Recent Reviews: May

Summer Lightning by P.G. Wodehouse

I laughed. I cried. Beautiful sentences. Beautiful paragraphs. Beautiful chapters. Beautiful novel.  5/5

Criminal, Vol. 7: Wrong Time, Wrong Place

by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

At this point I know what I'm getting with these: a bit of quick and dirty fun. This one is a two-part graphic novel, or two short stories, one told from the p.o.v. of recurring Brubaker character, career criminal Teeg Lawless, and one told from the viewpoint of his preteen son (and getaway driver), which has some bittersweet nostalgic touches. Of course I liked the fact that both father and son read comic books and they are incorporated into the story, dimly echoing an aspect of the characters' psyche. The dad reads a black-and-white pastiche of Savage Sword of Conan with lots of naked women in it, and the kid gets hooked on old issues of a Werewolf-by-Night/Chang-chi mash-up called Kung-fu Werewolf, both published by something like the short-lived 1970s Skywald outfit. 3/5

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

I loved the Nineties-ness of this whole package, from the book jacket design, to the serial-killer p.o.v., to the inclusion of the narrator's hand-drawn doodles. Tightly-written with some suspenseful structure. 3/5

Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery

by Amitav Ghosh

Complex, funny, hallucinatory sci-fi horror-thriller about an immortal cult of anti-science scientists that may or may not exist. I liked the jumbled structure, with two different time-periods and point-of-views, investigating a mystery going forward and backward, with epistolary and other classic novelistic devices. Open-ended and baffling, but in a good way. 3/5

The Mysterious Underground Men (Ten-cent Manga)

by Osamu Tezuka,  Ryan Holmberg (Translator)

Tezuka's first longform "story manga" is a charming children's science fiction tale of a boy inventor and an anthropomorphic rabbit on a quest to tunnel through the earth in their rocket train. Equal parts Jules Verne, Tom Swift, and Floyd Gottfredson, the feverish plot revolves around an apocalyptic war with the titular subterranean civilization. The common Tezuka theme of what it means to be human is embodied in the highly capable Mimio, the rabbit character given intelligence by a cadre of Frankenstein-esque scientists, who must prove his worth by saving his friends and humanity. In his Pinocchio-like agonizing, Mimio anticipates later heroes in the Tezuka pantheon like Astroboy. 3/5

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