Thought Train to Pusan

Speak is a young adult novel that deals with the aftermath of a young woman’s rape: a time wherein she feels she cannot tell anyone what happened, leading to a period of depression. I hate to think that these things happen to people who are so young and vulnerable, and yet I know that it does occur, and more often than not, the blame is placed on the wrong person, or the victim is too afraid to speak to someone who can help them. Laurie Halse Anderson portrays this issue in a serious manner, which I think is very important, yet she doesn’t allow for it to be so dark that there is no hope for redemption. While I could not possible know what rape victims feel, or even have an inkling as to how it may stay with them throughout their entire lives, I want to believe that there is still the possibility for happiness after such a trauma. The protagonist of Speak is a 13 year-old young woman named Melinda, who attends a party at the end of the summer before she enters high school, onl...

I don’t really know why I’ve found myself liking Hellboy so much lately, but I really do enjoy him as a character a lot, as well as how Mike Mignola uses dark folklore tales as the basis of his short, episodic stories, just changing them slightly to suit the world of Hellboy. And there are always little explanations from Mignola as to where the stories came from, which I find to be incredibly interesting. Then again, I have a thing for supernatural lore being used in different works, if just in influence, or being reinvented in a new way, and The Right Hand of Doom definitely follows the pattern of Hellboy’s past volumes in that it plays little installments from his life involving different paranormal threats, which may or may not be connected to a bigger picture. I really enjoy it, but I know that some people aren’t into that kind of thing, just like how I like the somewhat less-detailed nature of Mignola’s drawings, which makes them almost seem more moody and dark (heeeeey, early...

I know a lot of yee fellow Cannonballers have already read and reviewed this book since it came out this summer, so I’ll try to keep it brief. For me,  The Ocean at the End of the Lane  was an exercise in reminiscence on the past, and the wonder of childhood. I was amazed at how quickly and unquestioningly the young boy of the story just accepted the strange things occurring around him. But when I think about it, children are like that, aren’t they? They are the most likely to believe in things that defy logic, or even yearn for more magical explanations for things that they may not understand. This brief novel truly captures this quality: The Ocean at the End of the Lane begins with our nameless protagonist, returning to his hometown for a funeral, and finding himself back at the old farmhouse at the end of the lane where his childhood friend used to live. As he sits looking at the pond in the back of the farm, he recalls some strange events from when he was seven yea...