Comics Review: The Order of the Circle
Elisabeth Mkheidze’s art is strong throughout. Characters are clearly delineated and distinct, and their emotional states are conveyed effectively through expression and body language. Some comics artists tend towards conveying intense expressions too strongly, and characters’ faces look like caricatures or theatrical masks as a result. This seems like a small point, but in a graphic novel with a protagonist who spends virtually all her time on the page some combination of furious, terrified, and grieving, it’s important.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: An Elephant for Aristotle
“… This reinforces the clear point of view that De Camp promotes in the book, and that is one of multiculturalism and diversity being good things for people to experience and for polities to have. Time and again, having a wide and diverse group, or tribe, or nation is superior, clearly, to monoculture alternatives.”
Interview: Natania Barron, author of Netherford Hall
“It is *thrilling* to write. I love watching characters fall in love and question their own selves, and grow into something new. The best relationships can do that.”
A Book by its Cover: THE FAMILIAR by Leigh Bardugo
Joke review: “… the more highbrow reader will surely appreciate how Bardugo plays with a lighthearted Hegelian concept and complicates it within an esoteric historical fantasy plot…”
Book Review: Immortal Pleasures, by V. Castro
I was pleased to sink my teeth into Immortal Pleasures by V. Castro, about an ancient Nahua (from what’s now Mexico) vampire roaming the modern world. Some elements of the book weren’t to my taste, but it was fairly interesting and entertaining.
Book Review: The Navigating Fox, by Christopher Rowe
I wouldn’t call this novella undemanding, because there are various questions for the reader to think about along the way, but it is a very pleasant journey. Not all the questions are resolved, but enough are addressed for the reader, if not necessarily the fox, to be well satisfied.
