies from the scientist, and it’s no wonder the group is suspicious when a couple of men approach and offer them refuge in an idyllic community just outside of DC. They in their state of PTSD can’t stop seeing danger around every corner and don’t even realize the dangerous ones just might be themselves.
Review:
You know how they say you can always find someone in the world worse off than you? Well, the first part of book 6 seems to be all about proving that’s true, perhaps in a way to humanize the group prior to how abundantly evident their loss of humanity is in contrast to the DC compound. That isn’t to say I particularly enjoyed the cannibalism plot-line. I can see its value, yes, but I also feel like we’d already seen how bad humanity can go in Woodbury, and if people are going to be eating people, that’s what you have zombies for. So the first half of the book is kind of meh to me.
On the other hand, seeing our group in the DC compound is delicious. I think one of the pieces of artwork in the appendix at the back explores the contrast eloquently. Michonne is dressed up talking to a group of women at a party, but she’s hiding a sword behind her back. The group has become so used to constantly being turned on and at war with the zombies and other survivors that they cannot relax. Classic PTSD. It’s fascinating to see how even Carl can recognize that they are no longer like these people who’ve been able to have downtime in the zombie war. Anybody who understands war and trauma at all would know that these people need special care. Even just the way they clump up and sleep all together in spite of being offered separate quarters is a symptom of PTSD, and yet the DC group makes Rick a cop. Um….ok. A seriously questionable choice there, but then again, the mayor of DC did used to be in politics. And we all know how smart those types can be. *eye-roll*
In any case, it’s obvious that this book is setting things up for a show-down between our traumatized group and the DC folks. I’m enjoying seeing our main guys turn slowly evil, and I’m curious to see how far Kirkman is willing to take it. That said, the first half of the book with the cannibals seemed kind of unnecessary to me. I’d rather have seen more zombies. Overall, it moves the plot forward, but that plot momentum is left mostly to the second half of the book. Worthy of the series and hopefully book 7 will live up to the build-up.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Public Library
Previous Books in Series:
The Walking Dead, Book One
The Walking Dead, Book Two
The Walking Dead, Book Three
The Walking Dead, Book Four
The Walking Dead, Book Five
Book Review: Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead (Series, #1) (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
Georgina Kincaid is a succubus. Has been for hundreds of years. She’s currently assigned to the demon district of Seattle, but she’s not really feeling being a succubus anymore. Oh, sure, she still needs to eat sexual energy from men, but she tries to keep it to the low-lifes, like cheaters, and avoid the good guys. Thankfully her demon boss lets her lack of stealing souls for the bad side slide. All in all, life is pretty good for Georgina. Her favorite author is even coming to do a reading at the bookstore she works at! But one night a vampire is killed and threats start coming in against all the baddies in Seattle–including Georgina.
Review:
Sometimes the books I’ve read for the Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge make me wonder what the hell past Amanda was thinking, and other times they make me realize that past Amanda was still me…..and I really do love to love the bad guys. And hoo boy is this book ever about the bad guys! Also, sex. Lots of sex. I mean, a succubus has gotta eat.
Getting an urban fantasy that isn’t all about a demon slayer but instead is about the demons is just awesome. It is really fun to be rooting for the succubus, demons, and vampires, but not in a Sookie Stackhouse sort of way. These guys are the other side of the war, and are they ever fun. It’s obvious that Mead is aware that she’s flipping the typical story on its head from a delicious tongue-in-cheek scene in which an angel’s helper shows up completely covered up and mocking Georgina’s sexy succubus outfit and blushing at all the swear words the bad crowd tosses around. And it’s so true! The good guys wouldn’t be *fun*. The good guys would be boring, and they sure as hell wouldn’t say fuck.
Also, it’s nice that for once we pop into the middle of the main character’s life instead of meeting her right when she gets her powers. It lends more depth to the character, adds mystery, and lets us just get on with the supernatural. This makes for a much faster moving plot as well, which is definitely appreciate. Plus, there’s the historical aspect to Georgina’s flashbacks, and that’s always fun.
The sex scenes are well-written. Um, really well-written. *coughs* The love interest is realistically attractive and intelligent, which is pure win. For once we aren’t stuck with a gorgeous, perfect man. We have an imperfect one who is still totally loveable.
So what’s keeping it from five stars for me? I’m not a fan that Georgina has somehow turned into a reluctant succubus. I want my succubus to steal men’s life energy and LIKE IT. But I get it that this makes Georgina more lovable to probably just about everyone else. I am still hoping that this reluctance will change in the next book. Haha.
Overall, this is a delicious urban fantasy that I highly recommend to fans of the genre who enjoy steamy sex and rooting for the bad guys.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Friday Fun! (On Health and Entitlement of Women’s Bodies)
Hello my lovely readers! Sorry for the relatively smaller amount of reviews this week. I’ve finished a few books, but didn’t have the time to write up the reviews yet. This just means next week will be full. :-)
I have a relatively serious topic I want to talk about today. You guys know that I take health and the obesity epidemic seriously. One argument that I’ve heard a lot of unhealthy women make is that they put on a ton of weight to avoid men. They weren’t comfortable with the attention, etc… I remember thinking, when I, at the time, was overweight myself, “How bad could it really be?” Turns out…..pretty bad.
Over the last year, I’ve gone from a size 16 to a size 10. Over the last month, I’ve had more encounters with men who feel entitled to my body than I had over the entire two years I was overweight. I know correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but in some cases it does.
I’m a single lady. I date. I go places where single people hang out to try to meet new people. I do what single people in cities do. I dress attractively, because I WANT to, but also because I’ve worked damn HARD for this body, and I’m proud of my work. I’m not saying I’m Miss America, and I wouldn’t want to be, but I definitely look happy and healthy when I go out. Much more so than when I was overweight. I get hit on. I get asked on dates. This also happened when I was overweight. The difference, though, is that now when I dare to say the word no a much higher percentage of them get downright angry at me.
He’ll say something like, “Do you want to go on a date?” I say, “No, thank you.” He says, “WHY?! Think you’re too good for me?!” or “Well you shouldn’t dress that way if you don’t want attention” or “Please, you obviously need a good fucking.” (I am not exaggerating. These all have been spoken or texted or what have you to me).
Worse, though, is I’ll go on a first date. Usually dinner or drinks. I have a nice enough time, but I can tell we wouldn’t work long-term, and I want a relationship at this point in my life. He leans in for a kiss, and I turn my cheek or he asks me for a second date and I say no I don’t think it’ll work out. The reaction generally is, “You owe me, I bought you dinner!” or “How can you possibly know after only one date?!” or “Well, I thought you were ugly anyway.” (That last one, btw, makes zero sense since he ASKED ME OUT TO START WITH).
What really aggravates me about these interactions isn’t their disappointment that I said no. Obviously, that is flattering. What is bothersome is the evident sense of entitlement over MY BODY that they have. I’m pretty and single. They’re available and have a penis, ergo, I must want them or I’m a horrible woman. Since when did my body become the possession of every straight man in the greater Boston area?
Oh yeah, since I started glowing with health.
It’s draining. It’s enough to make me not want to go out some nights. It’s enough to make me want to stick my earbuds in in public and ignore everyone. Of course, I’m me, so I’m not going to do these things. I’m going to keep being my awesome self and feminist hulksmashing the douchebags (verbal smack-down, folks, not a physical one), but. If I didn’t have such a strong personality or had personal issues or WHATEVER I could totally see this being a thing that would make me stop working out, stop eating healthy, stop it all and just hide to protect myself.
Do you see where I’m going here? This misogynistic entitlement to women’s bodies is a poison to our whole society. A POISON. Every time you police a woman’s body or act entitled to her or watch it happen to a woman and not stand up for her, you are essentially watching the cook poison the food and then serve it to the dinner party without saying anything or trying to stop him. It hurts everyone, and it is not ok! It is just as bad as those cultures (that I know Americans judge) that say, “Women need to cover up because they tempt men.” Our cultural impetus is the opposite. “This woman is young and healthy and available ergo I deserve her body.”
No. You. Don’t.
I vow to say something any time I hear this attitude happening, and not just to me. I vow to encourage all women to remember that our bodies are ours and our health is about US and not about THEM. I hope you all will do the same.
Book Review: Tundra 37 by Aubrie Dionne (Series, #2)
Summary:
Gemme is the Matchmaker for her generation on board the Expedition a spaceship that has been headed toward Paradise 18 for hundreds of years and multiple generations in the hopes of saving humanity from extinction due to the failure of Earth. The ship is driven by a pair of seers–twins from Old Earth who have been kept alive an abnormally long amount of time by being hooked up to machines and virtually made part of the ship. The seers make a mistake for the first time in hundreds of years and end up in a meteor shower and having to crash-land on the barely inhabitable ice planet Tundra 37. Gemme finds herself reassigned from Matchmaker to the exploratory team Alpha Blue with the hunky Lieutenant that the computer system matched her with just before blowing off into space during the meteor shower. Can she land the hunk without anyone knowing about the match? And will the colonists manage to survive Tundra 37?
Review:
Although this is the second book in the series, which I didn’t realize at first, it appears that each book follows a different spaceship that left Earth, so I really do not think it’s necessary to read them in order. I didn’t feel like I was missing anything, for instance.
It’s been a while since I read a book this bad that came from a publishing house, but it does happen. This is part of why I firmly believe it shouldn’t matter if a work is self-published or indie published or traditionally published. Bad books happen everywhere. Although it definitely is more baffling when something like this slips through a publishing house. (Then again, Twilight happened…..)
There is just so much wrong with this book. The characters struggle in this odd land between one-dimensional and three-dimensional. They’re two-dimensional? The structure itself is odd. We jump around at illogical points between Gemme/Lieutenant, the Seers’ lives on Old Earth, and the little crippled girl on the ship, Vira. I’d just get interested, finally, in one of the plots and then get yanked over to another one, only to have it happen all over again. Actually, the Seers’ lives are interesting and unique. I wish Dionne had simply told their story and ignored the total snoozefest that is the love interest between Gemme and the Lieutenant. These are all moderately minor things though that I could still see another reader enjoying, if it weren’t for the things that make zero fucking sense. There’s so many of them, I’m just gonna go ahead and bullet-point them for ya’ll.
- When the ship first crash-lands, the Seers (telekinetic, all-knowing types) announce that they have enough fuel to keep everyone warm and everything running for three months. Mysteriously, this number changes to three days without any explanation.
- Seriously, how could one person’s entire career be matchmaking one generation that fits on-board a space-ship? Plus, all she does is double-check the matches the computer sets up. This could be done in a day or two. A week at the most.
- NOBODY noticed little Vira’s telekinetic powers before now? Puhleeze.
- Supposedly the Seers’ eggs have been randomly implanted into random women for all the generations on-board the ship in the hopes of getting another Seer. Nobody knows this except the Matchmakers. Fact: The Seers are African-American. Double-fact: It appears almost everyone else on-board the ship is white. And you expect me to believe nobody noticed the random inter-racial babies popping up?! When these people mate for life? Apparently the facts of genetics that are so important to these people are completely unnoticed when it comes to race. HUH
As if these inconsistencies were not enough, there’s also the fact that Dionne simply tries to do too much throughout the book. Among the ideas and storylines going in this rather short book (thank god), we’ve got:
- People reliving their past lives in their dreams.
- Soulmates from past lives finding each other.
- The humans’ attempts to survive on Tundra 37.
- The explanation of how this ship got in the air in the first place.
- One seer’s love story.
- The story of the seers’ relationship with each other on Old Earth.
- How Old Earth went to hell.
- Vira being telekinetic and hiding it.
- An “evil entity” on board the ship.
- The mysterious orb.
- The mysterious beacon.
- The Gemme/Lieutenant/Luna love triangle (wtf is with the love triangles in romance novels?!)
Basically, the problem is, you can either tell the story of the Seers’ lives or the story of the colonist’s lives on Tundra 37. You can’t really do both. It’s confusing and jarring and seriously that orb/beacon thing was totally unnecessary for either one. This is honestly an understandable problem. Authors sometimes get too much going at once. But how it made it through editing and to publication in this format is beyond me. Could it be a typical outerspace, clean romance? (There is no sex). Sure! Is it the way it is now? Hell no! How it is now is a confusing mess that’s simply exhausting to read. Not what your typical romance reader is looking for or, really, any reader for that matter. Definitely give this one a pass.
2 out of 5 stars
Source: NetGalley
Previous Books in Series:
Paradise 21
Book Review: The Broken Sword by Joseph Robert Lewis (Series, #2)
Summary:
The international bunch from the first book is back, this time with their lives intersecting in Espani. Taziri is now flying the Halycon 2, which is an airplane instead of an airship. Major Zidane is working as flight security, and Keenan is her copilot. Qhora and Lorenzo are married and living in Madrid running a fencing school. One day, Taziri’s flight drifts a bit off-course, while bringing passengers from Italia to Mazigh, and they happen to spot a brand-new Espani warship that promptly shoots at them. Forced down over Espani, Taziri takes her passengers to Lorenzo’s home, where they stumble into the middle of his personal quest to find the skyfire stone. A stone that fell from heaven in the frigid northern part of Espani, and that is supposed to emit heat that Lorenzo hopes will save the faith of his fellow Espanis.
Review:
In the first book, Lewis surprised me by writing a steampunk that I actually enjoyed. In this one, he managed to do that with a fantasy. Definitely impressive.
Whereas the first book focused on Taziri and the Mazigh steampunk science, this one focuses in on Espani–a culture that shuns science and instead trusts in faith. This is certainly not a set-up that would lead me to be sympathetic toward Lorenzo at all, and yet. It’s hard to blame someone for having faith in a country where people routinely interact with ghosts and water spirits. Eventually it comes to make sense why the Espani are so steeped in their faith and why it’s important to Lorenzo. It is his culture, after all. His culture, his land, his people. He’s afraid that the steampower and innovations from the southern nations are going to overpower and ruin Espani. It’s a culture clash from history only turned a bit on its head with Europe being the one to cling to the old ways. I think addressing the issue this way makes it more understandable and thought-provoking for the reader.
My complaint in the first book was there was too much exposition and it took too long to get the action going. Not a problem here! The plot jumps right in with both feet and sweeps along at a good, steady pace. The method of switching character perspectives in each chapter also works better in this book than in the first one. Perhaps this is because we know and understand them better, but I also think that the overall plot is just better and more tightly structured this time around.
The settings evoked are again stunning, only this time the direct opposite of Mazigh. The frozen north is something I have an affinity for myself, having grown up near the Canadian border in Vermont, and Lewis demonstrates how weather affects culture quite well.
Not to be outdone, Syfax imitated her [taking a shot of vodka] and almost choked on the burning in his throat, but he held it back and managed a grin. “You drink this for fun?”
“No, I drink it to get drunk, major. When you live in a climate like this, some nights are best spent with your brain on fire, burning your blood from the inside out.” (location 1929)
Can I also say, this book has a very hot, sex-positive, sex scene, and I like it, and can we get more of that please? ;-)
Two things I didn’t like quite so much. First, Taziri’s plot again mostly involves her wanting to get back to her family and missing her daughter. This feels a bit too much like a repeat of the first book. Second, where were all the Espani women? I cannot think of a single significant one encountered in a whole book set there. This made me sad after the large presence of females in the first book. Qhora talks about Espani female gentility and such, but we don’t ever really see it.
Overall, this is a fulfilling follow-up to the first book that does not suffer from the middle book in the trilogy plight that so often occurs to book two. The setting is different, and the action is tighter. I’m excited to read the final book in the trilogy and am certain fans of the first book will not be disappointed by this one.
Oh, and Lewis? Can you please write something set in the New World? I need more giant, purring tigers in my life.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Kindle copy from the author in exchange for my honest review
Previous Books in Series:
The Burning Sky
Friday Fun! (FI Steps and One Year Gym Anniversary)
Hello my lovely readers! Wow, can you believe it’s February already? Craziness. It seems like January just flew right by.
So you know that I’ve started following the steps laid out in Your Money or Your Life. One of them is tallying up your categories each month to see where your “life energy” went. My first month of tallying was December to give me a clear idea of where I was starting from. So this was my first real month on the plan, thinking through everything as $7 = 1 hour of my life. When I did my tallies, I am shocked to report, that my expenditures went down by 83.7 hours!! And I wasn’t even really trying! I just stopped and thought if each purchase was really worth X hours of my life. The book said thinking that way just naturally curbs spending, but I really truly am shocked at how much it did in just one month.
In other exciting news, this weekend marks my one year anniversary of gym membership and commitment to my health. I’ll be doing my measurements and such with my trainer, but I don’t even need them done to know it’s working. I just feel so much healthier than I did a year ago. I have more energy, sleep better, have more enthusiasm, can handle things better. It feels so much better to go take your stress out in the gym than in other unhealthy ways like drinking, eating, or vegging out in front of the tv. It’s a real positivity boost. Anyway, in honor of my one year achievement, I’m finally going to let myself get a real gym bag. I hadn’t let myself because I refuse to spend money on things I might not stick with, but it’s obvious this habit is here to stay. I can’t wait to have a real gym bag with compartments for dirty clothes and shoes and straps to hold on a yoga mat. It’s definitely going to be worth the life energy it costs for the purchase. ;-)
This weekend I’m going to be very busy with a couple of projects I’m excited about. February is going to be awesome. :-)
Happy weekends all!
Book Review: Y: The Last Man: Ring of Truth by Brian K. Vaughan (Series, #5) (Graphic Novel)
Summary:
Yorick, Dr. Mann, and Agent 355 (not to mention Ampersand) have finally made it to California, which surprisingly has managed to mostly avoid the chaos taking over the rest of the US. Dr. Mann is hard at work attempting to figure out why Yorick and Ampersand have survived for so long. Meanwhile, the crazed assassins who broke off of 355’s Culper Ring are in hot pursuit of the whole bunch.
Review:
I’m pleased to say that this entry in the series returned to the former glory of volume 3 and avoided the oddness of volume 4.
Perhaps what’s best is how much Yorick is growing as a character. Finally! He actually has sex! And makes plans. And thinks things through. But not always, so he’s still him.
There is a lot of productivity in the storyline too. I like that Dr. Mann actually considers a fantastical explanation for Yorick’s survival so far. It adds another aspect to her character and the storyline as well. In fact this choice of believing known fact or believing in a fantasy is a recurring theme in this entry in the series, and one that I really enjoyed.
The art continues to be good, the storyline moves right along, Yorick is less annoying, plus sex! Definitely a worthwhile entry in the series.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Public Library
Previous Books in Series
Y: The Last Man: Unmanned
Y: The Last Man: Cycles
Y: The Last Man: One Small Step
Y: The Last Man: Safeword
Publication Announcement: Short Story in Down in the Dirt magazine February 2012 volume 103
Hello my lovely readers!
I just wanted to take a moment to let you know that my literary short story “The Most Lovely Morning” is now available in the February 2012 volume 103 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine!!
Tag along on an elderly woman’s morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Also, there’s a surprise ending. ;-)
You can read it for free electronically or get a print copy of the magazine for $7.67. Permanent links have been added to my publications page. Happy reading!
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 