Wow, it's been a while since a YA title had a story and characters that didn't make me feel like I'm just getting too dang old to read about annoying teenagers. 4.5 out of 5! 

Star Splitter is a great sci-fi novel that reads exactly like it was written for its target audience, unlike a lot of YA novels these days. The story itself follows Jessica Mathers, who is reluctantly teleporting to join her parents out in space as they prepare to spend a year exploring and researching on a new planet. Only something goes wrong out there, because of course it does. 

I really enjoyed a lot about this novel. The exploration of the self vs body, the exploration of Jessica's complicated relationship with her parents, the way Jessica struggles with self-determination and self-worth and survival, it's all great. It's earnest.

There are two narrative timelines - a present and past - but that didn't bother me. One timeline went exactly as I thought it would; the mystery of what happens doesn't really feel like it's terribly mysterious. The second timeline, however, absolutely surprised me in a fantastic way. I wasn't expecting it to go where it did and explore the themes and story that it did, and I really liked it.

Star Splitter is a great pure sci-fi space and survival story that is perfect for teens, and I think enjoyable for any adult sci-fi reader as well.

My habit of picking DC titles at random just because they're available and look vaguely intriguing continues. Again, I don't know DC well other than through cultural osmosis. 

It's obvious in this volume that there is a TON of Green Lantern backstory I have no idea of, but I think the overall story did alright in trying to settle Sinestro and Hal Jordan in a place that sort of makes sense. Their antagonistic relationship made sense, Hal's loser era makes sense, Sinestro makes sense.

The only thing that really kept this from being enjoyable for me was the actual writing - I kept being smacked in the face over and over and over with "Hal and Sinestro hate each other and Sinestro thinks he's doing the Right Thing and Hal thinks he's the worst guy ever and Hal is a loser and and and--" 

It's so overwrought and gives the audience NO chances whatsoever to come to any emotional conclusions on their own. The very definition of telling and not showing. Every character explains their every feeling and motivation on page for us to see. It sucks, because the set up for the story itself is intriguing.

The art is...something, I guess. If you ignore everyone's constipated faces and the fact that this artist will only draw complicated line art for the males and aliens but completely smooth, featureless faces for any female-presenting character...it's fine. I guess. 

I wish this had been better. 

The Out Side sets out to do one thing, and that one thing it does extremely well. It's hard not to appreciate this anthology for what it is, especially with the way America is devolving into hate from coast to coast. 

This collection features stories from a variety of trans and non-binary artists that share their experiences on the long road that begins at struggling with their gender identity, and eventually leads to self-acceptance. It's both a teaching tool and a proclamation, a simple "I Exist and That's Amazing" message that is sorely needed and will keep on being needed. 

As with any anthology, some stories and art I enjoyed way more than others. At times I wished the artists had more page time to expand their stories, but some were absolutely perfect at a simple 2-4 pages. My favorites were How I Got These Sweet Nips! by The Nifty Fox for the comedy that hit my funny bone in the exact right place, and Familiar by Cyrus for the absolute gut punch of wonderfully effective art. 

Whether you are a part of the rainbow or an ally, I think everyone can benefit from checking out this anthology. We're all human in completely different ways, and it's lovely seeing the spectrum of queerness and human expression represented here.

The Out Side began as a Kickstarter project, and is now being traditionally published by Andrews McMeel Publishing for release on September 26, 2023. Thanks to Andrew McMeel Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC.

Ken Liu is an excellent writer with a fantastically imaginative mind. In this short story collection, he uses that imagination to great effect, intertwining fantasy and sci-fi ideas with the very real history and cultural issues the Chinese (of all times/places) have faced. As with any collection like this, some of the stories are absolute bangers of speculative fiction and others are simply okay. 

I was reading this as part of my Discord book club for May, so below are my thoughts on each short story as I read and commented on them. No cohesion or grammar here, just a copy & paste of my raw reactions on Discord. 

Putting all my thoughts on the stories behind a spoiler tag because a) it's a long entry and b) some of them have minor spoilers for the contents or theming of the short story.

The Book Making Habits of Select Species: this was a perfect start to this collection, I think? a nice taster to get a feel for Liu’s writing and imagination

State Change: just finished this one in the car on my drive home today (forgot i had this on audio too???), i just stopped listening and went back to music for my last 15 minutes home because i needed to think about it. what a great little story that just creeps up on you

The Perfect Match: this story felt soooo clunky. compared to everything else it feels like being hit in the face with a hammer with the theming and morals. like it could have been an interesting black mirror story, but just turned into another "tech giants like google are bad, actually. their excuses are lame. okay that's all."

Good Hunting: an example of great theme work without smashing you in the face with it!! loved the thoughts on moving on and surviving with the inevitable progress of technology, and omg the end when he helps Yan change into what she used to be, but for the current times. yes!! loved this. i'll have to check out the Love, Death & Robots episode for it now

The Literomancer: the way my jaw dropped in the car at the horror this threw at us out of nowhere, omfgggg. the only thing was that it felt highly weird that her father would just describe every single literal detail of the torture like that to his wife...like wtf. it just felt like an unnatural way to get the story of it out. i wish there was a tiny bit more from Lilly in the end, i think it just fell a bit flat.

Simulacrum: didn't care about this one. it was fine and i understood what he was going for, but meh.

The Regular: Ken Liu spent 50 pages writing a mystery thriller way more compelling than most whole novels i've read lmaoooo

An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition: very much disliked this one. my brain just kept skating away and losing focus during the audio of this, and i found it very hard to care about anything. i'm not sure what the entire point even was.

whoops, skipped by The Paper Menagerie: obviously the most straightforward in its theme and message, but probably the most viscerally emotional??? that last letter hit so hard.

The Waves: This was just fine. I don't have much to say about it otherwise, lol

Mono No Aware: this worked really well for me, especially the emotional beats it was trying to hit. like. <i>Mono no aware is an empathy with the universe.</i> UGH. my heart.

All the Flavors: this was SO freaking long and i think the length did it a disservice in this collection. while i was completely engaged because Liu's writing is always good, i just kept thinking i could be moving on to another story by the half way point. and this is another story with another young american girl named Lily that befriends a Chinese man who is unjustly arrested that ends abruptly...hmm

A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel: i think this was a GREAT story that used the same backdrop of the previous story (working on the railroad/tunnel) but worked in a way that was more interesting and felt closer to the character and the events despite the way its told. loved the last bit too.

The Litigation Master and the Monkey King: ha ha ha ha can i stop hearing about fucked up torture, thanks

The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary: so, i really liked this one and what Liu was going for, but i felt like it went on way too long. the themes he was working with about history, remembering it, the way countries and cultures and peoples have changed is wildly interesting. but oh my god, this was also so long. and after a while i just felt like i was being lectured to over and over again, and wanted out of the classroom.

I continued on because I wanted to know the truth behind Mother Soul and the Lazarus Tournament, and eeehhhh. This could have wrapped up in 2 issues if all the COOL POSING and CHARACTER BACKSTORIES were taken out or streamlined. It felt ridiculous after a while.

This wasn't too bad, and read decently for someone (me) not too familiar with what's going on in DC Comics right now. I'm gonna have to figure out how to read whatever led up to the death of Alfred, though, because most of the random stuff I'm picking up keeps referring to it. I did love the few emotional moments woven in here, especially between Damian and Dick as they reflected on Alfred's influence on them. 

The rest of this felt like a ridiculous over the top Mortal Kombat tournament with all the next gen versions of DC villains and it was enjoyable for what it was doing.

The art felt a little too cartoonish at times, but when it worked it really fit the tone and style of what this was going for. 

Well, this was an absolutely awful let down. I love that the What If? animated show launched a whole new iteration of Peggy Carter, and a quick little mini series to play out the story of Peggy waking up in the modern world the same way Steve did makes sense on paper.

Too bad this is a stinking mess that takes the various plot beats from Steve Rogers' story and does them poorly. It's quite obvious that Kieron Gillen is the actually good writer in the Gillen/McKelvie team. Everything is so on the nose here; the plot hits every single cliche you can imagine would pop up in a story like this, and the villain's motivation made no sense whatsoever other than an attempt to have vaguely watered down commentary on something a thousand other writers have done so much better. (One cliche that really stuck in my craw was where Peggy's young black female neighbor just so happened to also have l33t hacking skillz.

As for the art...whew. That was a mess. Cresta does okay body work, but every single face in this looked weird, like they were all dolls put in a microwave and their faces began to melt off. The action scenes were fine, nothing terrible but nothing great either. The color work was serviceable. Having McKelvie himself do the covers of each issue was just rubbing salt in the wound of the artwork, however. He's SO good and his covers are fantastic.  

What an all around awful disappointment of a book. Peggy deserves better.

This did NOT hold up to my fond memories of reading it at around age 14. 

The writing does not do anything for this story, there are lots of odd choices made in terms of switching from heavy dialogue to heavy narratives about science and psychology, to minor shifts in POV mid-scene. 

The character work is also atrocious and painful. The way Crichton tries to set up each main character in a way that explains how the sphere affects them, YIKES.  Beth's characterization and the attempts at making her Woman in STEM backstory mean something was horrible. Then there's Harry being a black man and how Crichton completely bungles that up too.

I shouldn't have re-read this, I should have just let my nostalgic feelings for the book and movie live in the past. 

DNF @ 15%, this just isn't what I want right now. It's interesting and has some well realized female leads, but it's so...melancholic and sad. And a bit boring.

DNFing because a lot of this world building and writing is just absolutely bonkers and terribly stupid. violet just happens to recite historical/geopolitical facts out loud to calm her anxiety and that's how we learn about the world? lmfao please

and i just cannot get past the whole premise of the war college and threshing ending in TONS AND TONS of young military cadets being MURDERED ALL THE TIME when there's an endless war and they're desperate for people to join! so desperate they CONSCRIPTED people!!! JUST TO HAVE THEM DIE BEFORE THEY EVEN STEP ONTO THE WAR COLLEGE GROUNDS? 60+ DIED IN THE FIRST MORNING??? make it make sense!!

also xaden is racially ambiguous and screamingly hot and muscled and of course violet is small so she barely comes up to his shoulders because big tall dark handsome man must be super big and tall and hot right??

i thought i'd give this a chance because the high star rating is absolutely fucking bonkers (4.78???), but nope. i really gotta trust my instincts more. at least the physical book is really pretty.