29 June 2016

What's A MATTER?!


DARK MATTER is wonderfully weird and borderline depressing. Drawing on elements of s/f and everyday happenstance of the comic book realm, Blake Crouch crafts a fun tale of a man on the run whose sole desire to simply get home to his wife and son. 

Be careful what you wish for, eh? In fact, Crouch's whole premise is "what if you can't go home?" and "if you make it home, what happens if everything has changed?". In doing so, DARK MATTER is a fun, suspenseful, chase of a tale.

What's missing, however, is more deductive reasoning, more problem solving to go with overall chase. The main character, Jason Dressen, is a physicist, so he's a bright guy. He is used to looking at equations and solving them. Unfortunately, he does not go about solving his biggest question, why his life has drastically changed, in a pure scientific or deductive method. As a result, DARK MATTER was s/f lite; suspense catered for a large audience. However, said large audience apparently had no problem with the science-heavy writing of Andy Weir and, if anything, Jason Dressen needed a little Mark Watney in him. 

Crouch's tale, nevertheless, is a fun, exciting read. Many thanks to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for making the ARC available and for the enjoyable read. 

As Always,
theJOE

16 June 2016

A Fantastic Summit

Mountain climbing, crime drama, and historical fiction certainly might not appear to be a natural mash-up, but Harry Farthing pulls it off – and quite well at that – with THE SUMMIT.

Farthing goes to great lengths in setting up and describing the climbs to and from Mt Everest in Krakauer-ian detail, with a similar height of excitement. The treachery, the splendor, the whole man-versus-nature element, all well done. To compliment, Farthing adds in a historical mystery involving a Nazi attempt at beating the British to summit Everest first. The ramifications of that plot propel the lead story of a British climber, Neil Quinn, who accidentally is roped into a mission to discover if this indeed happened all the while protecting himself and this mission from the obligatory ne’er-do-wells and adding to the already high-level of danger as man must also go against man.

Aside from the plot and pacing, Farthing creates an excellent set of characters. Even secondary and tertiary players whose sole purpose is to propel the plot along are fleshed out and real-sounding.  Perhaps the only detraction in this regard is the occasional placing of dialogue where said characters’ speech can come across as expository rather than meaningfully implied.


Truly, THE SUMMIT is a fantastic read. Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the advanced copy and a most satisfying novel.


As Always,
theJOE

15 June 2016

Spectacular Uncanny Invincible

How else would one expect Stan (the Man) Lee to craft his own memoir than through a bombastic graphic novel, where he speaks to you like a friend about his MARVELous life - and he does this in the mighty manner that only Stan knows how. With fan-favorites Peter David and Colleen Doran along for the ride, the graphic novel explodes with four-color stories and secret origins a go-go. 

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t go any deeper than that.

Granted, AMAZING FANTASTIC INCREDIBLE is Stan Lee’s story, but so much about Stan is synonymous with Marvel Comics and aside from his tales on creating some of pop culture’s most known and loved characters, as well as a few of Marvel’s business owners’ problems, the memoir doesn’t dive deep into the bullpen. Instead, Stan crafts the tale he wants to tell – and tells it entertainingly well. 

For that deep dive, I highly recommend Sean Howe’s MARVEL COMICS THE UNTOLD STORY. In that novel, Howe prints a tale related by Jack “King” Kirby where Jack, who had since switched to working for DC, was being interviewed on a New York radio program. Before he could get into his relationship – and subsequent falling out – with Stan, Lee calls into the program, shanghais the interview with a barrage of superlatives, and promptly leaves. Afterwards, Kirby just sighed and said that conversation summed up his working relationship. AMAZING FANTASTIC INCREDIBLE left me feeling the same way. Explosions and exclamation points. Fun memories but nothing too deep. However, I think I was smiling a helluva lot more than Jack.

As always.
theJOE

03 June 2016

H is for Humdrum

A depressing tale about depression. H is for Hawk. H is also for Humdrum. 

The book is half memoir, the tale of the attempt to deal with the loss of a father, and half thesis paper on TH White that, aside from White’s association with falconry, really goes nowhere, other than tying in the legend of King Arthur and Merlin also with hawks. Helen Macdonald has a great writing style, and her use of imagery and analogy to describe, to work through, her depression and the transference of such into owning a hawk, can be quite beautiful; her trials and tribulations with her hawk raising can get repetitive. The analysis of White feels and reads like a term paper complete with called out quotes and footnotes. 

I feel misled that the description of the book – as well as reviews – failed to capitalize on the vast portions of the title dedicated to White, making me regret my purchase. 

B is for Boring.


As Always,
theJOE