Speed Review: The good kind.

Title: The Fox

Status: Love #2

Author: Frédéric Brrémaud, Federico Bertolucci

Genre: Graphic Novel, Animals

General Thoughts: Lovely and true

Rating: 4.5/5 stars.

The Fox is not your typical story. And it's not really a story. It's more than that. The Fox is about life. The Fox is about family. The Fox is about survival. The Fox is the story that you'll love, without too much complicatio. In the point of view of wild life, we see all this and more.

Have I ever told you how wonderful foxes are? Actually, animals in general? They now everything and everyone, don't over complicate themselves, and have their priorities straight. They don't follow the rules of time and they have the biggest and truest capability to love.

For me, this novel was just that. Animals in their truest form. No story, no background or intricate plot needed. Just the true.

And the design in the drawing was insane. So beautiful and detailed. And not only the characters but the ambient. It all had so many details and was so carefully crafted. Not some random scrambles likes some of today's graphic novels.

Read it. Seriously. It is necessary. (not really but pretty please)

Title: Heart and Brain: An Awkward Yeti Collection

Status: Collection

Author: The Awkward Yeti, Nick Seluk

Genre: Graphic Novel, Humor

General Thoughts: Gotta love the good ol' heart and brain

Rating: 3.5/5 stars.

Heart and Brain is the collection of small comics of two comical characters we all know well. Heart and Brain. Taking a satirical spin to them, they talk about real life situations from the point of view of each organ and what their function is. This results in a funny, endearing comic strip that'll have you laughing out loud!

This was a really nice read. I mean, I love seeing satirical versions of what my heart and brain would be like. I think they represented them exactly as they are. The heart naive and reckless, but with true feelings and the drive for the better. The brain logical and responsible, but with flaws as minimum feelings and others like procrastination. None of them was better than the other and both as importante as each other.

And I loved that sometimes it wouldn't just be a funny, ironical or sarcastic joke presented, but that they added some small little moments of deep thinking and important messages.

I really like the Awkward Yeti. The only thing I would have like to see more was the other organs as well. So much heart and brain could be a little boring. Specially because the format was always the same and it could get repetitive.

But great bind up. Love to read more.

Title: Ashes

Status: Stand Alone

Author: Mario Candelaria

Genre: Graphic Novel, Daily Life

General Thoughts: Nice little book

Rating: 2.5/5 stars.

Ashes is the story of Matt, that while living a wonderful successful life, falls in hard times, and the story that follows, while trying to get his life back. Ashes gives a voice to those unnamed heroes that fight for our lives daily, and that not always win. This is what happens after one of those such days.

I loved that this novel centered around fire fighters. I think that they're underestimated most of the time. We don't give them enough credit, really. They put themselves at risk to save our lives. And sincerely, we don't do our best to help.

This is where Matt's story falls in. He suffered a horrific faith that doesn't fall anywhere near just, but there all the same. It was wonderful to see him overcome his anger and sadness over loosing it all, and manage to see beyond it and see all the people that loved him.

I think it's an important book for both the firefighters, because it brings awareness towards them, and people, because it shows that motivation, dedication, hard work and time can do wonders.

The only thing is that it wasn't the most interesting things to read. It read pretty bland and it lacked the suspense and drama. It needed a little more narrative.

And I wasn't a fan of the art design. All that black was sometimes hard to outline. And it didn't help with the overall presentation of the book. Like, if you're going to do it in b&w, at least let me see it.

Great book, you should read it, even if for the sake of knowing about the firefighters cause.

Small disclaimer section.

Due to it being an ARC, I won't put the first lines.

I received this copy in exchange of an honest review, for so, none of my feelings were affected or biased by the author or publisher.

Fairies and Twilight

Title: Shattered Blue

Status: The Light #1

Author: Lauren Bird Horowitz

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Paranormal

General Thoughts: Twilight with fairies.

Rating: 2/5 stars.

Shattered Blue is the story of Noah, a sixteen-year-old girl who befriends a new student in her boarding school, Callum. But things are not exactly what they seem, as a strange feeling sinks in whenever Callum is around. Soon enough, things start getting interesting and even dangerous, threatening the relationship between them.

Disclaimer, I have tried to do this review multiple times in the past, but haven't been able to complete or publish it because of multiple problems while at it. After getting over my anger, I am now trying again and (hopefully) succeeding.

Shattered Blue was weird. It tried to be so many things, or rather, it tried not to be so many things. I could see that the author wanted to avoid a lot of cliches and pet peeves of the Young Adult Paranormal genre. She was very aware of them and tried to avoid it at all cost. But in reality, she ended up creating many other problems and even creating the same problems she was trying to avoid in the first place.

Let me explain.

She most profoundly tried to avoid the instant-love kind of setting and show it isn't a real, healthy relationship. But while trying to avoid it, she created another even more annoying instant-love kind of setting, one where the girl falls for the very troubled boy, and even worse, the brother.

She also tried to do an interesting plot that was simple enough, but really, it was lacking and also not original at all. And she did something that incredibly annoyed me, that is, hiding things from the reader. Alright, like, normally that's good. But she literally loaded all of the secrets in one character alone, and that sole character revealed those secrets in the worst kind of way. Like, firstly, the secrets were incredibly obvious and unsurprising, and secondly, the attitude didn't really fit in with what was happening. It all felt kind of uncomfortable and weird. Specially that scene where he tells them about the little girl's real identity. It made me cringe.

The characters... I'm not sure. Noah was alright, I guess, but she, at the end, became more of the dumb characters that we all hate in paranormal. I did like her poems, but I never really understood them. I don't know, they felt kind of unnecessary as well.

Callum was meh. All those secrets kind of put me down on liking him. And I'm so done with the "I want you, can't have you" struggle. Really, we are all done with it. And I hated how he changed so much through the book just so we could add the love triangle (hate that as well) with Callum's brother (can't remember his name).

And talking about that brother, he was a most contradictory character. At first renegade and violent, then just romantic, then violent, then super whinny. Definitely didn't like his character. And again, hate what the author did to Callum's image in order to get the brother in the picture.

I really believe that this novel has too many secrets, bad done secrets, to be all that enjoyable. Some for shadowing and a little more coherence would have helped.

And, this is more a personal thing, I completely guessed the whole plot. All of it. The sister being not her sister, the white fae thing... am I getting good or are they lowering their skills?

And the final, most important thing that annoyed me throughout the whole book, is that this is literally Twilight. Everything about it screams Twilight at me. It feels like what the author wished had happened on Twilight. But with fae. Literally. Twilight. The world don't need no mo'.

I did give those 2 stars because it did entertain me through it all, and there was some kind of originality in it. The other sister, everything that had to do about her, I liked. Actually, a book that was solely about Noah trying to figure her life after her sister's dead, and her mom and dad, etc. That, I would have enjoyed way more.

Small disclaimer section.

Due to it being an ARC, I won't put the first lines.

I received this copy in exchange of an honest review, for so, none of my feelings were affected or biased by the author or publisher.

The good ol' times are back!

Title: Jem and The Holograms: Showtime!

Status: Jem and The Holograms Vol. 1

Author: Kelly Thompson, Sophie Campbell

Genre: Graphic Novel, Young Adult, Romance

General Thoughts: Light fluffy reads, I love.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars.

Jem and the Holograms is a story of dreams, finding your true self and having fun along the way! We meet our four heroins, who are just about to make their dreams of becoming super stars true, if only Jerrica could bring herself to sing. But just as they were loosing hope, they find a strange machine, that might help them in unexpected ways.

Man, this book was so much fun!

Ok, confesion time has arrived...I've never seen the TV show this is based on and only found out about it thanks to this!..

I know, most people loved this show when little and think that this graphic novel is such a waste of times because the show was so much better and this isn't adding anything new... but I'm new to this, so this is my side of the story.

First of all, the illustrations were soooo prettyyyy and colorful! This is the brightest palete of colors I've seen in a graphic novel. And I loved it. All the hair and costumes and colors and music tunes got me completely hooked and hallucinating!

The story itself was really light, nothing deep, really fun things happening all around. I really didn't even bother to see the not so well done things happening around (except the "ok cool, a machine that it's better than the world, all good" thing) because the story was really fun and I couldn't take it too seriously.

I loved that it had so much diversity in such a simple way. And that there literally was no conflict about any of it.

This novel felt like a 90's show. And I know it's kind of dumb to point that out, but it really felt like those old shows I used to watch when I was little. Except that social media was all over the place.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this novel, really recommend, read it, even if you watched the TV show when little. Good all the same.

Small disclaimer section.

Due to it being an ARC, I won't put the first lines.

I received this copy in exchange of an honest review, for so, none of my feelings were affected or biased by the author or publisher.

Space adventures at its best!

Title: Descender: Tin Stars

Status: Vol. 1

Author: Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen

Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy

General Thoughts: Excellent for space adventures' lovers!

Rating: 4.25/5 stars.

In a world, or rather, in the space, where everything is gone, Robot boy TIM-21 finds himself alone in a story that will reach your soul. In descender, he and a couple of space friends will go on incredible adventures, searching for the true and maybe some more...

I love when a story is so amazing, that you are left thinking about it for days, weeks after it, and still are amazed by it. It's not just something you can read and then blow off, the story forces you to think about it, to keep it within you.

Descender was such an amazing story! You start off by nothing, plain death and disaster. And you don't know the why's, the who's, and what happened before or after. It's all just confusion. But as you read more, you go figuring out more about what's happening, who is who, what happened before and what the future holds. I can't tell you enough, this story is amazing.

Once all the back story started to come through, you could tell this was no ordinary story. And already the beginning was strange enough, to hold you deep within the story.

The plot in general was super interesting. You get robots, space, aliens, androids. All you can imagine. And you get societies that go beyond what you can expect.

Also, the main characters were amazing. Tim the robot is such an adorable little boy, and so is the other robot. And then there's the professor...leave it at that.

What I do lament is that this first issue was so short! I'm left wanting so much more answers.

The one reason I gave it a 4.25, though, is that the story isn't really new...I mean, the characters personalities and roles were pretty typical within the context. And so was the story, a little. But only 0.75. It still is extremely good!

Small disclaimer section.

Due to it being an ARC, I won't put the first lines.

I received this copy in exchange of an honest review, for so, none of my feelings were affected or biased by the author or publisher.