#flash reviews

Author: Bao Shu (english translation by Andy Dudak)

Genre: sci-fi

Year: 2018 (first published in 2017)

Lenght: 8166 words

Where to find it: on Clarkesword issue 136 (January 2018).

The seven year old Ling Rourou has received a mini laptop for her birthday, and happily begins recording her days with her father, who works at home trading stocks.

The story is all written through diary entries (with one exception), and while we can see she’s a happy kid who has everything she could need or want, except for her mom who died a long time ago, we notice how certain things are just weird. And so does Rourou. Apparently she already knows how to play the piano perfectly, and has no trouble speaking english perfectly: she even introduces herself as Jessica in class. Her new english teacher, Elle is surprised by how similar she is to a childhood friend, except that Elle grew up in New York and we’re in China now…

I’d love to say more but I’m not risking it, I want you to enjoy how the story develops with the discoveries Rourou makes about her family and herself. I enjoyed this story a lot: it was an engaging read and just when I thought I had understood the secret of Rourou’s family, another detail emerged and suddenly the old theory couldn’t work anymore… I promise you, the ending is going to let you awestruck.

Author: Mike Buckley

Genre: sci-fi

Year: 2017

Lenght: 5037

Where to find it: on issue 134 of Clarkesworld  Read the review in italian here.

Our nameless main character lives in a strange alien setting. He collects face-shaped fruits from a nearby forest as nourishment, and takes care of his father, who is now in a semi-vegetative state since the Blank has taken all his memories. His father is not the only one in that situation, it seems the small community in which our MC lives is full of people who suffer of this kind of memory loss… our MC isn’t immune either. There’s much he forgets, and the same happens to his best friend Tim, a younger guy. Both love to talk about their favorite Soldiers. It has been a long time since the soldiers disappeared into the Forest to fight the Inhabitants, but their mechanized statues still roam the place. Tim and our MC love watching the statues… but  one day, something unique happens.

Author: Vina Je-Min Prasad

Genre: sci-fi

Length: 7943 words

Where to find it: Clarkesworld issue 124 (the italian translation has been published by Future Fiction). Read this review in Italian here.

Helena is the mind behind Splendid Beef Enterprises: it’s just her and her printer which produces fake meat for her clients, mainly restaurants. One day she gets a weird request: a mysterious client asks her for something she has never done before, and he has ways to ensure she will comply…

There are two major projects I’m tired of bouncing around in my head, so I’m doing my best to cut them from my mind and paste them onto our reality, which means I need to write a lot nowadays.

It also means my Cover In Dust reviews have gotten lost in the chaos but, instead of neglecting posting reviews like I have in the past few months, I’m going to do a “flash review” every so often.

I like doing the bigger reviews because they force me to analyze what I read in deeper ways. Also, I like the writing muscles I get to exercise. I will continue to generate those, but these “flash reviews” give me a second choice.

Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov / Art by Noel Tuazon / Published by Archaia 

WHY THE HELL DID I WANT TO READ IT? Because I like a good crime yarn. The comic book medium has a long and grand history with crime fiction. Tumor adds another chapter to that.

WHAT DID I JUST READ?

The blurb on the back of the Archaia graphic novel tells it best:

“A washed-up private detective on his last case, a brain tumor in his head. A girl on the run from the mob, the spitting image of his lost love. For Frank Armstrong, the past and the present are about to collide.”

Chugging ahead briskly, Tumor reads like a bullet train. Frank Armstrong’s fluid POV on time and events is its engine. The story cuts away just before the scene ends and drops us right in the middle of another. It’s an old screenwriting trick that works wonderfully here. It keeps the reader engaged in the story by never answering the questions every scene raises.  

I recommend setting aside an uninterrupted hour or so to tear through Tumor. It deserves that.

Fialkov’s script is a lot of gritty fun that takes advantage of page turns as the story’s unreliable narrator’s take on time jumps around. Fialkov reminded me that a well-crafted page turn in a comic book can be as powerful as a well-placed edit in a movie.

Noel Tuazon’s B&W art invokes a film noir movie. He does an excellent job of capturing the grime of modern Los Angeles. He correctly details her dry, dusty, and threadbare buildings which have been bleached by the intense SoCal sun.

Tuazon’s line work is full of energy yet conveys the many emotions the story’s characters go through.

WAS IT WORTH THE WAIT?

Yes. Tumor was a solid read with a nice twist on the unreliable narrator. It’s a quick read that invokes the best parts of film noir and is another fine notch in the history of crime comics.

Why yes, we are basically three weeks into May and I’m just now recapping April. April ended with me spraining my stupid knee and having to sit around doing nothing, which you would think would make for a ton of internet time but you would be incorrect. I just didn’t feel like doing anything but all of the things I couldn’t do, of course, like taking a walk or going up the stairs like a normal…

So, as I was going through my spreadsheet and uploading photos for this post, I realized I forgot to add a book to my sheet and I actually read 9 books this month instead of 8! Woohoo! And also 22 comics. Way to go, March.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami– Murakami has been running daily for about the last 23 years – at time that he wrote this, which was 10 years…

  Late, as per usual.

Okay, I read 6 books in February, and 20 comics, but I was in a slump. I almost kind of still feel in a slump. Most of the books I read felt like they took FOR-EV-ER to get through. Oy. Anyways, here’s what I read.

Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching by Mychal Denzel Smith– This is Smith’s recounting of how he grew up to be the black man that he is – the culture he…