Review: Velvet, Vol. 1: Before the Living End

Velvet, Vol. 1: Before the Living End by Ed Brubaker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Other reviewers have already pointed out that this story essentially asks what would happen if James Bond got killed, and it turned out that Miss Moneypenny was more of a bad-ass than he ever was? So in an effort to come up with a new way of describing this I’ll ask what if Sterling Archer got killed, and Cheryl/Carol was more of a bad-ass than he ever was?

In 1973 Velvet Templeton is the secretary to the director of super-secret spy agency ARC-7. After their best agent is ambushed and killed Velvet is implicated as the mole who set him up, but it turns out that she knows a lot more than just how to take shorthand. Velvet was actually a great field agent in the ‘50s before events forced her into accepting a desk job. To clear her name Velvet has to get back in the spy game to track down who actually betrayed their agent.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the lack of diversity in comics as well as the movies adapted from them, and it’s very refreshing to have the lead of this promising series be a forty-something female in an era where women were either the secretary to the good guys or the honey trap working for the bad guys. And Velvet is an intriguing character with all the skills of Marvel’s Black Widow with the looks of real life hard-boiled crime writer Christa Faust minus the tattoos.

Brubaker again delivers a version of yet another fantastic genre tale with a unique twist to it. Epting’s excellent art is realistic enough to be storyboards for a movie but still stylized to provide the atmosphere of a Bond movie from the Sean Connery era. Maybe its best trick is the way that the story blends the old school comic book style spy action with the darker John le Carre tone of exploring the toll that working in covert espionage takes on someone.

Overall it’s a terrific comic that I can’t wait to read more of.

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Review: Criminal, Vol. 7: Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Criminal, Vol. 7: Wrong Time, Wrong Place by Ed Brubaker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips churn out so many excellent comics that I managed to completely miss that they did this one which was absolutely ‘criminal’ of me.

(Yeah, I know. I apologize for that one.)

We’re back with the Lawless family in the ‘70s as Teeg spends some time in jail reading comics and killing inmates who are trying to cash in on the price that’s been laid on his head for some reason. Once released Teeg takes his young son Tracy on a road trip during which Teeg is hunting people while Tracy is on the prowl for a particular comic.

As always the crime story and art here are top notch, but the extra treat is that we get to read bits of the ‘70s style comic magazines along with Teeg and Tracy. Teeg’s story is about a Conan style barbarian with all the nudity and violence that era’s black & white mags could offer while Tracy is reading the adventures of Fang, the Kung-Fu Werewolf. And now I really want Brubaker and Phillips to actually do a whole run of that title because who wouldn't want to read a comic about a kung-fu werewolf?

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Review: The Punch Escrow

The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received a free copy from the author for review.

Anyone who has ever endured a long car ride or had to cool their heels at an airport because of a flight delay has wished that we had the technology to just teleport people from place to place like they did on Star Trek. After reading this they’d be more hesitant to step up on the transporter pad.

It’s the 22nd century and the world now relies on technology like teleportation. People and goods can be shifted anywhere on Earth in the blink of an eye. Joel Byram is a guy who spends most of his time playing video games and waiting for his more successful wife Sylvia to come home. Sylvia is an engineer for the company that controls the teleportation technology, but her long hours and company secrets are taking a toll on their marriage.

Joel is the victim of an accident while teleporting to meet Sylvia, and the result is that there are now two Joels in the world. This threatens to expose a horrible secret at the heart of the teleportation industry, and both Joels find themselves on the run from a corporation more powerful than any government as they try to save themselves and Sylvia.

This one is a bit of a mixed bag. It had a lot of things I liked very much from well thought out world building that creates a society based on future tech that seems logical and real. There’s also a bit of real science and physics mixed in so that it doesn’t seem like hand waving nonsense, and the writing has a nice style to it that walks the line between making it too deep to be fun but not treating the reader like an idiot either.

However, it’s got several things that irked me and dragged it down to the three star level. First, it’s got an underachieving smart-ass protagonist who we’re supposed to root for just because he’s not outright evil, and I’m just tired of that trope. Add in the fact that he’s got an attractive wife who is way smarter than him so it’s just like a million sitcoms and Adam Sandler movies that is supposed to appeal to that male geek wish fulfillment that it’s possible to outkick your coverage and snag a hot wife with a great job just by being a charming slacker while not having to change in any way or show any ambition of your own.

This plays right into the second thing that I didn’t like because I’m not a fan of vast conspiracy stories that have a hapless hero who doesn’t actually have any skills or knowledge that move the plot forward. Yes, Joel is able to do a form of hacking on apps because his job is teaching AIs how to think creatively, but he accomplishes this by just being a smart ass to machines so again that’s not anything that makes me think he should be able to survive this.

Instead Joel is just bounced from situation to situation where people then tell him what’s going on. He has no real agency of his own, and he also does another thing I hate which is to just react repeatedly with extreme emotion and no rational thinking. Yeah, your wife is in danger, but just running around like a maniac with no ideas of what’s going on or how to get her back just reinforces that he’s a simple baby man who charges in blindly and should be killed about twenty times over yet somehow he muddles through.

There’s also some unnecessary ‘80s nostalgia laced through with Joel’s love of old pop songs. It didn’t add anything other than trying to tap into the Ready Player One trend. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the very end, and the main secret at the heart of the book is a concept I’ve seen other places so it doesn’t seem as shocking or original as it should.

Despite these reservations I still kinda liked this book. That’s because it does have some genuinely clever stuff in it, and the writing was good enough to make Joel a sympathetic hero even if he’s pretty much everything I hate in a lead character these days. All in all it’s a solid debut sci-fi novel, and I’ll be interested to see what else Tal Klein comes up with.

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Review: The Cocktail Waitress

The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Cain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If this book actually were a cocktail you’d probably find it was pretty smooth going down, but think that it’s not all that strong while drinking. Then you’d be surprised by the twist you found at the bottom of the glass, and when you tried to stand up you’d fall over and realize that you were completely shitfaced after all.

Joan Medford is burying her husband, but since he was an abusive drunk she isn’t exactly upset that he crashed and burned in a drunk driving accident. However, he’s left her stone broke, and his sister is using Joan’s inability to provide for her small son Tad as an excuse to have the kid stay with her as the first step towards claiming custody of him. Desperate for cash Joan takes a gig as a scantily clad cocktail waitress in a lounge where her looks draw the attention of plenty of male customers including the rich but sickly Earl K. White who starts dropping huge tips on her. Joan quickly sees an opportunity to help her get her son back if she can make White fall for her, but she’s torn between working towards that goal and her attraction to a handsome rogue named Tom Barclay. She’s also got a problem with a pesky policeman who thinks that she was somehow responsible for his husband’s death.

This is one of those Hard Case Crime offerings where they’ve dug up some unpublished treasure, and this time it’s from noir master James Cain. Cain wrote and rewrote multiple versions of the novel until his death, and it’s a helluva interesting and tricky read. You can see element of his best known books like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce, but what’s interesting here is how he’s almost subverting his previous work by heading down similar paths yet still making The Cocktail Waitress something different.

It’s a subtle thing, and a good portion of the book just seems to be this hard luck woman struggling to overcome her circumstances and people’s perceptions of her. The police and her husband’s family think she might be a killer. Many people assume that she’s willing to flirt and flash some cleavage for tips, and maybe even do more than that. When she gets into the relationship with White it seems like a classic gold digger scenario. And yet the first person narration that Joan gives us make it seem like she’s just a decent practical woman trying to do her best to improve her situation enough to make sure she gets her son back.

The great thing about the writing here is that by the end you’re still sympathizing with Joan until the point where you look back and realize that there’s a whole lot of fishy stuff in her story. Is she an unreliable narrator who has been feeding the reader a line the entire time? Are we just as big of suckers as the rubes that Joan works for tips? Or is it really just a string of bad luck that is making Joan look bad, and she is just trying to set the record straight as she claims?

Those are the kind of questions you’ll find yourself asking, and it’s the way that Cain made Joan come alive as a character so that you’re not entire sure that makes this a fresh approach to a classic noir story.

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Review: Zodiac Station

Zodiac Station by Tom Harper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You’d think the biggest danger in the Arctic Circle would be freezing to death or being eaten by a polar bear, but as always it turns out that people are worse than anything Mother Nature can throw at us.

It starts out with a Coast Guard ship on patrol in the Arctic when a man on skis approach the ship over the ice. He says his name is Thomas Anderson, and he’s the only survivor of a disaster at a research outpost called Zodiac Station. Anderson tells a story of how he was a lowly lab tech whose once promising career had been derailed when he gets a sudden offer to come to Zodiac and work with his old mentor on a project. Unfortunately, right after he gets to the station they find his mentor dead after apparently falling into an ice crevasse, but the circumstances and several of the people at the station seem suspicious to Anderson. After the Coast Guard discovers other survivors at the station they hear other viewpoints that cast doubts on Anderson’s version, but when the tale involves possible conspiracies that might be related to climate change, oil companies, and Russian espionage it becomes impossible to know who to believe about what.

Overall, I was impressed with how well written this was. I thought it might be a pure airport bookstore type, but this is solid writing that builds up interesting characters and an increasingly puzzling scenario. The descriptive stuff about living and working at an Arctic research station was exceptionally well done, and it showed what a hard and dreary existence that would be spiced up with the dangers of living in such a harsh environment. So it’s a very solid thriller told in a unique way with an ending I never saw coming.

However, I very nearly didn’t read it.

This book popped up as a recommendation from Amazon after I read another cold weather tale of survival recently, and since I’m fascinated by the idea of scenarios involving polar research stations I thought I’d give it a try. (I blame The Thing for biting me with that particular bug in my teens.)

However, the quick skim of reviews I did before getting it nearly waved me off. A whole lot of people on Goodreads complained about an ambiguous ending that doesn’t resolve anything and some other problems. So I had doubts, but tried it anyhow since I already had it reserved at the library. I'm glad I did. Frankly, I thought the ultimate wrap up was very clever, and if I was a different kind of asshole I might say that those people who hated the ending missed the point.

In fact, I’m kind of shocked that not one of the reviews I read mentioned a key point, and I think it’s this factor that is going to shift your perspective a lot as to how you view the ending. [ Frankenstein. This is a story that uses Frankenstein as a template from the start with a ship finding a man with with a wild story out on the ice, and then it is ultimately revealed that a genuine creature created by science is the catalyst for all of this. The creature turns on it’s creator, and in the end the creature leaves the ship.

Yes, the stuff about Anderson’s ex-wife and husband being alive and hiding in a secret lab where they’ve created a new kind of human is something for which there is no groundwork laid and sounds like something out of a B movie. But to work this plot as written it really needs to come as a complete surprise with no hint of what kind of story we’re getting which is kinda of a rebooted retcon of Frankenstein for the 21st century….Maybe? Whatever. It worked for me. (hide spoiler)]

Having said all that I understand if a reader knew all this and still was angry at the end because it does take a spectacular leap that might leave someone feeling blindsided. Or if you didn’t catch what I discussed in the spoilers it’s still understandable that you’d feel like you got bait-and-switched by this book. Those are legitimate views that I wouldn’t argue with if you felt like you had been burned.

However, I find a lot of what’s done in genre fiction cliched at this point, and to be completely surprised by something coming out of left field like that was a pleasant surprise that I enjoyed. So if the setup sounds like something you’d be interested in I’d just say that you should be ready for the story to go off in a wild direction at the end.

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Review: The Fade Out

The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Because of its format some might say that this is fantastic crime comic. That’s true, but I’m going to take it a step further and say that it’s some of the best noir I’ve ever read which I’d rate right up there with the likes of James Cain or Jim Thompson.

Seriously, it’s that good.

It’s got the ultimate noir setting of post-war Los Angeles, and the plot involves a screenwriter with a drinking problem knowing about the cover up of the murder of an actress that the studio fixer has made look like a suicide. With that as a starting point we meet a variety of characters from despicable producers, publicists who put a glossy coat of paint over ugly truths, movie stars with secrets, blacklisted writers, commie hunting Feds, and even appearances from real people like Clark Gable and Dashiell Hammett.

There’s been no shortage of wannabe James Ellroys who try to do the old school Hollywood thing, and very often it feels just like bad actors putting on fedoras and trench coats so they can mouth clichéd tough-guy dialogue with a cigarette in the corner of their mouths. What really impressed me about this is that Ed Brubaker didn't fall into that trap but instead wrote an ACTUAL noir in which everyone is compromised, nobody is interested in the truth, and seeking justice is a fool’s errand.

Brubaker’s regular partner Sean Phillips does his usual brilliant job of making the art be a perfect marriage to what the story needs, and colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser adds a richness to it that is way more interesting than just a black-and-white comic which is what lesser talents might have done for something like this. This collected edition of the entire run of the title also has some great extras including high quality reproductions of the amazing covers as well as some interesting behind-the-scenes features of how it was all put together from the researching stage to the writing and artwork.

I got this as a present last Christmas, and I’m ashamed that I let it set in a stack of unread stuff for almost a year before getting to it since it’s one of the best things I’ve read in 2017.

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Review: Persepolis Rising

Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once you get seven books deep into a series it gets really tricky to review because you can’t talk about even the basic story set-up without spoiling stuff for anyone who hasn’t read it. Since I’m really trying to encourage any sci-fi fan to check out The Expanse I don’t want to just spoiler tag the whole thing either. So how to discuss in a way that won’t ruin it for the newbs yet still be an informative review?

Weep for me, people of Goodreads!

Here’s what I can safely say to everyone: The plan is for this to be a nine book series, and it’s obvious that it’ll end up being a three act structure with three books per act. So we’re starting the end run with this one, and that’s clear from the jump. A lot of time has passed since the last book, and our main characters can now claim senior discounts. In fact, some of them are even thinking about retirement. However, one of the lingering plots from an earlier book comes back in a big way and all of humanity might find itself under the boot of a dictator if something isn’t done. And all of this struggling among people scattered among the stars continue to take place as a potential alien threat simmers in the background.

Since this is essentially set-up for the final phase of the overall story there’s a lot left up in the air, but like the previous books it’s also an entertaining self-contained sci-fi tale by itself. At this point we’ve been living in this universe for a good long while so that we know all the ins-and-outs of it as well as what to expect from the story. What continues to be fresh and engaging is that the co-authors who make up the James SA Corey name come up with new spins on moving forward so that it hasn’t become stale and formulaic.

For example, this is a book in which a whole lot of people find themselves under the authority of an autocratic ruler with an army of true believers who believe anything he says. (Sounds familiar.) As you’d expect the story becomes about a resistance rising up among the conquered people, but what’s interesting is that there’s no immediate way to win. No Death Star to blow up, no magic computer virus, no chosen one to lead them to victory. Beating these guys will mean a long term strategy of resistance and a whole lot of blood will be shed in the process.

On the heels of that is that these bad guys don’t exactly act like villains. Yes, they’re smug jerkfaces whose utter self-confidence make them insufferable, but they’re also pretty sincere about going about it a way that isn’t a brutal occupation. These are smart folks who have studied history and know that the best way to stop an insurgency is to keep it from starting by keeping people from being disgruntled in the first place. Plus, they’re stated goal is to unite the squabbling factions of humanity into a single united force so they hope to get everyone on their side through the politics of persuasion.

That’s the really insidious thing about this one. A big theme in The Expanse as stated by one character in an earlier book is that a fair percentage of humans are always going to be assholes. What’s been shown over and over again is that people are always willing to fight among themselves about the old grudges rather than put them aside to band together even when it would be in their own best long-term interest. It’s been the biggest stumbling block that the heroes have struggled against over the course of the series. And here’s finally someone who has the power to actually make that happen, and he isn’t acting like an insane dictator. Hmmmm…maybe he isn’t that bad....

Another new aspect in this is that since we know the end is coming that no one is safe. It adds some tension and drama to the action because it really does seem like all our favorites are going to make it this time. (view spoiler)[Not all of them do. (hide spoiler)]

It’s another great entry in the series, and my only real complaint is that I kind of got bummed while reading because I know how few there are left. I’ll also plug the excellent TV series based on the books that the SyFy Channel airs and is getting ready to start its third season which is well worth checking out.

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