Manga Review: Neko Ramen vol. 1 by Kenji Sonishi

Note:  I wrote this review sometime last year.  Tokyopop, who published this, has since shut down, so you might have trouble finding a copy.

Pros: quirky, cute cats

Cons: Western readers may not get the Japanese humour

Art: comic strip style, quickly drawn

Taisho is a cat running a ramen shop.  Tanaka-san is his best (and often only) customer.  In this first volume of 4-panel comic strips, we learn how Taisho started his ramen shop, why his noodles taste odd, witness his experiments to better his shop and hire good workers.

The comics are short and quirky, examining problems a cat would have running a food shop (like trying to make rice balls where fur sticks to the rice).  Some of the humour is very Japanese, however, which some Western readers may not understand (both because they reference Japanese society or because people from other countries find different things humourous).

Still, if you're interested in Japan or just like cats, check this out.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Books Coming in July 2012

As usual, this list is compiled from the Indigo website.  The Carina ebooks are the only ones I mention, as their site has release dates (I'm keeping track of some other sites, which mention upcoming books but not dates as of yet).  My apologies for any books missing (there's always something).  Mention them in comments if you know any that were left off this list.  And please remember that this list reflects Canadian release dates.


Hardcover:

Iron Gray Sea – Taylor Anderson

Thirteen – Kelley Armstrong

Myth-Fortunes – Robert Asprin & Jody Lynn Nye

Queen's Hunt – Beth Bernobich

Orion and King Arthur – Ben Bove

Earth Unaware – Orson Scott Card

The Strangers Magic – Max Frei

The Thousand Emperors – Gary Gibson

Heaven's War – David Goyer

Blood of the Emperor – Tracy Hickman

Thieftaker – D. B. Jackson

Energized – Edward Lerner

Lovecraft Library Vol 2: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Mythos Tales – H. P. Lovecraft

Reaper – K. D. McEntire

The World of Poo – Terry Pratchett

Elfhome – Wen Spencer

The Apocalypse Codex – Charles Stross

Advent – James Treadwell

The Coldest War – Ian Tregillis

Coup D'Etat – Harry Turtledove

War Maid's Choice – David Weber

Trade Paperback:

Other Worlds Than These – John Joseph Adams. Ed.

Werewolves – Kelley Armstrong (omnibus edition includes Bitten, Stolen and Beginnings)

Adamtine – Hannah Berry

Wake of the Bloody Angel – Alex Bledsoe

The Wanderers – Paula Brandon

The Hollow Earth: At the Earth's Core & Pellucidar – Edgar Rice Burroughs (reprint)

Flow My Tears, The Police Man Said – Philip K. Dick (reprint)

Gather Yourselves Together – Philip K. Dick (reprint)

The Cosmic Puppets – Philip K. Dick (reprint)

Poison Belt – Arthur Conan Doyle

The Circle – Sara Elfgren

A Guile of Dragons – James Enge

Lord Tyger – Philip Jose Farmer

The Stranger's Woes – Max Frei

Final Days – Gary Gibson

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2012 – Paula Guran, Ed.

Glimmering – Elizabeth Hand

Secrets of the Wolves – Dorothy Hearst

Assignment in Eternity – Robert Heinlein (reprint)

The Legend of Jig Dragonslayer – Jim Hines (omnibus edition)

Report From Planet Midnight – Nalo Hopkinson

The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2012 – Rich Horton, Ed.

The Dragon Reborn – Robert Jordan (reprint)

Aloha From Hell – Richard Kadrey

Aleron – Kane

The Unincorporated Woman – Dani Kollin & Eytan Kollin

Technomancer – B. V. Larson

Tempting the Gods: Selected Stories of Tanith Lee – Tanith Lee

The Immortality Engine – George Mann

Darksiders: The Abomination Vault – Ari Marmell

The Time Engine – Sean McMullen

The Legend of Sigmar – Graham McNeill (omnibus edition)

Star Wars: Lost Tribes of the Sith – John Jackson Miller (collected ebook stories)

Tin Swift: The Age of Steal – Devon Monk

House of Shadows – Rachel Neumeier

Spin the Sky – Katy Stauber

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities – Ann & Jeff Vandermeer

The Soul Consortium – Simon West-Bulford

The Emperor's Knife – Mazarkis Williams

Daylight On Iron Mountain – David Wingrove

Mass Market Paperback:

Gunmetal Magic – Ilona Andrews

vN – Madeline Ashby

The Measure of the Magic – Terry Brooks

Stands a Shadow – Col Buchanan

Wings of Creation – Brenda Cooper

Exile – Rowena Cory Daniells

Shadows Before the Sun – Kelly Gay

Burden of Proof – John Hemry (aka Jack Campbell)

Citadels of the Lost – Tracy Hickman

Darklands – Nancy Holzner

Fighting Fantasy: Curse of the Mummy – Steve Jackson

Carry the Flame – James Jaros

An Officer's Duty – Jean Johnson

Dragon Rule – E. E. Knight

Imperium – Keith Laumer

Prince of Thorns – Mark Lawrence

Ghost Ship – Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

Star Trek: Titan: Falling Gods – Michael Martin

Chimera – T. C. McCarthy

Sin's Dark Caress – Tracey O'Hara

Snuff – Terry Pratchett

Grave Memory – Kalayna Price

Downpour – Kat Richardson

Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues – Diana Rowland

Forgotten Realms: Neverwinter – R. A. Salvatore

The Gilded Rune – Lisa Smedman

The Crown of the Usurper – Gav Thorpe

Blood and Silver – James Tuck

Kitty Steals the Show – Carrie Vaughn

How Firm a Foundation – David Weber

Carina E-books:

Eliza's Awakening – Zaide Bishop

Liar's Game – Kait Gamble

The Ravenous Dead – Natasha Hoar

Rogue's Pawn – Jeffe Kennedy

Monster in my Closet – R. L. Naquin

YA Fiction:

Mayhem – Artist Arthur

Texas Gothic – Rosemary Clement-Moore

Wolfsbane – Andrea Cremer

Original Sin – Lisa Desrochers

Relic Master: The Hidden Coronet – Catherine Fisher

Alex Van Helsing: Triumph of Death – Jason Henderson

Wildfire – Karsten Knight

Conspiracies – Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill

Exile – Rebecca Lim

Luminous – Dawn Metcalf

The Eternal Ones – Kirsten Miller

Undercurrent – Tricia Rayburn

Fat Vampire – Adam Rex

Eternal – Gillian Shields

Forever – Maggie Stiefvater

Germany - Renewable Energy

Last week, while I was still in Germany, I came across this Slashdot.org article, quoting a Reuters article about solar power generation in the country

"German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour — equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity — through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said. The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022. ... The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed."

Given all the solar farms we passed, and the number of houses with solar panels on the roofs, this didn't surprise me.  There were FIELDS of solar panels.  Row after row of them.

It's a little hard to see in the photo above, but the roof of the house on the left (looks gray while the other roofs look reddish) is covered in solar panels.  

Solar isn't the only clean energy Germany is producing.  Everywhere we went we could see wind turbines.  It would be nice to see more of the world turn to renewable energy sources.

Books Received, May 2012

A thankfully small number of books this month (I'm SO behind on my reading, and not reading at all on my vacation didn't help - though it did help with my fantasy fatigue, which is good).  The synopsis quotes are from the Indigo website.

First up is Fantasy Short Stories, Issue 1, edited by Mark Lord.  I've already reviewed it here.  I found the collection quite good, aside from the middle story, which was surprisingly bad.  The collection consists of 5 fantasy stories, and is intended as the first of many issues bringing 'traditional' fantasy short stories back into popular awareness.

Suited, by Jo Anderton.  I really enjoyed the first book in this series and am very interested in seeing where the author takes things.  Both mystery and romance were hinted...  The plot synopsis: "Tanyana has chosen to help the Keeper, to stand against the Puppet Men, but has she bitten off more than she can chew?"

I requested God's War by Kameron Hurley from NetGalley after reading several positive reviews for it.

Some days, Nyx was a Bel Dame - an honored, respected, and deadly government-funded assassin - other days, she was a butcher and a hunter; a woman with nothing to lose. Now the butcher has a bounty to bring in. Nyx and her rag-tag group of mercenaries is about to take up a contract that will shake the foundations of two warring governments...

Last but not least is Suzanne Johnson's Royal Street.  I can't remember what site I read it on, but someone gave this a good review, that's got me itching to read urban fantasy again.

As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco's job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ''s boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.

Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans' fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.

While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover.

To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing, the wizards' Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ's new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo.

Back From Vacation

Well, after two weeks in Europe I'm back in Canada.  And it feels good to be home.  We had a rather insane (planned by me) itinerary, where we did rather more cities than we should have in a short amount of time.  The downside of that is that I'm exhausted and didn't get any reading done on this trip.  The upside is that I took a ton of great photos and got to see a lot of amazing places (some for the second time).

Here are some of the photos I took (click on the photo to go to my Picasa album).  Don't worry, this is a 'best of' collection, not all 3000+ photos from my trip.

Germany/Switzerland 2012

One thing I am interested in, as a bookseller, is the selection and price of books in other countries.  Specifically science fiction and fantasy books.  So I checked out a few bookstores (mostly in train stations and the airport).

Here are some pics.  First, Bern.  Decent selection of books.  But wow!  Look at that price.  That's Brent Weeks' Way of Shadows in trade paperback on sale for chf 27.50 (that's $29.30 Canadian).  Take that, people who complain about Canadian book prices.

Germany isn't much better for price.  Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, also available in trade paperback, is 20.60 ($26.30 Canadian).  Remember that the price involves the translation.  I didn't think to check the price of an untranslated work.  The selection here included some manga at the end.  It looks like a lot of books, but they're all faced and there are multiple facings for some books, so there aren't really as many books as this photo suggests.

I started reading J. M. Frey's Triptych in the airport in Toronto, but my reading became so disjointed, and the prose is so good, that I've decided to start the book again and read it properly, now that I'm home.  I saw a bunch of movies on the flights, so you can look forward to some more current movie reviews as well.

New Author Spotlight: Chris Holm

New Author Spotlight is a series designed to introduce authors with 3 books or less in the different SF/F subgenres. Today's spotlight shines on Chris F. Holm, who has written numerous short stories, but whose debut novel, Dead Harvest was published by Angry Robot Books earlier this year. Here's the cover copy...

Meet Sam Thornton, Collector of Souls.

Sam's job is to collect the souls of the damned, and ensure their souls are dispatched to the appropriate destination.

But when he's dispatched to collect the soul of a young woman he believes to be innocent of the horrific crime that's doomed her to Hell, he says something no Collector has ever said before.

"No."

If you like books about collecting souls, check out these:

 

• Black Wings by Christina Henry (Ace)
• On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony (Del Rey)
• Soul Trapper by F. J. Lennon (Atria Books)

Movie Review: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Director: John De Bello, 1978

IMDB listing

Pros: spoofs a lot of movies, takes the attacks seriously while taking itself as a joke

Cons: very cheesy, less humor than expected, boring at times

Several groups of misfits from the scientific, military and special ops communities, are brought in to deal with the menace of killer tomatoes.

In order to keep the menace under wraps, only the most incompetent people are sent to deal with the problem, with the exception of Mason Dixon (David Miller), who's actually quite smart.  This allows for a lot of quirky humor.  Add in 70s clothing and cheesy effects and there is stuff to laugh at, just not always what the film was going for.

The movie does well to take the killer tomato premise seriously.  It creates  a 'straight man' to play the spoof jokes off of.  And the movie does spoof a lot of other films.  My favourites were the nods to Jaws and Superman.

The only 'special effect' was the giant paper mache tomatoes.  Any other time something requiring special effects happened the camera focused on the people reacting to the incredible thing (tomatoes eating people, Superman flying, etc.).

On the whole, for a modern viewer, the movie is quite boring (mostly meetings with various people and little actual dealing with the problem or seeing people get eaten).  Lois Fairchild (Sharon Taylor), a reporter sent to get the story, does nothing and could have been cut from the film.  Her only purpose seemed to be as a Lois Lane reference.  And while there were a few good jokes, there weren't enough to keep me interested for a feature length film.

I'd give it a pass.