jstilts's reviews
116 reviews

This low score may be due to it being well outside of my usual genres. 

A definite improvement on the first novel, which you don't need to have read to enjoy this book. Libby is now a much more well-rounded character. The never-called-out-on punching-down bitchiness is thankfully almost fully excised, but Libby hasn't lost her edge - there is some scandalous revenge on her old Holywood rival, and some fun friction with jealous classmates. The nasty exploitation angles are also gone, and a previous relationship I found deeply creepy is ended and - while not exactly re-examine, certainly is shown to be not at all perfect.

This time Libby is suffering from a broken heart, and balancing both a modelling career and full time university studies - while one of her Professors endangers his career by falling for her.

There are some rather sweet sequences the first book would never have had, such as Libby taking a teen girl out for a day behind the scenes.

An angsty but fun read which at one point seems to be heading for a satisfying but predictable ending - then switches cleverly in an unexpected direction that seems more true to life.

Still not my genre, but I'll be checking out the third installment.

What a mess. I don't award 1 star or less easily, for me it means the book was either genuinely offensive or a complete failure. This time it's both.

In order of importance: the artwork, while fine stylistically, is extremely obsessed with showing off the female body: tits, butts, crotches and almost-upskirt arrangements are a constant. I'm no prude, but Supergirl is frequently referred to as being 15 years old, so it's pretty inappropriate.

They try to wave off any accusations of impropriety by occasionally stating her body developed slower than her mind on the trip from Krypton to Earth. Frankly this makes it even more gross because they're basically admitting they've done the wrong thing but have a get-out clause they hope holds water. It doesn't.

Artwork aside, on to the story. It starts with Supergirl saving people from disasters while being surreptitiously observed by Batman and Superman. Apparently she's newly on the scene, and Superman doesn't trust her to do a good enough job, while Batman just doesn't trust her - she seems faster and stronger than Superman, and this worries Bruce. To their surprise Supergirl becomes aware of them, and manages to lose Superman when he tries to pursue. So far so interesting - a potential story on misogyny in the workplace! But it goes nowhere fast. We spend half the book as Supergirl drops in on various superhero teams and they argue and fight, argue and fight, argue and fight. There is no plot to speak of. There are some issues surrounding her lost parents and the mission they set her out to do, but it turns out this "Volume 1" starts about a dozen issues after Supergirls actual first appearance - at one point split into two aspects of her personality - which seems interesting but the missing backstory renders what little plot there is senseless. Why call this Volume 1 yet chop out the actual beginning of this characters tale when it's so vital to her story?

Supergirl is miserable, the world is awful to her, and the artist is obsessed with her 15 year old body. Who is this for? Heaven help any young girl who picks up this book.

Suddenly we are in a different world with an evil Superman, and again it feels like we are missing a lot of information as to where we are, how or why Supergirl is there - and even left wondering how they left. Eventually I realise they are in the bottle world of Kandor - which wouldn't be obvious to the casual reader but even this knowledge doesn't actually explain anything that is going on. Tits and arse galore again with our female leads being regularly brutalized. Oh, at one point the 15 year old Supergirl is mind-controlled into (almost) marrying and having sex with an alternate-universe version of her cousin. Yuck.

In the final third of the book we have a few disjointed tales of Supergirl hanging out in bars and going into high school in disguise and a few other bits and bobs that are pretty disjointed and keep bringing up the age/body difference, then on to a short tale of Supergirl being made miserable by other heroes again, just to ram home the point that a) she sucks and b) this book has achieved zero character development.

One last note - I was really looking forward to this book as key art from this era (smattered throughout as one-page pieces) shows Supergirl up in the sky, bathed in sunlight with pure exuberant joy on her face at being aloft. Quite a shock to find that she never has a single moment like that: she is miserable, harried and brutalized throughout.

Avoid.

A delightful and funny mystery that's all about a most unusual "found family", bought together because the matriarch of this eclectic group suspects one of them is guilty of murder.

Until Vera can work out which one of her new friends is the killer, she will treat them all with stern Indonesian granny-love, cook them delicious meals, match-make - and snoop outrageously.

Jesse Q. Sutanto has written yet another hilarious lightly romantic novel, this time tempered with real heart - and a heck of a twist.

An absolute blast of a book, part farcical heist, part romance, all funny family drama.

Once the plot gets going this becomes a real page-turner, with frequent bombshell twists at the ends of chapters that will make you howl in laughter and amazement at the audacity of the author.

Absolutely loved it!

An intriguing and complex tale that starts gently with an amnesiac discovering themselves at a 1920s British mansion day-long party, but quickly progresses into a rollercoaster "groundhog day" murder mystery where our sleuth wakes in a new host body as the day begins anew to try and solve or stop the murder that ends the day, all while avoiding unknown antagonists out to kill him in any and all of his host bodies.

It's an intriguing tale that does a great job of putting you in the head of the main character - no mean feat as each time they switch hosts the original personality influences their own.

That, to put it mildly, is the simple summary - the book is much more twisty and complex - but an absolute page-turner.

While it's hardly unusual for a murder mystery to have unexpected layers revealed late in the piece by the detective, this time it pretty much derailed the book for me. It's unusual flow of time and character is a lot of enjoyable work to keep up with, without the plot taking a sudden left turn as well. Ordinarily I might consider immediately re-reading the book with this new information in mind, but my brain needs a rest from juggling so very many elements of time, character and place!

One minor niggle on top: the backstory to the whole setup comes across poorly. It's a bit sci-fi when the book is very entrenched in the 1920s, and adds another layer of complexity in an already complex tale. If I was the editor for this book I would have suggested they reframe it as a ghostly supernatural cause, which would fit with the 1920s period better, and was already present in a red-herring manner to obscure that it was going to be a sci-fi explanation.

Still, that's minor, and my issue with the late-in-the-piece complication is my only real complaint, hence giving this gripping book 4 stars.

Surprisingly (mild spoiler) our main character never ends up in the body of someone of a different gender, which seems like a missed opportunity.

Very close to half of this book is about the making of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and if it was released as just that this would easily be a 5 star review. The book goes behind-the-scenes through the production of each film from conception through to the nervously-awaited first weeks box office takings. While it mostly follows Steven Spielberg's point of view, absolutely all aspects of the productions are explored, cast and crews quoted.

While this is true for each film, as I said Raider is half the book - the page count for each film drops by orders of magnitude, as I suppose for some reason less documents and documentary footage exists for the subsequent films?

Temple of Doom still has excellent coverage, but while Last Crusade is full of interesting information the difference between it's coverage and Raiders is very obvious - in one sentence 8 days shooting is skipped over, including the entirety of the sequence set at sea which couldn't have been an unremarkable shoot.

Crystal Skull suffers particularly - not only is the page count comparatively miniscule, but much of what there is reads like press-releade material. 

The coverage for Raiders and to a lesser degree Temple is so good that overall this is still a magnificent piece of work which I thoroughly enjoyed pouring over, easily amongst the best of it's kind. I can only hope for an expanded edition one day!

UPDATE: the author was a guest on the excellent "Indiana Jones Minute" podcast and explained he wanted to make 4 books, one for each film. The publisher insisted he rolled it into one, giving him less time (and money) to research all the films as thoroughly as each other. Source: The Indiana Jones Minute Season 3: Minute 75 of The Last Crusade "Just when you were becoming interesting". Which explains it, but still disappointing!

Yet another great Holmes book from Bonnie Macbird, this time a much shorter "Christmas Special" of sorts that sees Holmes and Watson investigate two cases over the Christmas season.

In this slimmer-than-usual volume Macbirds own creations Vidocq and Heffie both feature, and while there are a few confronting moments neither is a murder mystery. The shorter length also means that for once with Macbird we do not take any side plots into Holmes nor Watson's past or what makes them tick - all of which combines to make this a bit of a light Christmas treat of a read while we wait for her next weightier time to be published, and that's no criticism, it's an interesting change of pace.

The overall theme is one of kindness - which sometimes comes easily, sometimes has to be carefully negotiated and planned for.

As a bonus, there are excellent illustrations within as well. Highly recommend - all in all a very uplifting read!

This book was a blast - love and teen comedy drama in Indonesia with interfering Aunties and cousins galore!

A very predictable plot, but totally forgivable because the characters are such fun - and being a disguised love-letter to Indonesia through the eyes of a newcomer makes this a quick and breezy read.

Not my usual genre, but it makes me keen for more!

Absolutely crazy book, a stream-of-consciousness that is actually captivating rather than aimless and annoying.

"Fly" is a circus-born taxi driver who's grip on reality is extremely tenuous, his loquacious off-kilter views prone to leading him on rambling flights of fancy as he drives people around the city, stalks his neighbours, descends into literary-enfused erotic battlegrounds of the imagination and tries to eek out an existence on the fringes of the law.

The plot is only as thin as Fly's varying grip on reality, we split most of our time between Fly's day-to-day observances of life in the city gripped by the Carnival and exploring his probably-genuine circus roots and his early years in the city amongst revolutionaries.

The real meat of the book is Fly's personal and professional relationships, and how Fly reacts as those closest to him disappear from his life.

The only issue I have is with the final act of the book where SPOILERS I GUESS a serial killer starts murdering taxi drivers, taking Fly's last and most tenuous personal connections away from him. The book is very shy about revealing who the killer is, and there is no real compelling reason for it to be Fly - and yet these chapters are the only part of the book not seen from Fly's perspective, which very strongly suggests a clumsy attempt by the author to hide that it IS Fly. A small niggle that will bother me less on re-reading I imagine.

Highly recommended!

You shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but what made me pick this book up was the cover painting of police Commissioner Jim Gordon holding a gun to Batgirl's head as she unmasks herself as his daughter, Barbara Gordon.

With the title "Batgirl: Wanted", this looked to be something interesting, especially as Barbara is wanted for the murder of Jim's son, her brother (not really a spoiler, that happens outside of this book).

Unfortunately the book is mostly about a typically psychotic-for-no-reason DC villain, a ventriloquist who can telekinetically control puppets and corpses for some gross serial-killer activities. Once you've waded through this dross there is a bit of interesting drama with Barbara's personal life and her family relationships, but this is also mostly muddied by some ongoing story arc regarding a millionaire villain and her crew that neither starts nor resolves in this book.

Basically this is a collection of a few Batgirl comics, not a coherent story in itself - and it doesn't make me want to seek out the other volumes. Pity.