Lucas Blogs About Books

Ya gotta have blue hair! So, what's this book's deal? Well, we're on volume 4 of Kamome Shirahama's Witch Hat Atelier  manga. The one about the tween girl who needs to learn magic after she accidentally petrified her mother? The very same. Okay. You're taking a much more blithe attitude about this than I expected. I can grow and change. Fair enough. Anyway, in this volume, Coco takes a backseat as some of the other students at the atelier are preparing for their next test. Specifically Coco's roommate/frenemy (froomenate?), Agott, and Richeh. In case you can't recall, Agott is driven by a desire to live up to her family legacy and Richeh just wants to do magic her  way. In any case, they have to take the second test of their magical abilities, the Sincerity of the Shield. Basically, they have to lead a bunch of gryphons (in this case, four legged penguins with floppy ears) down a magical road without the gryphons catching wise that they...

Wow, name bigger than title status, nicely done, Powell. So, what's this book's deal? Embers of War  is the start of a new series by Gareth L. Powell, the British Science Fiction Award-winning author of Ack-Ack Macaque . Oh, you liked those books didn't you? I did. Did you like this one? I couldn't get into it. Sadly, this joins the " books that I didn't finish " club with Bloody Rose  and Into the Drowning Deep . So, it's not good? I wouldn't go that far. Look, I've never thought that Powell was an amazing prose writer. His style is proficient enough, but I was definitely more into Ack-Ack Macaque and its sequels because of the story and characters than because of the writing. But let's get an idea of the book's deal. Yes, let's. So it begins with a space battle over the planet Pelapatarn where Captain Annelida Deal gives an order that will simultaneously do two things: 1) end the immediate conflict and possib...

Huh, my hand looks like it's at a weird angle in this picture. Happy 13th of the month, readers (both hypothetical and otherwise)! You know what that means: it's time for me to revisit another entry in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events! Sticking with that intro? Yes. All right. SPOILERS  ahoy! Okay, last we checked in you were feeling a tad burnt out on all things A Series of Unfortunate Events. Well, not all things, mostly Lemony Snicket's stylistic tics. Fair enough. Do you still feel that way. Since I write the opening pretty soon after I post the previous entry, yes. Okay, so what do you remember abo— Hey, I'm the one who gets to say that this is where we talk about Book the Eleventh: The Grim Grotto . Fine, what do you remember about it. It involves a submarine and mushrooms. That's it? It might also reveal what became of Hector's self-sustaining hot-air mobile home. Okay, but you thought that about The Sl...

I suppose I could make a joke about how manly this picture isn't, but that seems out of keeping with the spirit of a book about being true to yourself, traditional gender roles be damned. Hmm, is pointing that out a way of trying to have my cake and  eat it? ‾\_(ツ)_/‾ So, what's this book's dea—oh, wasn't this in your Unhelpfully Specific Holiday Gift Guide ? Yep! I gave it to my first cousin once removed. She's a precocious eight-year-old. You mentioned that. What did she think? Well, her mom said it was a hit, so I guess she liked it. [ UPDATE:  I just received a thank you note in which she claims to have read the book ~2,000 times. There isn't a date on the note, but even conservatively, that's more than 100 readings per day, I think we can safely say that this one was a hit. - 1/9/2020] So . . . what's it about? Well, Jen Wang's The Prince and Dressmaker  is a graphic novel (but let's be real, it's a comic book) set in Paris...

That's right, there's a holiday this week so I'm just phoning in the blog with a holiday message. Hope you've had a good year.

To clarify, these are books I gave to other people, which I guess is obvious from the fact that I only used two kinds of wrapping paper. Is there any gift better than a book? A book you'll actually read? Fair point, Hypothetical Reader. Anyway, Christmas is coming up and I thought I might talk about some of the books I'm giving people as gifts and why. Seems a tad indulgent . Agreed. For your sixteen-old-brother who never really seems that enthusiastic about reading: I went with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick . I think this book has a lot to offer, even to people who don't necessarily think of themselves as readers. First of all, it's a sci-fi/detective noir that deals with questions of environmentalism and what it means to be human. Dick isn't the world's greatest prose writer, but his work is often more about the ideas involved anyway. There's plenty of action and intrigue, plus there's a famous movie adaptation...

Oh yeah, one of the pages came loose while reading. Might want to get on that Saga Press. Hey! Once again I'm setting aside the framework of the Hypothetical Reader to discuss a book that I enjoyed, and yet feel hasn't quite lived up to its potential. This time it's Temi Oh's debut science fiction novel, Do You Dream of Terra-Two? On an unrelated note, I'm a sucker for books whose titles are questions. I mean, I don't always buy them, but I think it's an effective marketing gimmick because it automatically engages the potential reader. Although it is sort of a double-edged sword because the response could just be, "Well, that's a stupid question." Anyway, in the case of this book, I initially misread the title as Oh Do You Dream of Terra-Two? because only the author's surname was given on the spine. Back on topic. Do You Dream of Terra-Two? is about the United Kingdom Space Agency's attempt to launch the first manned mission to th...