Six Crimson Cranes

Six Crimson Cranes is the story of Princess Shiori, who ends up cursed by her stepmother: no one will recognize her, and for every word she speaks, one of her brothers will die. Her brothers are also cursed, turned into cranes during the day. Penniless and voiceless, Shiori must find a way to break the curse and save them all while war seems to be breaking out around them. 

I enjoyed Six Crimson Cranes. It's a really fun, fairytale-like story (it's clearly influenced by the Wild Swans). There's some fun world building involving dragons and demons. And the story ends up taking you in some unexpected directions, especially at the end. I'm looking forward to reading The Dragon's Promise, which concludes the tale!

Hulk vs Thor: Banner of War

The same friend who lent me Dark Knights of Steel, Volume 1 lent me Hulk vs Thor: Banner of War.  I wasn't really expecting much from it, but wow was this a wild ride!

After a tragedy in El Pasco, Bruce Banner removed himself from the world, trying to stop anyone else from getting hurt. He separated his body and consciousness into three: Hulk's body was acting like a space ship, taking them out away from everyone. Hulk's psyche was powering the engines by fighting ever increasing (simulated) threats, and Banner himself was the captain of the spaceship. Unfortunately Thor gets wind of where Banner is, and tries to bring him back to face justice, resulting in an all-out brawl between the two! Unfortunately Hulk's powers/madness are contagious; is even the God of Thunder safe?

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did. One of the things that I really enjoyed was that Odin's ghost is currently inhabiting Mjolnir; after hitting Hulk, his spirit is able to enter the control room to talk to (and fight) Banner himself! The two of them ultimately work together to end the fight after Thor is infected; Mjolnir-wielding Hulk was a very unexpected but fun touch to the end of this story, too!

I'll admit that I didn't follow the story super well at times (I basically had to describe some of what happened as "space magic," even though I know it wasn't really magic at play at all). But it was really crazy, a lot of fun, and definitely worth the read!

Dark Knights of Steel Vol 1

A friend of mine lent me Dark Knights of Steel, Volume 1 awhile ago, and I finally sat down to read it today. Dark Knights of Steel sets Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in a medieval fantasy setting with an alternate history for Kal-El. In this setting, Kal-El's parents escaped the dying planet Krypton when his mother was pregnant; Kal-El is born on Earth. Batman's parents were the rulers of one of the three kingdoms, but after they were killed by the Green Man (Lex Luthor who found the Green Lantern ring and became the Joker), Kal-El's parents took over. Bruce was the bastard son of the Waynes (Thomas isn't his dad here) and so would never have been accepted as the ruler. 

While the Els rule fairly peacefully, magic is banned from their kingdom. Batman is tasked with rounding all of the magic users up and imprisoning them. Due to this, and a prophecy from John Constantine, the neighbouring Kingdom of Storms wants the Els dead. With the help of the Green Man, Green Arrow launches an arrow and kills Jor-El, starting the three kingdoms' descent towards war.

What's really fun is that Dark Knights of Steel takes you in some really unexpected directions. There were a few moments that I did not see coming because the story plays with what you know of the characters: for example, Dark Knights of Steel's Kal-El is not the same (Superman) Kal-El who we're used to. But you don't realize it until the story unfolds.

I thought this was a fantastic reimagining of the three superheroes, and I can't wait for Volume 2!!!!

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 9: Okay

Well, here we are: the finale of The Wicked + The Divine! Unfortunately the Comics Plus app didn't have Volume 9 on it, so I had to snag the physical copy from the library.

 

I had no idea where the story was going, beyond a few hints from Ananke's sister that the Children would have to find their own way out, and the ending she suggested to Ananke was false. Volume 9 also finally explained how Ananke (and Minerva) worked - Minerva appeared when the other Children's powers appear. They are basically the same person, but their consciousness splits until one of them dies. 

I was also really happy to see that reading Volume 8 was necessary: some of the things that happened with earlier pantheons (specifically the last two pantheons) directly came up in this book. 

I was really excited that some of the characters who were sidelined earlier by Ananke got new bodies! And Baphomet/Nergal made an amazing sacrifice that no one saw coming (not even the other characters). 

Laura Wilson managed to find her way out of the cycle first, at the end of Volume 7: she realized she wasn't a god, but still had her powers. It just took practice to make them work. When everyone confronted Minerva, she was the one who helped everyone end the cycle. It wasn't an exciting climax (in an action way), but it was a very fitting end for the whole series; you don't realize at the beginning how it's about the birth and death of stories, but that's honestly what The Wicked + The Divine is, at its heart. Not only their birth and death, but their power.

After that, the story wraps up with Laura accepting the punishment of her crime for murdering Ananke back in Volume 4. Then the book ends many years later, at the funeral of Cassandra, who comments on the good that the remaining members of the Pantheon have wrought now that they've broken free of the story and were able to live out their lives as themselves, not gods. 

All in all, Okay is a fitting end to The Wicked + The Divine. I'm glad I decided to reread/finish the series. While it is often quite brutal (there's a lot of gore, which I found very uncomfortable), the story is good; overall I enjoyed it.

The Wicked + The Divine Volumes 7 & 8

I decided to combine these next two into one review since I've been reading them so fast. Volume 7: Mothering Invention, is building towards the climax of the story. It's also explaining a lot of Ananke's past. Mothering Invention showed how this whole game started, and how it has played out through the millennia. 

But then Volume 8: Old is the New New, was completely different. I was excited for more of the story, and totally unprepared for this interlude: Old is the New New collects some short pieces that tell stories of other pantheons, and so isn't part of the main story. It was interesting to see different incarnations of gods like Lucifer (though I was really uncomfortable with how graphically gruesome the Roman story was). There was also a combination prose/comic story of the 1923 Pantheon created like an Agatha Christie mystery (specifically And Then There Were None) which was interesting but at times a bit hard to follow due to the way it was written (and the way the Morrigan spoke). The volume then ends with a collection of Funnies written in the world, which were amusing. 

I do wish I had realized what Volume 8 was sooner: Gillen suggests the reading order for these stories, and they may have been more effective if read where they were intended, rather than as a whole chunk near the end of the story. They may also have been better to read after the conclusion in Volume 9 (though we'll see - I haven't read 9 yet, so I can't say for sure).

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 6: Imperial Phase Part 2

Just a short one this time. The Imperial Phase, Part 2 was a quick read. Lots of backstabbing in this one, lots of death, and lots of drama. Cassandra, Dionysius, and Woden put together a show to power up the machine to try to figure out what it's for. Woden tries to use it to mind control all of the attendees. Meanwhile, Baal and company are hunting Sakhmet after she rampaged when she found out the Pantheon had lied to her. 

But the biggest surprise came at the end: it seems that Ananke may not be so dead after all. And she's trying to get one more head from a god or goddess to stave off The Great Darkness...

I definitely can't wait to see where things go from here!

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 5: The Imperial Phase, Part 1

Well, here we are: the first new (for me) The Wicked + The Divine story that I've read since starting the series back in 2016! The Imperial Phase, Part 1 had a hard act to follow (the crazy ending of Rising Action). I wasn't sure where the story would go (and honestly, it kind of felt like the creative team wasn't 100% sure what to do with the first issue after Ananke's death, though I imagine that was on purpose to show how the Pantheon has to figure stuff out now without the Goddess who guided them for millennia). 

This volume opens as a magazine with pieces about different members of the pantheon. The back pages of the book explain how this was put together, and it was really neat: the creative team got their writer friends to do an email exchange with Gillian, who stayed in character as whoever they were interviewing. Then the writers took that email exchange and crafted an article. I thought that was a really neat idea, and it was fun to read one of the actual interviews in the back pages.

The Pantheon are trying to figure out what is true and what is false from what Ananke told them (as well as what the purpose of her crazy machine is), when there starts to be attacks from the Darkness that she warned them about. But rather than working together, they are now split in three: those who primarily want to stop the Darkness, those who want to research everything about their existence (especially with their second year closing in on them), and those who don't care about any of it. But the attacks are increasing, and research is slow going....

I can't wait to see what Part II will bring.

The Wicked + The Divine Vol 1-4 Rereads

I was browsing on Comics Plus, a comic reading app my local library offers, and found most of The Wicked + The Divine is available on it. I never did read any more after finishing Volume 4 back in 2016, so I decided to start it again and see what I think now. I honestly didn't remember much of what happens in the first 4 volumes. But I think I enjoyed them a lot more this time around. 

I just reread what I wrote about these volumes back in 2016. I didn't find the dance party of Dionysus as bad this time around (it was still a bit confusing, but I wasn't trying to follow it super closely either this time - they were partying, and that was good enough). I also just looked up the god Nergal, and he sounds pretty interesting - I'm not sure why Baphomet lied about who he is. I also didn't really get why people didn't like the Goddess Tara so much (but I also didn't read the pages of terrible social media posts about her, so maybe there was something in there?) 

Needless to say, I'm quite enjoying the story this time around, and can't wait to see where things go now that Ananke is dead...

Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond

I've been reading Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge for the last few weeks. A lot of the basic ideas of the book (at least the first part) reminded me of Exercised: our bodies are meant to move, and movement equals health. Younger Next Year is a shorter read though. I also found that Lodge, who was a medical doctor, breaks down the science in a fairly accessible way (while Liberman is taking an anthropological approach, so his book covers things differently).

Younger Next Year is all about explaining why we need to move, and how moving will fundamentally make your body younger. At its most basic level, everyone has signals in their body to either decay or grow; exercise turns the growth signal on. If you can turn the growth signal on repeatedly (by exercising the majority of days), then your body can repair damage over time, slowly becoming better than it was; doing this for a year will fundamentally make your body younger than it was the year before.

Younger Next Year is mainly focused on people nearing retirement. The book asks them to treat exercise as their new job in the last third of their life, working out on 6 days of the week (if you're not yet at retirement age, the book recommends that you aim for about 4 or 5 days since you don't yet have the time, and the decay signals within your body aren't as strong yet). It also talks about maintaining connections and finding purpose in your retirement, which I thought was very valuable - I've heard stories of people who pass fairly quickly in retirement if they feel they have no purpose outside of their career. 

While I found a lot of the science (Lodge's chapters) and the latter third of the book interesting, I do have to admit that I overall wasn't a fan of Crowley's chapters. He wrote them specifically for (older) men and it shows; I wasn't his target audience, and, being a woman, I felt uncomfortable with the way he was trying to urge his audience on. I did persevere and finish the book, but there were many times during Crowley's chapters that I didn't want to.