Planetes is the story of Hachirota Hoshino, dubbed “Hachimaki†by his crewmates for his propensity to wear a headband (hachimaki), who dreams of earning enough fame and fortune to buy his own spaceship and achieve complete freedom. As the series begins, however, he’s part of a crew of “extraplanetary sanitation workers†who clean up space debris.
Continue reading “Planetes 1-3 by Makoto Yukimura: B+”
From the back cover:
Around Sunnydale, they say a scarecrow saturated with Halloween rain will come alive and slaughter anyone in sight. (Lovely place, Sunnydale.) Buffy’s best friends, Xander and Willow, used to think the tale was nonsense—but after a few adventures with Buffy, they’re not so sure.
Even without a maniacal scarecrow, a Sunnydale Halloween is a truly horrific happening. There are enough zombies and vampires about, ready to party hearty and eat some brains, to keep the Slayer and her friends up all night.
And then the rain starts to fall…
Continue reading “Halloween Rain by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder: C-“
The Plot
WW2 is raging and the Manhattan Project is well underway. A huge collection of scientists have been secreted at Los Alamos in the New Mexico desert. After her grandmother’s death, Dewey is able to finally rejoin her mathematician father while he works on ‘the gadget’. Though she gets along swimmingly with most of the other scientists, she has a harder time fitting in with the other girls her age who also live in the attached residences.
Continue reading “The Green Glass Sea (Ellen Klages)”
From the back cover:
“Frankly, I’m not fond of surprises, as ones around here tend to be rather wicked.â€
For poor Theodosia, however, surprises abound. She spends most of her time at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities in London. There, all the artifacts that her parents dig up around the world are put on display and studied. But what her parents can’t see—and what Theodosia can—is the curses and black magic still attached to the ancient pieces. And it’s up to Theo to keep it all under control. Quite a task for an eleven-year-old girl!
Then Theo’s mother brings home the Heart of Egypt—a legendary amulet belonging to an ancient tomb. Theodosia’s skills will certainly be put to the test, for the curse attached to it is so vile and so black, it threatens to bring down the entire British Empire! Theodosia will have to call upon everything she’s ever learned in order to prevent the rising chaos from destroying her country—and herself!
Continue reading “Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos by R. L. LaFevers: B-“
I didn’t know anything about these guys before I read the book. What I knew about it was pretty much solely from the front cover. Two friends, presumably guys, on a cross-country road trip to correct typos. It sounded cool.
It was cool. The story is told from Jeff Deck’s point of view, so I’m not sure how much of a hand Benjamin Herson had in the writing of it. At times I may say ‘he’ when it should rightfully be ‘they’. So, in this case, my next sentence was going to be: And Deck is actually pretty funny. But maybe it’s both of them that are, since they wrote it together.
Deck, and this time I do just mean him, hits on this idea of going cross-country correcting typos. I think it’s just the sort of thing a certain type of young guy decides to do. Road trip, nothing too new there. Correcting typos.. well, now you’re getting into geek territory. And I think the two of them are much more of the geek persuasion than they let come through in the text. Even references to Frodo can be passed off as literary rather than geeky.
Continue reading “J’s Take on The Great Typo Hunt”
