The Gold Ceiling: Page 24
Book Reviews & The End
While this is the last page I still have two more free posts planned. One will be a reading of script version of The Gold Ceiling. The other post will be the cover art, a task I’ve been dreading as most of the ideas I have for it don’t feel like they will look good. After that I have a few one off posts I’ll be making before moving onto my next book.
I’m finally finding time to read some of the comics I bought at Third Coast Comics for my birthday!
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Vol. 2 by 山田鐘人 - I was a little hesitant to buy this since I’d seen the anime already and volume 1 was out of stock. It was worth it though. While I remember the story from the anime it was still wonderful to read. It was especially enjoyable to see the early art. This was an English version (it’s hard to get Japanese versions of manga here). High level, Frieren is an elf who went on a great quest decades earlier with an adventurers party. Elf’s live very long lives. At one point in the story she says that the 10 year trip was less than 1/100th of her life. While I’m only at midlife, I connect with this concept of having lived a long time and thus struggling a bit to see the importance of the moment. All but one of the people she went on that original adventure with are now dead from old age. She’s getting a second adventure with short-lived humans and doesn’t seem as willing to take the time for granted. Another way I relate to her, she is willing to take risks that sometimes do not pay off. In her case, she often opens treasure boxes that are probably traps on the off chance they have new magic for her to learn. The final way I connect with her is that elves are asexual and I’ve moved further into the ace spectrum over the past few years.
MAGNIFICENT MS. MARVEL #1-18 by Saladin Ahmed - This was great. In April I had read Ms. Marvel No Normal by G. Willow Wilson (who I was on a Worldcon panel with). I’ve also seen the TV show and the movies that feature her. This went deeper into Kamala’s character. It’s interesting how different authors bring new things to a character. This is the first time I saw Kamala and Miles Morales on the same page. He made a very brief appearance. Jersey City is just across the bay from Brooklyn, so I had found it odd they hadn’t been together before. This story gets a little dark, Ms Marvel has and then deals with some trauma. It reminds me a little of Avatar Korra’s story.
The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso - The world building in this two book series is phenomenal. It has a ton of depth. It’s a fantasy world where battles are done with swords, knives, and fantasy powers. I spent a lot of time reading this thinking about how well the story could transfer to a game. In some ways the story is a lesbian love story. The main character, Kembral Thorne, is a member of an organization like a police force. The entire story takes place over 12 hours almost entirely within a new years party that is sort of in a time loop. This is Kembral’s first social event since the birth of her first child. The exhaustion she shows from having a baby is not only relatable, but more realistic than any work I can think of. Her worries as a single mother about being in danger, and leaving her child orphaned, are also relatable. Each hour powerful children of the moon take part in a deadly game that would let one of them name the year, granting them significant powers for that year. Humans like Kembral are treated as pawns. I struggled remembering what hour it was and thus how close to the game’s completion.
The Last Soul Among Wolves by Melissa Caruso - Set a few months after the prior book, Kembral and the woman she started dating in the first book are trying to protect friends from being killed due to a cursed set of objects they bled on in their youth. While this is Caruso’s second fantasy series, I can really see how she leveled up as a writer from the last story. The Last Soul Among Wolves has a similar isolated feel to the prior book, in fact for parts the characters are literally stranded on an island, yet at times the characters can actually go into the city proper. Caruso also extended the queer representation by introducing a trans masculine character. While there was a mechanism similar to the hour changing, though this time deaths, as the prior book it was far easier to follow.