56.
Title: [The G-String Murders]
Author: Gypsy Rose Lee
Genre: Pulp
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Beach Read
Date Completed: June 23, 2016
Rating: *****

Before there was Dita Von Tese there was Gypsy Rose Lee, a vaudeville performer turned strip teaser who went on to become a cultural icon with fluctuating media success.  According to her son’s introduction, Gypsy Rose Lee was never formerly educated, having spent her whole life travelling for the stage, but had a voracious appetite for reading, individual books becoming her tutors and her windows into different worlds and different lives.  Lee is no stranger to the pen, either, and in 1941 turns to pulp fiction with her publication of The G-String Murders.

The G-String Murders takes readers behind the scenes of a burlesque theatre, illustrating contentious and complex human relationships between stage performers, which leads to the very real (and welcomed, at times) murders of women with more enemies than back-door Johnnies. Gypsy Rose Lee herself is the protagonist, adding a realistic and identifiable voice to the telling of a series of garish murders, when strip-teasers are found strangled with glittering g-strings in a performance that seems fit for a stage. A classic whodunit, nearly everyone is suspicious, and the animosity between burlesque performers and the police force add a tension to the plot that adds believability to the suggestion that a comic and his dancer girlfriend need to investigate on their own.  The scenes backstage and in the dressing rooms are just as grand and engaging as the acts on stage, and the pace runs high and keeps twirling from beginning to end.  The G-String Murders will delight fans of mystery, pulp, and cozy-mysteries alike, and would be a real treat for anyone interested in burlesque and strip tease. Strong personalities and an intimate understanding of narrative make this pulp a real winner.

57.
Title: [Mother Finds a Body]
Author: Gypsy Rose Lee
Genre: Pulp
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Beach Read
Date Completed: June 25, 2016
Rating: ***

The sequel to The G-String Murders, Mother Finds a Body directly follows the conclusion of the first, removing Gypsy Rose Lee and a handful of familiar characters from the theatre, and and places burlesque performers in a tenuous position in the "real" world. Outside of the performing space, these characters lose a bit of their polish, and with it the interest of the reader. Though the introduction of Lee's mother as a principal characters adds a layer of enjoyable anxiety, the narrative as a whole is more traditional as a murder mystery, and thus less successful overall, as it is the unique perspective and setting which makes the first such a success.  The suspension of disbelief is a bit more difficult, as it's impossible to imagine travelling for several days in a packed trailer with an undiscovered murder victim in a bathtub, and the rest of the story is just as contrived. The saving grace is the character of Gypsy herself, who can still charm readers into going along for the ride. The second book is definitely second-best, but it's worth a look for a quick beach read.

58.
Title: [Sex Criminals: Vol. 1]
Author: Matt Fraction
Genre: Graphic Novel
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Beach Read
Date Completed: June 27, 2016
Rating: ***

The premise of Matt Fraction's Sex Criminals is curious and compelling: a young girl discovers at her sexual awakening that her orgasms stops time for all but her, allowing her variable stretches of experience in what she dubs "the Quiet Place." Faced with grief over the death of her father, and her mother's subsequent withdrawal and alcoholism, the Quiet Place gives Suzie the time and space she needs to heal and come to grips with her life, even as it leaves her feeling extraordinarily isolated and lonely following intimate bodily and emotional connections. Just when se determines that she'll never share this quiet moment with another she meets Jonathan, who has the same ability, albeit with a far more lascivious understanding, and a destructive inclination that leads him to use the time freeze for juvenile delinquency rather than quiet reflection and self-discovery. Together, they decide to use their intimate powers for both harm and good: robbing banks to raise the money to keep Suzie's library out of foreclosure.

For a book that uses sex as its narrative vehicle, Sex Criminals is not itself pornographic, keeping far from Alan Moore's level of sexual revelation, and playing the sex shop for gags rather than titillation. The artwork itself is oddly sweet and cartoonish, setting the tone of the book as approachable and well=meaning, with none of the grit and hard lines of, say, caped comics. However, the introduction of the sex police derail the story, adding an unnecessary layer of conflict and distracting fro the stories already put into motion. This, and the abrupt conclusion of the first volume, keep the book from being a full success, and ultimately will prevent me from seeking the next volume.

55.
Title: [Burial Rites]
Author: Hannah Kent
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Medium: Hardback
Acquisition: Library Book
Date Completed: June 20, 2016
Rating: *****

Hannah Kent's Burial Rites tells the story of an Icelandic farm family charged with the temporary holding of a condemned murderess, and the difficult and intimate human relationships that are formed when people are forced by circumstance and necessity to occupy the same small spaces for the sake of survival. Agnes, having been tried and convicted of the murder of her lover Natan, is placed with a family in the community in which she was first born, living and working with them more as a hired servant than a condemned criminal for the circumstances of her imprisonment. At first fearful and repulsed by both their charge of keeping and Agnes' proximity to their wholesome, god-fearing family, the members of the household each form individual and nuanced relationships with the young woman, illustrating their own humanity as Agnes' is revealed, and the texture of the human spirit.

The novel as an object is a work of poetry, carefully weaving a tale that draws the reader in, teasing with developing stories, and sharing a realistic space and time clearly informed by careful and extensive research; the novel has a quiet patience that allows relationships to unfold and develop and for an intimacy and depth of character to come forth naturally, echoing the real relationship and community building of such households and villages. . Far from the courts and intrigue that so often inspires the genre of historical fiction, Burial Rites tells the story of ordinary people living ordinary lives, and the extraordinary circumstances that punctuate their existence, and yet fails to change it permanently.  Kent's work is thoughtful and beautiful, and Burial Rites is a book that deserves extensive attention.

53.
Title: [Amazing X-Men: The Quest for Nightcrawler]
Author: Jason Aaron
Genre: Comic
Medium: paperback
Acquisition: Comic shop suggestion
Date Completed: June 17, 2016
Rating: ***

Like the last X-Men book on my list, The Quest for Nightcrawler is a shop-employee suggestion. In this first volume of Amazing X-Men, strange creatures begin appearing around the school, leading to a portal which suddenly transports a number of X-Men to heaven and hell, where they meet Azazel and a band of demonic pirates on a quest to collect souls and overthrow the afterlife.  Nightcrawler, himself deceased and pining for adventure despite his secure place in heaven, leads his former comrades in the fray against his father, literally captaining a hell-ship and defeating the empowered souls of notorious sinners such as Jack the Ripper.  At first, the entire plot device smacked of barely-palatable shark jumping, but as the book developed Nightcrawler as a conflicted and nuanced character, and brought the X-Men back from the afterlife to the present reality, it became far more compelling, and holds a promise of something interesting to come. Though a bit clumsy as a whole, the narrative reigns itself in successfully, and delivers appealing artwork to help fans through the rough patches.


54.
Title: [Batman: The Court of Owls]
Author: Scott Snyder
Genre: Comic
Medium: paperback
Acquisition:
Date Completed: June , 2016
Rating: ****

Batman: The Court of Owls is a dark and thrilling ride through a Gotham both familiar and not, taking well-known characters and complicating them in ways the series has failed to do in the past. A Gotham-known nursery rhyme speaks of a "Court of Owls," a shadowy cabal which controls the city. Having unsuccessfully searched for the court as a child, Batman dismisses the possibility of their existence, even after Bruce Wayne receives threats, and a subsequent assassination attempt, from the death-dealer of the Owls. As the plot unfolds, Batman realizes that he may not know the city quite as well as he thought, and his assertion that the city is "his" is soundly challenged.

One of the great appeals of Batman over supernatural superheroes is his fallibility - the very real possibility that he can fail, physically and intellectually, because he is human - and this first New 52 volume takes full advantage of his undeniable humanity. His struggles with the Court of Owls push him to the very brink psychologically, challenging the hero in ways far more poignant and compelling than brute and brawn. The book is well-paced and carefully developed, and much of the artwork is breathtaking, textured, and dark.  This book is a real winner.

50.
Title: [Extraordinary X-Men: X-Haven]
Author: Lemire and Ramos
Genre: Comics
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Purchased
Date Completed: May 2016
Rating: **

The subject of "Punk Storm," as I know her (or "mohawk Storm," as the comic shop clerk called her) first came to my attention when I was researching Storm cosplay and crossplay for a PhD course. At the time my object of study was the cosplay itself, and not the comic, so I spent my time researching backstories and reading images of fan productions. Now, with a few weeks of actual leisure time before me, I decided to seek out the stories in their original forms, and walked into the comic store saying (literally), "I need her in my life."  This time, though, the store recommendation did not meet my expectations. In X-Haven, Ororo is the headmistress of the famous school, and is facing down a series of exterior threats to mutant kind, as per the conflict that is familiar to any X-text. Given my limited experience with X-Canon, I had a very difficult time putting things in place; luckily my past research into narrative arcs prepared me for, for example, "Old Man Logan and young Jean Grey," but the story itself would have made next to no sense without that research. The excessive use of dimension transcendence and time travel leads to a sloppy story full of holes and an excess of expressive emotion over character development - what takes the whole book to establish could have been much more deftly done, and with greater interest, if layered with (forgive the pun) a sense of humanity and interiority.

ComicVine.com is quoted on the cover as saying, "A good place for new readers to jump on..." which is grossly inaccurate - those who have a passing understanding of these characters from other popular media (i.e. films and cartoons) will have no clear idea what is going on, and will struggle to put the pieces together as they race through the melodrama. If one is familiar with the larger narrative this book may be more satisfying; however, this is not a "place ... to jump on" for anyone who really wishes to engage with the characters.


50.
Title: [A Discovery of Witches]
Author: Deborah Harkness
Genre: Fantasy
Medium: Hardcover
Acquisition: Library Book
Date Completed: 352 pages read
Rating: **

A Discovery of Witches is the first novel in a trilogy which follows a plain, grounded young woman who magically captures the interest of a stunning and elusive ancient vampire who finds himself powerlessly drawn to protect her, despite over a thousand years of control and autonomy. He frequently threatens her with the aggressive poetry of his vampiric existence, and she stubbornly refutes all who stand in the way of what she claims can be nothing other than love.

Sound familiar?*

Unlike Twilight, which is in one sense a guide for accepting emotionally-abusive relationships, the protagonist Diana Bishop (of the Salem line) truly has a mind of her own (academically, at least), which she exercises enthusiastically through her research into the history of science and medieval alchemical texts.  A brilliant PhD with accolades to spare, Diana finds herself in Oxford conducting research, when she calls a text which seems to have a mind of its own - especially to her (largely suppressed) witch's instincts. Determined to stand by a resolution to avoid magic, a theme that is painstakingly detailed int he book itself, Diana send the book back, unintentionally bringing down the attention of a horde of supernatural creatures who have sought the text for decades, believing it was lost forever. Matthew is one such creature, and shoe-horns his way into her life and trust in search of the book, which he believes holds the secret to their supernatural existence, a question that has informed his genetic research since the nineteenth-century (at least. Perhaps longer? I can no longer remember).

Though I have a deep love of both history and vampires, I had much less for this book, which I found to be poorly paced and overly developed. Though threats, movements, and action are named, most of the 300+ pages I read took place in Diana's thoughts, with only the suggestion of things happening over there. In trying to be both a fantasy novel and an historical novel the book became neither, plodding through historical trivial and assertions of intelligence, stepping once in awhile to vaguely supernatural territory.  As I have two dear friends who devoured the trilogy, I'm willing to wager that I'm too much of a "fantasy" (horror) and historical (rather than historical fiction) reader to enjoy what Harkness has done.  Having read a short novel's worth and maintaining next to no interest I decided it was best for me to move on.


* Twilight is first published in 2005, and A Discovery of Witches is published in 2011. Although Wikipedia sites a newspaper article in which the authors claims to have never read Twilight (or other popular vampire texts), the resemblance in character dynamics can easily have come from a general awareness of the media franchise. Likewise, given her role as a female academic, I think it's probable she's familiar with at least the feminist critique of the romantic relationship of the series, which may have, at least subconsciously, informed her own writing.


51.
Title: [The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter]
Author: Rod Duncan
Genre: Fantasy
Medium: paperback
Acquisition: Library Book
Date Completed: June 9, 2016
Rating: **

The most creative and engaging aspect of this novel was the cover, over which the author likely had no control nor influence. Elizabeth Barnabas, having fled The Kingdom under the threat of sexual slavery, comes to operate as a private intelligencer in The Republic, utilizing her skills as a transvestite from a youth spent in a travelling show to secure the confidence of customers and the social freedoms of a man in a purportedly nineteenth-century influenced puritanical society. When a creditor threatens to repossess her beloved houseboat, Elizabeth is forced to accept a suspicious assignment to track down a Kingdom aristocrat who fled with a circus with the officials of the all-powerful Patent Office on his, and a mysterious contraption's, tail. Seeing not just the possibility of a mortgage, but the potential to return to the Kingdom a free woman, Elizabeth bullishly follows every lead, and finds herself in frequent hot water.

Elizabeth Barnabas has all the charisma of her traveling case. That is to say, her one distinguishing characteristic, and skill, is her life as a frequent transvestite and her assertion that she transforms into a twin brother in only two minutes (clearly the author has little technical experience with corset busks, breast bindings, or nineteenth-century clothes in general). Though there may be some use in creating an Everywoman protagonist, allowing for the reader's projection of self, there is so little personality in Elizabeth that she becomes a cardboard waif, generating just as much care. The false Victoriana is a drudgery, without the charm and nuance of the real thing, and lacking the fantastical delights of steampunk and alternative history. Given the rich potential of these genres, the author seems almost lazy in both world and character creation, moving the Berlin wall to the UK, and essentially placing a fantastic ahistoric France on once side, and a Puritanical US on the other. There is much to criticize, too, of the casual use of sexual indenture, but even this seems like an afterthought - after all, Duncan had to give his female protagonist something to fear in her homeland. Ultimately, there is too little for suspension of disbelief, and it was a real chore to complete.