Blacksad: A Silent Hell

by Juan Díaz Canales (story) and Juanjo Guarnido (art), Katie LaBarbera (translation), Tom Orzechowski and Louis Bualis (lettering), 110 pages

Noir takes a Southern twist as feline detective John Blacksad heads down to New Orleans to look for a missing blues musician.

For more details, please see my full review on NoFlyingNoTights.com!

Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Book 1

by Laini Taylor, 418 pages

Enrolled in a Prague art school, Karou sports a head of shockingly blue hair and some unusual tattoos.  She also leads a very atypical personal life (most teenagers don't live with a quartet of chimaeras, get paid in tiny wishes, and travel the world via magic portals in search of teeth).  She tells her mundane friends all about the doings of her family, but lets them believe it's just entertaining back-story to go along with the fantastical drawings in her sketchbooks.  She has her moments of loneliness, but she knows she's lucky to have friends, even if they don't really know her, and a family, even if they're secretive beings no one else would believe existed.  But then she meets an angel.  And the angel tries to kill her.  And all of Karou's lives start to unravel at the seams.

Ooh, and here I thought I was getting a little tired of YA fantasy series.  The world-building is creative, the plot pleasantly unpredictable, and Karou's a pretty cool lead in that she is not a passive heroine.  She makes decisions (not all of them wise, but then whose are?) and isn't afraid to be proactive.  Sure, the romance is a little sudden in its onset, but it turns out there's a reason for that.  Besides, when you're talking angels and demons and all-out war, you shouldn't be surprised if emotions run a little high, no?

If you enjoy Cassandra Clare's urban fantasy The Mortal Instruments and its prequel series but would like a heroine with a little more independence and grit, you might give this a shot.  Karou may be a teen, and she may even act like one on occasion when her heart's involved, but this could just as easily be an adult series.  I hope the next book comes out soon!

Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites

by Evan Dorkin (story) and Jill Thompson (art), 180 pages

A group of neighborhood dogs (and one cat) find their lazy days hanging out in each other's yards disturbed by one supernatural mystery after another.  A haunted dog house is easy enough to handle with the help of a Wise Dog; but as the situation gets progressively darker and more deadly, the gang realizes they'll have to learn some magic, themselves, if they want to survive long enough to save their neighborhood.

At first glance this may look like it's for kids, but don't be fooled.  Cute, quirky talking animals solving often supernatural crime?  Sure.  However, the forces they're up against include evil witches, involuntary werewolves, zombie roadkill, graveyard golems, and, just to keep things real, serial animal-torturers.  Creative and dark and funny and sad, this.  I hope there's another one soon, because I want to know what's behind the upsurge in dark magic as much as the endearing principals do.

Afterschool Charisma: Volume 4

by Kumiko Suekane, 205 pages

The clones fight--some successfully, some not--to survive an attack on their school during their skills exhibition and are confused and frightened to find those trying to kill them are earlier generations of clones like themselves.

This is a rough volume in that a few of the people you've gotten to know through earlier volumes don't make it out the other side.  And of those left, not all of them are stable (Hitler!) or adjusting well as they try to understand what's happened and why.  The next volume promises to explain at least a part of that when the mysterious Kai, one of supposedly non-clone Shiro's older lookalikes, reveals what little he knows of his own story.  I want to know, too!  And then the kids need to kick their school director's soulless backside until he recognizes their equal humanity.

"Dark Life (Dark Life #1)" by Kat Falls

304 pages

Ty has lived his entire life under the sea. His family is one of many who settled on homesteads below the surface after global warming caused ocean levels to rise and land became limited. When Ty turns eighteen, he'll stake a claim on some underwater land of his own. That's the plan, anyway, but now a group of bandits is threatening that dream. The outlaws are targeting government supply ships that go to and from the underwater colony, so the politicians are going to shut everything down and make residents move above the surface if the thieves aren't caught. Ty is determined to find them so they don't interfere with his future. With the help of his new friend Gemma, who has come to the colony to find her missing brother, he starts tracking the criminals. Before long, though, Ty and Gemma realize there's a lot more sinister activity going on under the surface than they realized--and the bandits aren't the only ones causing trouble.

Young adult science fiction is hot right now and it's starting to get repetitive, since some authors have jumped on the bandwagon without having anything original. This story, however, is different and I've never read anything quite like it. It almost feels like a western, what with all the bandits and exploration of new territory, but there's obviously some cool new technology involved to keep everyone alive under the surface of the ocean. The idea of living underwater sounds far-fetched, but the author has obviously thought it out well. She has explanations and solutions that make sense for even the tiniest of details when it comes to "dark life." The plot is paced really well and kept me at the edge of my seat, with some surprises that I didn't expect along the way. The ending is satisfying but left be anxious to read the next book in this fresh, entertaining series. 

"Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson

318 pages

Jenny Lawson has had an interesting life, to say the least. As a kid growing up in rural Texas, she just wanted to fit in. It wasn't easy to do, though, with her dad being a professional taxidermist who had been known to create dead-squirrel hand puppets and throw live bobcats on people (as a joke, of course). Her mom was a little more tame--her main idiosyncrasies involved mild things like making winter shoes out of bread sacks to save money. Jenny thought she could escape all the weirdness when she grew up, but she was mistaken. Whether she's trying to identify pictures of employees' penises as part of her human resources job or having to dig up and rebury her beloved dead dog, goofy things just seem to happen to Jenny wherever she goes. Through it all, though, she learns that the crazy things make her the person she is...and, of course, provide hilarious material for her now-famous blog.

It has been a long, long time since a book--or anything, really--has made me laugh as hard as Let's Pretend This Never Happened did. I seriously could not read it in public because if I had I would have made a scene. Jenny's humor is definitely not for the faint-of-heart, as there are plenty of f-bombs and nothing--sex, bodily functions, cow vaginas, etc--is sacred. Nevertheless, her writing is just hilarious. I mean, she obviously has some good material to start with. Her family is nuts but totally lovable. Her childhood sort of reminded me of my own rural upbringing, and I too often find myself thinking, "This could only happen to ME." I think everyone can relate to that sometimes. The difference, though, is in the way Jenny tells these stories. I don't know how she does it, but she turns a situation that is pretty funny into a story that is downright hilarious. Reading her book reminded me that instead of being frustrated or embarrassed by the ridiculous, I should see the humor in it and recognize that life would be pretty boring without it. 

"Flesh and Bone (Benny Imura #3)" by Jonathan Maberry

448 pages

Benny, Nix, Chong, and Lilah have healed physically, but they're still mentally recovering from the horrific events they suffered at the end of Dust and Decay.  They've lost loved ones and seen human beings do terrible things that forever changed the way they look at the world. Now Benny and his friends are on their own, headed east through the Rot and Ruin in search of the plane they saw flying in that direction months ago. And things get only more dangerous as they go. It appears that the zombies are changing. Some are faster and even seem smarter than any seen before. Has the plague mutated, or is a more sinister force behind this development?  Before the group can figure it out, they come across a strange religious cult with a so-called holy mission of killing people to send them into the sacred Darkness. Benny and the others have gotten out of scrapes before, but this takes it to a whole other level. 

I can't get enough of the Benny Imura series. It has non-stop action, but there's a lot of depth to the stories as well. You really get to know and love the characters. They grow up a lot in this installment, and I like that--it bugs me when characters stay the same throughout a book and especially a series. There are a few moments that are a bit cheesy, but for the most part the characters, their emotions, and their reactions feel incredibly real. Flesh and Bone, like the previous titles in the series, not only entertains but also provides a lot of food for thought about standing up for what's right and having hope when all seems lost. Oh, and as a final thought, I have to mention that I LOVE the unexpected appearance of a crazy-cool character from one of Maberry's other series. I literally cheered when I figured out who he is (yes, I am that nerdy). I can hardly wait to see where the rest of this series goes.