deeper waters

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17951418-black-city

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The Resurrectionist
by E. B. Hudspeth

In the late 1870s, the son of a resurrectionist – body snatcher and grave robber – was enrolled at the Academy of Medicine in Philadelphia. Spencer Black was a talented medical student with a special interest in mutation. As the years pass, the young doctor's studies become more and more unorthodox, until he makes a claim that shocks the medical community: mythological creatures like mermaids, satyrs and centaurs once walked the earth, and humankind descended from them. Ridiculed by his peers, Dr. Black persists in his belief, and spends the following decades attempting to re-create these ancient ancestors before mysteriously disappearing.

The first half of The Resurrectionist is a brief biography of Dr. Black, written like a historian outlining the basic life details of Dr. Black. To me, it was just like reading the introductory essay in a museum catalog for an art exhibition – there's just enough detail so that the reader gets a general sense of what happened, but it's not a full-fleshed biography with all the answers. There are a lot of unanswered questions raised by this section: what happened to Black's wife after she was horribly injured in a fire? Why was his son described as a “sleepless man”? Were Black's minotaurs and other fantastic beasts ever alive, or did he create composite creatures from corpses? Were his “performers” real hybrid creatures? On and on. I liked the ambiguity of Dr. Black's work. We know that he was a Frankenstein-esque scientist, performing gruesome and horrific experiments, but the exact nature of his surgeries is left unspoken, and the reader's imagination fills in the blanks.

Of course, the real beauty and treasure of this book is the second half, which is supposedly a facsimile of sketches created by Dr. Black of his creations. Eleven different mythological creatures, from sphinxes to sirens, are carefully dissected. One detailed drawing shows the skeleton, the next the musculature, while another shows the creature whole. It's just like looking at the pages of a particularly bizarre anatomy book. Again and again, I was blown away by the details of the images. They are so freakin' cool – the price of the book is worth it just for these drawings!

The one thing that I found wanting was that Dr. Black failed to explain the age-old question: how do mermaids reproduce? I had hoped for an image showing the sexual organs, just because I've always wanted to know if mermaids lay eggs or have live births! But alas, this was omitted, and I am left to wonder on.

5 out of 5 stars


To read more about The Resurrectionist, buy it or add it to your wishlist click here.




Peeking into the archives...today in:
2012: Fashionista Piranha on hiatus until May 24th...
2011: Bending the Boyne by J. S. Dunn
2010: New York City Library & Improv Everywhere Bust Some Ghosts
2009: Museum of Human Beings by Colin Sargeant

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Tomorrow morning I will be departing from San Francisco on a ten-day Alaskan cruise, followed by a quick trip to Yosemite with my husband to celebrate our one year anniversary.  For the first time, I have entries timed for regular updates during my absence.  Assuming everything is working properly here on Livejournal, there should be no interruption to reviews and suchlike.

However, should something go amiss, updates will definitely return on June 4th, 2013

But I hope that no one will even remember that I was gone!





Peeking into the archives...today in:
2012: Fashionista Piranha on hiatus until May 24th...
2011: Bending the Boyne by J. S. Dunn
2010: Band of Angels by Julie Gregson
2009: Extraordinary Engines edited by Nick Gevers

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Emma (Marvel Illustrated)
by Jane Austen, Nancy Butler & Janet Lee

At age 20, Emma Woodhouse is pretty, clever, and wealthy. She lives alone with her father, who allows Emma to do more or less as she pleases. After successfully introducing her governess to the man who became her husband, Emma is convinced that she has a talent for matchmaking. As she has no intention to marry herself, Emma turns her skill to finding a man for her friend Harriet, an impressionable young lady who will do anything Emma tells her. Convinced that Harriet is the secret child of the nobility, Emma encourages her to aim high, while family friend Mr. Knightley cautions Emma against setting the low-born Harriet up for disappointment. Another young gallant, the handsome Frank Churchill, has recently come to the small village of Highbury, and Emma begins to wonder if she has, in fact, fallen for him. It's a typical Austen web of tangled relationships and messy romances, retold as a graphic novel by Nancy Butler and Janet Lee.

Emma has always been one of my least favorite Austen novels. The author once described the character as “a heroine whom no one but myself will much like” - and I think that this holds true. Or, at least, I never much cared for Emma. She intentionally ruins a friend's budding romance and then constantly throws Harriet at men she'll never “catch”, ignoring Harriet's status as a bastard largely, I think, because Emma embarrassed to be so intimate with one of Harriet's true social class. Yes, Emma learns her lesson in the end, but she causes a lot of pain along the way, which makes me unsympathetic to her. I never found the secondary characters to be of much interest, either: Harriet is too much under Emma's thrall, Jane Fairfax has little personality, and Mr. Elton and Mr. Churchill are both selfish, careless men. One of the reasons Mr. Knightley is so likeable is that, he is utterly surrounded by terrible people - that, and he's often the only sensible person in the room.

In adapting the story to the graphic novel, Nancy Butler had quite a job. Emma, as I remember it – and it's been a good ten years or more since I last read it – is an extremely wordy novel. But she did a good job, for I could not detect any major missing plot points. The story moves along at a steady pace with entertaining dialogue intact.

It is in the illustrations that this graphic novel is weak. Although I was unfamiliar with Janet Lee's work prior to picking this up, I have to say that I am not a fan. The men have huge, oversized heads balanced on blocky bodies, an affliction that also plagues many of the women. Emma and Harriet appear quite dazed and bug-eyed in several panels; Mr. Knightley often looks to be a hunchback. I could see Ms. Lee's art style working in a more fantastical setting – fairy tales, perhaps, or Alice in Wonderland - but I found that it clashes with rather than enhances Jane Austen's story.


3 out of 5 stars


To read more about Emma (Marvel Illustrated), buy it or add it to your wishlist click here.




Peeking into the archives...today in:
2012: Fashionista Piranha on hiatus until May 24th...
2011: Bending the Boyne by J. S. Dunn
2010: Band of Angels by Julie Gregson
2009: Digital Piracy Affects Books, Too

yup two entries back at the start of the new year I was grateful for my family, just the last entry you have destroyed our family. Sorry I tried my best and this couldn't work out. Fuck you family.

no actually, I'm so angry I don't even know what I am angry about.

please don't lie through your texts and hide the truth between technology. Don't lie. Don't tell your mother it is because of me that you left your home to stay with your boyfriend. You want to sleep and fuck your boyfriend. That's the truth. Tell your mother you're moving out because you want to fuck your boyfriend and not because your sister borrowed your shorts. DUDE, if you don't have the bravery to share with me your joy in moving in with the person you love, then its because you are not proud of your decision, and that really you are just moving in with him to fuck him and to stay at his house (presumably if he's richer then maybe his house is bigger and therefore by the cheap shit you are, considerably "better"). I also hope that you're really happy to fuck the guy with whom you cheated with on your ex-boyfriend. I hope you are proud your affair turns out to be "the one". Sure thing, that's the truth, ain't it? He also happens to be uglier than your ex, and perhaps just about the ugliest person on earth, and then the day you give birth to that degenerate kid of yours you think, oops, an ugly one. It is your fault. It is your fault that you chose to fuck a stupid ugly person. It is your fault that you pretend to be a fucking catholic and yet you have the guts to move in with this boyfriend of yours. I can't think of anything uglier than these action. These fucking lies. These fucking need to fuck. I hope you fuck your guts out and then you die. So that I don't have to deal with the fact that if he beats you or fuck you and leave you I have to take care of you because of the sheer paper connection of me being your sister. Because sorry we don't share blood. because sorry I don't need to take care of you with the rudeness you react towards me. And because I love you with all my heart even despite our lack of blood ties and you walk away from all that; for some shit form of fuckery of which nobody deserves.

i'm so fucking angry at my parents for letting her walk away. And still defending her even as she commits the ultimate sin according to the bible version that she believes in. I am ashamed by your action, you fake christian. Ok, condemn some other girl for being a slut. But dude, you're way worse. the slut didn't pretend to be an innocent christian. You are the bigger slut, oh, that must turn you on. You fucking whore.

Thank you parents too, who pretend to be okay with all of this. Thanks for channelling your newfound energies onto punishing me for being still here. Because after next year, I promise to be gone from your lives.