Tag Archives: comics

Book Review: Human Remains, by Peter Milligan

I accepted a review copy of the graphic novel Human Remains through Rockstar Book Tours. It’s by Peter Milligan (Author), Adrian F. Wassel (Editor), Sally Cantirino (Illustrator), Dearbhla Kelly (Colorist), and Andworld Design (Letterer) and has also been featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight.,

Live. Laugh. Love. Scream.
DIE.
Dax and Bisa love each other. But in this new and terrifying world, love is dangerous. Feeling anything is dangerous. Love. Hate. Joy. Fear. Any of these in strong doses will bring a swift death. Earth has a new and terrible invader—monsters that smell the scent of emotion, salivate over the prey, and hunt the very feelings that make us human. A shocking tale of pent-up emotions and forced composure in the face of unspeakable horror…

It took me a little while to digest Human Remains. I finished with a feeling of, “Welp, that’s a thing I’ve read now.” I don’t know that I could have even said if it all came around to a salient point or not. However, as I sat on the experience a little while and thought on it, I decided that it did. (Of course, it did.)

It’s gory and touches on any number of heavy, trauma-inducing subjects. (I think a trigger warning wouldn’t be out of place for this one.) But watching as the characters slowly move from shocked and horrified to numb and blasé in the face of countless deaths is poignant. (Can I say a book with roughly 2 million panels of humans being violently dismembered was poignant?) But what does it mean to be human, how much will we give up to remain human, how much can we change and still be human are all important and thought-provoking questions this graphic novel seeks to answer.

I did think it took a long time to come around to those points and a few of the devices used to make them were a little ham-handed. But all in all I’ll call this one a success.

Other Reviews:

Mallory Books: Human Remains

Book Review: Coven, by Jennifer Dugan

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Sooo, funny story about how you can think you remember something and be completely wrong. I knew I signed up to read and review Coven, by Jenifer Dugan and Kit Seaton. So, I wasn’t surprised when it showed up in the mail. Usually, when I receive a graphic novel, it’s from Rockstar Book Tours. So, I set the book aside, waiting for the email to tell me my assigned tour date. And I waited and waited and waited.

Finally, it had been so long that I went to the website searching for the tour dates and was confounded to be unable to find anything listed. That is until a few days later when I received a polite email from Bookish First reminding me not to forget to post my review. Oooooh, that’s where I signed up! Bookish First has no assigned dates; I could have reviewed Coven the day it arrived. So, I dived right in.

Emsy has always lived in sunny California, and she’d much rather spend her days surfing with her friends or hanging out with her girlfriend than honing her powers as a fire elemental. But when members of her family’s coven back east are murdered under mysterious circumstances that can only be the result of powerful witchcraft, her family must suddenly return to dreary upstate New York. There, Emsy will have to master her neglected craft in order to find the killer . . . before her family becomes their next target.

I generally really enjoyed this. I thought the art was gorgeous, and the book portrayed the volatile, hyper-focused, but not always very logical mindset of teens well. It handled the grief aspect equally as well.

I liked the plot (though I figured out who the villain was very early on). There was a little humor and a lot of diversity, and I thought Emsy coming to accept her coven as family counted as personal growth. I can imagine her, Ben, and Ash as the power trio of the up-and-coming generation of the coven.

I did think the pacing a bit off; the beginning dragged bit more than needed and most of the action is packed into the last third. Plus, I feel like we could have been given more resolution between Emsy and her California friends. But all in all, I’ll call this a win. I’d be happy to read another contribution from Jennifer Dugan and/or Kit Seaton.