#Kazou Umezz

[happytapirstudio]

July 2024 Book Log

New This Month:

The Legend of Luke by Brian Jacques (reread)

Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher

Continuing:

The Deadlands Book 2: Trapped by Skye Melki-Wegner

My Good Man by Eric Gansworth (unfinished)

Ranger's Apprentice Book 3: The Icebound Land by John Flanagan (finished)

On Hold:

The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán

Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear

Orochi Volume 2 by Kazou Umezz

Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95 by Joe Sacco (reread)

When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll

Tremendously embarrassed that Carroll's 100 or so pages of easy-to-read pictures has got me stonewalled. My sister read it all in one sitting, and I should've too, but I got flustered by Women and put it down for a second-turned-month. I'm sorry, Women.

I'm reluctant to talk too much about Ranger's Apprentice because I feel simultaneously that it deserves more and less than a couple paragraphs at the bottom of a monthly book log. Here's the thing, I have a lot more books to get through in this series, plus three other spinoff series that I probably won't even touch. There was a lot I wanted to say after book 1, and that number only doubles with each new book. The world just keeps unfolding. As do my critiques. So I'm going to hold my tongue and wait until the show's over before I start hurling tomatoes.

I stumbled upon Obsidian Mirror totally on accident. I wanted to reread Fisher's Relic Master quartet (called The Book of the Crow in GB), which is an all-time favorite of mine, but then I saw Mirror and went !!!! and grabbed it instead. (Also I just hit up her wiki page to verify titles and she's written so much?????? I only ever see Relic Master and Incarceron/Sapphique on shelves so I had no idea. Wow I'm gonna have to dig into this.) ANYWAY it's dope as fuck so far, and I'm really excited. I adore the way she blends fairytale-fantasy and scifi, it scratches my imagination just the right way. Her prose is also just. Pleasant to read. Unlike. Some other writers. We shan't mention. (but already have......)

Reading was at an all-time low this month because of Art Fight and also being consumed by??? Dark spirits of a sort????? Fear not, we'll get those numbers up once more. Redwall and Deadlands reviews forthcoming.

[kcggggg]

"heaven is a prison"

a short story influenced by the wild manga of Kazou Umezz (Drifting Classroom) and the wild film "Riki-Oh: Story of Ricky" and my own desire to get out of here alive.

[yonandmu]

THANK YOU @evilm0chi for inspiring this! I’ve never made any Drifting Classroom edits before.

[happytapirstudio]

June 2024 Book Log

New This Month:

Bravelands: Thunder on the Plains Book 1: The Shattered Horn by Erin Hunter (finished)

The Deadlands Book 2: Trapped by Skye Melki-Wegner

Ranger's Apprentice Book 3: The Icebound Land by John Flanagan

When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll

Continuing:

The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond by André Gerolymatos (unfinished)

The Chronicles of Prydain Book 2: The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander (finished)

The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán

The Fire Within by Chris d'Lacey (finished)

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (reread, finished)

Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95 by Joe Sacco (reread)

On Hold:

Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear

My Good Man by Eric Gansworth

Orochi Volume 2 by Kazou Umezz

This month felt like a weird black hole. What the hell was I even doing these past four weeks?

You'll notice I've sort of reverted to my old way of formatting these, now with a new section for books I've technically still got a bookmark in but haven't touched in over 28 days.

The Bravelands book revived me. I don't keep track of which Erin is writing what, all I know is they take turns, and the Erin for The Shattered Horn did a really good job. Some really outstanding lines, good voices for some of the characters, and (I'm not sure if this was even their choice, but I'll congratulate them anyway) didn't shy away as much from mentions of polyamory as previous books have.

Also I finally got the next Deadlands book, I am STOKED. *does a little dance* Oh my God I still have to finish my "expanded review" post for the first book.

[happytapirstudio]

May 2024 Book Log

(bold means new this month)

The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond by André Gerolymatos

The Chronicles of Prydain Book 1: The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander (half-reread) (finished)

The Chronicles of Prydain Book 2: The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán

Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear

The Fire Within by Chris D'Lacey

Graceling by Kristin Cashore (unfinished)

My Good Man by Eric Gansworth

Orochi Volume 2 by Kazou Umezz

Pegasus Book 1: The Flame of Olympus by Kate O'Hearn (finished)

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (reread)

Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95 by Joe Sacco (reread)

It looks like I've read sooo much this month but that's a fucking lie. I should redesign how I present this information. Or like. Maybe just not have so many books open at once.

Anyway my perception of time this month has gone absolutely sideways, and while typing this up, I realized I totally forgot I'd finished reading Pegasus.

What the fuck. Was that ending.

I have similar thoughts on The Fire Within even though I'm not done with it yet...like I guess YA authors circa 2010 planned their whole series out in advance and were totally okay ending on cliffhangers and/or making their entire first book some weird prologue that dances around the actual heart of the series for several hundred pages. I'm over three quarters of the way through The Fire Within and we have yet to have any big dragon reveal. Genuinely thought that was going to happen in chapter three or four. Then I'm like "well certainly by the halfway point." Then "well perhaps it'll be part of the climax, near the end." No go fuck yourself straight to hell, D'Lacey said. Squirrel drama all the way.

Another note on that book: when I initially started reading it, I was really digging the writing style. It had a nice cadence, really flowed off the brain quite well. "Ahhh," I said to myself, "I see why this book was so popular in its day." I don't know if I was just in some special state that night, or if the first couple chapters really were a cut above the rest, but I'm not so in love with the writing now. It's very Disney-esque, in a way I can't elaborate on; which is charming at some times and frustrating at others.

And I genuinely don't understand why David is so caught up with these squirrels. Like 80% of this book is squirrel-related; the dragons (ostensibly what the book is about????) occupy a much smaller space, and information about David himself is laughably scarce. We get a couple throw-away sentences about college, and next to nothing about his childhood or personal life, which makes it that much harder to understand why these squirrels have become the focal point of his life.

Also there is no way in heaven or hell that this book is set in Massachusetts. D'Lacey's British and all his characters are British. Factually. For starters, no single person in the United States is unironically eating toast and beans.

And that's fine???!!! Like apart from the note in the beginning (which I missed the first time) and a joke about the President, there is no strong indication that this book takes place in the US. Nor is there a reason for it to be in the US. This is a very British story, a very British setting, and very British characters with decidedly British mannerisms. It makes me wonder if the story was written to be in England, but some editor went, "Hmmm I think kids would be more interested if this was set in New England instead." Loser.

But yeah. Chalk another one up under Tapir Reads Books Everyone Else Was Obsessed With In Elementary School. This one's for you, Shaun.

I was also really looking forward to Dinosaur Lords, which is part of a trilogy set in an alternate Earth that's juuust enough like real Earth to make you go, "I think that woman's supposed to be Russian", except no one actually calls her Russian. Though they do speak Spanish, Italian, etc. Except it's not called Spanish, Italian, etc. Which is a little aggravating, because, between the giant cast and this slew of dinosaur names, there's already a lot to keep track of. Having to remember Milán's made-up name for Spain, England, Romania, etc. on top of all that is making this book a lot harder than it needs to be.

Enough bitching let me find a few compliments about this book. Ummmmmm. Well there are homosexuals; I can get behind that. He also makes good use of the dinosaurs in his book: reconstructs convincing images of them, builds them fairly well into this alternate reality. I really locked in once we got a chapter from the Allosaurus's perspective. Like YES that's what I'm talking about!!!

But our two main characters are your run-of-the-mill Strong Independent Men, and I've really had enough of that in general. So in addition to stumbling over this exposition I'm holding back my groans every time we switch back to Rob (yes that is his fucking name Rob and yes he's fantasy Irish) and Karyl.

I think part of my frustration, apart from having high hopes, is that a lot of the things Milán does in his book that tick me off are things I've done in mine. And subsequently edited out, even before reading Lords, because I knew they were dragging down the text. I'm not well-versed in High Fantasy in any way, so I can't exactly compare these techniques with the standard--though I'd say, given the genre's tendency for pulling esoteric magic systems and fictional landscapes out of its ass, this is probably on par for the course--but I can compare it to my own work, and that fills me with no insignificant amount of dread.

Okay let's end on a positive note. Persepolis fucking slaps and I'm so glad I'm rereading it as an adult with a fully-formed brain. Thank youuuuuu Marjane Satrapi.

[happytapirstudio]

April 2024 Book Log

(bold means new this month)

The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond by André Gerolymatos

Bosnia: A Short History by Noel Malcolm (finished)

The Chronicles of Prydain Book 1: The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander (half-reread)

Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Orochi Volume 2 by Kazou Umezz

Pegasus Book 1: The Flame of Olympus by Kate O'Hearn

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (reread)

Ranger’s Apprentice Book 2: The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan (finished)

Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95 by Joe Sacco (reread)

Guess who kept going back to the library and getting new books before the old ones were finished.

Like Graceling and (from last month's log) Ranger's Apprentice, the Pegasus series was one I always saw hanging around shelves and in other kids' book piles. It's a thick volume, so it definitely stands out. I'm enjoying it so far, but I must confess that I cringed when I read that our main character's dad is a cop. Funny how that would've gone straight over my head if I'd read it as a kid. What probably wouldn't have gone over my head, even back then: the soldier who's serving in Iraq. What a way to date your book.

I'm gonna be honest I would not have guessed there'd be such a strong mythological component to this book? I thought I remembered reading the backs of one of these books--though it might've been another series, come to think of it--and getting the impression that it was its own universe, and a pretty mature one at that. But it's not, and that only makes sense...Pegasus is a mythological figure, after all! Not just some horse with wings! It's still giving Horse Girl, though, and I appreciate that.

One little detail I love is the fact that Pegasus, as an Olympian, subsists on ambrosia in his home world, but the best we have on earth is ice cream and sugary cereal. So he just chows down on that. Completely disregards normal horse food. Reading that made me cackle.

You'll notice Goražde is back on the list. I finished Malcolm's Bosnia and wanted to reread Goražde immediately now that I had clearer historical context.

Another graphic novel nonfiction reread up there...Persepolis! I think I initially read this when I was in high school, so I really didn't know nothing. Like nothing, nothing. Still, it left a really big impression on me. Originally I started rereading it on a whim when I was in Baltimore--just picked it up at a library and read a few chapters before I had to leave--but then after we got home we made a dedicated trip to a special branch to get The Book of Three, and Persepolis was there, so I grabbed it, too.

As for The Book of Three...let's just say checking out books and needing to return them before I finished reading them is one of my oldest and strongest talents. I had just gotten my rats when I first tried reading this, and they were still quite scared of and aggressive towards me, so I read part of this out loud to them in hopes of trying to bridge that gap. I guess it's no surprise that I didn't finish it.

Well the scene in the barrow has haunted me ever since, so I've been meaning to get back to it for a while now. Already halfway through in only a couple days, well past the point I originally stopped at, so I'd say we're doing good! I keep wondering how many of the authors whose work I read as a kid had read this book when they were kids. Everyone in fantasy always cites Lord of the Rings or maybe Narnia, but The Chronicles of Prydain (from the 60's) must've been right up there. There's something sort of ubiquitous about this story. I'm not even at The Black Cauldron, but already I can say the Disney adaptation did not do this series justice.

[happytapirstudio]

March 2024 Book Log

(bold means new this month)

Bosnia: A Short History by Noel Malcolm

Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Book 6: Ghost Hunter by Michelle Paver (reread, finished)

Crowded Volume 2: Glitter Dystopia by Sebela et al. (finished)

Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel José Older (unfinished)

Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Orochi Volume 2 by Kazou Umezz

Ranger's Apprentice Book 1: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan (reread, finished)

Ranger's Apprentice Book 2: The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan

So CoAD 6 and the first Ranger's Apprentice both got read in a single weekend each. This is strange for CoAD because book 5 took me several months, for some reason, despite being an embarrassingly slim book. I think once I finished 5 I was like "the end is in sight LET'S GO" and just took off. Also I had a dream after finishing book 5 that the series had been adapted into a movie and it sucked ass. I'm telling you, this series had a grip on my entire psyche. Felt a shaking sense of loss and nostalgia when I finally finished it, but then I remembered Paver wrote three more books in 2020. My diseases shall continue...

Now Ranger's Apprentice is a weird one, because I genuinely do not like this series, but I think it was the exact genre and/or brand of mediocrity that I needed at the time I picked it up. Both that series and Graceling are books I remember my high school friends reading and loving, and they actually have a lot in common. They're essentially reverse sides of the same coin: the coin that represents the state of YA fantasy in the 2000s. That is... Boy Fantasy (TM) ...and... Girl Fantasy (TM) (C) (R).

As always I could say a lot but I'll restrain myself. Neither of these books/subgenres are ones I particularly enjoy reading or writing, but it's for that precise reason (in addition their overall prevalence in the YA scene) that I'm drawn to them. I need to know how they tick. I need to pick them apart page by page.

My briefest review of Ranger's Apprentice is that it's possessed by the spirit of passive misogyny. That is to say, male characters far outnumber female, and the few women we do see are constantly measured by their attractiveness to male characters. Thus far, we've yet to meet any ladies who are framed as obnoxious or villainous because of their female traits (i.e. shrill, cunning, bossy, sexy-evil), but I wouldn't hold my breath. Insanely enough, I think I'd find that much less misogynistic than this bouquet of sweet-smelling Women (c) (TM) who are So Very Pretty and can Do No Wrong and Never Ever Say Anything Mean Whatsoever.

Also I always find it interesting when a series chooses to have the antagonist's supporting forces be largely composed of "stupid" monsters simply taking orders from a single Big Bad. Definitely a major characteristic to me of the "Boy Fantasy" genre. To me it automatically makes the story much more shallow. It takes a certain power away from the battles, because at that point you're not killing soldiers, you're disabling robots and racking up points. And it (deliberately and understandably so) removes any difficulties from the concept of killing, which takes the interesting edges off all these rugged warrior-men and turns them into a pack of two-dimensional action figures. This is the blonde one. This is the one who gets mad at other people. This is the fat one.

Oh. Do not get me started on the fatphobia in this series lmao.

Compare that to Graceling, where (chapter 1-level spoilers here) the main character is a girl gifted with superhuman strength, speed, and reflexes, making her an exceptional fighter and killer. Her uncle, the king, uses her as an assassin to punish those who've wronged him. She has a body count that would put half the cast in Ranger's Apprentice to shame, but she's not exactly proud of it the way they would be.

In fact, her feelings about herself and her powers are very complicated...she sees herself as a monster, a dog who works for her uncle. She tends to isolate herself from others in a way that comes across as conceit. For the most part, she is proud of her skills, partly because she's spent so much time honing them, and partly because she truly is better at what she does than basically anyone else alive. But she knows she's ruining lives for her uncle. She recognizes her enemies are people just like her, not campy villains or flat stereotypes. She understands that she isn't just taking a life or breaking a finger, she's effecting change that impacts the lives of everyone around them. For this, she resents her uncle, and she especially hates her inability to resist his commands. She can't imagine herself as anything other than an outcast because of her gift and her history.

That's not to say Graceling is without its own set of flaws, but I definitely take its story and characters more seriously than those of Ranger's Apprentice.

[happytapirstudio]

February 2024 Book Log

(bold means new this month)

Bosnia: A Short History by Noel Malcolm

The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Book 5: Oath Breaker by Michelle Paver (reread, FINISHED!!!!)

Crowded Volume 1: Soft Apocalypse by Sebela et al. (finished)

Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel José Older

Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear

Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes (unfinished - due at library)

Mossflower by Brian Jacques (reread, finished)

Orochi Volume 2 by Kazou Umezz

Pride Wars 2: The Four Guardians by Matt Laney (finished)

Guess who finally finished tCoAD book 5 lmaooooooooo okay jumping ship to Pride Wars 2 what the fuck was that ending. No spoilers but. Hello?????? Felt like I was being repeatedly tossed into the air by a gorilla until I landed face-first on solid rock. I'm anticipating this to be a finite series (four books, probably), so I'm gonna save my full review until after I finish the whole thing. I just need you to know I'm not happy with like...the whole last quarter of book 2, maybe more.

Once again defeated by due date. RIP Kindred I'll check you out again soon. In the meantime I'm reading a much slimmer volume on the history of Bosnia - 99% sure this is the text Sacco was referencing when he made Goražde.

Crowded was loads of fun. I spent like an entire Sunday reading it. Orochi is my friend's book...I have a lot of books of his I need to finish (I've been "borrowing" them for about two years now smh smh smh smh smh.) I typically have a hard time following the action and dialogue in manga, but Orochi is much easier for me, and a nice change of pace overall from most of the stories I read, comic or otherwise.

Dactyl Hill Squad has been in my inventory for nearly two months, and is on the very last leg of its library loan period. I grabbed it on impulse because it had dinosaurs. (You know me.) It's young YA, like Pride Wars, so it's got the typical young-YA quirks, but I'm really enjoying the core of the story: orphans of color navigate the aftermath of the Draft Riots in New York City during the American Civil War, in a universe where humans live alongside dinosaurs.

It's such a refreshing perspective that I'm even willing to forgive it for being set in NYC lol. This is, dinosaurs aside, a very different NYC - none of the hyperactive bustle and conceit of modern NYC that inevitably poisons the blood of any book or movie set there. This is old NYC...mid-19th century old...and I dig it.

I also love what Older does with his dinos: a healthy mix of traditional and modern interpretations, creating something unique and engaging. My only issue with the story so far is that we're not given good descriptions for about half the characters. Lots of names get thrown around in the beginning with little to no associated images, descriptors, or voices, so I'm having a hard time keeping track of the cast. Other than that, an exciting story! Glad it caught my eye on the bookshelf :)