Posted January 14, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Breaks
Genres: Graphic Novels Pages: 152
Series: Breaks #1 Rating: 
Synopsis: Cortland Hunt has made some dangerous mistakes. Now he's waiting quietly for those mistakes to catch up with him. Ian Tanner coasts through life denying the spark of anger beneath his laid back exterior. When school politics and personal lives become a battleground, the pair find that what they share may just be their only safe haven. Bringing the world of LGBT young adult fiction into the realm of comic books, and collecting the first arc of the acclaimed weekly web series (2014-2016), Breaks is the story of two young men discovering who they were, who they are, and who they will become. It's a love story...but a little broken.
Breaks (Emma Vieceli & Malin Rydén) is for some reason being marketed with comparisons to Heartstopper, and the similarities are basically: queer British boys in a Sixth Form setting, there’s some sport, there’s bullying, and someone’s got to come to terms with his sexuality. That’s it — and that might sound like a reasonable amount, actually, but it’s the tone that’s most important, and that’s worlds apart. Breaks is much grittier — even where Heartstopper deals with difficult topics, there’s a general sense that things are going to be okay, because they have each other and they’re both good boys.
Cort and Ian are not particularly great people (nor particularly likeable), there’s a good deal of violence, and we certainly don’t get to see them cuddling adorably. The art is also a touch closer to realism, which also reduces the cuteness factor.
It didn’t help the book at all that the reading experience via the Kindle version is bad, and while it’s also available free online, that also has its problems: the choice of background colour doesn’t provide a great contrast, and it’s difficult to know what part numbers correspond to which volumes. Really irritating.
That said, on its own merits it’s… alright? I think it’s ultimately not my thing, but I enjoyed the supporting characters like Amilah and Rennie, and I’m kind of curious about Harvey and where things are going between Cort and Ian.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, graphic novels, queer fiction
Posted January 5, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Camp Spirit
Genres: Fantasy,
Graphic Novels,
Romance Pages: 208
Rating: 
Synopsis: Summer camp is supposed to be about finding nirvana in a rock garden... But Elodie prefers Nirvana and Soundgarden. Can she confront rambunctious kids, confusing feelings, and supernatural horrors all at once?
Summer 1994: with just two months left before college, Elodie is forced by her mother to take a job as a camp counselor. She doesn't know the first thing about nature, or sports, of kids for that matter, and isn't especially interested in learning... but now she's responsible for a foul-mouthed horde of red-headed girls who just might win her over, whether she likes it or not. Just as Elodie starts getting used to her new environment, though -- and close to one of the other counselors -- a dark mystery lurking around the camp begins to haunt her dreams.
Axelle Lenoir’s Camp Spirit felt a bit like there were two halves, not equally split, that it kept jumping between: a summer love story between two camp counselors, Elodie and Catherine… and a spooky/supernatural story that involved the camp leader, and only later connected at all with what was going on with Elodie and Catherine.
The romance is cute enough, but it feels like it might actually have been stronger if it’d stuck to the summer of self-discovery between Elodie and Catherine or the supernatural plot. As it was, the supernatural plot felt side-lined compared to the teenage woes of those two.
It is, of course, also a very teenage book, given that a large part of what’s going on involves Elodie and Catherine developing feelings for each other.
I quite liked the art, and overall, I did have fun reading it, but it felt strangely slow — especially the first half or so.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: Axelle Lenoir, book reviews, books, graphic novels, queer fiction, romance, SF/F
Posted December 31, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Side Character's Love Story
Genres: Graphic Novels,
Romance Pages: 162
Series: A Side Character's Love Story #5 Rating: 
Synopsis: What does it mean to go out with someone? Suddenly, the things you couldn't do when you were friends are now possible, and the love, respect, and gratitude you have for one another grows ever stronger. With no manual in hand to guide them, Tanaka and Irie steadily grow closer. Perhaps they'll find the answers they seek between themselves.
A Side Character’s Love Story‘s fifth volume has a bit more of Nobuko’s anxiety again — my original comment on this volume was that that felt a little bit too real, ’cause yikes! Nobuko jumps to the worst conclusions because she’s having trouble reading Hiroki’s reactions. For his part, he’s worried about coming on too strong (where “too strong” means getting too excited about the idea of holding her hand!).
The sweet thing about Hiroki and Nobuko’s relationship though is that they talk about these things. Hiroki tells Nobuko that he wants to hear about how she’s feeling and what she’s thinking, no matter what she has to say — and she puts her trust in him, and tells him her worries. Despite her anxieties, it’s a really sweet and healthy relationship.
The funny thing is that the story has barely referred to him as Hiroki up to now: he and Nobuko still refer to each other by their surnames. They still have a long way to go!
Rating: 4/5
Tags: Akane Tamura, book reviews, books, manga, romance
Posted December 28, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Snowflake Kisses
Genres: Graphic Novels,
Romance Pages: 70
Series: Noahverse #3.5 Rating: Synopsis: After an eventful fall term, Skylar and Jacob are finally together and getting ready to spend their first holiday together.
It′s an extra special holiday for Skylar though. It′s his first Christmas with the Grays as part of a real family, and he′s both nervous and excited. Could this be the Christmas he finally feels like he truly belongs?
Jacob is looking forward to spending the weekend with his boyfriend, but right before the trip his anxiety kicks in. He hasn′t found Sky a gift yet, and he′s freaking out! There are so many things he could get but only the most amazing will do for his Skylar. Will Jacob be able to find the perfect gift in time?
Snowflake Kisses (Jordon Greene, Yayira Dzamesi) is a super cute short story in comic format, which is related to a book I haven’t read but was pretty intelligible without it. Skylar and Jacob are dating, and go with Skylar’s parents to have a little Christmas holiday together.
Skylar’s frequently non-verbal and likes to wear skirts, and Jacob is just helplessly in love with him, it’s really cute. The art works well and is really clear, and I liked that the speech bubbles are different shapes to show Skylar’s different ways of communicating: mouthing words, using his phone to speak for him, or using ASL.
It’s sweet, and probably more meaningful for people who’ve read the book, but still fun for me.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, graphic novels, romance
Posted November 7, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Sad Ghost Club
Genres: Graphic Novels Pages: 248
Series: The Sad Ghost Club #1 Rating: Synopsis: Ever felt anxious or alone? Like you don't belong anywhere? Like you're almost... invisible? Find your kindred spirits at The Sad Ghost Club.
(You are not alone. Shhh. Pass it on.)
This is the story of one of those days - a day so bad you can barely get out of bed, when it's a struggle to leave the house, and when you do, you wish you hadn't. But even the worst of days can surprise you. When one sad ghost, alone at a crowded party, spies another sad ghost across the room, they decide to leave together. What happens next changes everything.
Because that night they start the The Sad Ghost Club - a secret society for the anxious and alone, a club for people who think they don't belong.
The Sad Ghost Club by Lize Meddings is a pretty short graphic novel (took me 15 minutes to read, despite the page count) which features two lonely, awkward teenagers befriending one another after a day of agonising whether they wanted to attend a party, and an awkward evening of not really speaking to anyone at the party. The concerns and anxieties are really familiar from my own teenage years — I was definitely a sad ghost.
I don’t know what it’d have meant to me as a teenager, but as an adult it felt a little overly simplistic, and Socks’ explanation of their difficulties with depression (and the way they urge SG to seek help) felt… cookie-cutter, and laid on with a trowel. Also, it’s really hard to follow which of them is which other than by dialogue. I’m not very visual, so perhaps there are clues I couldn’t pick up, but Socks and SG look pretty identical to me.
It’s probably great for the right audience, but I wasn’t it. Always glad to try new things, though!
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, graphic novels, Lize Meddings
Posted October 31, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
.self
Genres: Graphic Novels,
Science Fiction Pages: 146
Rating: Synopsis: Postscript backs up everything about a person into a file ready to be loaded in a printed body that offers one final chance to wrap up loose ends after they’ve died.
Nat Winters has finally achieved something like a perfect life. No more scraping or getting by. She has a home, a husband and a job turning into a career.
When Nat’s Postscript gets hacked and her file is torrented, her life gets set on fire by these tweaked copies of her running around the world, chasing down their own versions of her deferred dreams. As more of them begin coming to town, looking for her, Nat will be forced to confront a dozen different sides of herself and try to fix the mess they’ve made. But as she tries to contain things, Nat finds out there’s a contingent of Blanks out there who want to hurt her, even kill her, on the orders of a mysterious enemy who is looking to make this identity theft permanent.
.self starts with an interesting concept: there’s a service that allows you to record all your experiences, right up until you die. Once you die, you’re uploaded into a blank body in order to allow you to move around, meet people, and provide closure. But what if that file gets out into the world early? What if dozens of people torrent it, download you, and put create copies of you? What will those copies do?
I think there’s a lot that could be done with this concept, but .self goes with a fairly straightforward route. Some clones want to kill Nat and take over her life, some want to punish her, some want to be their own person, etc, etc. I wasn’t sold on the idea that these clones were what they said they were: one tells Nat that they’re alternate versions of herself, versions that took a different path, but how? If they’re based on her recent data, they’re all the same. And they all seem to know what they are, and have no blurring of identity between their new self and Nat.
They’ve also all been downloaded into all kinds of bodies, not ones that look like Nat, but there’s little exploration of how weird that might be.
Overall, I thought that at each turn, the most predictable choice was made, and a story that could’ve dug into identity mostly just turned out to be about a modicum of personal growth for Nat, unconvincingly presented.
The character designs are cool, though.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: Aditya Bidikar, book reviews, books, Cara McGee, Christopher Sebela, graphic novels, Rebecca Nalty, SF/F
Posted October 24, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite
Genres: Fantasy,
Graphic Novels,
Science Fiction Pages: 184
Series: The Umbrella Academy #1 Rating: 
Synopsis: In an inexplicable worldwide event, forty-three extraordinary children were spontaneously born to women who'd previously shown no signs of pregnancy. Millionaire inventor Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven of the children; when asked why, his only explanation was, "To save the world." These seven children form the Umbrella Academy, a dysfunctional family of superheroes with bizarre powers. Their first adventure at the age of ten pits them against an erratic and deadly Eiffel Tower, piloted by the fearsome zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel. Nearly a decade later, the team disbands, but when Hargreeves unexpectedly dies, these disgruntled siblings reunite just in time to save the world once again.
I thought I’d give Gerard Way’s The Umbrella Academy a shot, though I didn’t know anything about it other than that there’s a Netflix(?) series, and I kinda liked the violin-woman design on the cover.
It’s… a bit of a mess, to be honest; there are some interesting character designs, but it jumps around, motivations aren’t clear, characters don’t really have coherent arcs, etc, etc. The idea of taking a bunch of “special” kids and training them to fight/unlock their powers/etc is a classic, but barely really used here; why they’re so dysfunctional, alluded to but barely touched on; the whole situation for Vanya, nope…
I don’t really get it, overall. Though I still think the violin-body design is astounding to look at.
Rating: 1/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Dave Stewart, Gabriel Ba, Gerard Way, graphic novels, Nate Piekos, SF/F
Posted September 26, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment
The Baker and the Bard
Genres: Fantasy,
Graphic Novels,
Romance Pages: 160
Rating: Synopsis: Author-artist Fern Haught weaves an enchanting, gentle fantasy tale of friendship, determination, and respecting nature in their debut graphic novel, The Baker and the Bard. Perfect for fans of The Tea Dragon Society, Legends & Lattes, and Animal Crossing.
Juniper and Hadley have a good thing going in Larkspur, spending their respective days apprenticing at a little bakery and performing at the local inn. But when a stranger makes an unusual order at the bakery, the two friends (and Hadley’s pet snake, Fern) set out on a journey to forage the magical mushrooms needed to make the requested galette pastries.
Along the way, Juniper and Hadley stumble across a mystery too compelling to ignore: Something has been coming out of the woods at night and eating the local farmers' crops, leaving only a trail of glowy goo behind. Intent on finally going on an adventure that could fuel their bardic craft, Hadley tows Juniper into the woods to investigate.
What started as a simple errand to pick mushrooms soon turns into a thrilling quest to save some furry new friends—and their caretaker, a softspoken little fey named Thistle—who are in danger of losing their home.
The Baker and the Bard, by Fern Haught, is a short and sweet graphic novel which has justifiably been compared to the Tea Dragon Society books. The two main characters, Juniper and Hadley, are apprentices who leap at the chance to go on a bit of an adventure to find a particular glowing mushroom to fulfil a big order for a client. In the process, they make a few friends and maybe make things a bit better for some people.
It’s very slight, not going into a lot of depth about anything, but the dynamic between Juniper and Hadley is cute, and the little snake is very cute.
There is a bit of a jarring bit where Hadley asks Thistle about gender stuff; rather than an organic part of the journey, it feels like a bit of a Teaching Moment, because it’s not been clear up to that moment that Hadley had any such questions or was anything other than comfortable with themself. And to be clear, I’m not saying it shouldn’t be included or that the presence of a non-binary character needs to have a reason, but it felt like that specific scene came out of left-field.
Overall, a fun enough short read, probably aiming at middle-grade reading age, I’d guess? The art is pretty cute, with a pastel sort of aesthetic.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, graphic novels, romance, SF/F
Posted September 15, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Love Everlasting
Genres: Fantasy,
Graphic Novels,
Horror,
Romance Pages: 137
Series: Love Everlasting #2 Rating: Synopsis: The mind-bending story of Joan Peterson's journey through love and horror continues in the second epic and heartbreaking arc of this critically acclaimed, Harvey-nominated series. After traveling from romance to romance, Joan finds herself trapped inside just one story, growing older with the love of her life instead of escaping again and again. And as she becomes a wife, a mother, a grandmother, she is on a bloody quest to discover if everyone in this new world is insane, or if she alone is broken.
Volume two of Tom King’s Love Everlasting is a bit different to the first: instead of multiple short romances, now Joan finds herself trapped in a different kind of love story. This time she gets married, has children and grandchildren, while all the while being haunted by the fact that she knows nothing is real: everything is happening in the year 1962.
The art style is great and expressive, and mostly I just want to be thrown a bit more of a bone story-wise. Just as it felt like it lingered too long on the random romances, it felt like it lingered too long on Joan’s fake family. We get no nearer to knowing why her mother(?) is putting her through this.
I’m still intrigued and would still pick up the third TPB if one gets released (seemingly not so far). But I do feel like as a reader I need a little more to hang onto here.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Clayton Cowles, Elsa Charretier, horror, Matt Hollingsworth, romance, SF/F, Tom King
Posted September 6, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment
Clear
Genres: Graphic Novels,
Science Fiction Pages: 137
Rating: Synopsis: In the not-too-distant future, mankind no longer sees the world as it truly is. The invention of neurological filters has made it so one can view reality however they may choose—Old Hollywood monochrome, zombie apocalypse, anime… the possibilities are endless.
Neo-shamus Sam Dunes is one of only a handful who choose to live without a filter. When the death of an old flame reveals foul play, Dunes is set on a wild and twisting mystery that will take him from the city’s deadly underworld to the even deadlier heights of wealth and power.
Scott Snyder’s Clear is set in a world where the US lost World War III, and all its citizens go around using “veils” to hide reality from themselves. Everybody’s using a different veil, there’s very little shared reality now. It’s unclear how that’s meant to work when people with different veils are interacting: at times it seems like it’s just a visual thing, and then it says that you can go around with everyone in the world desiring you. How? Does it change behaviour, then? Then how does anyone ever interact? How would you ever know what anyone else is doing? And yet people are interacting, throughout the comic.
There’s a twist that makes very little sense, as well. Isn’t it obvious, I mean? If you have to pay to have a veil but you also have to pay — even more! — to have no veil (“clear”), then how does that work? What happens if you don’t pay for anything? I guess the answer is that that only happens if you can’t pay, and then you probably become a “wrk” or something and you’re not able to tell anyone what’s going on, but to me it was obvious that the twist was coming as soon as Dunes said he was paying more and more each year for clear.
The more I think about it, the more it all falls apart. Maybe with a bit more time/world-building it could resolve those issues — and also I’m sure there are people content to just fill in the gaps themselves, take it as read, and not ask “why” too much. It’s also possible there are explanations I missed; I’m not very visual, and graphic novels can be a bit overwhelming in terms of the amount of information they give me. Still, the impression I was left with was one of swiss cheese.
Rating: 1/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Francis Manapul, Scott Snyder, SF/F
