Book Review: Area 51, by Bob Mayer

I believe I first came across this when it was originally published back in 1997.  The title immediately interested me, but then after reading the back cover it just didn't appeal to me for some reason - I can't remember why.  It could be that the text was different back then - I've seen this happen to republished books over the years - but it just didn't sound interesting.  It may also be that there was an abundance of books with this kind of subject matter around that time which just weren't very good.

Fast-forward to 2016.  I see a social media post (facebook/twitter - I can't remember which) about  'Area 51 Time Patrol:  D-Day' being published soon.  I thought:  isn't that the book I saw quite a long time ago?  So, I looked into it.  Not only is it the same Area 51 that I saw years ago, but the series has grown (and, it was originally published under the pseudonym Robert Doherty).  There are nine (nine!) books in the main Area 51 series (7 books in the main storyline, plus two that appear to be prequels to the entire series), there is a Nightstalker trilogy, and then the Time Patrol series, which appears to be an extension of the Nightstalker series.  The series has grown over the years, but I don't recall ever seeing any of these books past the first one at my local bookstore (and I'm usually there a few times every month).  I'm finding this happening quite a bit recently - various books are becoming increasingly difficult to find a bookstores.  A bunch of bestselling authors I've recently started reading appear to have almost no presence in bookstores - but, thankfully, you can find just about everything at Amazon.

I noticed that all of the books had very high ratings, so I read the blurb on Area 51 again.  This sounded very interesting, and since 2015/2016 are years where I have been taking a chance on many authors I have not heard of before (and have gotten quite a bit of enjoyment reading as a result), I decided to take a chance yet again.

I'm sorry I didn't pick this up years ago!  This story has several elements that I enjoy - ancient civilizations and their mysteries, aliens, conspiracies, etc.  This story covered all of the bases, and addressed many mysteries of the ancient world:  Atlantis, the Egyptian pyramids, Easter Island, etc.  The story involves a journalist, an archaeologist, a former Nazi, UFO conspiracy theorists, and powerful military groups. I was surprised by a few things which were really unexpected.  Events do get wrapped up at the end pretty quickly, but I am very interested in what is going to happen in the next book, and I'll definitely be checking it out at some point.

Book Review: Scott Pilgrim Series, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

I kind of missed this whole thing.

Yep, that's right.  The graphic novels.  The movie.  All of it.

I wasn't even aware it was a thing.  When the movie came out I my kids were ages 8 and 4.5.  I wasn't reading as much as I used to, and I wasn't seeing as many movies as I used to.  Life kind of got in the way - not that it was a bad thing, just different.

I just recently became interested in reading the series after seeing a review of Seconds (by the same author), which I also read recently and enjoyed very much.  For me, Seconds was at just about the same level as Scott McCloud's The Sculptor.  I was seeing that reviews for Scott Pilgrim were even higher, and many reviews for Seconds also claimed it wasn't as good as Scott Pilgrim.  Plus, Joss Whedon had good things to say about Scott Pilgrim.  So, I just had to read it, and I went through it pretty quickly - all six volumes in about a week while reading some other books.

Impression:  while I did enjoy Scott Pilgrim, I think I liked Seconds slightly better.  Of course, I wouldn't exactly say that these works are quite the same genre.  Seconds is more of a serious story, and Scott Pilgrim is more of a zany catch-all of many different things (video games, Kung Fu, twenty-something angst, relationship and self-identity issues, clubs, music, and too many other items to mention).  It kind of brought me back to the days when I used to read Rumiko Takahashi's two popular series Ranma 1/2 and Maisson Ikkoku.  Perhaps there is some influence there - in the afterword to one of the books I did see that Mr. O'Malley claimed to become obsessed with manga while writing the series, so its possible.

As with Seconds and The Sculptor, this series shows me yet again the importance of comics as literature (for a full definition of what this entails, you really need to read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud).  Yes, you read that right - literature.  This word does not only encompass those works which are commonly referred to as "classics" - you know, Moby Dick, Ivanhoe, Oliver Twist.  Here's part of the definition from www.dictionary.com:  "writings in which expression and form...are characteristic or essential features".  The definition specifically calls out novels, biographies, and even poetry and essays - if essays can be considered literature, then comics can be as well!  Graphic works like this are important because they can convey aspects of a story in ways that words simply can't handle effectively.

Comics are also a great source material for movies and TV shows - someone first imagines a concept as a comic series or a graphic novel, and then Hollywood gives it the film treatment.  The graphic form is more accessible than wading through hundreds or thousands of novels ranging from 300 to 800+ pages each.  And I'm not referring to Batman and The Avengers, or even Spider-Man here, as those are all related to comic books (the kind that I grew up with).  I'm talking about other comics that dared to do something different.  Men in Black, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Priest, The Walking Dead - they all started as a comic series, and they are quite different in nature from the comic books that I grew up with.

The comic form is an important piece of literature, and I look forward to future efforts from Mr. O'Malley.

Book Review: Project Maigo, by Jeremy Robinson

This was an excellent continuation of the Nemesis series.  The stakes are raised, because there are now five additional monsters to deal with, and General Gordon is still around, and we find he has become a bit more than just his usual nasty self.

Poor John Hudson has way more to contend with than in the first book.  The story moves quickly, and is filled with power struggles, hidden agendas, further background on the main characters, and multiple conflicts with the other Kaiju.

Elements of the story connect back to Project Nemesis, and the different plot threads become more complicated, and we learn that there is much more going on than we were aware of in the first book.  We learn more about the original creature discovered at the beginning of Project Nemesis, including hints of where it may have originated, and who currently has the body.  This is now becoming like a mega-Kaiju movie, in the vein of Destroy All Monsters (the 1968 Godzilla movie) -  I would not be surprised if there was some influence there.

As is detailed on the back cover, Boston has already been destroyed, and Washington D.C. is next on the list!  Everything comes to a head, and I was not sure where things would be going, so I was very surprised with how things ended.  Some interesting technology is also used by some of the characters, and led the story in a direction I didn't expect.  For me, the book ended like a good horror movie with a twist ending - let's leave it at that.

Some characters from Island 731 also make an appearance in the story, and played a larger part than I was expecting, and it looks like they may be appearing again in the next book, Project 731.  If you started with Project Nemesis, and are moving on to this book, I would recommend reading Island 731 first.  I really enjoyed this book and I'm looking forward to the next installment!

Book Review: Seconds, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

This is the second serious, thick, hardcover graphic novel I've read in the last year (before you ask - no, graphic novels about superheroes like Batman don't count).  The first was The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud (just follow the link to see my review).  In short, that is a powerful story of a man who makes a deal with death to be able to sculpt anything with his bare hands, but at a price - he will only have 200 days to live.  Naturally, as deals with death (and the devil) typically go, things are made worse by discovering the love of his life immediately after he starts sculpting.

While Seconds is not precisely the same type of story, it is very similar in nature, but very different in implementation.  Both stories deal with difficulties in relationships, as well as personal goals that always seem to be out of reach, no matter how hard to try to make progress - even when you cheat or break the rules to try to get ahead and achieve that goal.  And not only do you still not achieve the goal, but things continue to get worse.

The meaning of the title was an unexpected surprise for me.  This was a great story.  Initially, I didn't find the artwork particularly attractive, but once I started to get twenty or so pages in, I found that it fit the story, and it fits the mood of the story as things become darker.  When bad things happen, Katie simply needs to write something down, eat a mushroom, and go to sleep and things change.

There were so many endearing things in this story, and I'm guessing there is influence from many sources - I'll name a few that came to my mind:

• The main character, Katie, has a hairstyle that reminds me of Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons TV show.
• The "multiple second chances" reminded me of the films Run Lola Run (German) and Sliding Doors (American).
• Katie lives *outside* of the changes she makes to past events, which reminded me of Ashton Kutcher's character 'Evan' in the film The Butterfly Effect.  Wereas 'Evan' suffers physical change as the result of his tampering, his memory is unaffected - he has no memory of how or why things changed.  Katie suffers *no* impact, as she is never physically affected, and she has no memory of the changes that have occurred, just as if she just stepped back into the picture after being gone for a while.
• The relationship of a gourmet chef reminded me of the movie Funny About Love with Gene Wilder and Christine Lahti - although, Katie's love interest is not a cartoonist, but a chef like herself.
• As the story gets darker, I was reminded of elements of films like Flatliners (Kevin Bacon) and Event Horizon (Sam Neil), or Fright Night (William Ragsdale) - characters are faced with the unshakable feeling that "they brought something back with them" or they have "invited something nasty into house".

Whether these influences are real or imagined by me makes no difference.  All of the different elements make for an entertaining and thoughtful story and makes us think about our own choices in life.

Bryan Lee O'Malley is also the author of the Scott Pilgrim series of graphic novels.  I kind of missed that boat.  I never saw the movie (which was released in 2010) - despite the fact that it stars Michael Cera, whom I have enjoyed in the films Juno and Superbad (still haven't seen Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - which I should have seen since "Nick and Norah" was the name of one of my wife's favorite stores).  I didn't even know that the movie was based on a set of graphic novels.  But, I'm attempting to remedy that by reading them now, and I do hope do see the movie at some point.

Anyway, if you have read and enjoyed The Sculptor, I would recommend Seconds.