Themes and concept accent an otherwise pretty uneven experience. Ranges from really good specificity and descriptive writing, particularly in one story that was just excellent and riveting, to somewhat bland prose acting solely to convey a particular conversation that rounds out the diasporic examination through line.

Wow, way better than the first one. There were at least 4 stories that I considered to be completely perfect and a great marriage to the form of comics. Two duds, but the overall quality is staggeringly better. And the resolution was better, though still not exceptionally high dpi for whatever reason. Or maybe it was exported and then scrubbed for lower file size. Regardless, glad I kept reading. Excellent stuff. And on paper, of course you wouldn’t have that issue. Printers require a set high dpi (300) to print anything.

This is the futurist issue, which I was looking forward to the most, I think. But I actually loved the second one more so. This is hit-and-miss. Sci-fi, spec fiction is difficult in comics, I find, because it so often goes to a gonzo place, which I personally don’t love. A middling collection. But the export issues aren’t present either, so the art hasn’t looked any better.

The Juni Ba comic here is why I bought it and completely incredible. Unfortunately, the other two I just did not like. There’s some interesting themes rooted in African tradition, mythology, and history, but they’re highly masculine and all about physical confrontation and with less interesting art. If it was just the middle comic—Juni Ba’s—this would be 5 stars.

Even for a laymen with poetry, I thought this was really great and a lot more accessible than some reviewers would have you believe. I guess it helps knowing a lot of cyberpunk and l33t speak, for the beginning, and just having consumed a lot of media/pop culture.

There is a birthing sequence at the start paralleling Ghost in the Shell that sort of sets up the parameters of the collection. What is the identity that runs the “programs”/poems. What is the lens, essentially. Each poem usually has a start line of code that says what this examines and there is a long list at the back of the book of references. So sometimes when it says it’s running a decolonial program of whatever, say Whitman, you can actually flip back and see the references and see how it’s subverting it and applying a different lens.

I think it’s really, really clever. Some of it went over my head and some of it felt a bit disjointed and outside of the initial theme. Like when it isn’t running a program and randomly has something else. But much of it feels cohesive and truly unique. Especially for cyberpunk, which is too often claimed as a white space with so many marginalized people working in the space back when it began, but still. Now. This only further proves that. It’s fertile ground, this sub genre.

I hope to one day get Misha’s book of indigenous cyberpunk poetry; I know it’s the first one, but seems pretty unobtainable every time I search for it. I bet that book and this book would be in an interesting conversation.

This is in pretty stark contrast to Apples Never Fall, which feels far tighter and interesting to this. The idea of nine strangers going to a resort to “fix” their lives is trite as it is. It turns out that it’s even less dynamic than that; much of the book takes place in a locked room that the author simply doesn’t pull off.

This has some of the worst middle book syndrome I’ve encountered. Very little to nothing happens and most everything we need to know about the characters has been established. Strangely, it does have good comedic timing and situational comedy throughout. But this tone made the overall piece feel even more disjointed to me. I’m not sure what this was actually going for.

This feels superficial and sadly only continued to navigate to the very least interesting aspects the story could have gone in. I have no idea how this would make for an interesting TV show. I own Big Little Lies and need to get to that, but so far this author is a hugely mixed bag. I loved Apples Never Fall released this year, and was close to giving this a 1 star review, despite finishing it and wishing for that time back.

This is a heartwarming story of a group of elders taken to the biggest powwow down in the states. A trip that invariably ends up unearthing tension, secrets, and a reckoning from self awakening.

I liked this, with a few caveats: it skews more middle grade than young adult. Both in terms of diction and sentence construction. It is a very simple story and feels designed to be accessible and perfectly transparent at all times. It is also uneven, but in a strange way. Once it gets going it rapidly shifts between heartwarming and endearing and emotional conflict. It doesn’t feel like it has any time to breath in any scenes, isn’t concerned with description, or is concerned with the plot whatsoever. The fiction is merely a vehicle for pretty prescriptive advice or perspective on various aspects of indigenous identity.

The voices are distinct for each character and the narrator does a phenomenal job. They’re a chameleon with voice work. At its best, the endearing dialogue between characters is the reason to come to the story and what keeps you there. If it didn’t feel overly emotionally manipulative with its pendulum of tragedy and comedy, it would easily rate higher for me. It occupies the same spot as Midnight Library and Phone booth at the End of the World. Self-help as fiction. If you’re into that, you’ll love it. If you’re not, well, your mileage may vary.

This was better than I expected. Admittedly the humour was hit and miss for me, but did hit more so because it’s often pretty low key, so misses are more inoffensive than usual.

I also quite liked what it has to say about institutions in general. Identifying a grifter/huckster to con essentially oligarchs? (I have not read any other discworld books, and as such some of the systemic things about the city are still opaque to me) via various intersections of Kafkaesque businesses and companies interacting with the post office said con man was hired to run, into as much of a “win” as you’re likely to get—was all very satisfying to me.

Also, I liked the golem and was surprised at how much that was gone into, systemic wise as well. I guess it did a good job of showing me things I honestly could not care less about in the first half and then showing me why I ought to in the later. There’s so much humour it was hard to know what was foreshadowing and a jape; it somehow worked in its favour, by the end.

Not sure I could say I cared about the characters beyond what they did for the story, or that the pacing was to my liking, though exactly as fantasy nerds tend to like it. But it’s very pleasant at a craft or structural level to look at. It also didn’t hurt that in my mind it was all playing out as Disney animation film cross between Ichabod Crane and 101 Dalmatians; ie, excellent line work and very pleasant to have in your head.

Excellent follow up to the first issue, which was pretty much all setup. Echo signs up for a bake sale and meets another kid, things are looking up. But, at the same time, she is learning about a very traumatic history from her heritage as a Métis person. So much so that as she consumes the history whenever she sleeps, she dreams about being there herself as a kind of bystander witnessing everything; this causes her emotional pain, of course.

It’s a really smart way of illustrating to people what learning this kind of history would be like and how affecting it is, generally. Some people classified this as like science fiction and time travel and stuff, but it’s very clearly a dream. You see her eyes closed and she says it’s a dream. I don’t know why people think a visual dream, imagining yourself in events you’re consuming would be fantasy. It occurs literally all of the time for some people.

With such a short page count, you can imagine it’s near impossible to provide a definitive thesis on the subject. But I think the point is still pretty well made through the short hand of literature and visual media.

Essentially, it boils down to the notion that within culture, regardless of specific intent, there is a climate fiction through-line in contemporary fiction and media, though even further back is probable. Dystopia or utopia, mere visual aesthetic or otherwise, there is knot of anxiety in the cultural consciousness around climate effects.

While some properties combat this with popular delusions—an amusing correlation being the fast and furious franchise, literally making petrol fuelled fantasias before the oil runs dry or everyone dies; a product trying to milk every last Penny from the people denying reality and constantly wish to imagine that what we consume for entertainment has no basis in reality. As if it could actually be divorced.

The author goes into how the framing of climate fiction in particular is curious as well. Authors who don’t classify their works and others as “cli-fi” often use motifs that specifically invoke environmental changes from climate change to great effect. So when can or should a story be “about” climate effects and change?

Though consumers don’t want to acknowledge the realities of the crisis, it bleeds through into art and politics and entertainment regardless, subconsciously. I think that’s quite true. And the attempt to sketch a few salient points ends up being extremely entertaining to read. Short; punchy; conversational, yet deploying specific jargon and diction, the piece walks an effective line between making an argument and keeping the attention and accessibility of the text.