A grotesque yet humane world unlike any other
580427
In "The Scar," Mieville has created another society on his planet of Bas-Lag, featuring an entirely different cast of characters. (Those readers who haven't read "Perdido Street Station" will want to know that this "sequel" is a completely standalone book; I haven't read the earlier work yet and, although there are a very few scattered references to characters and events from the first novel, they are in no way crucial to the plot. Not once did I feel like I didn't understand precisely what was going on.)

The action here is set on Armada, a floating city of pirates. The concept of a floating city formed by boats lashed together is not a new one in fantasy; most recently David Drake set a large part of "Lord of the Isles" among the Floating Folk, scavenger tribes who lived entirely on houseboats lashed together traversing the wide oceans and sending out "catcher boats" for supplies. But the resemblance of Mieville's world to previous efforts is only superficial: never has anyone created a maritime society to such vivid effect.

In Armada, usually incompatible creatures and societies exist peacefully (if uneasily), both because they are outcasts from the larger world and simply because they must in order to survive in the hostile ocean environment. There are the Remade (biologically engineered mutants), scabmettler (whose blood coagulates upon slashing), Cactacae (cactus-people), and even vampir. Armada adds to its inhabitants by "press-ganging" new members--capturing imperial ships, detaining their inhabitants, and indoctrinating them into its societies. The new inhabitants are pretty much free to do whatever they want in their new home--except they can never leave.

In addition to its fully realized atmosphere, "The Scar" boasts an extraordinarily convoluted (yet credible) plot and several of the most memorable characters to be found in science fiction or fantasy. To its inhabitants, Armada is alternately a prison or a paradise. The heroine, the newly press-ganged Bellis Coldwine, is both defiant and well-meaning, but she inadvertently unleashes a chain of events with unexpected consequences for both her old residence of New Crobuzon and her new city of Armada. As the man who controls the goings-on of Armadan society behind the scenes, Uther Doul scorns power for himself but doesn't hesitate to use it when necessary. A castigated exile and slave from New Crobuzon, the grotesquely "Remade" Tanner Sack realizes that Armada means freedom for him and his kind, and he willingly takes his mutant engineering to the next level. Only the young and kindhearted Shekel never seems to fully realize his potential as a heartwarming counterpoint in this harsh world; it's a minor quibble, but I wish we'd seen more of him in this book.

The story takes several unusual (and satisfying) turns and moves along at a lively pace while pausing to embellish the idiosyncrasies of Armada and its inhabitants. It's a fascinating world, a majestic story, and a powerful incentive for me to finally read "Perdido Street Station."
1406648
This book is a discussion of humanity, what it is that makes us human and what it means to be humane. It is a reminder that maybe there is a horror story in all of us, but maybe there is also a bit of hope. It is heart-wrenchingly tragic at times. Other times, it is bold and beautiful. And sometimes, it is the action paced suspense that you'd expect from a typical zombie novel.
3924359
A bold and beautifully rendered vision, Monstress presents a universe populated by mythological creatures like unicorns, angels, talking cats and little fox girls, but while at first glance the characters may say kawaii, this female-centric graphic is more creepy than cute. No matter how delightful to the eyes, this world is for fighters and survivors, full of secrets, deceptions and mixed loyalties, and people both profane and violent.

The story is dark, and some of the images are quite brutal and disturbing. Suggested for mature readers only, and highly recommended, particular for readers of Bitch Planet and Promethea.

4.5 stars
724434
There's a great balance here of dark and light. Some satire, some wide-eyed wonder.

In some there are corpses in freezers, hunters being hunted, and people without eyes. In others there are children running in the snow, Ray Bradbury opening a college-age kid's eyes to the magic of the cosmos, and a husband and wife keeping their marriage alive.

My favourite story was Wings, which I think is represented on the cover in the form of a meat-man (When I needed pate for breakfast, thats when I knew I had a problem.). It is inconceivable strangeness set in a normal world. It is horrifying. And it has a beautiful coda that made me tear up.
4239514
This graphic novel is a tale of heroics born of struggle and pain .Vengeance at its MOST primal influence.  The protagonist would seem a product of circumstance, yet her tale stems from an ancient history that has afforded time, and whose purpose has found new ground in an age of chaos.  A chaos that has been left to its own devices for to long and whose only remedy would be that of unyielding unbiased justice, albeit said justice may be of a cruel and beastly kind.
The supernatural is shrouded in an ethereal cloud of pagan mysticism and practiced in all ages of Latin histories.  These histories within this novel are beautifully rendered in modern graphic art whose detail does not leave the reader wanting but left in a state of desire and pays no apologies to the welcome of such aesthetics.
This tale is one whose recount is that of the most primal instinct of justice in an unjust world.  Sacrifice is its only maker and this fashion has come full circle.
The willing heroine becomes a modern day deity whose justice is dealt in an animalistic yet justified way.  This tale opens to the reader a world of ancients whose place in history comes alive in the modern world. Where blood has become the preferred method of payment. What this world anew must be baptized in crimson in order to attain redemption.
I personally cannot wait for the next installment and I anticipate where this will take the idea of the immortal justice.
3993736
I have never, in all my years of reading hundreds and hundreds of books, read a book like this one. It is, as the show itself, bizarre and excellent, as if Dali took a class in narrative structure or Lovecraft a course in racial sensitivity and adequate prose writing. It attempts, at many points, to explain to you the inexplicable, and it manages to put just enough in your head to feel the bits that won't quite fit in all their mindbending extra dimensions. The characters are written in such a way that you feel them, and understand them, and see yourself in them, and their development and relations are excellently presented. The book is at turns sad, strange, reflective, exciting, poignant, insightful, joyful, comforting and disquieting. It also occasionally causes showers in the real world to scream, so do be cautious.
2696742
This is an interesting book that postulates a future "de-evolution" of modern society. With greedy corporations calling all the global shots, the gulf between the have and have-nots has grown to alarming proportions. A handful of investment firms now dictate world economic policy, with an eye to keeping themselves firmly entrenched in power and the powerless right where they are. A pecking order is established among those vying for number one status through a unique kind of duel- not with guns, but cars. It becomes standard policy to challenge your corporate rivals to a violent road race where only the most ruthless survive, a clear metaphor for a primitive, Darwinian survival of the fittest. The unbridled violence unleashed by this winner-take-all free-for-all keeps the story moving at a fast clip, as gory as it is. Far from being a novel of redemption as you might expect at the end, Market Forces is instead a somber speculation of what could happen if corporations were unleashed to do whatever it takes to fatten their bottom line, with no regard whatsoever for the well being of the less fortunate. While there are glimpses of a kind of Wild West justice at times, mostly the story is sobering in its portray of a future society where pure capitalism without charity rules, where only those totally lacking in morals or compassion become celebrities and hold all the cards. It's a fascinating future to imagine, but one that would be disastrous in reality. More than anything, Market Forces is a warning about the direction we might take (or are taking, as some would say) as corporations grow bigger, executives wealthier, and the average worker marginalized, outsourced, or sent packing. Recommended.

Also read An Audience for Einstein by Mark Wakely, a clever story about a major medical discovery with worrisome implications for the future of mankind.
2790396
With the world in the grips of advancement of the world we rarly look at the consequences.  THE STAND is a frightening tale of what happens when a small plauge made by man is the same thing that distroys humainty.  In this Epic (and that what it is), King creates a world where just going from point a to point b is a jorney frought with terrors so simple that it makes our world now look like giant cushion.  Just breaking a loeg could be the determining factor of life and death.  This world is not just a place where simple terrors are, it is also the play ground of a walking terror more powerfu;l than anything ever faced.  THE STAND is a testiment to King's craft and an insperation to all who read it.
3221829
I can't think of a more terrifying world than Pandora, Herbert's world of weird and deadly animals and mutant clones, all created at the whim of Ship, the accidental god-machine from his novel Destination:Void. Again,  Herbert places his poor charaters in a constant and dire struggle for  survival, only this time it's not just humans who want to stay alive. The  whole drama plays out under the watch of the sometimes benevolant,  sometimes indifferent, but always inscrutable Ship, who has become man's  (and clone's) computer-God of his own creation.
What foresight Herbert  had to present such a world of biological science and ecological  destruction gone mad that foreshadows our own time.
A real treat for wild  sci-fi fans. Look for it in used book stores. It's worth it!
4068705
Wiesel's words are at once crisp and searing.  He transported me to places that I could never have conjured even in my most vivid nightmares.  How did these events transpire a mere 70 years ago?  Where was our sanity, rationality and humanity?  Every person should read this book, get this brief glimpse of hell, see this portrait of mankind at his most terrorizing and unyielding.  You will walk away with a deeper understanding of the human spirit, a deeper appreciation for human strength and limits, and a firm belief that we each have a duty and a role to play to prevent such unspeakable evil from ever occurring again.
3434668
Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel?  Or, in the words of one of the characters in Human Acts, To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered  is this the essential fate of humankind, one that history has confirmed as inevitable?

Its a dark view, but for those who survived the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, it would appear that cruelty is, indeed, part of being human. As happens all too often in history, laborers and students rose up against a dictatorship and later were arrested or massacred. As a result, in Korea, the name Gwangju is synonymous with for whatever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been mutilated beyond repair.

The novel, told in six parts and encompassing 35 years, shows how this act  like radiation  continues to affect the lives of those who remain.  In the first chapter, a 15-year-old boy named Dong-ho futilely searches for his best friend Jeong-dae. Soon we learn that Dong-ho is yet another victim, with his soul staring into his own bodys dead eyes. The massacre is played back by a female editor who was tortured, by a factory worker who was brutalized, and, in one of the most emotionally haunting sections, by Dong-hos mother, who heartbreakingly recalls his earliest years. Han Kang becomes her own character in the epilogue, revealing her own reasons for feeling compelled to tell the story.

Reading Human Acts in close proximity to Han Kangs award-winning novel The Vegetarian, its easy to detect certain similarities: the unrelenting darkness of the vision, the multiple narrators, the glimpse into acts of resistance, the gradual insights as the big picture emerges. Yet while The Vegetarian was psychologically intimate, Human Acts is broader, dealing not with a familys trauma, but an entire countrys. As a result, it transcends The Vegetarians theme of what does it mean to be human and instead, focuses on what does it mean to transcend our human condition and make the corpses we sing over into something more than just butchered lumps of meat.

There is no doubt that Human Acts has aggressive goals: evaluating the macrocosm of trauma as opposed to analyzing it on a smaller one-on-one scale. I, as a reader, was affected more deeply by the mothers story than, say, the editors story on the crackdown on literature.  In a prologue, Han Kangs excellent translator, Deborah Smith, states that this book is A reminder of the human acts of which we are all capable, the brutal, and the tender, the base and the sublime. Although the balance weighs to the brutal and base, there is just enough of the tender and sublime to provide hope.
1349413
The Innocents places you in a world where every time you leave your house, you are risking your life. You're taking a chance that someone who passes you will infect you, the shopping cart handle, or the gas nozzle will carry the Plague. The world has gone mad and society is in shambles. What makes this book such a terrifying, all-consuming ride is that it could happen. We could wake one day to find ourselves in this horrifying reality where no one is safe and every living being is truly equal, because the Plague doesn't discriminate.
86552
I was basically reading this graphic novel to clean out my collection.  Now that I've read it I dare say that I cannot part with it.  I've read the other reviews and agree that the artwork is beautifully captivating.  I won't recap the story, but it has some amazing elements that are familiar in other works of fiction.  I would describe it as Aliens meets Starship Troopers with a sense of hopelessness for survival that one might get from a historical account of a war zone like Vietnam.  I am fascinated with the myriad ways in which the world asserts its sentience.  Yes, the world of the rift is alive!  It learns, uses technology to its advantage, and captures the memories and intelligence of other lifeforms to communicate with its enemies.  It lives off of pain and fear, and it's oh so beautiful.  Pick up with amazing graphic novel today.  I guarantee that you will not want to part with it, either.
724751
This is not a pleasant book to read. I have never read anything like this before. If you are not comfortable reading about human misery, I would not recommend this to you. The existences of some of the major characters can be best described as wretched. As others have mentioned, the novel alternates between two stories, one set in medieval England and the other in present day America. Not to give anything away, but the two stories are tied together in a most satisfying fashion so if you can handle the ugliness and violence, do stick it out. Luckily for me, one character has a sunny disposition despite knowing the worst heartache. The dialogue is crisp and appears well-researched, the descriptive passages a little less so, but I know that this is the author's first published effort and I look forward to the next one.
1157708
The Mezna are hailed as saviors when they come to a toxic Earth to save the human race. But what are they really after? In a world of interminable dust, toxstorms, and acid oceans, the Mezna build their hygienic terraformed cities which house the Miscegenate blue-eyed Mezna-human hybrids and the half-robot teks. Outside their cities are the Human Reservations, where the people live in poverty and squalor. And, in the Wilds in between, live the Undone, humans born with severe birth deformities and considered monsters. "The Jakkattu Vector" interweaves the stories of Sabaal, a native of the planet Jakkatta who escapes from a Mezna breeding facility, and Julip, a fifteen-year-old girl from the Greenland Human Reservation. Insignificant as they might seem, their meeting might just spark a revolution.

The author continues to build the world we encountered in "Avendui 5ive" and "Twin Helix". Here we are introduced to a matriarchal society where Jesus's mother is the supreme deity - Mother God - and where the men are uneducated and only considered good for labor and for breeding. We meet interesting characters from all parts of this new world, and we follow a number of different storylines until they come together in a thrilling climax. Even though the book is science fiction, its message is applicable to today's world. It is a timely warning to all humans about the consequences of continuing to treat the Earth the way we do. We are also given a heartbreaking look at how ignorance can turn people against each other, how people who are basically the same can turn on each other for being slightly different, how discrimination if often based on lies and unfounded beliefs, and how religion can be used to brainwash its followers.

This is story-telling at its finest. While this story is complete, I can't wait to read the next installment of this enthralling new series, "The Jakkatu Insurrection".
4079456
Ken Weene has created a masterpiece of devastating beauty. Memoirs from the Asylum is a story from the fetid underbelly of civilization that is too ugly to consider let alone experience first hand. Ken masterfully gives life to these characters through the all-too-real tragedies of their existence. Ken captures the ethos of humanity, and insanity, as we are guided by the disturbingly rational eloquence of the narrator. We see the well-to-do intentions of an overambitious doctor rust as the Asylum consumes him. We are taken on a hopeless journey that only very few return from.

It is a tale that can only be written by a person who not only has experience in an asylum, but who has a profound understanding of the soul and what it means to be human. Memoirs from the Asylum will evoke the reader to feel, to think, to laugh and to cry.

"If jazz is the music of life, how can we describe the music of the asylum? Discordant, raucous, lacking in form, it is the music of a creeping groaning machine. The sound does not uplift, nor does it invite introspection. Its emotions are anxiety and loss. It is not sad because it does not care." (p. 127)

I give this my highest rating. A must read!
2066651
There's something out there.

No one knows what it is, but it's bad. It starts in Russia. There are reports that something is driving people insane and when they turn insane they attack other people before killing themselves. It becomes obvious, over time, that it's something that they see and once they see it - their sanity disappears.

Now, the few people left in the world live a world of darkness. They cannot go outside without wearing blindfolds. Their windows are covered with blankets. Of course, the remains of humanity also still need to fear their fellow humans.

Malorie is pregnant at the start of Josh Malerman's stunning debut novel, Bird Box, and she soon find shelter inside a building with other humans. They are trying to figure out how to survive in this world, how to continue with life. We learn about the beginnings of this epidemic in flashbacks. In the modern world Malorie has discovered that she will need to do something dangerous - she will have to travel down river about twenty miles to find help with her two young children. They will have to do is blindfolded.

I am telling you right now that there have been fewer novels that have kept me on the edge of my seat like this one. The tension stars from the first two pages, and never once lets up. What's out there? Is it in everyone's mind, as one character suggests, or is this real?

This is the best example I have seen in a novel of the idea that things are more terrifying in your imagination than in reality. The shark is so terrifying in the film Jaws because you don't see it for much of the movie. Hitchcock's Psycho works so well because much of the violence you see is actually seen only in your mind - he just throws enough clues at you that your brain fills in the rest. Special effects are not scary, but shadows and noises and things lurking in the background are.

Malerman's novel captures that perfectly. The creatures that are causing the madness cannot be seen. They cannot lest anyone who sees them goes insane. It's a simple plot device, but it works perfectly.

Bird Box has a strange title, and it makes sense once you read the book. Don't be deterred by the oddness of the title. This is Malerman's first novel and it's one of the finest thrillers I have read. It gave me the same sort of feeling I got when I read Blake Crouch's RUN.

I look forward to seeing what Malerman comes up with next. If this is any indication, it should be quite a ride.

Read Bird Box if you love edge-of-your-seat thrillers. Read it now.