Review: Pride of Baghdad – Brian K Vaughan

I need a minute to catch my breath after that one.

Written in 2006, Pride of Baghdad was written during the height of Vaughan’s two successful series Y the last man and Ex Machina. Vaughan is no stranger to politically charged, controversial story lines, bringing LGBT characters into the spotlight, as well as attacking the issues of gay marriage and marijuana, racism, and islamiphobia. 

Pride looks at the Iraq war through the lenses of four lions living in the Baghdad zoo.  At the beginning of the story they are discussing escape with the other zoo animals. Serious tension exists between the lions due to their past experiences before the zoo, including a violent rape between the alpha lion and an older lioness. 

The bombing of the city destroyed the zoo walls, freeing all of the animals. Not all of the animals survive, notably a giraffe, who, chanting to the other animals about their deliverance, takes a missile through its neck in a particularly gruesome scene. 

As the lions make their way through the city, the come across a turtle in the Tigris river and it tells them this is not the first time such an event has struck the city, alluding to his own childhood when he lost his family to the first gulf war in a particularly traumatic panel showing the family of turtles drowning in oily river. 

Further travel through the city leads them to the palace, where they encounter a lion chained to a wall, dying of starvation and exposure. A bear, also palace entertainment attacks the lions, gouging out the other eye of the older lioness.  The alpha lion and the cub succeeded in killing the bear, with the help of a stampeding pack of horses, and make their way to the roof to view the sunset. The alpha lion is nearly how dead from the fight, and is finished off by a group of American soldiers who kill the group with assault rifles.  The final pages show that the story was based on a true story.

The power of the story and the images shown struck me like a slap in the face. The lions symbolize the innocent lives that were swept away in the bombing, and the careless nature and destructiveness of war.  Pride of Baghdad Is to the Iraq war what Grave of the Fireflies was for world war two: a reminder of grim war is.

Rating: 9/10

Order from Amazon:

Book Review: Cruel Devices – George Wright Padgett

Just finished up Cruel Devices, and I really enjoyed it. I meant to get into this one earlier, I received a copy through the publisher’s ARC program but December was so crazy that had to wait until now to get into this one. (See my post later on December’s readings) I only recently got into Horror through Stephen King’s The Shining, and you can see a lot of the same themes in this, the struggling author trying to identify himself and meeting scary and strange situations along the way made for a fast paced but engaging read.

Cruel Devices – George Wright Padgett  : 7/10

Available Direct from Grey Gecko: http://store.greygeckopress.com/products/cruel-devices

Review: Kill Swap – James Lovegrove

Let me preface this by saying that I usually love the work of James Lovegrove.

This book is only 56 pages long, and the print is enormous. 20 minute read at the most, so I was disappointed when I paid 6.50 for 20 minutes of entertainment.

Second. it really isn’t up to par with Lovegrove’s usual amazing work. I saw the 2012 publication date, and figured it just slipped by me, I’ve read everything he’s written since 2009. But this book simply fell flat, written in 2007, the plot was underdeveloped, the pacing was poor, and the prose was just not what I’d expect from such a great author.

Rating: 4/10

Check out his other work, I recommend starting with the Age of Zeus:

Review: Blood Gravity – Gayle Towell

Trigger warning: this review is of a book containing graphic depictions of rape, incest, self harm, and suicide.

A little while back I read the collection Burnt Tongues, and enjoyed it so much that I emailed a few of my favorite authors and offered to review any future work. The first author to graciously send me a copy of their next project was Gayle Towell.  Gayle’s new piece, Blood Gravity, Is the first installment in an ongoing series focusing on two brothers subjected to abuse by their father.

The story clocks in around a hundred pages, and focuses on the first born, Jake Smith. Jake is 20, a successful college student living with a heavy burden, he has been sexually abused by his father for the last 10 years.  Jake visits home often, mostly to watch out for his younger brother Ben.  Ben is 5 years old and suffers from chronic bedwetting and thumb sucking. Jake worries this might be an early sign of abuse.

Throughout the story we find Jake struggling with extreme anxiety and self harm as copingmchanisms to deal with his father’s abuse. Late in the story Jake visits home and goes camping with his father and brother, during the camping trip his father rapes him, telling him it’s alright, and that it can’t be wrong if he enjoys it.

After the camping trip, Jake spirals into increasing depression, his roommate discovers his self harm and attempts to connect Jake to help, but he is too afraid. Jake  runs away and considers suicide, but eventually talks himself down from a literal cliff. Through a chance turn of events he drops out of school and begins working as a shop assistant and gets his own apartment, much to his father’s disapproval. The story ends with Jake kidnapping his brother to bring him to safety.

This story is important for many reasons. It tackles the problem of abuse in boys as well as in girls. It also discusses the dangers of self harm as a way of dealing with abuse.

I greatly look forward to the continuation of Gayle’s work, and will certainly keep reviewing further releases.

Blood Gravity : 8.5/10
Availbile from the authors website
http://gayletowell.com/scars/bloodgravity/

Review: Beautiful You – Chuck Palanhiuk

Hey readers.

A few weeks ago I entered to preview some advance reader copies of new books I was interested in.  At the end of October I received an email saying that I won an audio copy of the new Chuck Palanhiuk novel Beautiful You. The book arrived on monday, and because I work on weekends, I used my days off (Monday and today) to listen through the book and do some work around the house.  While I listened, I worked on a new recipe I found for bread using the leftover mash from home brewed beer, which pairs well with sweet onion marmalade.

Beautiful You is one of Palanhiuk’s most outlandish pieces yet, focusing on the ideas of sexuality and power, but in terms of layout, it is one of the most linear and structured works he has published.  Starting with a scene from near the end of the story, Chuck tells the story of a woman in the near future.  Our hero, Penny Harrigan, is a young New Yorker aspiring to become an attorney.

(Due to the erotic nature of the book, this review gets fairly mature so please proceed with disgression)

Penny’s story begins in the usual way, a small fish in the big pond of NYC.  She is working as a errand girl in a big name law firm.  Having failed the bar exam three times, Penny is searching for meaning in her life when one day she meets the worlds richest man, currently in her bosses office dealing with a palimony lawsuit with his movie star ex-girlfriend.  A harlequin romance novel style romance ensues, Penny’s rich suitor C. Linus Maxwell (romanticized by the tabloids as billionaire playboy CLiMaxwell)  invites her to dinner at the city’s most exclusive restaurant.

After their high profile night out, a romantic relationship ensues, and Penny discovers that Maxwell’s passion in life is researching the maximum possible pleasure of the female sexual experience.  Penny describes her sexual history as very lackluster, but once she begins her relationship with Maxwell, she discovers new exciting experiences.   Over the course of their relationship, Penny begins learning of Maxwell’s past.  His previous sexual partners included the first female President of the United States, a four time Oscar winning actress, as well as many sexual teachers, courtesans, and prostitutes.

Penny and Maxwell’s relationship comes to an end after 136 days, the same period as every other relationship Maxwell has had.  As the relationship ends, Maxwell demands that Penny not tell anyone about their experiments in return for a trust fund of fifty million dollars.  This is the turning point in the novel where things change from erotica, to social commentary.  Maxwell takes his inventions public, creating the adult toy company “Beautiful You”.  The company does incredibly well, creating lines of women winding many city blocks before the store opens.  The female population becomes addicted to using the products, countless women begin calling in “sick” and lines around the stores increase exponentially.

The novel escalates as Maxwell’s former lovers begin dying mysterious deaths, and the female population begins disappearing.  Penny begins a quest to stop Maxwell, seeking legal action against him, and eventually traveling to Nepal to seek out the help of Maxwell’s original tutor, Baba Greybeard.  Baba Greybeard teaches Penny the ancient ways of sexual magic, teaching her to become a viable sexual wizard to stop Maxwell using her inner power.  Palanhiuk channels Stephen King for the last section of the book, as the story takes on a tone of Carrie, or It when Penny unleashes her powers to destroy a great evil.

Palanhiuk makes many assumptions in this novel, exploring the dangers of arousal addiction and obsession.  He also explores the idea of media control and the lemming-like nature of following.  The “Beautiful You” products were engineered to break, unleashing nanobots into the women using them.  The nanobots directed their buying habits, directing them to purchase things produced by Maxwell’s companies.  Maxwell’s ultimate goal was control of the world, and he thought that by using women, he believed he could direct the world.

Beautiful You was an interesting read, especially regarding Palanhiuk’s reputation for misogyny and sexism.  Like many male authors, Chuck often used women as a way to progress male characters, instead of using them as characters.  Beautiful You marked much progress in Chuck’s understanding of other genders.  One complaint that could be found in the novel was it’s disregard of LGBT+ identities in the story.  While very interesting, the book takes a very gender binary approach to the world, and could use some improvement.

As a whole, I was very impressed by Palanhiuk’s latest offering, and would recommend it to fans of his earlier work, and would also recommend it to those who were disappointed by his lack of knowledge of the female voice in literature.

Beautiful You: 8.5/10
Available on Amazon

Review: Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

As I mentioned a few days ago, I downloaded the audio book version of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  I finished it on Tuesday morning, which is pretty quick for a 16 hour book.  I spent a good chunk of my weekend playing Super Mario 64 and listening to the book, which was a great combo.

I like to think of Ready Player One as a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for quips nerd culture. I thought Ready Player One very enjoyable to listen to, Will Wheaton did a good job narrating the story and gave a good voice to the stories main character.

Ready Player One follows the exploits of Wade Watts, user name Parzival, in a near future where the world has used up most of its natural resources and now relies on a immersive gaming experience called the Oasis.  The creator of the Oasis, James Halliday, user name Anorak, created a challenge in the game near the end of his life by hiding an Easter egg in the video game in the form of a quest related to his interests, which were classic video games, science fiction and fantasy, and classic rock.  The prize for finding the egg? Halliday’s entire inheritance, the billions of dollars of revenue for the Oasis.

The book starts with Wade 5 years after the quest is announced, living in a trailer park known as the stacks, living in poverty and working his way through school.  Egg hunters, or Gunters, have devoted their lives to finding the egg, spending countless hours every day researching the interests of Halliday and searching the countless worlds stored in the Oasis.  Because of his lack of funding, Wade is not able to explore past the starting world of his virtual high school.

By a strange turn of luck, Wade is the first Gunter to find the first clue.  Wade eventually becomes famous through the process.  Wade makes friends with the other Gunters who are able to make it through the challenges, and they begin to face the challenge of competing with a technology corporation that is attempting to win the challenge to acquire control of the Oasis. The employees of this corporation are known as Sixers, due to their user names being 6 didget employee codes.

The competition intensifies through the hunt for the multiple keys and clues to find the egg, and eventually climaxes in an all out war between the Sixers and the Gunters at the location of the final gate.

I enjoyed the story very much, even though I don’t usually go in for young adult fiction.  There were a few issues I found with the story telling method, mainly, I found the voice used for the teenage characters a bit oversimplified, including lots of cliches and stereotypes.  The book also contained many extensive explanations about things like classic Atari and computer systems, descriptions of role playing game formats, and 80s pop culture. Which, if you didn’t have any previous knowledge, it would be very helpful, but as someone who has an extensive knowledge of the 1980s, it was a bit redundant and seemed unnecessary. One other note would be that there were a few references that were a good deal late for a 1980s focused story line, namely references to Firefly and Stargate.

As a whole, Ready Player One was a very solid book, which I would recommend to anyone interested in 1980s or nerd culture.

Ready player one: 7.5/10
Availbile on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307887448/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&sr=&qid=