This is a beautiful book about a terrible subject. It's a fictionalized memoir of one unit of the Japanese Imperial army stationed on an island in Papua New Guinea during WWII. The soldiers, who are under-prepared, underfeed and under-informed, struggle against the unfamiliar climate and ecosystem. Before they even see the enemy many have died of fevers, malaria and freak accidents such as crocodile attacks and attempting to fish with hand grenades. But even the ones who survive these deadly mishaps are doomed, because they have a manic hotheaded commander who has his sights set on a suicide mission. The characters are drawn in a loose, cartoony style set against a hyper-realistic, gorgeously rendered background. Some of the drawings of sky and forest took my breath away. However, I struggled to tell the characters apart because of the minimal portrait style. I think I was less emotionally effected than I might have been since I was often unable to follow a character's path throughout the book.

This comic pulls no punches. It's a complicated and emotional story of human scientific daring and utter folly. The lead characters are Hank and Molly Nonnar, a couple who have been married for 45 years. Molly is a doctor and researcher, and Hank is an author who writes novels about the popular sci-fi character his father invented in the 1950s. A big movie deal gives him the funds to begin investing in a ground-breaking, but under-tested, experiment: a way to rejuvenate and improve the body at the cellar level. Hank and Molly sign up as the first human test subjects, and the results are stranger and more devastating than either could ever have imagined. Gorgeously drawn and luminously colored.

I was expecting a hefty sci-fi novel for adults when I put this on hold at the library, but what arrived instead was a YA steampunk fairy tale. It was very enjoyable, and surprisingly clever! Set in a loosely defined dystopian future, the action begins in London, which is now a Traction city. The Traction cities of Europe roll over hills, plains, and the dusty beds of ancient long-dried oceans on massive wheels, chasing down smaller towns and devouring them. This is Municipal Darwinism at work, and Tom, a Third Class Apprentice in London's museum, has been taught that it is right and noble that the strong should grown stronger by ingesting the weak. Only when he falls from London and has to survive in a shattered landscape of deserts, marshes, pirates, slavers, rogue towns and Anti-Traction League spies does he begin to realize that what he grew up believing in might actually be monstrous.

This is the second book in C. S. Pacat's homoerotic fantasy political drama trilogy and it in no way suffers from any 'middle book' lull. It is just as action packed as the first book, with more danger and higher stakes. Laurent, Prince of Vere, and Damen, the enslaved Prince of Akielos, are forced into a reluctant and mistrustful alliance as the border conflicts between their two countries escalate. Damen is just beginning to glimpse the machinations of Laurent's uncle the Regent. Laurent is just beginning to see Damen's usefulness to his own cause. And they are both beginning to acknowledge their extreme attractions to each other.