Lucas Blogs About Books

Hmm, I know I've seen this book cover before  . . .  somewhere . So, what's this book's de—motherf— Last one, I promise. I just think you're setting a bad precedent. What if you finally finish one of your phonebook sized short story collections? We'll burn that bridge when we get to it. You know that's not the expr— Oh, and spoilers for "Remake," I guess. AUGH! So, the deal? All right, so Theodora Baumgarten finds her life transformed when she's whisked away to the IASA's (International Air and Space Administration, I assume) academy. And get this, it's in SPACE! SPACE! SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE! So I take it that she's excited? Naw, her bunkmate, Libby, is ecstatic, but Theodora hates it, not least of all because she didn't apply to go to the academy—she wanted to go to UCLA.  However, when an assembly is called to announce the latest Academy appointee, it's Theodora. After a few hours, she'...

Hey! Sorry, there's no post today. I know Easter was yesterday, and I write these in advance, but . . . whatevs! No blog post today. Hope you're enjoying/have enjoyed Spring Break at some point in your life! Wow, this is even more lazy and tepid than your Christmas post . Quiet you!

For once, that glare is present in the artwork itself and not due to the lighting in my room. Mister Miracle is a book about #fourthworldproblems (sorry, couldn't resist). So, before we really get into it, I'll give you a little background on just who Mister Miracle is (the comic book also starts off by doing this). The cataclysm that destroyed the Old Gods left behind two new planets: New Genesis, a paradise ruled by the wise and benevolent Highfather, and Apokolips, a dystopian hellscape under the iron fist of Darkseid. A hundred year war between these worlds was ended when Highfather and Darkseid exchanged their infant sons. Highfather named Darkseid's son Orion and raised him as his own, but Darkseid abandoned Highfather's son into the X-Pit under the cruel tutelage of Granny Goodness. Due to his constant escape attempts, Highfather's son was given the mocking moniker of Scott Free. Eventually, Orion would learn of a prophecy that Darkseid would be killed...

Here we are, the second entry in my attempt to re-read all thirteen entries in Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" over the course of a year-ish. I hope you've had a good month. Before we jump in, just a reminder, this will contain the dreaded SPOILERS . So, if you haven't read these books, yet, just know that I'm not going to be making any concessions to you. You don't have to be so rude about it. No, I don't. Book the Second -  The Reptile Room What did you remember about this book before re-reading it? Well, I remember this book as being the only one in which the Baudelaires are in the care of a truly likable guardian: their Uncle Monty. Monty is a kindly herpetologist with a sense of irony who warmly welcomes our orphaned heroes into his home. It also introduces one of the series' main tropes: Count Olaf wearing a terrible, completely transparent disguise which somehow only the Baudelaires can see through. So, yeah, t...

More Squirrel Girl? More Squirrel Girl! All right, let's get this over with. You know, if you stopped treating these comic reviews as a chore they'd stop being one. You're not this obnoxiously chipper IRL, are you? Definitely not, but that upbeat attitude is what I love about this comic, as I have previously mentioned. But let's jump right in. Volume 9: Squirrels Fall Like Dominoes , more so than any previous volume of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl , exemplifies the ethos of it's indefatigably optimistic hero. This volume finds Doreen Green (the aforementioned Squirrel Girl) worried about her new friend Sergei Kravinoff (better known as Kraven the Hunter). So along with her friends Nancy Whitehead (Doreen's roommate), Tomas Lara-Perez (Chipmunk Hunk), Ken Shiga (Koi Boi), Brian Drayne (Brain Drain), and Mary (Tomas's girlfriend), she invites him to go to an escape room. Little do they know that Jomo, the proprietor, is actually Mojo II — an obsc...

Huh, this is familiar . So, what's this book's de—hey! We had a whole bit about this last time , if you're going to be blogging about each of these novellas individually, you gotta have a picture with their title! My bad! How prescient! That's better. So, then, this book's deal is? Well, like "Uncharted Territory," "Remake" is a sci-fi novella that Connie Willis published in the 1990s. Unlike "Uncharted Territory" it seems to take place on Earth in what must be the early 21st Century. How d'ya figure? Well, one of the characters was born the year Fred Astaire died, which was 1987, meaning that she's only a few years younger than me. It's probably set in the late 2000s or early 2010s. Well, as scintillating as this discussion of how old one of the characters in the story is, would you care to elaborate on its deal? Oh, right. Anyway, we open on our protagonist Tom, an on-again-off-again film student who...