Wonder Woman: Earth One by Grant Morrisson (writer), Yanick Paquette (Artist), Nathan Fairbairn (Colourist), Todd Klein (Letterer)

Wonder Woman: Earth One, Vol. 1 by Grant Morrison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was kind of weird. It was a skewed version of the Wonder Woman origin story, but instead of their patron goddess being Hera, it's Aphrodite. You can imagine how that could change a few things. It has a lot more overt sapphic tones than I've seen with Wonder Woman (but hardly surprising or shocking). I mean its a Utopian all female society, so why wouldn't the women pair up together as partners and lovers? I was fine with that. I think some of their rituals were on the verge of kinky if I'm honest. I've always been leery of sex and violence together thought.

I did like that Steve Trevor was black in this version. The relationship that Diana has with him is undefined. Since Wonder Woman has a lover already, I wasn't sure that there were any romantic undertones in her relationship with Trevor as it was written.

When Diana comes to the world of men, she is portrayed as very dominant with an edge of cruelty. I didn't love that about her characterization. I don't see Diana as being that kind of person.

The storyline where she encounters the sorority girls on a wild spring break trip and bonds with a particular girl was a bit odd. I know it was a way to group Diana and teach her the ways of the modern world. I didn't much care for it.

Honestly, I was glad this is Earth One. While I didn't mind the aspect of Diana being queer, and I liked that Steve was black, I didn't care for other aspects of the storyline. It wasn't terrible, so I would still give this three stars.

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Justice League Volume 2: The Books of Magic by Jeff Lemire, Mikel Janin (Illustrations)

Justice League Dark, Vol. 2: The Books of Magic by Jeff Lemire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I liked this a lot more than the first volume, thus the higher rating. The storyline makes more sense to me, and it's quite menacing with a series of stories where the team is forced to give their 100% in working together to save the world, and a team of people who don't want to work together having to do so. I also liked the look back when Zatanna and Constantine meet, since it ties into the story as an old enemy from their past becomes an issue again.

Also, I liked the way the story leads into a huge arc that promises to provide plenty of fuel over this series. They have a special kid to protect, for specific reasons. Constantine, who is not quite a hero, has to man up and be heroic to save the world. But never fear, he's still up to his shifty tricks. Also, there were some cool cameos that sent me running to the DC Wikia page to do some research.

This story was fun but scary and has plenty of cool magical and action moments. There are plenty of twists and turns and the story feels more developed, cohesive and layered. It's definitely convinced me to keep reading this series. I would have done so half-heartedly before (just because of Constantine and Zatanna), but now I'm invested.

My advice is if you didn't like the first volume, don't give up. This one is much better. I enjoyed the heck out of it.



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Justice League Dark, Volume 1: In the Dark by Peter Milligan, Mikel Janin (Illustrations), Ryan Sook (Illustrations)

Justice League Dark, Vol. 1: In the Dark by Peter Milligan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The short of it:  This is weird!

For a supernatural fiction-attracted person like myself, the idea of a Justice League sub-group with members who are all gifted in the magical/supernatural arena was too awesome to resist.  It has some pretty weighty DC magical members, such as John Constantine, Zatanna (one of my new favorites), Madame Xanadu, and Deadman.  Add some new to me character like Shade The Changing Man and Mindwarp, and you have an interesting cast of characters.  Madame Xanadu is a powerful seer who foretells the end of the world, unless this specific group of people can work together long enough to set things right. That is much more difficult than it seems, with differing agendas and levels of commitment on offer. Not to mention a very powerful, very dangerous adversary, Enchantress, who has lost her human host and is going on a rampage.

Yeah, this was weird.  I think the thing I liked the most was the ensemble cast.  The storyline didn't really capture my interest.  It was pretty gruesome and just plain kooky.  Overall, made the book hard to follow.  Also, some characters had stronger roles than others.  I think that lacking backstory on some of the characters left a few question marks for me. I consulted the DC Comics Wikia and that definitely helped.

Of course, I'm not done reading this series.  It's sort of a mediocre start, but I can see some promise.  Plus, I just love Zatanna and I do have a sort of thing for that rogue John Constantine.

It's a three star rating for me. 



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By the Blood of Heroes: The Great Undead War: Book I by Joseph Nassise

By the Blood of Heroes by Joseph Nassise

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While I'm not a big zombie fiction fan, I couldn't resist reading this book about WWI with a supernatural/steampunk twist. And Joseph Nassise doesn't disappoint.  It's high caliber action that brings to mind movies like The Dirty Dozen, but twenty plus years sooner.  I don't know a lot about WWI, to be honest, but what Nassise writes seems credible.  I like that he takes what is known about WWI fighting and integrates some steampunkish and supernatural elements.  I think that he builds on the ever-present sense of horror that war inherently has, and that's a firm foundation for a supernatural suspense novel.  I can't verify this, but the Germans seemed kind of Nazish already, especially in the blatant defiance of human rights and experimentation on humans.  That part was rather disturbing.

  I felt the suspense element was a huge appeal of this book. I literally didn't know what would happen and I even had to put it down a few times to get a break. Although I wanted to keep reading. I find zombies really disturbing, and the fact that the Germans are using gas to turn people into zombies is pretty darn awful. I wanted the heroes to open up a can of whip@$$ all over them.

If anything could have improved this was more dialogue and interaction with the members of Burke's team. I cared about all these guys, but I think I would have liked to know more about them. I realize that this book occurs over a short period of time, but this would have enhanced my reading experience.  The main villain Richthofen was a "real you know what". He's the kind of villain you want to see get his butt handed to him. But he's a credible villain in that he's not easily defeated.  He's enough to give you nightmares, actually.  I don't think I'll have any, I hope. But just in case, I tried not to read this before I went to sleep. This book is so much scary as unnerving in that I can put myself in the soldiers' shoes and imagine that sense of constant fear that dealt with in the trenches.  If being blown up or shot or gassed to death isn't enough.  That's a chance they will be turned into zombies or see their fellow soldiers come back to try to eat them to death!  Yeah, that's pretty disturbing. 

Overall, this was a very good book. Great action moments.  I liked the lead characters, especially Burke.  The villain is nasty enough to make him a worthy antagonist.  The supernatural/steampunk parts are excellent. They tie into the WWI setting very well.  I think with more development of the secondary characters, this book would have been even more effective as a read. I will definitely continue this series, but when I'm in the mood for a creepy zombie novel with good action.

Recommended.



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The Diviners by Libba Bray

The Diviners by Libba Bray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have to give it to Libba Bray. She captured the Roaring 20s in full color. I can tell she put some serious research into this book, but also endowed this period with her own spark and brought it to life for this reader.

This was an odyssey in some ways. A long read, and a long listen. Thinking about this book gives me an ambivalent feeling. The subject matter is very dark. The tone quite pessimistic. I realize that this is the authentic feeling of youngsters of this period. How can you believe in the fairy tales your parents tell you about God and country, about safety and peace when your older brothers and friends went to die in the Great War that seemed to have nothing to do with you in America? Especially when things aren't exactly fixed on the home-front? All that the old timers say seems to be hypocritical and designed to suck the life out of you. That they are selling you a dream you can afford to buy.

With this novel, Libba Bray captures that feeling of doubt and despair of this period, and how the Bright Young Things, the Flappers and their male counterparts, threw themselves into the party, the Now, instead of focusing on a future that didn't seem to belong to them anyway. I think my feeling of almost depression when this ended also related to the fact that I watched a documentary on Sunday night about the black American experience and how by and large most blacks never really had a chance at the ever-elusive American Dream, far from it. So I can feel that sense of disillusionment that some of the characters felt in this book, knowing how bad it must have been for many blacks during the 20s, and having false promises about how great America was rubbed in their faces because of their skin color and race, despite being born and raised in this great country.

She also shows the constant party atmosphere that was going on during Prohibition, bought at a hefty price, with the rise of gangster-related crimes in the cities. Immigrants who came to America to get a better life, find themselves living in falling down tenements and preyed upon and despised because they can't afford any better (or to buy into the American Dream). Doors slammed in their faces because of their ethnic origins. The rise of xenophobia and racial hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and espousing of racial purity through eugenics. I imagine it was a scary time indeed for youngsters like Evie, Jericho, Mabel, Theta, Memphis, Sam, and Henry. Much better to drown your sorrows in gin, constant partying, and watching movies on the Silver Screen, than to face the scary present and an uncertain future.

On top of that is a very real and very frightening supernatural peril, at a time where Modernism and self-determinism seems to counter beliefs in a supernatural God, must less anything like ghosts or even spiritual beliefs. How does one protect oneself against a ghost resurrected to continue his blasphemous work, when one doesn't even believe in that sort of thing, not as a Modern person? How can you conceal the fact that you have abilities that you are not able to explain in a rational sense?

Yes, combined together, this makes The Diviners not a fun read. At least most of the time. But it's very good. The characters were very vividly realized and I felt much sympathy for them even when I didn't agree with the choices they made. Evie, particularly, challenged me at times. Her reliance on drinking and her self-absorbed, questionable moral compass chafed at me. However, Bray shows the pain that lurks beneath her careless facade. Being the child who lived when her mother wanted her brother to come back from the War instead. Losing her only sibling to a war that didn't make any sense to her, and not even having a close relationship with her parents to console her. On top of that, her ability to read objects, and its effect on both her body (horrible dreams and headaches) and her reputation when she makes enemies by telling the truth, making her known as the weirdo who doesn't fit in. While Modernism seems the solution to the problems that she and many youngsters face, they run into the brick walls of establishment and parental authority, which is always telling them to follow rules that make no sense or have no personal relevance. Her dream to go to New York is a way to start her Real Life. She belongs there, where the party is, where she will fit in. However, she finds that many of her problems exist in New York as well, since she is answerable to her uncle, William Fitzgerald, and she's still considered a young girl to the establishment. When she gets involved in the case to find a ritualistic killer, her abilities give her a purpose and validation that she lacked before.

I appreciated how Bray uses each young character in this book as a frame of reference, across racial and social barriers, which the youth believe are artificial anyway. I sometimes questioned Bray's modern, almost Rainbow Coalition voice as I read, but with research into the era and the Modernist movement, it is clear that this voice was authentic to this era. I liked that she taught me a lot about the social politics of the time in the context of this fictional work. While I feel that this book has some very mature themes and dark themes and subject matter, I feel that it teaches important history lessons that a mature teen could benefit from. If I were a parent, I would suggest reading it first though.

The supernatural storyline was quite unnerving and disturbing. The tie into religious fanaticism made me uncomfortable, particularly in light of the fact that this was the major representation of modern belief in God in this story. I am not saying that Bray attacked religion, but perhaps these times were not as friendly overall to a positive view of Christianity not related to unpalatable social movements such as racial purity and isolationist xenophobia (keeping America pure). In the context of Memphis' journey as a young black man, Christianity doesn't seem to offer him much, since it has done little to improve either his life or the station of life for many people of his race. In the case of Evie, her parents' Episcopalian worship is strictly a social convention with little life or emotion. From that frame of reference, it's easy to see why this has no major influence on her own beliefs. Her friend Mabel's parents are atheistic social reformers, her father of Jewish background, and her mother a runaway socialite. In the case of Jericho, he renounced belief in a God who would abandon him to a life-threatening illness that changed his whole life. So when you have a killer who has grandiose beliefs of himself as the Beast who will bring about the end of the world, a very heretical corruption of Christian eschatology, it comes off as a very negative view of Christianity in general.

While Bray doesn't describe the murders in detail, she does show us the fear and the hopelessness of the victims of the killer, which was hard reading. Although society might consider them undesirable, to me, they were innocent human beings who didn't deserve what happened to them. I found it disturbing, although not gratuitous. Perhaps some readers wouldn't be as bothered. I admit I am a wimp when it comes to serial killers and psychopathic killers. It especially bothers me when religious imagery is mixed in with it.

While Evie's uncle Will is not a focus, I liked his character a lot. His scholarly bent and carefully disguised soft heart were a good foil for the younger characters. He is Old Guard, but the more time Evie spends with him, maybe he can show her that not all the values of the older generation are worthless. And maybe she can teach that it's okay to enjoy life and have a sense of emotional connection instead of viewing everything through a divorced and academic lens.

While I found the serial killer aspect disturbing, I like how this story sets up the series for a larger supernatural threat. I can definitely see this series building into something quite interesting and worthy of following.

Just a note about the narrator. She was excellent. She conveyed the characters very distinctly. I liked how she sang as well as speaking some of the parts. I felt like I was there in this period with her lively rendition on this audiobook.


The Diviners is a very good example of what young adult fiction has to offer to both teens and older readers who enjoy young adult books. I'd recommend it for the vivid and very faithful rendering of this intriguing time in history, the Roaring 20s, with an intriguing cast of characters that will bring me back to future books in this series.



Just a few casting images:

Evie O'Neill (Kirsten Dunst)



Theta Knight (supposed to resemble Louise Brooks)



Memphis Campbell (Mechad Brooks)



Sam Lloyd (Younger Christian Bale from Newsies)



New York City (Manhattan)-1928





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