Manga Monday: Exposing the ugly side of society's vanity

Strangers make all sorts of assumptions from a person's appearance. A woman with styled hair and a powersuit looks more like an attorney than the woman with a sidebraid and a sundress. Similarly, no one takes the man with shaggy hair and three days' beard as seriously as the clean-cut man next to him.

It's even more prominent when weight is added to the equation. Being overweight has connotations of laziness, a lack of willpower, a lack of self-respect. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the opinions of people become internalized, it becomes more and more true.

This is the trap in which Noko finds herself in Moyoco Anno's In Clothes Called Fat. 

Noko is living a life that seems exaggerated to others, but rings true to anyone in her position. Working in an office staffed by pretty women in their 20s who still live at home and have their whole paycheck to spend on pretty clothes and going out, Noko is the outcast of the office. Called 'pig' by her superiors, mocked for her underclothes by her coworkers, all she has for comfort is food. And her boyfriend Saito.

But when one of the girls at work crosses the line, and Noko discovers Saito at Mayumi's apartment, all bets are off. And when Noko comes into a large amount of money unexpectedly, the obvious use for it is to lose the weight that has made her more and more of a target for this torture.

Then again, when the only thing a person has control of is their food, everything else slowly spins out of control. As Noko turns to dangerous means to attain the physique she wants, and Mayumi continues her campaign to destroy her, will she lose more than just the fat?

The art of In Clothes Called Fat tells as much of the story as the text. Even in her early fantasies, being thin is always equated with having pretty clothes and perfect hair. The thinner Noko gets, the more tired and haggard her face gets. Rather than becoming more pretty, she uses more and more makeup to hide the circles under her eyes.

Moyoco Anno has written an insightful tale of the ptifalls of society's shallow view of people, as well as the insecurities of those of all walks of life. Whether a top trader, or a beautiful secretary, or a lost soul, there are no pretty people in this book.

Highs: Anno shows a remarkable understanding of the insecurities - and their roots - of a wide swath of society.

Lows: There really isn't anyone to root for in this book; every last person is a broken, irredeemable mess.

Verdict: With no 'good guys' and few happy moments, In Clothes Called Fat leaves the reader with a bleak, if honest, look at society's failings.

Further Reading: Solanin

Manga Monday: When Abnormals fight, experience matters

The Survey Corps continues its campaign in the woods in Attack on Titan Volume 7.

Note: Attack on Titan Volume 7 is part of an ongoing series. Check out the review for Volume 1 here, and Volume 6 here.  Otherwise, read on!

Manga Monday: Chi's friends look an awful lot like her

Chi learns more about both of her families, and the Yamadas learn another hard lesson about having a kitten family member, in Chi's Sweet Home Volume 11.

Note: Chi's Sweet Home Volume 11 is part of a series. Check out the review of Volume 1 here, or the review of  Volume 10 here. Otherwise, read on!

Two more stories from a voice thought lost

Whenever an author passes away, I'm reminded of the Library of Dream, from Sandman. There, all the world's books that were never written, except in dreams, live. This hit me especially hard with the death of Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall series. In that moment, all the possible adventures of the mice of Redwall were subtly shifted to Dream's library. The same may happen all too soon, to another grandmaster of fantasy, Terry Pratchett.

Ever so often, though, readers are granted a reprieve and a tale or two appear. In Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler, we get two stories that have never been printed anywhere before. 

'A Necessary Being' is in the point of view of the leaders of two tribes. Tahneh, the Rohkohn Hao, is the daughter of the previous leader. Before him their tribe didn't have a Hao, a born leader with a pure-blue coloring. He was kidnapped from another tribe and crippled to ensure he couldn't flee. He was able to rise above the bitterness and hatred of those who had damaged him so and become a good leader for his new Tribe, but watching him and his broken legs showed Tahneh the true cruelty of that tradition.

Tahneh has failed to give birth to a successor Hao, and now it's become her burden to order the capture of a foreign Hao to take over after her. Will she lose heart and betray her own tribe, or will she be able to do to the Tehkohn Hao what was done to her own father?

'Childfinder' takes place in a possible future of our own civilization. Psionic ability has appeared in humanity, and the optimists marveled at the possibilities of uniting the world.

Barbara is living the reality of this new world. Hiding in a suburb-turned-slumlord-housing, she is trying to pass on the control of the psionic ability to children who would never have the opportunity for training otherwise. Very few people can see the potential for psionics in children, and it withers from disuse so quickly that most never learn to use it. Children that the organization hadn't already gotten a hold of and tainted. Children like her.

The organization that she escaped from has no one else with this talent. Eve is sent to retrieve her, to find more children for their own use. But Barbara has other plans.

These stories are from earlier in Butler's writing career, and it shows. These two stories show the potential that Butler has as an author, along with the rough edges that any new author has. Her ideas are as huge as in her later novels, but seem incomplete somehow. There are just a few more unanswered questions than she might have left later on, but they are still light-years ahead of the average short story. 

Unexpected Stories gives Butler's fans one last glimpse into tales rescued from Dream's library.

Highs: The footnote at the end of 'Childfinder' is one of the most chilling bits of writing I've read in a long time.

Lows: The slow discovery of the caste system in 'A Necessary Being' might be frustrating to readers unaccustomed to the style.

Verdict: These two tales raise hopes that more spectacular stories might be hiding somewhere in Butler's papers, just waiting to be revealed.

Further Reading: Kindred, Dawn, Kabu Kabu, The Speed of Dark

Where do our warriors go, when the war is finally over?

The alien invaders have won. By using the serotonin paths in the brain, they are able to read our thoughts and kept one step ahead of our best military personnel. There seemed to be no way to win, as the 'human population' counter slowly ticked towards zero.

Where traditional arms have failed, a genius geneticist steps in. By radically changing the structure of both the brain and the body, she is able to create the perfect warrior for the fight against the Luyten. Fifteen feet tall. Tripedal for added speed and strength. Genius-level IQs, trained from birth on military strategy, and completely without empathy for the enemy, or each other.

They are Defenders.

Within a matter of months, the Luyten threat is neutralized. Humanity's Doomsday Clock finally stops ticking down, and there is some hope on the horizon. But now that the outside threat is gone, there's a new problem to deal with.

The problem is the Defenders. Humanity has burdened itself with a race of sociopaths who are bigger, stronger and faster than humans. Now that the war is over, they don't have anything to do.

And idle hands are the Devil's playground.

Told from many points of view - from a 'traitor' who helps a Luyten survive in the rubble of a city, to one of the scientists working in the labs that created the Defenders - this is a story of an ongoing apocalypse. Just as one threat to humanity is defeated, another emerges. Humanity will have to make alliances it never thought possible and betray its own creation in order to survive.

Will McIntosh shows his deep understanding of the human psyche, both the thoughts of the individual and those of the masses. Any book with telepathic main characters would be a challenge, but with the fractured minds of the Defenders added to the mix, the book becomes a minefield. McIntosh masterfully creates both a race that is interdependent on the emotions of its group, and a race who has no concept of these feelings at all. The contrast throughout is fascinating and addictive.

Defenders is a can't-miss for fans of near-future science fiction as well as the growing fan bas base of post-apocalyptic tales.

Highs: The way that each Defender is eerily similar, yet has separate personalities, is striking.

Lows: There were mistakes made by the world governments, over and over, that made me want to scream at the book.

Verdict: A masterful piece of science fiction that should have wide appeal.

Further Reading: A Hymn Before Battle, Fortune's Pawn, Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka Volume 1, Robopocalypse

Everything comes with a price

Some people have a knack for things. Perhaps the letters of her Scrabble bag spell out the future. Maybe they can hop on their bike and find whatever it is they're looking for, whether they know exactly what they're looking for or not. 

Or their car drives them to Christmasland.

In Joe Hill's NOS4A2, some objects can help their users open rifts in the universe. Victoria McQueen, also known as Vic - or simply The Brat - discovers this when she gets her Tuff Burner for her eighth birthday. As she rides away from her parents' fight, a bridge that has collapsed years ago appears before her. On the other side, she finds the bracelet that her parents are fighting over - and a piercing headache unlike anything she's ever experienced.

Over the years, her Tuff Burner and her Shorter Way Bridge help her other lost things, too. A cat, left for dead on the side of the road. A plush penguin. Trouble.

Trouble in the form of Charlie Manx. Once, long ago, Charlie might have thought he was doing good. In fact, even now, he believes that the children he 'rescues' are being given everything they could ever want. They get to live in a land where it's always Christmas. Where they wake every morning to presents and songs and games. Where the evil parents in their lives will never hurt them again. Never mind that their teeth are replaced with row upon row of hooks, like a shark. Or the games that they play with knives and scissors and lynching trees. Never mind the mothers that become the playthings of the Gas Mask Man for no reason other than that they were trying to protect their sons and daughters from the man in the Rolls Royce Wraith.

As a teenager looking for trouble, her bike led her into the path of old Charlie Manx. That encounter ended with Manx behind bars, a conveniently untrue story about being kidnapped by him, and riding off to safety on the back of Lou Carmody's motorcycle.

But now Charlie has escaped the jail hospital. He's found his Wraith, all fixed up for him by an amateur mechanic. He has his Gas Mask Man, who only needs to rescue one more kid before he can go to Christmasland himself.

And he has his sights set on Vic's son.

Now Vic is in a race against time. His old Tuff Burner is long gone, but she's picked up a talent for motorcycles, having married Lou in the intervening years. She's going to have to hold herself together - through police investigations and her own mental illness - long enough to put Manx in the ground once and for all.

Before her son turns into one of the damaged children of Christmasland.

As with his comic book series Locke and Key, Hill tells a wonderfully creepy horror story with touches of magic and the supernatural. Everyone's actions have consequences, and using their reality-bending talents leaves everyone involved broken in one way or another. In showing us these shattered individuals, the truly good people in the story shine like beacons of hope, and the reader can only hope that they get to the end unscathed.


Highs: The side characters, like Maggie and Lou, steal the show.

Lows: The very last chapter 'Come All Ye Faithful' wrapped things up just a little too prettily for me.

Verdict: Despite a slightly weak ending, NOS4A2 is the type of creepy psychological horror full of damaged people and terrible magic that one would expect from the son of Stephen King.

Further Reading: Locke & Key, Another Volume 1, The Midnight Palace

Alexia wasn't the first Tarabotti to travel to Egypt

The growing popularity of the ebook has created a renaissance in the short story market. once relegated to transient magazines and intimidating best-of anthologies, now anyone can create a Kindle Single and release their tale as an inexpensive tidbit for the general population.

Another bonus of the new publishing industry is the freedom it gives authors to revisit past worlds. While an author may consider a series complete, she might still have a few scenes that never made it into a book, or a bit of backstory that could be told, but these bits and bobs aren't enough to warrant a novel. Instead of being lost to a few pages in an anthology, or never seeing the light of day at all, authors now have the ability to put these treats online for their fans to enjoy. 

And such is the case with Gail Carriger's The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn't, the Mummy That Was, and the Cat in the Jar.

Note: The Curious Case... is part of the Parasol Protectorate series. As it's a prequel, it shouldn't have any spoilers for the series itself, but it might not make much sense without the rest of the series. Check out the review for Soulless here. Otherwise, read on!