Great schmaltz. Absolutely fantastic. Afraid to rate this as high as five star and thus admit to myself that I have really corny-ass taste. Amazing tender moments. Could not stop reading even if I was threatened.

Ended extremely abruptly. This was not without its moments, and I appreciate the return to exploring a fear of homophobia like in the first volume, but I think the content and the plot peaked in the second book. It was still immensely sweet and a joy to read.

Not bad, but not great. Most of the decent things about this whodunit happen in the second half.

Two things make this a difficult book to recommend. The first is not the author's fault; indeed, it is no one's fault other than just the world's lack of awareness. The criminal justice system and just what exactly Szacki is might alienate some readers who don't quite understand what the prosecutor of a case is doing to be so deeply involved with crime scene investigation. This is what was confusing to me after living in Poland for some time, and more day-to-day life and activities might prove confusing to other readers. That's not something I'd hold against picking up the book; honestly, for the sake of broadening cultural horizons and having a look at authentic-ish Polish bureaucracy, this book does the trick. (Additionally, the translation gets a bit antiquated and awkward at points, and knowing Polish I can mentally see what was the original line and often have to admit that there's no neat way of expressing that idea, but oh well.)

Second, and something that is a fault of the author's, is how bad the characters are. My God. The story is a good one, but the characters are a series of completely uninspired tropes that were just starting to get dated and annoying in 2007 when this was published. For example, there is a lecherous cop. He is either "lecherous" or a "cop" in any of his scenes, forcing in constant references to sex in between commenting on the the job at hand. Arguably he's meant to be annoying, so what about the reporter with whom the protag is tempted to start an affair? I don't get what the appeal for Szacki is other than that she's kind of pretty which seems to be enough for him to just throw it all away. She doesn't even particularly throw herself at him, and by the end it feels like she was just a token for the villains to threaten him with, twirl their moustache and proclaim "You're gettin' too close, you better drop this case, see?!" The wife and child fulfill the role of "wife" and "child", as in the wife nags but used to be a lot more fun and the child draws drawings and has stuffed animals. The most interesting character in all this was the nagging boss, and only because of the interesting dynamic of having a male character freak out over her abusing her power to extort sexual favors from him.

And at the center of this cascade of caricatures sits Szacki, who never feels particularly sharp or interesting. The book would have you believe it's a more grounded and realistic take on cop dramas, and therefore its hero is not some sexy movie star and a savant, but an average Joe behind a desk.,
And yet it indulges in all the tropes of incessantly thinking about the case, being unsatisfied at home, wanting to start an affair, etc. When you don't follow that up with some interesting savant-ism from the guy, it's not very exciting. It's realistic, but it's not entertaining to read, like I've had to read through a banker's very mundane work shift. The book IS a mystery/thriller, and so the protagonist should be a guy who pieces things together in a way we can't or breaks the rules and gets a crucial piece of evidence. Instead, oh God, we endure entire sequences of his job that never advance the plot and are just pages-long demonstrations of "yeah my job sucks" like having to prosecute a woman who killed her husband in self-defense.

However, what is this book's saving grace is the buildup at the end, where the pieces of the mystery start falling into place and a vise starts closing in around the protagonist. Something that I wish had a bigger role was the constellation therapy, and it ultimately does, but as a gimmick I think it would have been interesting to write around and have it be the quirk of the protagonist, using it to solve cases or understand crime scenes. I like that kinda stuff, and if the book weren't so obsessed with stressing that Hollywood sucks, that it isn't just some cop show, and at one point having all the audacity in the world to declare "this isn't some detective novel", then I think we could have had some real fun with constellation therapy as a means to sniff out criminals. There are two books left in the series and I hope it comes back. The mystery itself was exciting, and the way it tied into history in an authentically Polish way was especially harrowing and sparked fear for the reader. With better characters, I would have been more afraid and the stakes would have been higher.

Overall, not the worst--it feels as though the mystery part was easy to write for Miłoszewski, but populating it with realistic people was a much harder task. I certainly hope he improves with subsequent stories.

Equal parts memoir and self-help audiobook, although it comes with the frequent frustration of Willam constantly insisting we check the attached .pdf. I get it. Drag is a visual medium, but I came here for Willam's comedy. I'd be looking at the YouTube page if that was what I was in for, but that's just a minor point.

Willam was the first drag queen I became fascinated by and figured would be the obvious winner of Season 4 when I first got into the show.

Spoiler

So when Willam did not win and was instead cast out Paradise-Lost-style from Heaven, I was devastated.

So I got this book ages ago, listened to most of it, but never finished it. In the interest of looking for background noise, I found this in my old purchases and kicked it back up and had... well, not such a fun time.

Willam's personality sells this book. The unprofessionalism of just belching during recordings is ignorable because they pass it off with charisma and not caring what anyone thinks. To that end, I want to stress the low rating doesn't have to do with any of the morally objectionable content of the book, which is to say Willam's takes on incest, spousal abuse, bulimia/anorexia, and a few others. Most can be written off as Willam being excruciatingly honest and dipping more into the memoir side than the advice side. But ironically, the strange thesis of the book is to hate yourself a little less and to act like it--and to take this book, or any self-help book for that matter, as absolute gospel is stupid beyond belief. This person is not you no matter how much you like them, and Willam is quick to shut down any level of parasocial interaction.

So, with all that being said, I think I'm a little sad I didn't get more out of this book. I think I would have wanted something more on the memoir side, as I don't really relate to drag and a lot of it washed over me, particularly after years of not keeping up with drag or RuPaul's Drag Race. (I think the golden years were Seasons 4-8.) There are plenty of memoir-adjacent tidbits; no start-to-finish narrative, just more like we slingshot around from time to time as Willam uses an anecdote to drive a point across.

This is all still very well-written and funny. Willam puts themselves down near the end, saying their act is one of a stunt queen because Bianca Del Rio's conquered comedy. For someone who exudes such confidence, that self-deprecation, however subtle, made me a little sad. Louis C.K. is my favorite comedian but that doesn't mean I'll turn my nose up at any other comedian. Willam can be downright hilarious, adroitly wielding insults like knives, and this book is hilarious all throughout and reminded me why I'd followed Willam's exploits for a while.

I think the kairos of the book must be what made it suffer. Most of what was in it was a little reliant on the times and a pop culture snapshot, and didn't feel so universal nearly ten years later from the book coming out. Even so, I'm vacillating on whether this is a 3 or a 4. I might edit this review later. I mean, I read some real shit this year, and this isn't shit at all. I think I just wanted more, and I can't put into words what it might be or what was missing. But something was.

The author introduces twist after twist, which leads to less of a mystery that can be guessed but instead fosters an atmosphere of overwhelming paranoia that grips you. I’m very pleased with having read it; I stepped out of my comfort zone to read this for a Goodreads achievement and quite frankly, I am all the better for it. The book’s description made me feel like it would be worth my time, and that gamble was abso-fucking-lutely right. I may be rereading it sometime just to appreciate all the twists more. It’s amazing a book like this can exist in 2024’s atmosphere of contemporary slop—slop that was offensively placed on the same list as this book, and that could have caused me to miss it if I had not been meticulous perusing the descriptions for just one that I would like.

The only issue I take is maybe the last 2-4 twists in this book. They are not dealbreakers, I was in too far by that point, but truthfully I think they were the things that were finally, FINALLY too hard to buy. But it’s fine. In fact, depending on how I feel as time goes on, I might change this to a five. We’ll see.

I'm not sure that the origins of Drizzt were all that interesting, or necessary to hear (or read). Drizzt would have been more interesting if he struggled with some kind of darkness where he saw the drow point of view, but even "The Hunter" persona is more akin to starvation-based survival instinct than some genuinely evil individual. These books are especially boring with no one lighthearted for Drizzt to play off of, whether it's Wulfgar, Regis, or Bruenor. If people really want a canon origin story, then I suppose one now exists. But I would not call it wholly necessarily.

The low rating has nothing to do with the content or writing style; rather, it’s to do with this book’s unfortunate antiquity. At best, this is a case study of very primordial Internet issues, and from a historian’s perspective, it is a great resource to trace the genealogy of modern-day Internet issues back to two potential grandfathers (though the line is unlikely to be direct.) However, it seems to be more of a guidebook and analysis on what must be done going forward with the Internet as a new forum. All of this advice ranges from the presently fairly obvious to the grim realization of “It’s too late, we should have listened to these ideas back then.” Even the stuff that hasn’t changed from back in the day doesn’t really have a solution that could be applied; it’s almost a commentary on human nature in those parts. Any information that can be gleaned from this is simply, by and large, outdated—making any value this book has into historical text, rather than informative advice.

Speaking completely divorced from knowing anything about Andrew Dobson, I think this book's perfectly fine. I think there's a need to say something sucks just because the Internet clown's done something objectionable or tweeted something people hated. Divorced from any of that, I seriously don't think this will ruin some kid's life if they pick it up in the kids section of their library, read it, maybe even love it passively, and just kinda forget about it as they get older.

I'm not an artist, but the drawings aren't too bad. There is one instance in the early panel where a woman's eyebrows fly off her face and it's a bit silly. They're simple enough to where I think that same hypothetical kid would read this and make some facsimile fanart in a notebook or on their desk or something. It's honestly charming. The standouts are the two leads, who can be expressive and even though the circumstances and dialogue aren't all there or fully developed to support it, you want them to be romantically entangled or friends at least.

The world is weirdly empty. I am not sure if this is by design, because it seems like a semi-primitive society, but the impression I get is that the only inhabited zones are Keisha's village and the Master Roshi ripoff character. By the end of the book I'm still unclear on what the world's deal is other than that Mezteck has mastered something arcane to dominate it, and that on some level what you take into it is what you take out of it.

On that note, Darian's mystical jacket just holds whatever it needs to for a cheap gag. The bad guy asks for something precious of his and he produces his iPod, har dee har har. To lure in a mysterious masked stalker, he produces a heretofore unseen chocolate bar, and not only does the stalker understand what chocolate is but knows how to unwrap it and leave it behind. On its own, this really doesn't raise any red flags, except Darian doesn't seem to question it like he did with the Master Roshi ripoff character's solar panels and engineering.

The emptiness and lack of definition to the world seems as though it can be populated with whatever the plot will need at a given moment, which is often the case with books and comics and publishers who ask for changes, but it doesn't holistically give the impression that this is fully planned out. That's fine though; assuming this is just a character study, the world can shift to fit them, but there's not much to go off of just yet and I think they need to be a bit more characterized to have it work. For example: Darian comes in and hates Mezteck because he's mean and wants to marry Keisha against her will and he's weird and uses what looks like dark magic. For a kid's book, that's more than enough, I guess. But why is Darian hellbent on treating him like a comic book villain, obvious meta context notwithstanding, when he doesn't really have any impression of the status quo? Mezteck hasn't really done much to show off his goals; he hasn't even done something all that evil yet. More suspicious, certainly, and certainly evil on a personal level, but what's Mezteck's tax policy? What's his long-term goal?

And yes--this is all the first book, so much of this has to be established. But as a comic, these kinds of things should be established visually. Mezteck looks like a villain, but we don't know why he wears a shawl, or if his garb helps with magic. There is a hippie transported from the 60's but maybe his clothes should be tighter on him from outgrowing it, or faded or smelly or ripped. You can tell us a lot about a character just from appearances, but it's just not realized.

Anyways, these are just me being a couch quarterback. Oh, boohoo, a joke about A.D.D. didn't land for me, oh, this character isn't written with Oscar Wilde level complexity. These are things I can't do even if I tried. But there are things I wouldn't do even if I could. The most offensive thing about this whole thing is a character who is a whole ripoff of Master Roshi from Dragonball. There is no line to be blurred between homage and ripoff, it's just Master Roshi and it is embarrassing to look at. His actual literal name is Hippie Young Man and by God I really hope we learn that wasn't always his name or we see a flashback in future volumes to a youthful design that is less derivative because dear God it was loathsome to look at.

This is where I’d say things are hitting their stride. Bulma makes a great comic relief character and playing off her parents makes her a lot of fun. She’s very expressive and silly. Muten Rōshi acting as an obstacle to fight and when he’s kindhearted towards Namu. Sometimes the power levels are insane, where seemingly cataclysmic events have wider ramifications. Something happens to the Moon at some point, which has already been visited in the previous volumes. Not to say too much, but I wonder what ended up happening to that visitor.

Just like the last books brought me Pilaf, these volumes brought me Mechanical Man No. 8. My metric for how much I think I should be invested is based on how often I see the character in related media, and 8-Man is nowhere to be seen—perhaps expected, since his appearance is Universal’s Frankenstein, but he is thoroughly kindhearted and all his subtle facial expressions make him a wonderful friend for Son Goku during the brief stint they team up. Like Pilaf, I hope we see more of him.

Now this isn’t to say I dislike the character, but I’m not sure I understand the “point” of Kuririn/Krillin. I like him a lot, and his snide remarks and his perseverance, but as best as I can surmise, he just seems to be a measure of power in this world. Like he’s an average person who trains on the same level as Son Goku and is maybe meant for the readers to get a sense of scale—that the average person can train and reach Kuririn’s level, only to understand what a wide gulf exists between himself and Muten Rōshi as well as Goku. Still—these are only qualms with the function of the character, not so much the personality. He just appears quite frequently despite having contributions on par with, say, Pu’ar—at least so far.

It’s a very relaxing read—very simple, and comfortable to slip into when you’re overworked and exhausted.

Okay, cards on the table—I don’t have any nostalgic attachment to this series; in fact, I kinda just didn’t like it and over time it’s had pressure put on it as a classic, but as a classic that’s fully embraced its identity. Most manga/animé that people try to entice others with is done so with language like “it’s the manga/animé for people who DON’T usually like manga/animé,” and no one even pretended as such with this. This, as well as the perceived length that this has a million episodes and thus a million volumes, put me off.

(For those who are also looking to get into this with the massive influx of fans thanks to Gen Z and Alpha, let me cut your work down—there’s just this series and a spinoff called “Super”, at least books-wise. The rest are dubiously canon promos for tie-in media. This book’s a threefer with only 13 more of a comparable length.)

So. No nostalgia goggles to wear, no knowledge of the series other than vague names and memes here and there, not even much Toriyama fanhood going in besides Chrono Trigger. What do I think?

Admittedly, lots of frustration that I hope alleviates itself the further along we go.

Is it too much to say that the sexuality is uncomfortable? I don’t want to clutch my pearls here, I’m just saying that my image of fans never seems to be about this so much as battle, conflict, and getting stronger. The pervert geezer just wears on my patience a lot and I get tempted to skip his parts. And when it’s not that, it’s a lot of just peeing and pooping and farting and surprisingly childish crap.

I won’t say the innuendo never lands—there’s some pretty funny dialogue that stems from it. It also helps that the main protagonist has zero interest so in spite of what one might expect in a stereotypical animé (and Dragon Ball is as stereotypical as they get!) the main character is above lust and actually clueless. Most of the jokes that land revolve around his genuine confusion.

On that note, the characters other than the Muten Rōshi are fantastic. I thought I would hate Bulma but I like that she constantly suffers; there’s always some divine comeuppance for being so entitled and she’s the most fun when she’s screaming or looking terrified rather than cutesy. Her ending was very obvious, but nice all the same. Son Goku is incorruptible and a very charming protagonist. Kuririn (I know it’s Krillin) is a version of the old man I find tolerable. Yamcha was great! I almost felt a little bad the story calls him a villain. He’s fine, honestly—he has reasonably good motives and isn’t all that selfish. His ending was a little less obvious, but almost Wizard of Oz-like, where he had it all along. I was really happy for him! Even minor characters like the Ox Kig, Chi-Chi, and Lunch all had a level of charm to them. Oolong I didn’t like all that much until the climax, but the thing he contributed was one of the few lewd jokes I thought was hilarious, especially as the joke takes several panels of anticlimax to land on his head.

My absolute favorite character was Pilaf. Everything about him, his design, the absurdity of his proposed empire being called the “Reich Pilaf”, his little Scrooge pajamas, his very unlewd and almost pedantic nature—he was absolutely precious and he just up and vanishes. I hope he comes back, he was so wonderful for too short of a time.

Another critique I guess I have is the story weirdly continuing. It seems obvious, sure, and the way the story is structured there may be a cyclical nature to things where the events continue, but the very sudden interim is strangely low-stakes, although it does introduce Kuririn and Lunch, who were a lot of fun. I will keep reading, simply to keep up with the great characters and wonderful art even if the story is what it is and the jokes are very frequently not to my taste.