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richincolor · 3 years

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Book Review: Infinity Reaper (Infinity Cycle #2)

Title: Infinity Reaper (Infinity Cycle #2)

Author: Adam Silvera

Genres: SciFi, Fantasy

Pages: 592

Publisher: Quill Tree Books

Review Copy: Copy provided by Publisher

Availability: Available now

Summary: Emil and Brighton Rey defied the odds. They beat the Blood Casters and escaped with their lives–or so they thought. When Brighton drank the Reaper’s Blood, he believed it would make him invincible, but instead the potion is killing him.

In Emil’s race to find an antidote that will not only save his brother but also rid him of his own unwanted phoenix powers, he will have to dig deep into the very past lives he’s trying to outrun. Though he needs the help of the Spell Walkers now more than ever, their ranks are fracturing, with Maribelle’s thirst for revenge sending her down a dangerous path.

Meanwhile, Ness is being abused by Senator Iron for political gain, his rare shifting ability making him a dangerous weapon. As much as Ness longs to send Emil a signal, he knows the best way to keep Emil safe from his corrupt father is to keep him at a distance.

The battle for peace is playing out like an intricate game of chess, and as the pieces on the board move into place, Emil starts to realize that he may have been competing against the wrong enemy all along.

Review: I initially thought Infinity Reaper was just a sequel to Infinity Son, but as I got about a quarter of the way through I realized I was wrong because Adam Silvera was packing in so much more drama into Infinity Reaper and that there was absolutely no way this was going to be solved in one book. Shifted my perspective a bit as I was at first overwhelmed with the addition of Maribelle’s and Ness’s perspectives but they were used to round out the story a bit more and sets up a complex and thrilling story.

To me the heart of the story is the two brothers Emil and Brighton. I really love Emil’s gentle soul and he continues to shine in this second book as he struggles with how his new power and new expectations contradict who he essentially is. However, he digs deep and works to do his best. The side effect of this is that he is becoming much more outgoing, much more open to other people, and is willing to take more risks. He’s starting to become a bit more like Brighton, just without the ego. I really like the emotional journey that Emil went throughout the book. So much so that he ends up in a love triangle and I honestly couldn’t decide which person I would love for him to be with because both bring out the best in Emil and have helped me become more accepting of who he is. Brighton, on the other hand, let me just say that I wanted someone to slap some sense in the boy. The novel starts off moments after he took the Reaper’s Blood portion, which I feel also changes his personality or either his sense of self dives off the deep end into straight narcissism. Either way, I did not like Brighton by the end of the novel. Not sure if this is setting up his villain origin story (which would be so complex and cool) or the start of a redemption story so I just have to trust Silvera at this point, but Brighton’s ego bothered me so much that I would rush through his sections and every time I saw a chapter with his name on it I would groan. And because Brighton was so unlikable to me, I struggled with getting through the novel. But like I said, it feels like Silvera is setting up the story to be a struggle between the brothers and I am here for it.

An aspect of the novel that I liked was that it is such a metaphor of the past few years we’ve been living in. Those of us who’ve lived it, experienced it, survived it, will recognize all the parallels, but future generations who read this novel it will come off as a classic “good versus evil/hero vs. Society” epic story. The “racism” (for lack of a better word) that Celestials experience is truly heartbreaking and as a Black woman it resonated with me deeply. Silvera adds a storyline about “The Bounds” which is a specialized prison for Celestials and it is as cruel as you can imagine. The fact that their society puts Celestials there who are doing small crimes like burglary to survive, and then subjected to cruel and unusual punishment is a perfect metaphor for how our society penalizes People of Color and poor people for doing things to survive, then jailing them for it (think about the mother who lied where she lived to get her son in a better school, then ended up in jail for 5 years). These subtle call outs to our society ills, in such a fantastical world, is what make great science fiction/fantasy. And, it is another reason why I enjoyed the novel.

Lastly, and this is a purely selfish reason…this novel is all about Phoenixes, and as a phoenix lover, I truly loved the mythology and different types of phoenixes that Silvera created for this series. I just wished Silvera’s phoenixes were real.

#book review #weneeddiversebooks

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ginnyzero · 4 years

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Killjoys Season 3 reaction

I promise to try not to turn this into a rant about the state of science fiction media... try. (Might not succeed.)

Last year about this time, I wrote about how I might not be able to make it through Killjoys Season 3. Last season really pushed a bunch of my writer big red buttons of do not want and I was seeing the writing on the screen. As in, this is not going well, red alert, red alert, Danger Will Robinson!

I hate being right.

I won't be watching season 4 or 5 of Killjoys (yes, they've green lit 20 more episodes of this show, and if you like it well, that's great. If you're me, you're in a corner whimpering. Why? TV Overlords, WHY?) I really, really wanted to love this show. It has a female creator, there are some female producers, there are females in the writing room and the main lead of three is, well, female! (Though the male to female cast is still rather disproportionate.)

The end of season 2 left us with a pretty big mess for season 3. The team was split. Dutch was being selfish. We'd lost a great female secondary character they'd taken 2 whole seasons to develop in order to have a male character feel pain. D'avin was the biggest gary stu of all time. And the show had taken a sharp left turn from campy, fun, new and into boring old cliche sci fi story territory.

Season 3 did not get any better.

I was thinking about this while curled in bed trying to convince myself to get up and realized why Season 3 was so jarring. This show had about 7 episodes of world building on their primary pitch of "Bounty Hunters in SPACE" before they took their sharp left turn into "humans versus alien parasite SLIME GOO." And it simply wasn't enough. See, the great thing about the concept of "Bounty Hunters in SPACE" is that you can spend as much damn time creating fun mini stories that explore your universe and it's VASTNESS, sprinkling little bits of information for a couple seasons about the "wrongness" in what is going on to take a couple seasons at the end to fight your parasitic alien goo. (which would have been great fridge horror to offset the campiness and created all sorts of meta and fun fandom discussion and theories!) And this show needed the world building. (They even lampshade this in episode 1 of season 3, "remember when we used to... yeah... that was fun." Yeah, the show was fun back then wasn't it.)

BECAUSE... Season 3 has the team split and "war is coming" and suddenly we are slapped in the face with the fact that the Quad is just one of many systems. That there are thousands of these alien goo pools and hundreds of RAC Ships (the bounty hunter HQ) and that there may be a purpose to these hack mods people (Only introduced in Season 2, used for less than half a season 3) and there are some nasty people called "skinners" who also use the green alien goo without realizing what it is. (And yes, it's as nasty as it sounds.) And I'm sitting here going, "Wait, wait, what? WHERE was ALL THIS during YOUR WORLD BUILDING EPISODES? NO. NO. COME BACK HERE. I WANT MORE OF THIS!!!!" The skinners would have been a GREAT way to introduce the green goo. Very, very fridge horror.

By the way, Season 3 spends over 2/3 of it dealing with internal politics and expounding on the Hullen focusing mostly on Aneelah. Aneelah and Dutch are not who they think they are. (DNA also doesn't work that way folks.) Not that we get too much about the Hullen, other than Aneelah is crazy and they're pretty arrogant. Oh, and new villain, the LADY who lives in the Green. (There is a reason why I'm not a fan of the television favorite of the "big bad" method of storytelling.) They set up Aneelah in Season 2 to be this big bad character that Dutch, D'avin and Johnny were going to have to overcome and destroy to destroy the Hullen. Except, problem, she only commands a tiny bit of the Hullen. Oh dear, bigger problem, she's more of a prisoner than a commander. Major problem, they tried to make her sympathetic by making her crazy and the whole of next season I think we're supposed to support her as a "good guy" as she helps Dutch fight "the Lady."

And if you're going, "huh and what?" to the previous paragraph. Then you are right there with me. (I mean, this typical Killjoys though, they spent season 2 turning Kylen from bad villain to good guy.) We spend 7 to 8 episodes of season 3 on internal politics between the RAC members, recruiting Pree's warlord ex-lover (yes, the homosexuality was strong this season), watching Delle Seyah play Aneelah like a harp, D'avin exhibiting his continued gary stu qualities with control over the green and a new story arc that never went anywhere (what else is D'avin forgetting show runners, oh wait, you're forgetting,) new nerd characters being nerdy (oh Hullen technology is more biological than machinery but Johnny is about machinery. Damn it, they had to bring in 2 new characters, one for the bio-techy stuff and one to replace Johnny's charm, then in the last episode pair them off for the wonderful 'pair the spares' sundae special) for the pay off of two episodes of "war" where our main characters are sitting out of the fight for the most part and for Aneelah to well, essentially change sides.

Look, if there had been 50 episodes of popcorn munching buttery goodness world building with BOUNTY HUNTERS IN SPACE before all of this, I wouldn't be so snarky. But here we are at 30 episodes out of 50 and I'm going "this is feeling a bit rushed darlings and everything is suffering for it."

What's suffering the most is Dutch's character. Writing wise, Dutch is the most inconsistently written character in the show. She's the Pinkie Pie of Killjoys. Dutch's problem is still they're trying to make her too many things at once. D'Avin and Johnny are stereotypes and relatively easy to write. Johnny is in fact the most consistently written and possibly most well rounded character on the show. Dutch is well, I'm not sure what Dutch is. I have what I think she's supposed to be, but because they left out an essential "Johnny and Dutch do their first Killjoy mission" episode, I'm not really sure.

You see, Dutch is a gender flipped action hero type. Disregard her back story, (which is cliche and sexist and all around not good) and her role in the story is to be the action hero lead big tank lead of the "trio." (Which imo, should have stayed a duo because D'avin is unnecessary.) Male action heroes tend to be brusque, stoic and at times flippant. They were going for big and tough and then went "Damn it, she's a girl, we have to make her girly too." And that, unfortunately, breaks most writers minds because a "girly action hero" is not a stereotype they are familiar with and is found more in Japanese media than American media.

So, Dutch flip flops between being extremely competent to making rookie mistakes to be a temporary damsel, doing the femme fatale nonsense, being the big sister, to being a selfish "I don't give a shit about everyone else," to being the self sacrificing hero all in the space of 2 or 3 episodes. It gives me serious whiplash. (Her and D'avin's rookie mistakes make me grind my teeth, they are both level 5s. They KNOW BETTER and they are still doing it. No. It's not interesting. It does not make for good drama or conflict. It's frustrating.)

I think they I know what they were trying to go for, a big sisterly type of warrior. She's experienced, competent and will make sure that the newbies make it out the other side of the battle intact, even if that means she gets hurt or almost dies to do it. Throw in some PTSD and call it a day. But instead, they tried to add a heaping spoonful of sex (because no one is going to watch a female action hero if she isn't sexy, am I right?) and keep her "professional" meaning brusque and eye on the prize at the same time. And it's not working. There is complex and then there is "trying to be everything all at once." Which isn't necessary because they have Delle Seyah to be the vamp. They had Pawter to be Delle Seyah's foil in political maneuvering. They added this newbie nerd female character who was a bit naive and innocent and could be the damsel in distress in a pinch. They had Hullen characters and the Hack Mod girl to be brusque and stoic. (Let's not talk about what they did to the hack mod girl. I'm grinding my teeth here.)

It doesn't help that we barely know anything about Dutch outside of bounty hunter and fighting work. What does this girl do to destress other than have sex with men? I mean it? Does she rock climb? Maybe she bungee jump dances or does aerial silks? Does she like calligraphy? Meditation? (Is now so very curious.) As much backstory they've thrown at us about her childhood and her father figure, as much "emotional turmoil and trauma" they've put her through, to me Dutch is still this card board cut out that is so very, very flat. Pawter had more depth than her. It's crazy. I almost feel like Dutch doesn't have a personal conflict in herself. I don't know what Dutch wants. I don't know if Dutch ever asks if what she's doing is right or wrong. And for a main character in a show that's lasted 30 episodes, that's disturbing.

So, basically, I'm frustrated and disappointed that yet another scifi/fantasy show that had the potential to be great and had an interesting basic premise lost it out on the execution. There are other scifi shows that I want to check out, The 100, Dark Matter and The Encounter but their premises sound so stereotypical scifi cliche that I'm having a hard time mustering the energy. I'm either growing up and becoming more discerning or I'm having writer spidey senses.

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the-chaotic-neutral · 6 years

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Among current comic titles there are a handful that are acknowledged as classics in the making. Y: The Last Man, Monstress, The Walking Dead, though this last one possibly by sheer exposure and reputation more than the quality of the current story. One title that almost always comes up is Saga. Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, is a sprawling mess of a comic that shouldn’t work but not only does, is amazing. It has been called out by everything from The Atlantic to Popular Mechanics. Lin-Manuel Miranda ‏gave it a shout-out in one of his many reading updates. It outsells The Walking Dead and is a huge hit for Image, its publisher.

And as of last week, with issue 54, Saga is on a hiatus to give the two creators behind it some time to work on other projects and rally their creative minds for the rest of the series. A hiatus that will last at least a year. Which is a perfect time to grab this book and catch up. A backlog of over 50 issues can be intimidating, but a year-long hiatus is the most welcoming way to get on the bandwagon. Think of it this way, that’s enough time to be able to catch up before anything else comes out so you won’t be overwhelmed with an impending release schedule. It’s also a comfort to know that they plan to go for at least 100 issues, so you won’t be investing all of your time in characters that will abruptly be dropped. It’s a win-win situation! I’ll also be candid with you: I have fallen behind on Saga. I accidentally let if fall through the gaps of my copious comic reading somewhere around issue #26 or so. And I’m going to use this hiatus to start the whole series over and catch up in one long, indulgent stretch.

So what is Saga about? It’s an epic space opera that spans planets. In the background is a civil war between Landfall and Wreath. Landfall is an enormous planet with a very high level of technology, whose inhabitants have insect-like wings. Wreath is its moon, with a race of horned people who utilize magic. In the forefront of the story is Marko, a prisoner of war from Wreath, and Alana, his Landfall guard. They are in love. When the first issue picks up, they are on the run and Alana is in labor. Soon, they and their daughter (Hazel) are being hunted by both sides. The technological Landfall sends the fittingly technological Prince Robot IV to hunt them down. While Wreath sends the rough and tumble bounty hunter named The Will, who has his pet/partner Lying Cat to assist him.

Prince Robot IV

The Will and Lying Cat

The world of Saga is a mish-mash of everything. There is scifi, magic, ghosts, and professional wrestling. There are ex-es, expository masturbation scenes, meta-textual authors of in-universe trashy romance novels. But most of all, there are personal stories that drive every aspect of this bizarre genre mash-up. Prince Robot is half-heatedly but cruelly pursuing Marko and Alana to get home to his family. The Will seems to care about nothing, yet gives up fortune and success to rescue a young enslaved sex worker. Fiona Staple’s art may be lavishly inked, but the entire moral fabric of the Saga universe is painted in increasingly complex shades of grey.

Oh, that’s right. This book has some of the most gorgeous art laid out on every single page. Fiona Staples is a master at illustration and storytelling. Yes, everyone familiar with comics know that Brian K. Vaughn is a great storyteller because he’s a great writer. But far too often artists are not acknowledged for their part in a comic’s narrative. Staples’ does an absolutely astounding job grounding everyone’s emotions on the page. And when I say everyone I mean humans, humanoids, anthropomorphic animals, robots, ghosts, monsters, and the like. The alien landscapes, spaceships made from everything from metal and plastic to living trees, they all come across as real places because of her. There’s a reason that she has been nominated for a Harvey Award for best artist every year that this comic has been in publication. It’s also worth noting that she’s the artist for the entire run so far. Very often, long running titles will change up artists and while this can give the look of characters a refresher without actually changing their designs, it’s a selling point that this book has such a consistent look from the very first issue up through last week’s #54. It means that after five years of publication, these characters still look familiar. It means that when they age, they’re growing up with the same hand that created them. In the case of Hazel, literally from birth. So not only is it mind-boggling that the story works so well considering how scattershot the universe is, the fact that this book has continued with one writer/illustrator team since the onset is just as improbable and works just as beautifully.

If all of that isn’t reason enough to convince you, I’ll also throw this out there; the book is fun. And funny. The characters are smart and sometimes make stupid decisions. They can be impetuous and they can be patient. These characters feel like real people. The have histories that weigh on their present actions. They have personalities that can get them in and out of trouble. They have emotional cores that will make you rethink the political landscape and ongoing war over and over again. This book doesn’t have a wholly cruel Empire, nor does it have an emotionless Borg. This book has sides that have cobbled themselves together out of the self-interest of numerous planets and people and cultures. It is full of places that could never be, and yet could also be discovered tomorrow.

Ultimately this book is about real people living in unreal situations that sometimes mirror the worst this world has to offer. Alana and Marko argue that Hazel isn’t a symbol, which is an odd statement for characters in an epic saga to argue. But for real people and grounded characters, it’s the only reasonable thing to say. And in their world she is a symbol, a representation of a piece between two sides of a war that cannot end. But she’s also just their daughter, and our narrator. So what would that girl mean to you? Grab Saga and figure it out.

Saga #1

Saga #54

And pick up this book if for no other reason than to meet Lying Cat. For that alone, you’re welcome.

Cover Gallery for volumes 1-8 and the upcoming 9th.

An Epic Saga Among current comic titles there are a handful that are acknowledged as classics in the making. Y: The Last Man, Monstress, The Walking Dead, though this last one possibly by sheer exposure and reputation more than the quality of the current story.

#comic books #comics #Image Comics

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