Err...maybe I'm being judgmental, but rightstuf.com's current sale seems to really be scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Then again, their newsletter said they were doing inventory and updates would be slow, so maybe they just wanted something that would result in lower traffic.  I hope that means one of their seasonal cleaning sales is coming up.  That or a Viz sale.  I could do with either one.  And I have given up on their ever having a Go! Comi sale and ordered what I need from Amazon.  (YAY!  for new Mick Takeuchi and You Higuri manga!  Even though I'm behind on what I have for both.  I think I forgot something, though.  Maybe I'll remember soon.)

Though I really shouldn't be ordering anything with the Booksale O' Doom later this week.

The plotholes in ep 14!  The plotholes in ep 14!  They are epic!

Like, as compared to the already gaping plotholes we already had.

I'm sure others have covered them better than I could, though.

( spoilers )

And I have been borrowing Heroes from Tall Cynical Boy and he only gave me the first 4 discs, and may be off work Mon-Weds and I'll be off Thurs, so it may be Friday before I have more Heroes to watch.

X/1999 meets Twilight:



Hmm...Kamui/Edward angstoff, anyone?

(Oh, X/1999 anime...the first stage downfall into becoming a Clamp fan...how little I understood then...)

I thought Tokyopop was cutting its line back?


And speaking of You Higuri (there's a license of hers listed) Angel Coffin is out now, according to Amazon.  I must have it.  Yes, I still have lots of Seimaden to go.  Shush.  Maybe I'll order it and the Demon Ororon collection after I see what rightstuf.com's next sale is.  (I keep holding out for a Go!Comi sale.)

And...err...is "Of Swords and Parasols" a weird LJ name?

Anyone have any opinions on the following manga/manhwa?

Alichino
Aque
Arcana
Demon Ororon
Fantamir
Jyu-Oh-Sei
Nabi
Planet Ladder
Rure
Vassalord
V.B. Rose

(I'm pretty sure I've seen several posted on recently, actually, I just can't remember where.)

I find it difficult to muster up anything more coherent than vague handflappy motions and rabid squeaking noises over this. But I shall try.

So, in volume one, we have a world where the industrial revolution caused a massive war, advancing technology to gleeful pulp robot things that rampage down streets. And Our Heroine, Agatha, is a university student whose inventions don’t work, but who secretly has The Spark, which makes you a mechanical supergenius. Except she doesn’t know this, and builds rampaging machines in her sleep. And she is somehow related to the Heterodynes (this is revealed in the titles of the volumes…) who are famous inventors and adventurers. Oh, and Gilgamesh, the son of the Baron who kinda basically rules the world, is a supreme-but-arrogant dork who kinda-sorta has a crush on Agatha. He won’t figure that out for a few more books though, I’m sure.

And then we get to volume two, and I learn that not only does everyone live on a giant airship, but it's actually an airship city.  And the handflapping starts. And then Gil’s experimental airship won’t fly, and he and Agatha leave off bickering for five seconds so Agatha can redo the engine mid-fall. And the squeaking starts. Then I start to get over that and the rabid overprotective not-human-insanely-violent den mother of all the youth on the ship shows up, and it starts again. And then one of the characters tells a story (True? False? No clue!) about the heterodynes that involves the Dragon King of Mars in the basement. And then the missing wife shows up brainwashed and trying to kill them from the pilot seat of a giant mechanical fish and the reunion is “It’s my wife! In a giant mechanical fish. Er-nice one, dear.” “DIE!” and the story ends with everyone but the wife and friend being sucked through a portal to Mars and the husband (getting sucked in) says “Klaus! Take care of Lucrezia until we return!” to which she says “Take care of me! I’ll take care of him! Get that portal back! And just when I start getting over that and a few other things, Agatha (I keep trying to type “Amelia”…) finds a prisoner who is all “Oooh…the Baron’s beautiful daughter or lab assistant who is here to seduce me! Don’t you want to fall for me and help me escape as girls always do in this situation?” To which she is all “Uhm…no…you could be a big fat liar. Or a killer. Or a rapist. Or just a moron.”

And this is just a small fraction of the gleeful love in this volume. Oh, and there are new characters in the form of the Baron’s “wards” who are actually political hostages (not surprisingly, my favorite is Zulenna) and hints that the Baron may have a small nice guy hidden inside, not to mention hints about Agatha’s past and the situation of the world and Agatha and Gil both being oblivious to Gil’s crush. But really, I was lost to actual real plot things but the time we got to the airships.

As soon as she was old enough, Sylvia Lynn fled Lynn Hall, her family’s home in upstate New York, fleeing her past and the secret of her birth that only she and one other know. But when her grandmother, Iris, calls to tell her that her grandfather has died, Sylvia knows that she has to go back home. There, she learns that she isn’t the only one with a secret, and that the walls that keep the real world and the Otherworld from intermingling are starting to come apart, with potentially disastrous results for her young cousin, Tyler.

Like Winter Rose, which it’s a sequel to, Solstice Wood is a take on Tam Lin, only set in the modern day. As a Tam Lin story, and a story about small town secrets and magic (the secret knitting circle of witches is the best thing in the book), it’s great. The problem is that it’s a sequel to Winter Rose, and makes Winter Rose be set specifically in 19th (possibly late 18th) century New York. This…is not the impression you get while Winter Rose. While the time periods line up fairly well, the setting doesn’t. Winter Rose has a bit more of a “somewhere in real world time and place” feeling than other McKillips, but it’s distinctly a feeling of some indefinable place in the British isles, and the Otherworld is distinctly based on European mythology.

But if Winter Rose is set in what’s most likely 19th century New York, why are there no signs of American wildlife? No sign or mention of Native Americans? In both books, why is the mythology completely European, with no hint at all of Americana or Native American mythology? And yet, if it had simply never been said that the book was set in upstate New York, never mentioned what country Sylvia fled across, none of this would be a problem.

If you remove the establishment of the setting the book works wonderfully, and even manages to successfully pull off multiple first person narratives. It’s just when you apply the setting that that you run into problems. (And, really, as little as it’s mentioned, I almost wonder if McKillip just had to provide a setting since it was set in modern times.)

Now, before answering this all important poll, please remember that one candidate is a 15-year-old in a world with nothing in common as her own and where she goes in knowing nothing of the world and its rules and dangers, and the other two are adults (late 20s-early 30s?) operating with an unusual addition to their own world, where they know all the normal rules that operate behind the strange things around them.

Poll #1276325
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Who is the most TSTL?

For those who do not know, this is Miaka.

Ok, my notes are a jumble as there's more and more scribbling while boggling, but I shall attempt to decipher them.

( long spoilers )

( season 1 spoilers )3. It is also my official opinion that if you can defend Mohinder in any way, shape or form, you officially give up the right to call any female character in existence TSTL. Ever. Though at least he is pretty to look at and fun to facepalm to. (Also, Peter: almost as bad. And less cute. I think Nathan stole all the brains in the family and didn't leave any for Peter.)

Aaah…this volume has the “Kyoko as Red Riding Hood” picture I’ve seen around. Very cute.

( spoilers involve clueless people with massive height differences )

I concede.  Everyone was right.  It isn't being written for the DVD so much as " we know where we want to end up at various points but aren't sure how to get there.

( spoilers which are more like boggling )

Sumeragi Subaru is a 16-year-old onmyoji(magician/exorcist) who lives in Tokyo and is the heir to his clan. HE makes a living by banishing evil spirits and bringing spirits to peace. His twin sister, Hokuto, who has powers herself, and is very addicted to making Subaru and herself look as cute as is humanly possible. Subaru is aided at times by Sakurazuko Seishiro, a 25-year-old veterinarian who claims to be in love with Subaru. Since Seichiro is part of the Sakurazukomori clan, a rival onmyoji clan of assassins, Hokuto is extremely enthusiastic about this and their epic and forbidden love.

If you’ve seen (or read, of course) X/1999, you know that this series ends in tragedy, and what specific thing happens to each of the three leads. What you don’t know is what led to that. By the end of the first volume, the darker end is already being hinted at, and we know that the relationship between the three isn’t nearly as cheery as it seems to be on the surface. (And, honestly, you probably know it ends in tragedy if you've ever even heard of it, due to fandom osmosis.)

Each story in the book features the idea of Tokyo from one tortured soul or another, each tied to the economy or the lifestyle. The stories in the second volume were much tighter than those in the first, but I can’t help wanting to move on to focusing on the main story with Hokuto, Subaru and Seishiro. Already, we know Seishiro and Subaru both have very important secrets. Subaru’s is tied to his role in his clan, while Seishiro’s hasn’t been explored yet. So far, Hokuto doesn’t seem to have any Deep Dark Secrets, but this is Clamp, so who knows.

I have to admit, I have difficulty remembering that Subaru is a boy. His looks and personality both make me think more of a nice, cute girl than a nice, cute boy, especially when he reacts to Hokuto and Seishiro teasing him about Seishiro’s feelings for him, and talking about being future in-laws. The art is very dated, but also very detailed, with some amazing fashion (and I do wish Hokuto and Subaru didn’t look quite so much alike…I know they’re twins, but it makes it harder to remember he’s a boy) and extremely detailed backgrounds.

I have various thoughts regarding reading it from the perspective of knowing what happens, but I think I’ll save them for later, once I’ve read more.

Please use the spoiler code for comments about future volumes, or X/1999.

The third Molly Murphy mystery picks up some months after the second. Still living with her bohemian lesbian friends, Sid and Gus, Molly is also still struggling to keep the detective agency she “inherited” going. In addition, she’s learning that female private investigators don’t have as many lucuries as male ones do. For example, a man hanging around a streetlamp gains little or no notice, a woman doing the same is mistaken for a streetwalker or a lookout for thieves. Things seem to be going her way. However, when two cases fall into her lap. One is from an English family looking for their daughter, who ran away to America with a stablehand. The other is from Mostel, a clothing manufacturer whose designs are being stolen by a competitor.

The first can be handled through normal investigative means (or so Molly thinks) but the second requires going undercover in a sweatshop*, and eventually to getting involved in early union strikes. This last result in a new beau, Jacob, who is a union worker. Unfortunately, Jacob is just as fond as Daniel O’Sullivan to not do “stupid” things and to stop doing men’s dangerous work. While this is historically accurate, having love interests tell Molly to go back to the kitchen make my arms cross and nose rise. Meanwhile, Young Seamus, part of the Irish family Molly has fallen in with, is getting caught up with street gangs.

Like in the first two Molly Murphy books, Bowen manages to strike a nice balance between wit and humor and tackling the darker social and legal issues of the time. I was saddened that we saw so little of the Greenwich Village residents, but the new people Molly met here were also quite fun.

( spoilers )



*Minor and possibly misguided nitpick: Would it have been called a sweatshop in 1900? I thought the term came into use later.

Why is it that, every time I got to Wal-Mart, groceries (and such) ring up as almost twice as much as I think they will while I'm shopping?  Alas.  (And Wal-Mart, why were you hiding my  box of Pepperidge Farm assorted cookies?  And will you never again carry Chinese dumplings?)

Meanwhile, Jen won her tennis tournament over the weekend, and she and her partner are going to the state championship next month.  In Sacramento.  I think my contribution to getting them there will have to double as their birthday/Christmas gifts.

It is also Myles's birthday.  Must call him.  (And you know, I object to the fact that funny "for brother" B-Day cards are brother-brother or "you're getting  oooolllllddddd" cards.  As I am a sister and older...)

1. Favourite Book? I believe this is a very evil question and refuse to answer it.

2. Favourite Author? Elizabeth Peters, Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Marsha Canham, Loretta Chase, Dorothy L. Sayers, Patricia McKillip, too many to list.
3. Favourite Genre? Flipflops between mystery and fantasy.
4. Favourite series of books?  Most likely the Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peters.
5. Favourite Illustrator? Charles Vess, Brian Froud, Kinuko Craft
6. Favourite book from when you were little? Trixie Belden and the old school Nancy Drew books.
7. Favourite Hero? Again with the evil questions.  Ok, Amelia Peabody would mop the floor with anyone in the universe, so...
8. Favourite Villain? No idea.
9. Favourite couple? Amelia/Emerson have the questionable honor of possibly being the only couple I would read endless prose fiction purely for their interactions.  (For whatever reason, pairings are even more secondary to me in books...)
10. Favourite Character? Oh, let's just say Amelia again.

5 Lasts

1. Last book you bought?  Hmm. *glnces at the small pile that has not yet been released into the wilds of TBR* Either The Moorchild by Eloise Jarvis McGraw or Cybelle's Secret by Juliet Marillier
2. Last book you were given?  Swordpoint by Ellen Kushner and  the fourth Young Wizards book by Diane Duane.  (Fromdesdenova .)
3. Last book you pre-ordered?  Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier
4. Last book you loved?  All the Fishes Come Home to Roost by Rachel Manija Brown
5. Last book you hated?  Hrm...if I don't like it, I don't really stick with it long enough to hate it.

3 dos

1.Do you read part of your current book every day? Yes
2. Do you stick to one genre of books or do you jump around? jump around, though mostly mystery an sff + random romances
3. Do you review all the books you read on LJ? Yes

1 If
1. If you were stuck on a desert island and could only take one book with you, which book would you choose?
The Bible.  Forget religious beliefs and preferences, no matter what they are.  Do you realize the sheer number of stories in it?