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larryhammer " ... if you can't send help, send two more women"
A couple odd ducks I've read these last few months:
The subtitle of Andrew Hudgins's Shut Up, You're Fine is "Poems for Very, Very Bad Children". This is one of those cases where "bad children" is code word for "grown-ups who haven't quite grown up", as that seems to be the actual target audience, anyway. But, well, that's me -- so I'm good here.
The collection itself is light verse in a sort of updated Shel Silverstein vein, which happens to be surprisingly solid craftwise, making it fun to read in more than one way. All the more so for the occasional veins of pure ore, in the Keatsian sense, that show up in the rifts.
I do get the impression that, as a child, Hudgins felt about grandparents what some people do about clowns.
As you know, Bob, I'm fond of quirky manga tag lines. "The lollipop romance exploding with in-her-seventies granny power!" is odd, even by those standards. From Kimiko Kikuchi, the creator of Angel Manual (of the angel-as-dino-plushie), it's the just as charmingly eccentric Obaa-chan wa Idol -- "Granny Is a Pop Idol". Momoka's born-in-the-1920s grandmother Tamaki is accidentally electrocuted and "for some reason" has the looks and body of a 16-year-old again. Okay, sure, we can go with that. And decides to attend Momoka's high school. Er. Oooooo-kaythen.
Author's first serial, and it shows. She hadn't yet gotten a handle on her manner of stringing together disconnected scenes of one to three pages into a coherent narrative, with the result that it's just scattered. Worse, given the title, it takes two volumes before granny is actually scouted (for her old-fashioned air) by a talent agency -- and until then, the joke of a not just old-fashioned but out-of-date apparent-teen lecturing her classmates in traditional arts is overdone. And do we really believe that she hasn't reset her sense of the worth of a hundred yen since she was a child? Not really, especially when we see her running into it over and over.
Still, the series has its (enforcedly nostalgic) charms. Kikuchi's other show-biz series, Complex, is a better story though.
The title alone, Maimiko Touko no Jikenbo or "The Case Files of Priestess Touko", is promising. Touko being a high school student and scion of the family shinto shrine, where she is not only a miko but a kagura dancer, one good enough she gets hired by other shrines. Which is a good thing, as the shrine is impoverished and needs all the money she can bring home. However, Touko has no small amount of spiritual power, which gives her dances their efficacy but causes more spiritual encounters, let us say, than is compatible with a steady income.
The series is a single volume of episodic stories, which I suppose is one of the title's promises. An author's note pleadingly suggests that if sales are good enough, it might be continued; apparently not. The stories are interesting, as manga based on traditional Japanese lore often are, but variable in quality. But what really makes it an odd duck is that here, in this shoujo series, Touko is drawn as the most beautiful bishoujo I have seen, hands down.
Not that the series as a whole is as beautiful as, say, Bride of the Water God. The bishounen are, here, pretty enough but merely average for the type. Touko herself, though, especially when she dances, is drop dead gorgeous. (And yet, of course, has no boyfriend -- which, of course, she so desperately wants. Did I mention this is shoujo?)
You know how some novels have a sort of notional shape? and how some first novels don't hold together perfectly, as if they are wobbling out of that shape? Kristin Cashore's Graceling was one of those, where it takes about two-thirds of the book to solidify in the mold. So to speak.
The prequel, Fire, has the opposite problem: the shape is solid until the last third, where it starts wobbling. Which is kind of a shame, because as an exploration of what it's like to live with the advantages and disadvantages of a powerful Mary Sue field, one that makes everyone else orient on you, it's pretty fun. Until around the point, that is, where the scope of the worldbuilding hole (like plothole, only it's setting, not event) in the ecology becomes evident. More of an issue is something I can't even mention without being *deeply* spoilery, but the way the climax was handled makes me wonder why this even had to be set in the same world as, let alone include a character from, Graceling. Still, a good and recommended read, and even better than Graceling.
Unfortunately, when I tried to read an actual duck, it wouldn't sit still. Stupid mallard.
*Harpo comes through door, holds up three fingers*
"Make that three more women."
---L.
A couple odd ducks I've read these last few months:
The subtitle of Andrew Hudgins's Shut Up, You're Fine is "Poems for Very, Very Bad Children". This is one of those cases where "bad children" is code word for "grown-ups who haven't quite grown up", as that seems to be the actual target audience, anyway. But, well, that's me -- so I'm good here.
The collection itself is light verse in a sort of updated Shel Silverstein vein, which happens to be surprisingly solid craftwise, making it fun to read in more than one way. All the more so for the occasional veins of pure ore, in the Keatsian sense, that show up in the rifts.
I do get the impression that, as a child, Hudgins felt about grandparents what some people do about clowns.
As you know, Bob, I'm fond of quirky manga tag lines. "The lollipop romance exploding with in-her-seventies granny power!" is odd, even by those standards. From Kimiko Kikuchi, the creator of Angel Manual (of the angel-as-dino-plushie), it's the just as charmingly eccentric Obaa-chan wa Idol -- "Granny Is a Pop Idol". Momoka's born-in-the-1920s grandmother Tamaki is accidentally electrocuted and "for some reason" has the looks and body of a 16-year-old again. Okay, sure, we can go with that. And decides to attend Momoka's high school. Er. Oooooo-kaythen.
Author's first serial, and it shows. She hadn't yet gotten a handle on her manner of stringing together disconnected scenes of one to three pages into a coherent narrative, with the result that it's just scattered. Worse, given the title, it takes two volumes before granny is actually scouted (for her old-fashioned air) by a talent agency -- and until then, the joke of a not just old-fashioned but out-of-date apparent-teen lecturing her classmates in traditional arts is overdone. And do we really believe that she hasn't reset her sense of the worth of a hundred yen since she was a child? Not really, especially when we see her running into it over and over.
Still, the series has its (enforcedly nostalgic) charms. Kikuchi's other show-biz series, Complex, is a better story though.
The title alone, Maimiko Touko no Jikenbo or "The Case Files of Priestess Touko", is promising. Touko being a high school student and scion of the family shinto shrine, where she is not only a miko but a kagura dancer, one good enough she gets hired by other shrines. Which is a good thing, as the shrine is impoverished and needs all the money she can bring home. However, Touko has no small amount of spiritual power, which gives her dances their efficacy but causes more spiritual encounters, let us say, than is compatible with a steady income.
The series is a single volume of episodic stories, which I suppose is one of the title's promises. An author's note pleadingly suggests that if sales are good enough, it might be continued; apparently not. The stories are interesting, as manga based on traditional Japanese lore often are, but variable in quality. But what really makes it an odd duck is that here, in this shoujo series, Touko is drawn as the most beautiful bishoujo I have seen, hands down.
Not that the series as a whole is as beautiful as, say, Bride of the Water God. The bishounen are, here, pretty enough but merely average for the type. Touko herself, though, especially when she dances, is drop dead gorgeous. (And yet, of course, has no boyfriend -- which, of course, she so desperately wants. Did I mention this is shoujo?)
You know how some novels have a sort of notional shape? and how some first novels don't hold together perfectly, as if they are wobbling out of that shape? Kristin Cashore's Graceling was one of those, where it takes about two-thirds of the book to solidify in the mold. So to speak.
The prequel, Fire, has the opposite problem: the shape is solid until the last third, where it starts wobbling. Which is kind of a shame, because as an exploration of what it's like to live with the advantages and disadvantages of a powerful Mary Sue field, one that makes everyone else orient on you, it's pretty fun. Until around the point, that is, where the scope of the worldbuilding hole (like plothole, only it's setting, not event) in the ecology becomes evident. More of an issue is something I can't even mention without being *deeply* spoilery, but the way the climax was handled makes me wonder why this even had to be set in the same world as, let alone include a character from, Graceling. Still, a good and recommended read, and even better than Graceling.
Unfortunately, when I tried to read an actual duck, it wouldn't sit still. Stupid mallard.
*Harpo comes through door, holds up three fingers*
"Make that three more women."
---L.