Lucas Blogs About Books

Oops! I left in the bookmark. You may have heard of N.K. Jemisin because she's been a bit of a big deal in the speculative fiction scene lately. And there's a good reason for that: each entry in her Broken Earth trilogy won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. That's three consecutive Hugo wins (obviously), and it's also the first time every entry in a series has won. Which is why I picked up this book and decided to give it a shot. The Fifth Season  is the first of the Broken Earth books, and it begins with the end of the world, sort of. See, it takes place on a supercontinent known as the Stillness. This is a bit of a misnomer as there is a colossal fault running along its east-west axis which is subject to extraordinary seismic activity, These earthquakes and volcanic flare-ups are referred to as seasons, and when they're bad enough to cause something akin to a nuclear winter, they're referred to as fifth seasons. But we're just getting started on the...

Oh, Assassin Nation sounds like "assassination," I get it. So, what's this book's deal? Well, the deal with Assassin Nation: Number One with a Bullet  is that it's a comic book written by Kyle Starks and drawn by Erica Henderson. You may recall that Henderson was the original artist who worked with Ryan North on The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl   . As for Kyle Starks, this is the first time I've read his work. Anyway, the comic opens with the attempted assassination of Boss Rankin, formerly the world's top-rated hitman, currently the head of the city's second-largest crime syndicate. In response, Rankin invites the current top twenty hired killers to his penthouse to offer them the chance to be his new protection detail. Unsurprisingly, several of them have been hired to kill him at this very gathering, leading to a shoot-out. Over the course of the five issues collected in this paperback we see Starks and Henderson explore such topics as gang w...

Things are a little scary right now. Even if you're not in a high-risk group for COVID-19, you probably know someone who is. And if you're one of the millions of people who are self-isolating, you might find yourself in need of a distraction. There are worse things you could do than pick up a book. And yes, I know that going to the bookstore or library isn't in the spirit of self-isolation, but if you can take advantage of it, most libraries give members access to ebooks and audiobooks. Also, this is a good chance to tackle some of the books in your to-read pile. Anyway, let's get this show on the road: What's your self-isolation reading, Lucas? Thanks for asking, I'm reading: Unnatural Magic by C.M. Waggoner. It's about a young woman who discovers an aptitude for magic in a roughly 18th/19th century Europe type of fantasy world. It's also about a young troll who rescues and befriends a human soldier after he deserts his unit that's ...

Not pictured: the Baudelaires' boss sunglasses . So, I've spent the last year re-reading Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. You read other things, too. I did. But you know, this was a project, like that time I read one chapter of  Journey to the West  everyday for one hundred days. That must have been before the blog. It was before the blog. So, is this where we're putting the SPOILER   warning for this month? Well, I don't know that I'll be recounting the plot of this one. What? Yeah, I thought we could have a brief discussion of Book the Thirteenth: The End And then sort of wrap up this little project in a somewhat less lengthy fashion. You're the blogger. So, what did you remember about The End before you re-read it? Alright, so we start right back up with the Baudelaires and Olaf as they sail away following the events of The Penultimate Peril . Long story short, they're shipwrecked on a desert island. Someho...

Why aren't all comic books this giant? So, what's thi—good lord, that is a gigantic comic book! It is. What's its deal? Silver Surfer Black  is a five-issue miniseries written by Donny Cates, drawn by Tradd Moore, and colored by Dave Stewart. It apparently follows up on a Guardians of the Galaxy story where the Surfer and the Guardians get sucked into a black hole. After the Surfer saves the Guardians, he finds himself pulled deeper into the singularity where he finds a planet ruled by a guy named Knull, who apparently is the creator of the symbiotes like Venom and Carnage, but who I'd never heard of before. Anyway, it chronicles the Silver Surfer's battle against Knull. Oh, and there's one more complication, the more the Surfer uses his power cosmic, the more his body turns from Silver to a pearlescent black. Okay. Is it any good? It's pretty good, yeah. Although, I do have one gripe. That gripe being? There are a lot of st...

I'll admit it, I possess a weakness for Le Guin omnibuses . . . omnibi? So, what's this book's deal? Oh, hey, it's another Ursula K. Le Guin collection! It is, but this time I'm only blogging about the first book: Rocannon's World . So, I've already read The Left Hand of Darkness  and The Dispossessed  with which it shares a setting, but this is the first book she wrote in what is generally called The Hainish Cycle. Speaking of Hain, Rocannon, the protagonist hails from Hain. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The novel begins with a brief ethnological note about the second planet of Fomalhaut, where a previous survey had revealed multiple sentient hominids with a roughly bronze/iron age level of technology. However, after this sketch, the prologue feels like a fairytale: with a young princess in search of an appropriate dowry. She travels to her father's castle and is told that the family treasue, a necklace was given to the dwarf-like Gde...