I read reviews of this that said it was basically just extended excuses for Gambit to take off his clothes, which it IS, and which I'm totally fine with. I mean he could have taken his clothes off a few more times, really.

Uh this was just like candy pretty much, near-naked Gambit having sort of implausible Indiana Jones/James Bond-y adventures and that's EXACTLY what I wanted it to be.

But if that's not what you want to read then probably don't read this.

Is this cancelled yet? All the comics I love get cancelled. (I just googled it: ONGOING! HUZZAH.)

OK yeah, cool story. I committed the sin of reading this after I saw the movie & I couldn't help but think that overall the way the movie handled this story line was cooler and made more sense... but this was really a pretty short, contained story arc and I logically know it couldn't have done as much as the movie. (And parts of the movie were silly too.)

Ummm in short I guess really all I have to say is COOL STORY BRO.

UGH perfect basically. Matt Fraction is so great at capturing Tony's sense of humor/wounded genius/etc. Plus PEPPER and MARIA HILL.

I did not 100% know what was going on and I'm guessing it's because I still haven't read Civil War?? But it didn't really impact my enjoyment of this.

My only real complaint is where was Spider-Man?? Shouldn't Spider-Man just randomly show up at least once per Marvel book? I think that's the law.

This was a quick, fun read. Good European armchair travel.

I was pretty stoked to read this because I love reading about ghosts and I'm interested in the Spanish Flu epidemic (because I'm very well-adjusted, that's why.)

Unfortch, this kind of felt like the author was just like "I did so much research on Spiritualism and spirit photography and WWI and the flu and I MUST USE EVERY PIECE OF DETAIL I LEARNED OR IT WILL BE WASTED." It also felt a bit heavy handed with its themes of equality for women and opposition to war propaganda. Like... we get it. But perhaps as a teen reader I would not mind as much. As an adult reader it was like, OK, Mary Shelley, we get it, girl power, girls can do photography too.

I liked the romance & mystery aspect more, although

Spoiler

I was kind of disappointed that the solution to the mystery turned out to be that ghosts are real?? seemed like kind of a cop-out after all the build up about debunking fake spiritualists. Whatevs

God, M.T. Anderson is so smart and so good. Like, it's not enough to just do perfect satire of fast food jobs, he also has to be so clever with gender roles and teen relationships? This was only your second book? UGH, GO HOME, M.T., YOU ARE THE OPPOSITE OF DRUNK.

I read this all in one day! I was obsessed with the concept--teen boy has to help a kleptomaniac mean girl ghost return all the stuff she stole while she was alive--and it didn't disappoint. A lot of the pop culture references are so on point that this book is going to be stale a year from now, but whatever, it's very fresh right now.

Fun, compelling, not too scary. Boo-yeah.

I'm still surprised by how solid these are. I had honestly made the hipster-asshole assumption that since these were so popular they wouldn't be any good. UGHHH RENATA DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE.

The audiobooks are great because they're so fast-paced. Once in awhile the discs are too scratched and I miss a chapter-ish but I'm pretty sure I still followed the whole story. I really liked Artemis & the Hunters. It was totally time for some more (cultish) girl power up in there.

Tony Stark's Flowers for Algernon AU! Pepper, Maria, and Natasha being BAMFs! RESCUE!

What's not to love?

Hmm, middle books of trilogies are tough. This one had a LOT of exposition to deliver. Still, satisfying, and I'm definitely looking forward to book 3, like, OMG.

I wish I had been able to listen to the audiobook, but I was glad I'd listened to the first one on audio--the audiobook is really great and I was able to still hear some of the voices and accents (and pronunciations of weird monster names) in my head.