I keep accidentally picking up sci-fi mysteries, and I‘m a little puzzled by the sub-genre. In Sci-fi one of the mysteries that moves you through the story is “how does the universe work in this story?” Trying to unravel both a universe and a who-done it seems like it will leave one or the other short changed.

This was written in 2020. It‘s galling how much worse things have gotten since then and frustrating how many of the online right wing figures referenced feel dated, but have been seamlessly replaced in online spaces by NEW online misogynists (and government officials).

A charming survey of some whimsical and nearly forgotten traditions.

There was something very claustrophobic about this book. Alefret is stuck in his body, in his prison, with his injuries, with Qhudur, in the political position he finds himself in, with the lies that have been told, with the state of the world, with his loses, with his morals. Alefret isn‘t a passive character but he does feel trapped.

There are shades of Labyrinth in this book, by which I mean the Lady of the Hills and Jareth could both have been played by David Bowie, in my head.

The disease was framed, as disease so often has been, as a moral quandary; if you don‘t wear high heels, and you don‘t live unnaturally in the city, and you don‘t drink, and you don‘t cry at night when you‘re 4 years old and miss your mother, then you will survive.

Larson is a good author. But there was some language that felt wrong. I think it came from primary sources. But it was weird. Using the term “relationship” to describe owners having sex with women and girls they own is a weird, racist, old fashioned soft pedaling of rape. You can‘t consent, if you can‘t safely say “No”.

Death is natural. Children dying is natural. None of us actually want to live in a natural world. Treating disease is unnatural….and yet we tell ourselves that some, and only some, lives end naturally, which means acceptably.

Gar “I‘ve grown a lot of horns in my time and, professionally speaking, these feel like they‘re for show, rather than being functional. Same can be said of the wings really. I mean you can already fly.” Raven (the dark-winged queen) “With a beat of these wings cities will be blown to dust”
Gar “Sure, if that‘s what you‘re into.”

Poor and middle class white people help rich assholes set the country on fire, out of fear that people of color might get access to parts of it

I feel like someone should write a paper about the creation, idealization, and destruction of simple binaries and how that relates to magic in this book and English Language fantasy. There‘s a lot going on there even if the bare bones of the story are YA wish fulfillment. Also, I desperately want to know why the protagonist is from Florida, while the magic school is in Scotland, and the author is Australian.

“But I smile and sit and eat dinner with them, because almost belonging is better than being alone”.

Readable, but not in depth. Does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.

I like how this book dealt with not being “chosen”.

It‘s weird how much of homophobia is about power dynamics, even during a revolution.

“They confuse manliness with brutality” Sigrid Schultz in reference to Goering and the Nazis

Group of survivors of a monster apocalypse get to the source of the outbreak in the heart of West Hollywood prepared to fight monsters and find a fancy gala at the Pacific Design Center: “What‘s the battle plan if it‘s just white people?”

It seems like the people who made this had fun doing it. It‘s a campy media aware monster apocalypse story. “What if Shawn of the Dead was about a group of queer teens visiting a drag show in WeHo? And there are dragons?”.

This feels like a solid start to a story. The main character is more relatable than charming. But she‘s only little, by which I mean a college student.

Cool setting, nice use of language, and just a pretty pretty book. It‘s like a Susanna Clarke amuse-bouche, it won‘t satisfy you, you‘ll just want more. And by “you”, I mean me.

This graphic novel moved from art style to art style, team roster to team roster, tone to tone faster than Nightcrawler teleports from place to place. It felt like a lot of missed opportunities. Only potentially for Excalibur completists.

What this really made me wonder is, what if the Weimar Republic hadn‘t ended? In WWII books the end of the Weimar Republic always feels like a forgone conclusion, but I don‘t think it felt that way to people living through it.

It felt like a weight I didn‘t know I was carrying was lifted to read a fantasy about someone with a chronic illness. Real seeming chronically ill characters, where it‘s every day, don‘t show up much in genre fiction. Then I started to wonder why the character wasn‘t stressing about paying for their medication. I thought they must be fabulously wealthy. Then I remembered, the author is Irish not American. Now I‘m just kinda sad.

Whew, I don‘t know much about Bauhaus. But the dislike that the author holds for Gropius‘s wife Alma, seems over the top and problematic.

This doesn‘t have a plot, it‘s just a series of cute cat drawings, and I‘m okay with that.

This is an interesting topic. Having more walkable communities, better transportation, less car centered growth is always the hope. It always seems so potentially doable. But ….

I only have #6 in this series, so all I know for sure is that it is very, very pretty.

Emma Frost rally‘s everyone to fight fascists and reference‘s Mean Girls.

“You could have left…maybe you would have gotten away. I‘ll never truly understand you”. “We didn‘t leave …because we belong! Because we say so.”

This reminds me of It by Stephen King; the story has the same sort of cyclic horror and abuse hiding behind a the facade of a “nice” town. Unlike It, the monster in loving is a religion (or cult), and the religion is a pyramid scheme, and it remains undefeated by the end of the story. That tension of the monstrous thing confronted but not defeated, just escaped, feels very adult.

#Choose20 comics that stuck with you or influenced you. Post one cover a day, in no particular order. No reviews, no explanations. Just covers. Day 20:Castle Waiting Volume 1: Lucky Road

#Choose20 comics that stuck with you or influenced you. Post one a day. No reviews, no explanations. Just covers. Day 19 : Hopeless Savages #4

#Choose20 comics that influenced you or stayed with you. Post one a day. No reviews, no explanations. Just covers. Day 18: Giant Days - Volume 4

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. Post one a day. In no particular order. No reviews, no explanations. Just covers. Day 17: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. One comic a day, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. Day 16 - The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. Post one a day, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. Day 15: Uncanny X-Men 303

#Choose20 comics that influenced you or stayed with you. One comic a day in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. Day 14: Relish

Meh. This was less about Vivian Gordon than it about people around her.

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. Post one comic a day, in no particular order. No reviews, no explanations. Just covers. Day 13: Locke & Key #2

This was a pretty breezy history of lipstick in the US specifically. And, more specifically, how lipstick was sold to woman and thus what being a woman was supposed to mean at different points in history. The ways economics and makeup interact drew special attention.

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. One a day, in no particular order. No reviews, no explanations. Just covers. Day 12: Books of Magic #35 The Burning Girl

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. One comic a day, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. Day 11: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. One comic a day, in no particular order. No reviews, no explanations. Just covers. Day 10: Grayson 5

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. One comic a day in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. Day 9: Strangers In Paradise volume 2

The frantic multiverse travels of Dead X-men is enjoyable, although too high stakes to be fun. I read this based on the team make-up. So if you like Jubilee, Rachel, Cannonball, Dazzler, Frenzy and Prodigy you might like this. (I will never understand Prodigy‘s power. Someone explain it to me.)

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. One comic a day in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. Day 8: Leave it to Chance: Shaman‘s Rain

Saga sets up gut punches really well.

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. One comic a day, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews. Just covers. The Cartoon History of the Universe: Day 7

#Choose20 comics that stayed with you or influenced you. One comic a day, in no particular order. No reviews, no explanations. Just covers. Day 6: The Wicked, the Divine.