While Fairly light-hearted—which is generally not my thing—I really enjoyed this. The artwork and colouring alone is reason enough to pick it up. The story is fairly simple, but develops some interesting world building and gets slightly more complex. A girl embarks on a quest with a new friend seeking her missing grandfather. Along the way, we she has to confront her anxiety and get out of her sheltered existence. It’s got some action, it’s cute sometimes, there’s some interesting conflict and out-of-the-box creature design sometimes. The stakes don’t feel super real, but I think it appeals the age range it’s going for with that choice. I’ll pick up book two, for sure.

A 24 year-old office wage slave, with the maturity of a 16 year-old incel, finds he’s free from his job when a zombie outbreak occurs. Initially, it’s interesting enough, with the comparison to capitalism and work—but it quickly segues into the zombies, as well as literally everyone woman, being an opportunity for fan service. There’s very little development of the character and the humour was also pretty adolescent too. It’s not going to onboard people not into this kind of manga, but to those that like this sort of thing, I’m sure it’s good.

This alt manga, published in the 80s, follows a housewife raising her children, with societal norms being forefront in the depiction of home life. She is very stark in what she is content with and what she isn’t, and her observations of inequality between sexes are starkly drawn. I think it’s fairly subversive of current manga too, let alone back then. Each set, serialized, is a short vignette, basically a musing on a specific thing. Most are relatable and I think her interiority is very well rendered.

The art style is quite sparse, but works very well. It’s a nice contrast between male dominated art style too, which is thematically appropriate. The only reason this doesn’t get 5 stars from me, is that it ends really abruptly. Partly this is because an essay of the importance of the work starts from the left and you read from the right, so you think you have a few stories left to go, but you don’t. But also, there is no “arc” or plot, and so the last story mostly feels like another one. And towards the end there emerges a thematic through line that cooould be addressed, but isn’t really. I imagine they just didn’t know it was going to end and then it does. The essay at the back (front) is really interesting reading, though. Very edifying and helps situate a lot more context for western readers, such as myself.

This is much more ambitious than Priory - which both helps and hinders it. There are eight perspectives, multiple regions, and a sweeping narrative that covers a large swath of time. Because of this, character take a while to feel relatable and a lot more patience if asked of the reader in terms of payoff.

Thematically, I think it delivers very, very well. Queer characters are handled very well and it also has complex themes around motherhood - two things that sometimes don’t jibe well, in my experience. The inclusion is done really well. The author, I think, is interested in characters and readers parsing out information that make them inherently unknowable, even to themselves. They articulate imperfect information that questions what the meta knowledge of the reader is, which sometimes put me on shaky ground, but was always interested to learn more. Mostly because I had faith in the author from reading Priory years ago, and those things I was most confused about were revealed in a way that reworded it. But it does feel like the first time the author ventured into this complex and ambitious a project. Priory is a much more confident novel. Once you get to about halfway into this, the footing is found and it more resembles Priory in that regard.

There’s room at the end of this for an additional chapter before Priory as well, I think, which I’m looking forward to, should that happen. I think the author only gets better at this kind of expansive story. Even as rocky as it was, it was still far better at pacing and information design than Sandersons’ lauded works, imo.

The voice of the narrator was unconvincing, it felt like it was moving in a direction where it was using someone on the spectrum as a device, and I just didn’t care about what was happening. Didn’t want to bother finishing it.

I must confess, I fell asleep trying to watch the movie a while back, so I wasn’t sure how this would fly. But I hit it at the right time. The gauzy haze with which the protagonist approaches her queer questioning impetus felt, along with some other aspects of the book, historical? And that actually made it more interesting to me. Questioning without any sense of queer culture and just being the straightest, mousiest woman, who flits from societal expectation to the next, until real emotion trumps her—kind of feels relatable.

Maybe it’s just post-covid days, but there is a disruptive element to the fifties depicted here. An in-group, out-group that the privileged never see. Had she more of an internal life the signs that she’s not particularly inclined toward the norm would prompt a galvanzing effort. Instead, an outside factor like Carol has to.

How the questioning functioned was the most interesting aspect to me, aside from Carol herself, who is basically the opposite of our girl. Mysterious, refined, in a heteronormative relationship and has a child, but also immediately a caretaker of a communicable obsession—ushering them into a objectively pretty tame, but somehow hedonistic awakening. Where the aperture of perspective shifts, though the protagonist is exceptionally mundane. It’s a relatable transition that felt organic for her.

Gave it an hour on audio and it didn’t catch my interest.

This has a bunch going for it. The main perspective being told from a Chinese policeman and the story being steeped in American history about the systemic racism, and how he negotiates that, is completely new ground for the genre, as far as I know.

The plot itself is interesting enough, even if the impetus is quite weak. His adopted father is ill and a recluse after his long-term Chinese maid mysteriously disappears. His adoptive brother hires him to find her, thinking her return will basically wake him like Lazarus. It’s pretty thin ice. Thankfully this sandwiched after a compelling action-packed start, which forces him to act as a police officer to go along to get along. This segues into the perfect model minority and the history around the legal vilification of the Chinese, among others. And then we get the why he’s off the beaten path and another impossible position for the end of an issue, cliffhanger style—something this team likes to do immensely, judging from these first 4 issues.

The main weakness, for me, is in the artwork. It doesn’t quite match the style and atmosphere. It’s cartoony and off putting when contrasted to the cover. But, it’s well worth reading, so I will continue.

I actually consumed the audiobook version with Stephen Fry in a collection, and this is just the closest thing. This is my first Jeeves and I can see the appeal. It’s idiosyncratic in its humour. From a strange gambling ring betting on something as silly as how long a pastor’s sermon will take, to circumstances conspiring to paint Wooster, the employer of Jeeves, as a loon. And behind everything is Jeeves, puppeteering so that things work out for Wooster, by proxy, mostly for him, though. It’s not laugh-out-loud, but I liked it. Fun and simple, and filled with antiquated Britishisms. Lighthearted good fun.

Fry is, as ever, a great narrator, of course.

What you’d expect, If you’ve seen the movie. Very commercial, both in terms of the prose work, character work, and dialogue, as well as the outright propaganda I figured was injected at Hollywood. The Russians, aside from one or two, are basically bumbling fools shackled to a system constantly referenced as terrible without the lens being turned to the west. No wonder it was made into a movie, really.

Plot wise, it’s pretty simple and fairly fun. It’s also really packed full of detail that felt well researched and believable to me. The intricacies and verisimilitude of the military and the various machines in use feel well realized. That feels like the secret sauce. A lot of what is opaque but interesting is gone into, sometimes shoving unbelievable dialogue into the characters to do so. The classic characters telling each other things they already know, things like that.

But it is very consumable. Big as it is, and it’s quite chunky, it goes by very quickly, which is what I’m looking for these days. I’m not actually sure why I started with Red October, having seen the Jack Ryan movies; this is the third in the series, apparently. I think I thought this was the first. Whoops.