Okay, I’m determined to booklog all my 2006 books before it becomes 2007 (and technically, it already has, but I feel okay backdating a wee little bit), so here’s a last hurrah for 2006:
I bitched about how Kushner and Sherman’s The Fall of the Kings wasn’t the sequel that Swordspoint deserved. Well, Ellen Kushner’s Privilege of the Sword is the sequel it deserves, despite which it pains me to admit that I didn’t really love it. The characters were capricious and unlikeable, the plot was arbitrary and rambly, and the whole thing had a general air of shabby unconcern about it. It’s not a bad book, but as a true sequel of the excellent Swordspoint, I would have expected more than “not bad.” It’s still better than the trite, cliched The Fall of the Kings, though, by a mile.
On the graphic novel front, I was going to write up Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, vol. 8 , and say that it was enjoyable and continued to possess the virtues of the earlier books, but that by now I’d completely lost the plot, and events were referenced that I didn’t even remember happening. And then I realized (by looking at my booklog archive) that I’d never actually read volume 7. Oh. So I read Y: The Last Man, vol. 7 , and... well, it possessess the virtues of the earlier books, but by now I’ve completely lost the plot, and I had no idea what was going on at all. I’m going to need to reread this series; if you haven’t started reading this tale of a gender apocalypse, though, you need to. It’s absolutely worth it, and one of the most non-comics-reading-reader friendly books out there.
And finally, there’s Robert Kirkman’s Invincible, vol. 7: Three’s Company , the latest installment of his superhero comic. Nothing in it will surprise readers of previous volumes, but neither will they disappoint them. Overall, it continues to be a reasonably enjoyable superhero comic, but still not worthy of the lavish praise it frequently receives. Worth reading only if you like superheroes.
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