Houses With a Story (Seiji Yoshida)

Houses With a Story: A Dragon’s Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a Library of Lost Books, and 30 More Amazing Places to Explore

Seiji Yoshida, translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, MG? Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION:

From the mountaintop sanctuary of a dedicated astronomer to a modern bookshop whose proprietor is more than he seems, from a Victorian mansion with a playful young ghost to the dwelling of a dragon tamer who carries the mail across the mountains, artist Seiji Yoshida presents numerous fantastical homes with hints of the stories behind them and the people (or spirits) who live within.

REVIEW:

With strong shades of the whimsicality of Studio Ghibli films and the fantastical locales that feel so real you could step into them presented by James Gurney in his Dinotopia series, Houses With a Story is precisely what the title promises: a series of pictures and cutaways presenting all manner of imagined homes and imagined characters in imagined yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows. These are the kind of imagination-stirring, thought-provoking images that one could pore over for hours, inspiring tales and perhaps compelling one to draw original homes and characters of one's own. At the end, Yoshida includes some sketches and a walkthrough of his art process for further inspiration.
That said, there were a few quibbles - nothing truly awful, but a few little nits and itches that held it down a bit in the ratings. For one thing, the "stories" are uneven; some locales have plenty of extra images and ideas about them, while others are there and done in a single page, as though the artist were less invested or interested. For another, I borrowed this via my library and the Hoopla app, and digital was perhaps not the best choice. Though my tablet is not top-of-the-line, it's not underpowered or underpixeled by any means, yet some of the "zoom" images included to show details had poor resolution, and navigation was sometimes confusing. Also, there was a certain sameness that settled in; there were a few outliers that were wildly imaginative, but many of the others started feeling... I suppose "safe" and "familiar" are the best words, not exploring the far corners of imagination but sticking to what was clearly familiar territory for the artist.
On the whole, though, this is a fun, undemanding book to page through on a lazy afternoon.

You Might Also Enjoy:

Drawing and Painting Fantastic Worlds (Finlay Cowan) - My Review
Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time (James Gurney) - My Review
Castle (David Macaulay) - My Review

(Delayed) June Site Update

Another day-late/dollar-shot update marks the halfway point in a year that has yet to demonstrate a redeeming quality that isn't qualified and asterisked and otherwise simply "not quite as bad as the absolute worst case scenario just yet." Anyway, June's five reviews have been archived and cross-linked at the main Brightdreamer Books site, as usual.

Enjoy!

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Matt Dinniman)

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 6
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION:

Every floor of the dungeons has been designed to break not only the bodies but the wills and spirits of the surviving humans, and the harder Carl and Donut and the others resist, the more sadistic the "game" becomes. The eighth level is dedicated to reminding all of the crawlers just what was lost when the aliens took over. It's a "tribute" to the last days of free Earth, where the crawlers move through recorded, ghostly versions of the surface world nations in the days leading up to the end of everything... where people cannot be interacted with, but physical objects like cars can still be deadly. Also, the creators and AI have recreated many of the local monsters of folklore and legend for each locale, from Irish banshees to Pacific Northwest sasquatches to the myriad deadly demons of Japan. But this time, there's another game at play: the crawlers not only need to fight these new mobs, but take at least six powerful monsters for "totems" in a card game that will unfold in the second phase of the level, one that will determine who gets to proceed to the ninth floor and who dies here and now. With the way this crop of crawlers has already messed with the systems (and meddled in intragalactic politics and profit margins), the creators clearly have no intention of letting any crawler survive to reach the Faction Wars of the ninth level, meaning to make their deaths as painful and humiliating as they possibly can... but the "Princess Posse" won't go down without a fight, and may find some unexpected allies even as they unearth new enemies and complications.
This book contains the sixth installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing bonus story set elsewhere in the dungeons.

REVIEW:

What else can I really say about this series? Dinniman delivers yet another astounding, sometimes horrific, sometimes hilarious outing for Carl, Donut, and the rest of the crew. The Eye of the Bedlam Bride maintains the momentum of the previous installments admirably, building on prior developments in the greater arcs and creating new complications that will no doubt come back to haunt the characters in future installments, even as the cast yet again thins by a few notable names. Carl and Donut are drawn deeper into the drama between the "gods" of the dungeon world and the greater galactic political nightmare, even as the already-unstable AI slips a few more notches away from sanity and out of the game runners' control. They're both getting better at juggling the demands of life in the dungeon with the need to play the larger game, especially now that they've secured an official spot in the Faction Wars on the next floor, but that only puts them in more danger, creating more ways for enemies to strike at them. It can be a bit sprawling and overwhelming, but generally one can ride it out and trust Dinniman to know what he's doing, which so far he seems to. More is also coming out about the origins of the "Primal" AI systems that are used to create the reality-altering bubbles in which the dungeon games occur, and how even the people running the show are unaware just how massively they've blundered in mishandling tech they still do not truly understand.
For the in-book arc of the eighth floor, the dungeons find new ways to twist the knife in the guts of the surviving crawlers, forcing them to witness just what it was that they lost when the aliens arrived and the dungeons appeared. Each have been placed deliberately to endure encounters with ghosts of their past, both as memory phantoms playing out the recording of the final free days of the species and as resurrected and twisted versions of family and loved ones that they're forced to confront... but first the crawlers have to fight their way through hordes birthed from the collective imaginations and fears of humanity in the form of legends and monsters and other iconic ideas made flesh (including an "Uzi Jesus," the assault rifle-bearing, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, enemy-crushing, and hate-spewing embodiment of a church gone so far off the rails it wouldn't even recognize its purported founder). These bring their own complications and side-quests, as well as unexpected opportunities if a crawler is clever enough about the (literal) cards dealt them. As for the card game, I don't play the sort of games that inspired this, but I could follow the gist of the action if I just let things play out; I'm sure I'd have gotten much more out of it if I were more familiar with the intricacies of combat card games.
As I've come to expect from the series, the action just keeps building to a truly explosive finale, which entails some sacrifices but also offers a faint glimmer of hope going ahead, that maybe Carl and company can indeed survive what's ahead... at least for one more floor. The epilogue, of course, promises more wrenches in the works, as does the sixth installment of the bonus story.
It goes without saying that the seventh book is on deck, to be started as soon as I can clear a little breathing space in a summer that's already overloaded even though it just technically started.

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Suzanne Collins) - My Review
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Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend (MJ Wassmer) - My Review

Bea Wolf (Zach Weinersmith)

Bea Wolf

Zach Weinersmith, illustrations by Boulet
First Second Books
Fiction, MG? Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor/Poetry
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION:

Hey, wait! Hark now to a tale of heroes and monsters, of foam swords and green soda and tooth-rotting treats, of the ancient King Carl and the many who bore the cardboard crown after he passed into the teen-lands, and of the greatest warrior to ever raise her sugar-sticky fist against the fun-breakers and the bullies: Bea Wolf.
In the high hall of Treeheart, a magnificent stronghold of childhood wonder and hijinks, King Kai and his loyal band enjoy raucous merriment, trading jokes and telling stories and playing video games without parent-approved content... until the enraged neighbor, Mr. Grindle, can stand it no more. His mere touch instantly turns the wildest of children into a dull-eyed, dull-minded teenager, stripping them of their power and joy and ushering them into the doom of gray adulthood. All seemed lost, childhood forever ruined by the mustached monster - until an ally arrives to do battle with the fiendish foe.

REVIEW:

In this homage to the classic epic poem Beowulf, Weinersmith projects age-old concepts of mythology, heroism, loyalty, storytelling, and even the inevitability of entropy and decay of all great things onto the ultimate lost country of childhood.
Intentionally evoking the language and poetry of the original, as well as the alliteration and the dance of words, the tale relates the founding of the "kingdom" by the great king Carl, who - when he inevitably found the chin-whiskers and cracked voice of adolescence upon him, called for a pyre to mark his "death" and passed his crown on to future generations... knowing, even in his "afterlife" checking groceries at the supermarket, that his legend lives on. Heroes of old are evoked throughout, such as the twins who defied bedtime for seven whole days and gained wizardly powers before succumbing to sleep, and the girl whose Halloween candy haul remains unmatched. The current heir to Carl's throne, Kai, has raised the great high hall Treeheart, a place of feasting and merry-making and bedtime-defying for all brave children. But he faces a new threat: Mr. Grindle, "gloom's guardian, teacher of grief," a man who so embodies the epitome of boring, nasty, petty, cruel adulthood that he has become a monster, who only needs to lay one finger on a child to "begeezer" them, leach all their joy and imagination and magic (and there very much is magic involved in this story, which blurs the lines of reality and imagination to create a realm of epic marvels and dangers for the young and a gray, staid "afterlife" for the adults) and make them into phone-staring, rule-following young adults devoid of dreams. Treeheart technically partly overlays his property line, but it's the pure expression of childish joy and anarchy that truly drives the man into a rage, prompting him to defy the traps set to keep grown-ups out - a ladder laced with bug carapaces and boogers and other things repellent to their kind - to savage the very sacred hall itself, until no child dares set foot within. In Kai's time of need and woe, however, an ancient pact is recalled, and an ally from a distant kingdom (another suburb, up the "sliding sea," or river, from his) sends her greatest band of warriors to his aid. The chief of these warriors is the girl Bea Wolf, whose each fist holds the strength of sixty children. But is Mr. Grindle a match even for her bravery and might?
As in the original story, there is, even underneath the moments of triumph and humor, a sense of fate to both victories and defeats, as well as inevitable ending and tragedy, that even the greatest of kingdoms and mightiest of legends will inevitably fade. No child can escape adolescence forever (well, almost no child; there are a few tales mentioned in passing that hint at children who either managed to hold onto their dreams into adulthood or... did not grow up, though I may have been reading a little too much into those). Only the stories survive to inspire and inform the next heroes, passed down by young poets and bards from child to child like Carl's cardboard crown.
At the end, Weinersmith discusses the original Beowulf, the history of the surviving manuscripts, and how Bea Wolf was written to evoke the ancient epic, as well as a few pages of concept art that went into developing the idea. The art itself is worth noting, too, giving noteworthy children their own heraldic shields and creating distinct, occasionally surreal characters and monsters, matching the text in how it blurs lines between realism and fantasy.
The whole is an imaginative ode to timeless classical themes, a story that a clever child should enjoy, but which might speak also to those looking back at childhood from the other side of the teen-lands, hoping perhaps that magic and wonder and adventure yet remain somewhere in this gray and dreamless world, at least for the young.

You Might Also Enjoy:

Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury) - My Review
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Dungeon Drawler Carl: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1 (Matt Dinniman et al.)

Dungeon Crawler Carl: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1

The Dungeon Crawler Carl Graphic Novel series, Issues 1 - 13
Matt Dinniman (author and creator), Aethon (creator), and Actus (creator), illustrations by Laurel Pursuit Studios
Vault Comics
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor/Media Tie-in/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION:

It was 2 AM on a cold winter night in Seattle when Coast Guard vet Carl watched the world end. He'd run outside in nothing but his boxers and a pair of too-small pink crocs after Princess Donut, the award-winning Persian who belonged to his ex Beatrice, escaped, so he could only watch in shock as every building suddenly was squashed out of existence, along with everyone and everything inside (including his pants). A booming voice informs everyone that aliens have arrived to take the planet's minerals, but humans could regain control of their world... if anyone dares brave the eighteen levels of the dungeon "game" that have been created underground. Carl didn't even want to do it, but he and Donut will die of exposure if they don't get out of the frigid air, so when a stairwell opens nearby he ventures down, hardly expecting how his life is about to change...
This volume collects the first 13 chapters of the webtoon based on Matt Dinniman's novel, Dungeon Crawler Carl.

REVIEW:

Yes, I'm on a bit of a Carl kick at the moment (so sue me, I seriously need something to enjoy with the way everything's going), so I went ahead and sprang for this graphic novel adaptation. The story sticks pretty close to the book, covering the first third or so of Dungeon Crawler Carl, and was clearly made with the author's input. The only major change that I noticed is that Donut is now a colorpoint (mostly white) cat instead of a tortoiseshell, a perfectly understandable compromise for the medium (torties being far more complicated to consistently ink and color, plus the simpler markings of a colorpoint make expressions easier to render and read). The art, effects, and overall layout and conventions reflect more manga influences than I usually read in my admittedly-limited graphic novel experience, but do a decent job getting ideas and emotions across.
That said, I do have a few gripes. The size is a little smaller than I'd hoped, being roughly eight inches by five and a half inches, which can make some of the text a little hard to read. Speaking of hard to read, several of the dungeon announcements, such as the AI's often-hilarious "achievements" for various tasks, are printed in fine white lettering on gold/orange backgrounds. Either my copy is slightly off true in color alignment, or it's just plain too small and with too poor contrast, because a good third at least of these announcements I could not read; the text is just too grainy even with a magnifier. There's no real gutter at the inner margins of the pages, which also cuts into images and text in ways that affect readability; I can't open the thing flat enough to see it all without damaging the spine or pages. I'm also unsure how well I'd be following it if I didn't already know the story (again, in part due to bits being a little tough to read). I'm not sure it picked the best point to end, not really being at a conclusion or a cliffhanger but just in the middle of things. And there were times where the panel layout and progression wasn't quite clear, though I expect this is down to me not reading enough manga-influenced material to be familiar with how they flow compared to more "Western" graphic novel styles.
Still, for all that, it's still a fun story that doesn't stint on the emotional weight, and the visual aspect highlights both the comic absurdity and the overall darkness of what's happening to Carl, Donut, and the world.

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King: The Graphic Novel (Joshua Hale Fialkov) - My Review