This is where our reviews live. They get along in relative harmony. You can find reviews for brand-new titles, and upcoming titles. There are reviews from our to-be-read piles, the books we simply didn’t get to when they first released. We even have a Throwback Thursday page where you can find reviews of books ten years old or older. So take a look. Stay a while. Find something new to read.
The Book of JoanI really love dystopian books. I really didn’t love this dystopian book. The Book of Joan by Lidia Yukinovitch was disappointing conglomeration of ideals that at once said nothing of substance and beat the reader over the head with what messages it did convey.
Papillon Vol 1I won’t lie. I originally checked this book out of the library simply because the title matched the name of Papillon, my favorite villain from Buso Renkin. (What can I say? I like my 90s shonen anime.) Of course, this is a shojo manga, so I wasn’t expecting anything remotely similar to Buso Renkin. But I wasn’t expecting to dislike Papillon Vol 1 by Miwa Ueda even half as much as I did.
The Doomster's Monothlithic Pocket AlphabetSome people pick up books based on the front cover. Me? I tend to pick book based on the title. One of the last graphic novels I read based on the title was this one. The Doomster’s Monolithic Pocket Alphabet written by Theo Prasidis and with art by Maarten Donders is a love letter to doomsters. It’s short, it’s fun, and it’s cute (not necessarily a word I every expected to use in regard to doom metal, but hey).
Food Wars! Vol. 2It’s going to be a long road while trying to catch up to the current chapters of Food Wars! in Weekly Shonen Jump, but it’s guaranteed to a be a road filled with cooking battles and boys clad only in aprons. A fantastic follow up to the first volume, Food Wars! Vol 2 by Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki is a shonen manga following Soma, the newest student at a prestigious cooking school that boasts a whopping 10% graduation rate. Only the best of the best survive at Totsuki Culinary Academy.
Binti: The Night MasqueradeThe last book in the acclaimed Binti series has been released. Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor is the third and last book in the Binti series, a great conclusion to a wonderful series.
Tales of the Abyss: Asch the Bloody Vol 1I’ll be honest. I think I may have actually squealed out loud when I discovered Tales of the Abyss: Asch the Bloody in their manga collection. I have been a fan of the ‘Tales of’ games for a long time, and Tales of the Abyss remains my favorite of the franchise. Though I initially picked it up out of pure fandom, I found myself intrigued upon reading the description. Tales of the Abyss: Asch the Bloody by Hana Saito and Rin Niyjo follows the story set in the game not from the point of view of Luke, the original main character, but that of Asch, one of the villains and someone very close to Luke.
RWBYI cannot describe how excited I was when the RWBY manga appeared at my door. I love the anime and I wanted to see how the story was handled within the anime. Unfortunately, RWBY by Shirow Miwa ignored much of the animated versions strengths to the manga’s detriment.
Down Among the Sticks and BonesI have always loved portal fantasies, those books where a group of children fall through the back of a wardrobe and enter a world of fantasy and magic. Last year, Every Heart A Doorway piqued my interest based on its new spin on this familiar scenario – what happens when someone comes back to our world? Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire is dark, stunningly written, and utterly beautiful.
Down Among the Sticks and Bones has some of the loveliest prose I have read in quite some time. It’s the sort of writing that normally makes my father look fondly at the book in hand and say ‘people don’t write like this anymore’. Reading McGuire’s work is a real treat. I devoured this book; it was a one sitting read.
Dreamland BurningIt has been a long time since a book has struck me in the sort of way Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham struck me. It’s the sort of book that is devoured, read with the sort of all-consuming fervor that makes a person look up bewildered when the phone rings, or wondering when exactly the sun set. I loved this book. This book is important. It matters.
The Novel of the Tumpinamba IndianWhen I heard that a novel written by a surrealist artist was being published in English for the first time, I knew I needed to read it. I was fascinated, both by the subject matter and the writer. The Novel of the Tumpinamba Indian is a surrealist take on the Spanish Civil War and was written by E. F. Granell, artist and revolutionary.
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