The start of April was so busy, I forgot to ever post this.
- Hawkeye vol. 2 by Matt Fraction and David Aja – The conclusion to their run on the title. The deaf issue was really amazing, but it had been too long since I’d read the previous volume to remember some of the identities in Kate’s branch of the story, and I just muddled forward rather than going back to review. Not having ever been a Marvel reader or knowing there was precedent, I was legit surprised when Clint Barton was deafened.
- Miracleman: The Golden Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham – My first time reading Gaiman’s contribution to the title. He followed up the mythic grandeur of Moore’s conclusion in probably the only way that would work: by telling a series of small, human stories in a still-fresh utopia. It lets the story take a breath, builds room for new kinds of narrative consequence to form, which we perhaps see only the very beginning of in this volume. I look forward to seeing the arc completed.
- The Anatomy of Melancholy by Joey Comeau and Emily Horne – The Kickstarted best-of book for A Softer World, which I will miss. Every page made me want to claim the words as my own and pretend to be cleverer than I really am.
- Hugo and Nebula Award Winners from Asimov’s Science Fiction edited by Sheila Williams – I picked this out of my parents’ library to read after “The New Mother” was nominated for a Nebula. It has a lot of old favorites, like “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler, “Bears Discover Fire” by Terry Bisson, and “Beggars in Spain” by Nancy Kress. I think my favorite story here that I hadn’t read before was “Barnacle Bill the Spacer” by Lucious Shepard.
- The New and Improved Romie Futch by Julia Elliott – I’d been looking forward to Elliott’s debut novel ever since I read her debut collection The Wilds last year, and it did not disappoint. It’s a story of artificial intelligence enhancement, in conversation with Flowers for Algernon and Camp Concentration, but with a southern gothic humor and occasional satirical edge that I found delightful. I nominated it for a Hugo award which it will certainly not win because it isn’t well-known enough within the genre. But on merits it deserves that kind of attention.