Sophronia and her friends are getting ready to head back to her hometown for her brother’s engagement masquerade ball (ah, yes. the traditional engagement masquerade – the husband and I really missed out). Their good friend, who is part of a werewolf pack (although not a werewolf herself), is distraught and leaves their dirigible school when she gets bad news. From there, things get even odder. Steampunk is a fairly new genre for me, but I get its appeal, and I enjoy these somewhat quick […]
And the plot thickens…
In Curtsies & Conspiracies, the second of Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series, we join Sophronia Temminnick for her next stint at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. Sophronia is fifteen now (we somehow missed her birthday) and she is up for her six-month review. She has learned her lessons perhaps too well, as she is now shunned by her classmates. Although disappointed, this does not stop her from continuing her adventures! And an adventure it now is, for not only are we […]
The Start of the Finish
Etiquette & Espionage, Gail Carriger’s first installment of her YA series set in the universe of the Parasol Protectorate, is an absolute delight. The events take place before Soulless, and can be thoroughly enjoyed without having read the other series. I read Soulless a few years ago, and am ashamed to admit that I don’t remember much, just the basics that werewolves and vampires are out in society, and that vampires are fabulous (which is not the main point of the book, but certain things […]
Slick As Sh*t
There is a very deliberate sort of chaos in Perdido Street Station. Everything about it is designed to force square pegs into the rounder, well-worn holes of our expectations for fantasy and horror. Its pages are occupied by fantastical races, but their separation from humanity is stark and marked. There are no beautiful elves or noble dwarves found in New Crobuzon, but there are frog-like vodyanoi and beetle-headed khepri and culturally alien bird-folk and inconveniently spiny cactus people and…and…and… There is a very deliberate […]
This book was great until this thing happened and then more things happened and then I was thoroughly overstimulated and then I didn’t know what to think anymore.
Okay, so you know how sometimes when you have a fever and you’re all achy and you have the chills, your skin is like, really absurdly sensitive? And it hurts to wear clothes but if you take off your clothes you’ll be cold and get the fever shivers, so you wear the clothes, and you can feel everything, from all over your arm hairs and back hairs (and all the other hairs, too), and after a while all of the sensations together actually start to hurt collectively, […]
Chaos, Confusion, Twain and Tesla
The Five Fists of Science, by Matt Fraction (Art by Steven Sanders) is one of those books. I really wanted to like it, and it has a promising premise, but in the end it’s more a fun concept than a good story. Is it a graphic novelette? Yes. Is it steampunk? Sort of. Is it a superhero comic? Maybe? Lovecraftian? Yes, that. Is it an Alternate History with Famous Personages? Yes, also that. Plus, I think there was some influence from Godzilla and also possibly […]