Sunday, June 26, 2011

Chew, by John Layman

Chew is one of the best fucking comic books that I have read.  Seriously. 

It works like this: Written by John Layman and featuring the art of Rob Guillory, Chew is funny as hell, albeit in manner that surrounds itself with nastiness.  Chew is violent, but has a heart.  Chew is something of an investigative story, but saying that fails to do justice to what Chew really is, which is completely awesome.

See, Tony Chu is a cibopath.  This means that he gets a psychic impression from whatever he eats: the history of the food is laid bare.  Who prepared it, how it was prepared, how the animal or plant was slaughtered or treated with chemicals...all the way back.  Anything he eats will give him that flash of history.  Anything

This is a world where poultry is illegal and when we meet him, Tony is working as a vice-cop investigating a black market chicken operation.  Yes, there is a certain amount of absurdity played straight in Chew.  Recruited from the Philadelphia PD into the special investigations division of the Food & Drug Administration (which has a crazy amount of authority here), Tony's world opens up and as such, so does ours. 

I'm not sure Chew can be well described or well defined.  Chew is its own thing.  Chew is mind-blowingly awesome. 

Right now there are only 19 issues published (three collections worth, plus change), so get in on it now.  I believe there is a story arc planned to go 60 issues.  You want to read this.  You need to read this. 

Go read Chew.  Seriously.  Go. 

I can't recommend this highly enough. 

Sunday, June 05, 2011

adjustments

Now that I have time to look at what is on the horizon from a better vantage point, if I were to adjust my last post on the Q3 forthcoming books, the one I wrote back in February before I left for BMT, I would do something like this:

July
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer (no change)

Kitty's Big Trouble, by Carrie Vaughn (no change)

A Dance With Dragons, by George R. R. Martin: Because holy crap it's really coming. 

August
The Tempering of Men, by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear (no change)

The Diviner, by Melanie Rawn (no change)

September
Winter's Dream, by Glen Cook: Honestly, I'm skeptical of this listing.  Locus shows it as a collection from SubPress, but I haven't heard word one about it.  But, if it is real, I want.  Badly.

Hellbent, by Cherie Priest: Umm...it's by Cherie Priest.

Goliath, by Scott Westerfeld: The concluding volume of the trilogy beginning with Leviathan.


Good stuff.  The monster is obviously GRRM's book, but Melanie Rawn's Diviner is kind of a big deal.  It's her first foray back into more traditional fantasy AND, it's the prequel to the outstanding novel The Golden Key.  Like everyone who read The Golden Key, I've been waiting a long time for this one. 

Friday, June 03, 2011

Forthcoming 2011: Q3

(this post was written back in February)


Welcome to the latest installment of "Stuff I'm Looking Forward To This Year". As always, I take my information from the Locus Forthcoming list, plus a little bit of extra research when I'm aware of things that should be on the Locus list and are not.

Because this post was written so far in advance, I expect that there will be significant changes to what is coming out this quarter, especially around August / September.


July
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer: This. No, really, this.


Kitty's Big Trouble, by Carrie Vaughn: I really, really like the Kitty Norville novels.


August
The Tempering of Men, by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear: The follow up to the all sorts of awesome A Companion to Wolves.

The Diviner, by Melanie Rawn: You may put this book firmly in the column of “novels I never expected to see published”. If I remember correctly, this is the prequel to The Golden Key (1996) and without Rawn's entry, Kate Elliott and Jennifer Roberson have been unable to write their planned novels. I am super excited about this. Also, you should really go check out The Golden Key if you haven't yet.


September
Honestly – nothing. But this is based on what was listed as forthcoming for September waaay back in February. I'm sure by this point other awesomeness will hit the publication schedule.