Thought Train to Pusan

This past weekend I spent my time at the Calgary comic expo, and one of my cousins (who is an avid fan of all comic books and genres) got into a big discussion with me about what he recommends I read, and American Vampire was one of them. He said it was one of the only vampire stories that has even interested him since he was about 12 years old, given that the whole thing has become a bit overpowering and sanitized in popular culture today. But American Vampire is quite intriguing regardless of this, as it addresses the concept of generational vampiric evolution, and isn’t afraid to leave a twisted trail of bodies behind. Scott Snyder predominantly writes the American Vampire series, with art by Rafael Albuquerque. For the first trade volume (single issues #1-5), however, the stories told alternate between writing from Snyder, and guest writing by Stephen King. Each volume of the series focuses on a different period of American history, and how the new bloodlines of v...

Dash ner, writing about running through a maze… huh. I just realized how much that seems like a terribly unintentional pun. In any case, The Maze Runner is the first book in the young-adult dystopian trilogy of the same name. It first came onto my radar when I saw one of those “If You Liked The Hunger Games then you might like…:” lists, and it sounded kind of interesting, if only because most of the young-adult fiction I’ve read over the years has been somewhat female-centric (I don’t know why, it just has been), and this one is centered around a society of boys. Then, I heard some internet whisperings that this was going to be another YA series being adapted for film, with actors such as the strangely endearing Dylan O’Brien, the stunning Kaya Scodelario, and that cutie-patootie Thomas Brodie-Sangster in the lead roles, and my interest was peaked all the more, hence, my delving into this novel. And was my intrigue warranted? Yes, it certainly was. While the novel has...

World’s End is the 8 th volume of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel series “The Sandman”, but does not focus on any direct story-arch of the series as a whole. Similar to the 3 rd and 6 th volumes of “The Sandman”, World’s End is essentially a collection of short stories, this time being told by a collection of various characters that find themselves all in the same place at the same time. All of the tales are related in some way to one another, but in the most minimal sense. Each story on it’s own is quite interesting, yet the volume as a whole is slightly lacking when compared to some of the previous installments of the series. That’s not to say that it’s not a good, speedy read, but there is something less than satisfying about it when all is said and done. The story begins with a man named Brant Tucker, as he drives his sleeping friend, Charlene, back to Chicago, when they hit a sudden summer snowstorm. Being driven off the road and injured, the two manage to make th...

What’s with me and starting my reviews of a series partway through? In any case, after I devoured the first four novels in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series last summer, I started to get a bit saturated with the whole thing and had to take a break, until picking up the 5 th addition, Mostly Harmless , now. To be honest, I’m not really sure where I last left off… But remembering the characters is really all you need for this one. Of course the plot ends up all in a mishmash once you get into it, but what else would you expect with the series at this point? And while it’s nice to revisit those familiar faces and the fun writing style of Adams, this novel is definitely not the greatest thing I have read, or even close to being the best of Adams’ work to date. Mostly Harmless starts us off with the theory of alternate, parallel universes: those universes that would have existed had you made a different decision at some point or another in your life (...

Approaching the end of the semester (and with it, my class that purely studies Shakespeare), I do say that this will likely be my last Shakespeare review for quite some time. Was it fun? Well, it was hit and miss, but for this last reading, we hit a bit of a higher note than some of the other plays I’ve reviewed thus far. The Winter’s Tale is categorized as one of Shakespeare’s Romance plays, and, like Problem plays, it doesn’t really fall into a distinct classification as a straight tragedy, drama, or history. What is typical of the Romances, however, is their use of other-(worldliness and sometimes magical elements) to produce an effect. And unlike the other hard-to-categorize Problem plays, this work wasn’t really that much of a problem for me. In fact, I found it to be a lot more effortless in it’s unraveling than some of the previous Elizabethan works I have read. Predictable? Yes, it is ridiculously predictable, and I found myself saying, “because of course!” a n...