Ubalblog

[  Mood: Sick ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
So the Hunger Games is popular right now. And there are lots of people tossing around titles for people to read after they have finished Collins work. And believe me, there are many worthy followers, but what about a book that came before the Hunger Games? One that explores some of the same themes, but goes in a very, very different direction.

It’s 2154, and the world is a dystopian mess. Many years ago, some apocalyptic event occurred that caused the population to drop to a point that there was a lack of workers. To fill this need, governments created robots to do menial work. These robots began to get better, able to handle more complex work. This meant that as the population recovered, there was no work for them to do. Permanent classes of unemployed were created, living off government hand outs.

Into this world is born Lisse. As a child of an unemployed family, she is taken from her parents at the age of six to be educated. But with the robots taking more and more jobs, she too ends up Unemployed at the age of sixteen. Dropped off in the Designated Area in which she is now to live, Lisse bands together with a group of seven friends to survive their new world of gangs, drugs, garish clothes and government crackdowns.

But then one day, an invitation arrives for the group to attend the mysterious Game. With nothing else to do, they go and are exposed to a treasure hunt in a new world that seems too real to be true. Each return finds them wanting to do better and learn more. They devote a great deal of time to preparing for their next session. And then one day, it turns out the Game may have been all too real.

Author Monica Hughes’s work was published in 1991, and it shows a world where technology is replacing man in insidious ways. A precursor to works like the Hunger Games, there is a very socialist theme to this book, that big government may know better than we think it does. And the Utopian view that the children, when given a chance, can build a better world out of the ashes of our own.

It has aged very well and is worth the look.

[  Mood: Cool ]
[ Currently: Waiting to go grocery shopping ]
I managed to get my library to ILL an omnibus edition I have been wanting to read for awhile. And low, The Life and Times of Martha Washington arrived for me.

Martha was born in 1995 an alternate history America, one where the poor are locked into the slum/tenement housing provided by the government. From there she joins PAX, part peace corps, part military police, part army. She rises through the ranks and becomes a war hero, and treasonous rebel. And we see her as she passes finally dies at the age of 100.

Martha Washington is probably Frank Miller’s best work. (There I said it. And I sit back and wait for someone to tell me I am wrong.) Or at the very least his most feminist. Martha is not a sex kitten who uses her body to get what she wants, nor is she a male vision of what a strong woman is. She is a strong female character in the tradition of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarion and Tanya Huff’s Torin Kerr. One that I, as a woman could identify with.

This omnibus collects the series Give Me Liberty, Marth Washington Goes to War and Marth Washington Saves the World, plus some one issue stories. Because of this, it is a little disjointed, but that is due to how Miller wrote the Martha Washington series. Some chapters were written before others, while he deliberately chose not to cover certain chapters of her life. Still it is enjoyable and leaves you wanting to know more about this amazing woman.

Go get it.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Listening to Extra Hot Great ]
In my travels through the library led me to this book:

While out walking one night, Alexandra comes across a bookmobile that is full of every book that she has ever read. This library of Alexandra fascinates her, and after she leaves, she spends years looking for it again. Alexandra begins to isolate herself, becoming obsessed with reading, wanting to impress the librarian with her choices. Eventually she becomes a librarian herself, and each time she encounters the library she is amazed at how many books it contains.

This is a beautifully illustrated picture book, that the author, Audrey Niffenegger (famous for the Time Traveller’s Wife), calls a graphic novel. If there is one flaw with this book, it is the characterization of Alexandra, a reader and eventually librarian, as alone and desperate with only one choice at the end on how to join the mystical library. This is not a book about how incredibly uplifting and enriching reading can be. Instead readers are loners with suicidal tendencies, which we are not.

Niffengger missed the mark here. She wants to produce a piece that makes us stop and think about who we read for and why we read, instead becomes a slap in the face of the very readers she is trying to appeal to. What would have happened had she used Alexandra’s reading as a way for her to grow, find a better, more self-fufilling relationship and contribute to society. The end could have been relatively the same, but her readers would have been more satisfied.

Interesting concept, but Niffengger’s depressing plot turn ruins what would have been a perfect book.

In my quest for manga, I found this.

When Aya turned sixteen, all she wanted as a karaoke party with her twin brother and their friends. Instead she is attacked by her family, who are trying to kill her because they think she is a threat to the family. It turns out Aya is the descendant of an angel and carries her heavenly powers. Before long, Aya is on the run, accused of her father’s murder and hiding out with another of the angel’s descendants.

This first volume of the manga series is quite interesting. Some nice layout of plot and backstory. An early leader in the "angels are the new vampires" trend. Pick it up.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Thinking about making a cup of tea. ]
I picked up the second volume of the Justice series by Jim Kruger and Alex Ross. And I was pleasantly surprised by how much better the story was than the first volume.

In this volume we find out that our favourite heroes have not been killed off by the advancing hordes of bad guys. Instead, they have used their smarts and experience to defeat them and escape. The problem is that they are not smart enough to capture them, as would have happened in a classic Justice League comic or cartoon.

When our heroes reconvene, they discover several things. One, the B-team Leaguers and associate members have begun to rally to help with the fight. Two, some of the big times members have been compromised in a big way, specifically Batman is under the control of mystery worms and Wonder Woman is turning back into the clay from which she was former. Three, thanks to their control of Batman, the bad guys now know all of the superhero’s secrets and have begun to kidnapped their loved ones and sidekicks.

Meanwhile, the bad guys have unveiled the next stage of their "humanitarian" efforts, creating floating cities for the poor and the sick, but perhaps all of humanity. It appears these lucky citizens are also all getting alien worms.

Great story, with references to classic JLA mythology. I have ordered Volume 3!

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
So I went to pick up a sweater that was on hold for me today (that was indeed beautiful, but appears to be another factory mislabelling of size). While there I picked up a Holiday London Fog from the Second Cup.

By Calgary Reviews from Calgary, Canada (Second Cup Holiday London Fog) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Now a regular London Fog is an Earl Grey Tea steeped in steamed, frothy milk. The Holiday London Fog is the Second Cup’s Holiday tea steeped in steamed, frothy milk. There may be a shot of cherry syrup in their, because the cherry notes are heavy in this cup.

This is the best of the holiday specialty prepared cups of tea out there this season. I strongly recommend that if you live in Canada, you find a Second Cup and get yourself a cup of this before the stock runs out and you have to wait until November to get another one.

And maybe buy yourself a couple of boxes of the tea to make this at home.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
My quest to find some new manga continues, and this time hits an iceberg. And sadly, not a big bouncy iceberg.

Akito wants to write manga, so he convinces Moritaka, a classmate who can draw, to create a manga with him. Conveniently, Moritaka’s uncle was a manga artist and writer who worked himself to death. And Moritaka’s crush wants to be a manga voice artists. Akito even manages to arrange a situation that leads to the young lady promising to marry Moritaka when they have both successfully achieved their dream. This book chronicles their initial efforts to create a manga they can sell to a publisher.

This book proves the adage "there is a manga for everything". This manga is about making manga. Highly meta, this could have been brilliant. Instead it is dull as dishwater as the boys conduct research on what is popular in manga and come up with their answer to that. And so I put it aside, which I rarely do.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Getting ready for bed. ]
Again with another Justice League graphic novel. And another instalment from the Cartoon Network JL tie in. I really can’t say enough nice things about this series. It is not deep and earth shattering, but it is fun and lets younger kids get into the Justice League without anything scarring happening.

As with the previous two volumes, this one contains a series of stand alone stories that feature both the big and smaller names fighting bad guys. And again, the strength here is that the stories do a great job focusing on the lesser known characters. This volume has stories that focus on Vibe, Deadman, Steel, Red Tornado and the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick.

Just a fun read for the littler comics fan.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Listening to My son play ]
So here we have a new year, and I feel pressured by society to make some New Year’s resolutions. I’ll spare you the long winded explanations of why, because that might be over sharing. So here I go, with my resolutions for the new year:

1. Spend more time with my son.

2. Spend more time with my husband.

3. Making time for the rest of my fiends and family.

4. Go to bed earlier.

5. Blog more.

6. Get back to writing articles for RevolutionSF.com

7. Floss more.

8. Clean my house and get organized.

9. Read and review 300 books at Goodreads this year.

10. Do something totally creative this year.

So there you have it. I will use the blog to keep all who care upto date.

[  Mood: Cool ]
[  Currently: Listening to Shauncastic ]
As some of you may or may not have figures out, I love the Justice League. So I tend to read any graphic novels the library has or will get for me. (Why I don’t buy them? That’s another post.)

This is another collection of straightforward, episodic stories based on the Justice League Unlimited cartoon series. This is nothing earth shattering, but there is some minor character development. Again, this allows the comic writers to explore characters that are spear carriers in the animated series. The best of these is when Vixen travels back in time to help Merlin defeat Morgana Le Fey (a call back to a great Justice League episode).

A very kid friendly graphic novel.