Apr 19 2021

Astro Mouse And Light Bulb #1: Vs Astro Chicken by Fermín Solís

In the absurdist tradition of Sergio Aragones comes the work of his compatriot Fermín Solís, who goes forward in time instead of back a la Aragones’ Groo to bring us the adventures of Astro Mouse, a mouse who’s an astronaut, and his companion Light Bulb. The comic starts off quite cleverly, as our heroes are on a strange planet and realize that their lack of hunger and other bodily urges is both unnatural and potentially deadly. But that original bit of sophistication eventually leads to the introduction of, sigh, their pet poop, translated here by Jeff Whitman as Caca.

Kids who are at the stage of best appreciating gross-out humor will love this, but I admit to being too grossed out to fully appreciate the humor in their initial adventures. While Mr Solís has the excellent point that every parent thinks their kid is cute and everyone thinks their farts don’t stink, that doesn’t mean I want to look at the poop of others! By the time Astro Chicken rolls around in the second half of the book tho, I guess I’d gotten used to having Caca around, as I quite enjoyed that more traditional tale of Astro Mouse and Light Bulb butting heads with the domineering chicken who has come aboard to boss them around. The way they resolve their conflict with him is cute and, eventually, wholesome.

The art isn’t incredibly detailed, but adequately conveys the story. It’s definitely on the cartoon-y side, and seems to undergo a subtle change between the halves of the book. While the first part displays a traditional hand-drawn style, complete with visible art marker strokes, the second half employs more digitized effects. The art marker strokes are still visible, but the backgrounds are better filled in and the colors both more vibrant and more smoothly gradated. Interestingly, the line work suffers a bit for it, losing sharpness for several pages before balancing out better as the book closes.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/19/astro-mouse-and-light-bulb-1-vs-astro-chicken-by-fermin-solis/

Apr 16 2021

Malice by Heather Walter

This book was such a struggle to get through, and I might not have done it if I hadn’t been grimly determined to see how Heather Walter made good on the terrific premise of Sleeping Beauty’s true love actually being the dark fairy who cursed her. In the land of Briar, bordering on the fae land of Etheria, a long-ago treaty between humans and fae made it so that Graces are born whose golden blood can produce elixirs that enhance the abilities of their fellow humans. Briar, being a roundly stupid place, squanders this gift primarily on petty vanity.

When our heroine Alyce is discovered as a baby, it’s readily apparent that she’s half Vila, the magical race of once-fae whose corrupted powers led to their seeming extermination. But some Vila have apparently survived, and after a nightmarish childhood of testing and torture by humans and fae alike, Alyce is finally given the role of Dark Grace, whose green blood is used to enchant elixirs of physical misfortune for clients who wish semi-permanent harm to their rivals.

Chance encounters lead her first to a possible mentor who informs her that everything she’s learned about the Vila is wrong, as well as to Crown Princess Aurora, beautiful and doomed to die on her 21st birthday if she’s not released from her curse by true love’s kiss. A procession of royal male suitors is brought in to “save” her, but as Aurora and Alyce fall in love, they begin to wonder if there isn’t another way.

Great premise but told in a way that’s infuriatingly dull when not making idiotic narrative choices. First of all, it’s glaringly obvious that Alyce being employed by anyone other than the Royal Court is complete nonsense. I also found myself annoyed at the idea that the Briar Queens all gave up their power to their kings throughout generations. As a metaphor for female complicity, sure I get it, but it also ignores the fact that most women don’t willingly hand over power but have to have it taken from them, even moreso in monarchic structures. Sure you’ll get the occasional queen who will broaden her consort’s powers, but for every Mary II, you’ll have Elizabeths and Anne and Victoria firmly putting their men back in their places. And not out of any feminist belief — Lord knows Victoria was notoriously misogynistic — but because vested power in a ruler does not like to be divested. It was also weird to me how Alyce lamented Briar’s lack of military strength, given their heritage, but then clutched her pearls that King Tarkin was trying to restore said strength. Like, what did she think that strength was for?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/16/malice-by-heather-walter/

Apr 15 2021

Thao by Thao Lam

This is a beautiful children’s picture book that tackles a topic very near to my heart, seeing as I’m only now embracing my own Asian-inspired name in favor of the Anglo one I’ve used professionally since I started getting paid to review books. In my case, however, the Asian-inspired name is a weird mess my parents made up, hippie-style: even they caved and have been calling me Doreen for as long as I can remember. My real first name, Edaureen, is distinctive and, IMO, looks pretty on the page. It’s pronounced ee-DOW-reen but not even my best friend from grade school could get it right, so I’ve never minded being called Doreen, since that is essentially what I’ve been called since birth. Plus, it kinda stings whenever people pronounce it wrong (or when they think it’s a variant on Eduardo, like, wat?) so I actively encourage the nickname in social settings.

It’s my last name I’ve always felt bad about eliding. My parents shortened it from Muhamad Nor (my dad’s given name, as is tradition in my culture) to just Nor when I enrolled in American kindergarten, and I’ve pretty much gone by Doreen Nor when in the west, sometimes adding M as a pretend middle initial, a defiant reminder that I’m Muslim even if I don’t look it. I adopted Doreen Sheridan as my professional name after I married, tho I never changed it legally. Being both Muslim and Malaysian, the patriarchal adoption of a male spouse’s family name feels like an unnecessary erasure of my own identity. I was willing to go along with name changes socially and professionally, but legally just felt like too much of a negation of who I am, where I come from and what I believe.

Which is why I found this book exceedingly relatable. Telling the autobiographical story of the author as a little girl, trying to get people to call her by her actual name instead of a weird or even racist variant, this book is gorgeously designed and presented in a way that makes it easy for young readers to digest and empathize with. I’ve always been a fan of Thao Lam’s collage art, and love the incorporation of her own childhood photos here.

But I found it baffling that she doesn’t actually explain how to say her name. In the book, she shows a lot of the mispronunciations — several of which I’d guessed were how I was supposed to pronounce her name — but not the actual way to say it. And that’s a huge letdown. The name Thao and its correct pronunciation are uncommon knowledge. Readers likely picked up this book because they’re open to learning how to say it correctly. I get that Ms Lam might not have wanted to go into greater detail here about how to have that conversation in general — tho that’s a hugely useful topic for young readers, IMO! — but there’s a weird undercurrent of “if you can’t say my name correctly then you’re the one who’s deficient, not me.”

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/15/thao-by-thao-lam/

Apr 14 2021

Genghis Khan by Leo de Hartog

I’m glad that Leo de Hartog did not title this biography A Life of Genghis Khan because there is astonishingly little life between its covers. I would have thought the biography of someone who rose from a tribal noble to rule the largest land empire this world has ever known would be positively gripping, but no. Reading along, I first found myself dozing, then skimming, then skipping vast swathes of the book. This is by no means a complete review, because by no means did I read the whole of it. And I’ve even been to Mongolia! Flew in on MIAT’s flagship airplane, no less; it is of course named Chinggis Khan.

The main reason for the staid text can probably be found in the first sentence of the preface: “The study which forms the basis of this book began in 1941 when I was a prisoner of war in Colditz.” Though de Hartog published the book 48 years later, its premises, approach and style are all from a much earlier era. It was probably outdated and was definitely old-fashioned even when it was first published. A quick perusal of the bibliography showed fewer than a dozen sources published within a decade of de Hartog’s book, and far more sources from the 1930s and 1940s.

This biography offers a recitation of facts as dry as the Gobi, with no sense of contending interpretations or controversies and extremely little sense of the personalities involved. De Bartog is also clearly enamored of the Mongol ruler, speaking often of his brilliance, his excellent judgment of character, his wisdom, and so forth. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a biographer having a high opinion of the subject, but even in the few chapters I read, this struck me as jarring and unbalanced.

The maps are stuck in the back, hand drawn, lacking useful detail, and clearly not updated for the 2004 paperback edition. They might as well date back to the time when de Hartog began his studies.

This biography’s greatest virtue is probably its brevity. Less than 200 narrative pages separate the intrepid reader from its ending. After trudging through the first four chapters, which covered Genghis Khan’s early life and rise to ruler of the united Mongol tribes, I dipped back in here and there, and read most of the penultimate chapter, “The Mongol invader in Europe,” because I was especially curious about the encounter with the early Russian principalities. The chapter fit with the rest of the book by draining all zest from an epic collision of peoples. Alas.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/14/genghis-khan-by-leo-de-hartog/

Apr 13 2021

Love In Color: Mythical Tales From Around The World, Retold by Bolu Babalola

I finished this book of romantic short stories and thought to myself “why on earth did I think this was going to be more about myths than romance?” And then I copied the full title for this review and realized that it was because Love In Color has been marketed as such. Which is a bit baffling to me since, barring one story in this collection of thirteen, every single one of these tales ends in a Happily Ever After or Happily For Now, often in a significantly different manner from the original story. The original tale of Attem, for example, ends with our heroine, her lover and her servant being made truly gruesome examples of: the version here is definitely an improvement that still hearkens back to the folktale without losing any of the source material’s richness.

Arguably, that story, like the others in this book, is made richer by emphasizing female agency and the romantic aspects of each tale. Even the retelling of Scheherazade, with the only non-HEA/HFN ending here, is significantly less grimly patriarchal than the Thousand And One Nights original. Bolu Babalola determinedly reinterprets the stories, often setting them in modern milieus, and about half of the time it works. The stories of Yaa, Naleli and Zhinu are lovely subversions of their source material, with the questionable parts shorn off and female agency and love celebrated instead. More importantly, they feel like complete short stories, instead of ideas for longer works as almost all the rest of the folktale-based stories here do. Attem and Nefertiti’s stories, in particular, felt like outlines for dynamic novels of adventure and intrigue that I am interested in reading. As shorts, however, they taste less like appetizers than amuse bouches. It’s odd, too, how certain stories feel like just enough while others feel like too much. Psyche feels like an entire romance novel crammed into a short story sausage casing, while Orin — one of the original stories here — is perfect as is.

And yes, there are three stories collected at the end that are not founded in mythology. Tiara, the story of a woman reunited with the man who left her for his career, is the first and least successful in my opinion, though yours will likely vary based on what you think of long-distance romances. Orin and Alagomeji are both really terrific, and the fact that the latter is based on the lives of Ms Babalola’s parents is incredibly touching, ending the book on a note that perfectly matches the author’s heartfelt opening declaration as to her belief in romantic love.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/13/love-in-color-mythical-tales-from-around-the-world-retold-by-bolu-babalola/

Apr 12 2021

Dinosaur Explorers Vol. 8: Lord of the Skies by Redcode, Albbie & Air Team

As with the other Explorers titles produced by Malaysian company GempakStarz and distributed in America by Papercutz, Dinosaur Explorers is filled with the trademark coupling of gorgeous art with truly informative and educational text breaks. And while certain things don’t necessarily lend themselves well to cultural translations, others fall flat in any situation — or at least any situation in the year 2021, as we’re hopefully coming out of a global pandemic and should be thinking of how we can be kinder and more respectful of one another as human beings.

I am referring, of course, to the early gag of Rain and the professor, two of the most important characters in this book, deciding to not only spy on the two female members of the Dinosaur Explorers team as they bathe in hot springs but also to make derogatory comments as to the 13 year-old’s body not being developed enough to be worth spying on. While the feminine duo is depicted as being clever in the ways they foil these pervs, can we not normalize that kind of misogynistic behavior in the first place, especially in people we’re meant to root for? It’s deeply disrespectful, truly trash behavior, and I’m sick of seeing it in mainstream Asian comics.

The rest of the book isn’t terrible. The overall premise is that the team has accidentally traveled back in time and gotten stuck, able only to hop forward several hundred years or so with each jump. Given how long dinosaurs roamed the earth, this means that they spend a lot of time studying and trying to avoid being eaten by same. This volume focuses on the period when dinosaurs took to the skies, examining the known science behind what we believe of the time and providing a fanciful tale to bring home to readers the majesty and danger of these prehistoric creatures.

The story follows Rain as he and the two other teenage boys of the group, smart Sean and strong Stone, head off to gather food for the party, aided by their robot supercomputer Little S. Trying to gather eggs only gets them into trouble, so they eventually find their way to the sea to fish. Fortunately, seafood is plentiful, but amassing such a large amount draws the attention of predators. The boys will have to battle their way home, discovering unexpected allies through kindness and friendship.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/12/dinosaur-explorers-vol-8-lord-of-the-skies-by-redcode-albbie-air-team/

Apr 09 2021

An Interview with Oliver K. Langmead, author of Birds Of Paradise

Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. Birds Of Paradise had a particularly long gestation, as you note in your afterword. How did this novel evolve?

A. In the end, it took me more than a decade to finish writing Birds of Paradise. It began as a colourful explosion of a book called Eden Rose, which was so full of ideas that I still sometimes turn back to it today. Of course, it was completely unpublishable. But over the years, I would occasionally turn back to that original idea (What if the first man was still alive today? What if all of Eden was scattered across the world? How far would he go to collect the pieces of the garden together again?) and write an entirely new draft from scratch, learning from each draft along the way. Back in 2016, after the publication of my second book, Metronome, I sat down again for a fresh new draft and made a promise to myself – no more compromises. It would take me another three years to finish writing it, but I can tell you that I did what I set out to do. I finally have a version of the book worthy of the idea behind it.

Q. As a person of faith who takes as metaphor the scripture on which you based your novel, I was particularly impressed with the layers of metaphor you continued to layer on here, particularly with the flooding and with humanity coming together at Pride. What inspired that for you?

A. My partner says that fantasy is an act of literalised metaphor, and I think there’s a lot of that here. Eden is (largely) regarded as metaphor in scripture (though Milton would disagree), and Birds of Paradise is an exercise in literalising it. What if Eden was real? What if pieces of it were still around? How would the first man feel about the world we live in today? But also – how would Adam express himself? Of course, he would use metaphors himself, because he’s human, and humans have always used metaphor as a significant means of understanding themselves and each other.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/09/an-interview-with-oliver-k-langmead-author-of-birds-of-paradise/

Apr 08 2021

Advanced Triggernometry (Triggernometry #2) by Stark Holborn

With this sequel to the gangbusters math- and gun-slinging debut of the Triggernometry series, Stark Holborn goes from tackling the heist trope to taking on the theme of Seven Samurai. Professor “Mad” Malago Brown has gone into hiding again, pretending to be a simple schoolmarm, when she’s approached by three desperate women from the nearby town of Summerville. A rancher named Austin has moved in and told the townsfolk that he’s the area’s new Capitol Representative. No one questioned this until Austin’s taxation went from inconvenient to deadly. When Marshal Miller went to the sheriff in the next town over for help, she was told to take it up with the local Capitol Representative — a vicious cycle that can only spell even more trouble, or worse, for a town already pressed to its limit.

Not knowing where else to turn, the townsfolk take a vote and decide to seek help from those deadliest of outlaws: mathematicians. Browne is hardly interested in upsetting her quiet new life in order to help people who, at best, look down on her kind, but her inability to let inequalities stand drives her to round up a crew to help Summerville fight back. And so seven mathematicians gather to help protect a small town against the Capitol and its Representative, hoping to strike a greater blow for freedom and equality.

I very much enjoyed this second Triggernometry novella, as Browne and her desperate crew fight enemies from both outside and inside Summerville, while winning hearts and minds to her cause. For whatever reason, the lack of back story (why, I still wonder, are mathematicians outlawed in this alternate universe?) seemed less pressing an issue for me than while reading the first book, so absorbed was I in the immediacy of the proceedings. I did wonder exactly what happened to the Kincaid boy when he was surrounded by the rest of the posse, but overall think this was a terrific alt-Western tale of math so fancy it looks like magic.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/08/advanced-triggernometry-triggernometry-2-by-stark-holborn/

Apr 07 2021

Triggernometry by Stark Holborn

Mathemagics is totally my jam, so I honestly have no idea why I’d never heard of this series till the author messaged me about it! In this first novella of the series, “Mad” Malago Browne is one of the mathematicians outlawed by the Capitol, eking out a living doing illicit math jobs in the Western States. When she and partner Pierre “Polecat” Fermat are betrayed by someone they thought they were helping, Browne swears off the outlaw life and goes into hiding as a simple railroad assistant in a small, out of the way town.

Fast forward five years and Fermat needs her for a big score that could give them enough money to flee the country and live unbothered across the border in Mexico. Browne is reluctant to give up her quiet life but, when forced to abandon it, resentfully joins Fermat as he puts together a crew. Betrayals, hijinks and acts of derring-do — usually involving a set of mathematical tools — ensue.

A lot happens in this novella’s 50-odd pages, and I was panting to read more by the end of it. While a large part of this was due to how exciting the story had been, I also found myself wishing that more of the setting had been filled out. I know mathematicians had been outlawed by the Capitol States in this universe but I wanted to know why this version of the United States, a capitalist mecca going centuries back, would so violently repudiate math and therefore the means to economic and scientific dominion. And why, if Mexico was more accommodating to mathematicians, it hadn’t invited them all over and used their skills to overpower its determinedly ignorant northern neighbor. I really dug all the mathemagical fighting otherwise, so I’m very much hoping more of the setting is explored in the follow-up, due out tomorrow!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/07/triggernometry-by-stark-holborn/

Apr 06 2021

The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente

In 1999, Gail Simone made a list “when it occurred to [her] that it’s not healthy to be a female character in comics. … These are superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator. Some have been revived, even improved — although the question remains as to why they were thrown in the wood chipper in the first place.” Once you start to notice how often female characters exist merely to motivate male characters you can’t stop seeing it.

In The Refrigerator Monologues, Catherynne M. Valente gives voice to six such women. It’s a ferocious deconstruction of comic-book tales, undertaken by a true fan who wants them to be better, who knows they could be better, and who is utterly indignant about the laziness that keeps them from being what they could be. And in an age when comic-derived stories make billions at the box office and spawn many more tales on smaller screens, improving the source matter is hardly a trivial notion. Valente explains in her acknowledgments:

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank the pantheon of comics writers, artists, and creators—great and small—who built the grand superhero universe in which we have all been swimming in over the last century. None of my girls and none of my heroes could possibly exist without them, and even when I get my anger on, I have nothing but respect and honor for the monumental feat of deliberate mythology that they have, and continue to, accomplish. …
More specifically, the deepest bow and greatest thanks must go to Gail Simone, who first noticed, named, and collated evidence for the phenomenon of Women in Refrigerators and brought it to the attention of the culture at large and who has fought the good fight for decades. … On the other side of the coin, thank you to Even Ensler, whose The Vagina Monologues detonated the theatrical scene when I was coming-of-age as a young feminist-actress type of thing. Both in title and structure The Vagina Monologues gave me a sturdy framework on which to hang my frustration with the roles of women in superhero stories. (pp. 149–50)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/06/the-refrigerator-monologues-by-catherynne-m-valente/