stadkison's reviews
299 reviews

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 209 by Neil Clarke

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4.5

Scalp - 2.5
The Flowers That We Intend To Share - 4
The Enceladus South Pole Base Named after V.I. Lenin - 5 stars
Kardashev's Palimpsest - 3.5 stars
The Peregrine Falcon Flies West - 3 stars
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole - 4.5 stars
The Beam Eidolon - 3.5 stars
Lonely Ghosts - 4 stars
Forever Magazine Issue 108 by Neil Clarke

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3.75

Escape from the Caring Seasons. 4.25 stars. 
Void. 2.5 stars.
Elves of Antarctica. 3.5 stars.
The Goruden-Mairu job. 4 stars.
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 208 by Neil Clarke

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Putting them into tiers, the A+ stories were Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness and Just Another Cat in a Box. The former is about obsessing over a new way of visualizing emotions after tragedy, and the latter a dark exploration of a single post-apocalyptic concept on an infinite timescale. 

Stories that get a regular A are You Dream of the Hive, Stars Don’t Dream, and Rail Meat. Those are about escaping a collective, Borg-like society from someone who doesn’t want to escape, a group of specialists coming together for a moonshot (or Venus-shot) dream, and a romance between futuristic thieves.

Finally, the still good B stories are Nothing of Value, a teleportation tragedy, Down the Waterfall, a poetic time-travel story, and You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth, a brief story about the young’s desire to explore space when earth is drained of resources.
Maggie the Mechanic: A Love and Rockets Book by Jaime Hernandez

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4.25

It takes a minute to get into this books rhythms but once you do there is nothing like it 
Blood Stained Teeth, Volume 2: Drip Feed by Christian Ward

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4.25

A visual feast and a fun world adds some bite back into the vampire genre
The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Perhaps the most episodic and “directionless” of the series so far yet everything had me constantly on the edge of my seat, dying to know what is next.
Hellboy Omnibus Volume 1: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola, John Byrne, Dave Stewart, Mark Chiarello

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Mignola’s art is such a treat. The economy of life, deep shadows, and Kirby crackle done here. And he’s got such a fun mythos developing. His historical occult fascination morris my own.