WONDER CITY (graphic novel) Written by Victor Fusté. Illustrated by Jared Cullum

Published by Insight Kids in 2022.

Synopsis:

Teenager Alex Riley and her older sister Elizabeth are very different kinds of people. They are the daughters of a adventurous married couple who turned their adventures as archaeologists into a TV action adventure cartoon. Think of them as the archaeologist versions of Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter) and his wife.

Their mother passed away a while back and their father recently died in mysterious circumstances working on a secret project in the subway tunnels under New York City. Now they are having to depend on each other.

The good guys sneaking into the network of tunnels
and sewers under New York City

When Mafia-type thugs show up to their place and try to steal notes their father had written while working on his secret project in the subway they know someone has been lying to them about their father's project...

My review:

I liked Wonder City well enough, especially at first. There are strong characters, interesting art, and There is an ongoing issue with the speech balloons. There were smushed together words, misspellings, and strangely divided words that made me wonder if they were electronically inserted and no one bothered to check on the results. 

The final climactic scene was a bit too much for me. It didn't quite make sense and there were times when the art didn't quite make it clear what was happening - kind of blurry with weird magic tossed in to make it all work out in the end even if it makes no sense. 

Final verdict:

Pretty good (if not super original) story marred by unclear art and writing at the end. The weird typos in the speech balloons made it seem like no one cared at the publishing house.

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found at Amazon.com here: WONDER CITY. Written by Victor Fusté. Illustrated by Jared Cullum.

THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6)(audiobook) by Nick Petrie

Published by Penguin Audio in 2021.
Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 12 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis

Fugitive good guy Peter Ash is hiding out in the open in the city where his adventures began in book number one of the series - Milwaukee. In The Breaker Peter Ash has an assumed identity with very good fake papers. His girlfriend June has joined him, resuming her career as a reporter with the local Milwaukee big city paper. Of course, his friend Lewis is around as well.

In the previous books Peter Ash is dealing with untreated PTSD from his time as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too many searches in too many small confined areas has left him with severe claustrophobia.

Peter is working on the claustrophobia, though. Peter, Lewis, and June are at the Milwaukee Public Market for lunch. It is indoors, but it is very open concept with a lot of open space above. He's been eating there to get used to being inside. 

The Milwaukee Public Market

Lewis and Peter notice a figure carrying a hidden weapon entering the crowded Market. That's bad enough - but there's also a bus full of elementary school children unloading for a lunch field trip. 

Lewis and Peter leap into action and things get very complicated very quickly...

My Review

This book was the weakest in the series so far. There was plenty of action - almost non-stop action.

*****Spoilers******

June became a much less nuanced character in The Breaker. Most of her lines consist of her yelling, "Marine!" at Peter and then ranting about how much she loved him and how he needed to take care of himself and how he needed to neutralize the threats facing them without creating any fuss that would bring unwanted attention to him. That was cute at first but it got old.

It also makes zero sense for June, a woman who owns a tech research company and owns an entire mountain valley to put Peter Ash (and herself) at legal risk by letting him wander around Milwaukee all day. Hide that man away until you can figure out how to get Peter out of his predicament.

There is a police stop early on in the book for a burned out tail light that seemed needlessly petty. It was designed to introduce a grizzled old cop character who might see through Peter Ash's elaborate paperwork disguise. But, instead of giving the impression of an experienced cop who has hunches that pay off, I got the impression of a petty man who likes to push people around and make them search for electrical shorts in their tail lights by making them crawl around their vehicles in the rain and get soaking wet and dirty first thing in the morning. 

The book almost approaches sci-fi, with giant hydraulic-powered machines adapted to a wheelchair-bound man, scientifically talented orphans seeking revenge, hundreds of armed robots powered by revolutionary long-lasting batteries, and self-driving vehicles that can travel anywhere on any road.

Throw in a secret government agency and its seemingly all-knowing mysterious representative and it was just too much.

*****end spoilers*****

If this had been the first book in this series, it would have been my last. Hopefully, the next one is much, much better.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6) by Nick Petrie.

THE BALLOT and the BIBLE: HOW SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN USED and ABUSED in AMERICAN POLITICS and WHERE WE GO from HERE (audiobook) by Kaitlyn Schiess

Published in 2023 by ChristianAudio.com.
Read by the author, Kaitlyn Schiess.
Duration: 6 hours, 27 minutes.
Unabridged.

I first heard about Kaitlyn Schiess on one of my favorite podcasts: The Holy Post. She is one of the three regular hosts of the show and often serves as their in-house theologian. She is well-suited for this role because she offers well-considered answers and she thinks them through before she answers, rather than just shooting her mouth off - all the more impressive when one considers that she is by far the youngest member of the podcast.

I was drawn to The Ballot and the Bible because: 1) I am concerned the rise of Christian Nationalism in America and the damage it does to the Christian witness; 2) I knew that Schiess would give thoughtful answers.

The intermingling of Christianity and politics is not a new phenomenon in the United States (or in the rest of the world - but that is not the focus of this book.) Schiess looks at the intermingling of faith and politics in the Revolutionary Era, the pre-Civil War and Civil War eras and in our modern times (1970s to now.)

Schiess spends special attention on how Romans 13:1-7 has applied in these situations. Attorney General Jeff Sessions brought this verse to the forefront in June of 2018 when he defended the policy of separating children from their illegal immigrant parents.

If you remember that controversy, you realize how much bad will could be created by this book if it were written by a less talented writer. 

Worth your time.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BALLOT and the BIBLE: HOW SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN USED and ABUSED in AMERICAN POLITICS and WHERE WE GO from HERE by Kaitlyn Schiess.

ILLEGAL (graphic novel) Written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin. Illustrated by Giovanni Rigano.

 

Published in 2018 by Sourcebooks Young Readers.

Illegal is the fictional story of two young brothers from Ghana: Ebo and Kwame. While it is fictional, it is based on lots and lots of true stories.

Most Americans are very aware that immigrants/refugees are fleeing from their native countries and arriving at the border of the United States and are not aware that a similar thing is happening in Europe. 

Europe has a similar refugee/immigrant situation. People are fleeing from the wars in Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. There are also refugees fleeing the brutal poverty and political situations in sub-Saharan Africa. Like in the United States, these immigrants/refugees depend on very shady people to move them closer to their goals.

In this story, two young brothers named Ebo and Kwame live in a village in Ghana. They are orphaned and living with a useless, drunken uncle. They have an older sister that has already crossed the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to look for work but they don't know anything about where she ended up or how it is going. 

Kwame is the older brother and he has decided to sneak away and try to get to Europe. He doesn't want to bring along his little brother because he is concerned about his safety, it will cost twice as much if they both go, and there is a superstition that says only one family member should make the trip at a time because it is so dangerous that it just seems all the more likely that there will be a loss in the family.

Ebo will have none of this. He immediately sets off to find his brother at his first stop - Agadez, Niger. Agadez is a city of a little more than 100,000 and serves as the launch point to try to cross the Sahara Desert.

The Sahara is too big to cross on foot so migrants trying to cross it have to have money to pay unscrupulous smugglers (much like Mexico's infamous coyotes.) This is not cheap.

If a migrant is lucky enough not to be robbed and dumped in the desert they arrive in Libya and pay smugglers for a boat ride across the Mediterranean Sea and try to land in Italy or Sicily. This is also not cheap.

Ebo and Kwame work various menial, under the table manual labor jobs while living on the streets and avoiding the police. Life is cheap, hard, brutal, and dirty - yet no one talks about turning back.

My review:

This is an excellent graphic novel. The parallels with the American refugee crisis are striking and equally heartbreaking. I learned a lot and I enjoyed the easy to follow art work as well.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ILLEGAL - Written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin. Illustrated by Giovanni Rigano.

INCREDIBLE HULK: PLANET HULK written by Greg Pak, illustrated by Carlo Pagulayan, Aaron Lopresti, Juan Santacruz, Gary Frank, and Takeshi Miyazawa.

Originally published by Marvel Comics from 199-2007.

Synopsis:

Hulk is banished from Earth after helping The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, and others defeat a common enemy by using Hulk's brute strength. Hulk has been rendered unconscious and placed on a spaceship. Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) leaves a video message for Hulk to find on the spaceship when he arrives at his destination - a planet with no intelligent life. Reed knows that it is a wish of both Dr. Banner and Hulk to be someplace where Hulk cannot hurt anyone and no one can hurt Hulk. 

But, a wormhole opens up and sucks Hulk's spaceship to a different destination - the planet Sakaar.

Sakaar is ruled by a despotic, deranged emperor. He rules a planet with multiple species - all of them hate each other because he pits them against them against one another. He has discs attached to their bodies to control their impulses and allow him to deliver pain at will. He wears a suit of armor that Iron Man would envy and he runs a giant gladiator contest to punish anyone who dares stands up to his regime.

That is, until Hulk arrives...

My Review:

Planet Hulk has a reputation of being THE ultimate Hulk story arc. This story is also part of the inspiration for the Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok. 

*********Spoiler alert*********

While this graphic novel has a great reputation, I found it to be very repetitive. Hulk meets a danger, he nearly dies but he wins by just brute forcing everything. Every new confrontation makes him stronger until it just gets to the point of ridiculousness. Every time Hulk turns around there is a new species with new traditions, new prophecies, and new attacks on the Hulk that make him stronger. Eventually, he gets so strong that he can literally tear apart the planet from the inside - it just became tedious for me. The whole plot is something attacks, Hulk mad, Hulk smash, Hulk get stronger, Hulk finds peace of mind, something new attacks, Hulk mad again, and on and on and on.

*********End Spoilers*********

The art is very beautiful, though.

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. I had to force myself to finish it, even if it is a classic. 

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: INCREDIBLE HULK: PLANET HULK written by Greg Pak, illustrated by Carlo Pagulayan, Aaron Lopresti, Juan Santacruz, Gary Frank, and Takeshi Miyazawa.

VANISHING EDGE (National Parks Mysteries #1) (audiobook) by Claire Kells

Published by Dreamscape Media, LLC in 2021.
Read by Natalie Naudus.
Duration: 9 hours, 13 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Felicity Harland is a former FBI agent just turned investigator for the Investigative Services Branch (ISB.) ISB is the criminal investigation unit for the National Park Services. They investigate serious crimes that happen in National Parks. 

Harland has been called to Sequoia National Park because 2 customers of an ultra-glamping camping service has disappeared in a remote mountainous location called Emerald Lake. No one knows if they are dead, have intentionally gone missing, or have simply wandered off into the wilderness. No one will say anything about who the supposed victims are because this service is ultra-exclusive and treats the names of its customers like its a national secret.

Harland, along with an old crusty park ranger, and an ex-Navy SEAL who has just joined the park service search for the missing pair. What they discover next leads them to one suspect after another and no real obvious answers...

My Review:

Emerald lake in Sequoia National Park

I really liked this first entry in a new series. Felicity Harland is far from perfect and she has her own personal demons that the reader learns about as the book progresses. She's flawed, but trying to rebuild her life and learn a new job at the same time. Setting her cases in the National Parks means that she can literally travel the country investigating different cases and the reader gets to see a lot of different parks along the way. For example, at the end of this book she was off to Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. I will be moving on to the next book in the series.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: VANISHING EDGE (National Parks Mysteries #1) by Claire Kells.

YEARS THAT CHANGED HISTORY: 1215 (The Great Courses)(audiobook) by Dorsey Armstrong

Published in 2019 by The Great Courses.
Lectures by Dorsey Armstrong.
Duration: 12 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Great Courses offers a lecture series by college professors that the average person can listen to on their own time. 

In this case, Purdue University history professor Dorsey Armstrong is focusing on the year 1215 as a pivotal year. 

1215 is well-known to Americans as the year of the Magna Carta, but it is also the year of the Fourth Lateran Council of the Catholic Church. The rest of the lecture series is about general things that were going on around 1215. These include the crusades, a brief look at the Americas, a look at the Islamic world, Japan, and an extended look at Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire.

This is a lecture series that could have used a bit of editing. If two hours were removed, that would have been good. Three hours would have been great. This was especially true in the section about Genghis Khan. Armstrong admitted that she was excited about this topic and she really just laid on the details - way too many details for even this history teacher. It just got bogged down in the early details of his life and scooted through the height of the Mongol Empire and its eventual collapse.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. I don't really blame Armstrong for this - this series tends to like 20+ half hour lectures and I don't think this was a rich enough vein of information for her to mine.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: YEARS THAT CHANGED HISTORY: 1215 (The Great Courses) by Dorsey Armstrong.