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Graphic Novel Review: Her Life Matters: (Or Brooklyn Frankenstein) by Alessandro Manzetti and Stefano Cardoselli, art by Stefano Cardoselli

cover art for Her Life Matters: (Or Brooklyn Frankenstein) by Alessandro Manzetti and Stefano Cardoselli

Her Life Matters: (Or Brooklyn Frankenstein) by Alessandro Manzetti and Stefano Cardoselli, art by Stefano Cardoselli

Independent Legions Publishing, 2020

ISBN-13: 9788831959827

Available: Paperback  ( Bookshop.org )

 

Dr. Jamaica Foxy, a brilliant scientist, creates Franky, an eight-foot tall gentle giant. Dr. Foxy teaches Franky life lessons, essentially raising him. Franky even calls her Mom. He loves his mother, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, and watching baseball games. Apart from his mother, Franky has only one friend in the world: thirteen-year-old Mary Shelley. Set in the summer of 1977 in Brooklyn, New York, the Son of Sam killings keep people off the streets… most people, anyway. One morning, Dr. Foxy’s path crosses that of some white supremacists wandering the streets looking to start a fight. When Dr. Foxy doesn’t return home after hours of waiting, Franky searches for her himself. What he discovers enrages him, turning him into a force of vengeance.

 

I love seeing what authors can do with the Frankenstein story. While this isn’t the first one where the authors have used Black Lives Matter as a focus, it is one that has a unique take on the monster tale. Dr. Foxy is a Black woman striving to improve her community through her science, teaching and raising Franky to be a caring, thoughtful individual. Against the backdrop of a tumultuous time in history, the authors call out the racial injustice faced by Black Americans today. The authors created a powerful story in Her Life Matters: (Or Brooklyn Frankenstein). The artwork is stark in its presentation, black and white art using negative space effectively. I would put Cardoselli alongside Mike Mignola and Frank Miller in its presentation.

 

Linda D. Addison provides a short but powerful introduction to this incredible graphic novel.  Recommended.

 

Contains: depictions of white supremacists, gore (in silhouette), violence against Black community, violence against women

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Editor’s note: Her Life Matters: (Or Brooklyn Frankenstein) is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel. 

Posted on March 31, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie

cover art for The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie

The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Trepidatio Publishing, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1950305247

Available: Paperback

 

The Cuckoo Girls is a collection of eighteen stories (three are “drabbles” and counted as one in the table of contents), eight of which are original to the collection, and includes “Abby”, a story narrated by the mother of an autistic teenage girl that appears to be an early version of the beginnings of  Lillie’s debut novel The Ceiling Man (I wish she had mentioned this in her story notes as I was not familiar with the novel). I’m glad Lillie expanded the story as the novel apparently includes Abby’s point of view, something I felt was really missing here.  In stories like “That’s What Friends Are For”, about a woman who grew up in a haunted house where she made friends with the ghosts,  and “Mother Sylvia”, which is told from the point of view of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, Lillie shows the imagination to re-vision and reverse familiar schemas, so it appears that in “Abby”, she just needed more space to express that. It’s an eerie and disquieting story as it is.

 

Doppelgangers, twins, parasites, and children gone wrong populate Patricia Lillie’s stories, from her surreal “The Cuckoo Girls” and  “In Loco Parentis”, to those, like “Mother Sylvia” and “The Robber Bridegroom” clearly based on fairy tales, and those mystical but grounded in fact, like “Notes on the Events Leading Up to the Mysterious Disappearance of Miss Lotte Clemens” ,  a fascinating story based on actual newspaper accounts. Other stories are brief but clever, such as “Laundry Lady” and “Three Drabbles Brought to You By the Letter E”, and there is commentary on the tragedies that can be caused by small town “togetherness” in “And One For Azazel (With Jellybeans), a Bradbury-esque tale about a little girl who is blamed for causing the colors of things in her town to change, and “Wishing You The Best Year Ever” about a family held responsible for the fate of a town’s star baseball team.

 

This is an enjoyable and imaginative, if uneven, collection of insightful, quiet, and disquieting, stories about women and girls trapped by circumstance, family, society, and themselves, that leaves me intrigued enough to look into Lillie’s novel. Having now seen the difference between “Abby” and the first few chapters of The Ceiling Man, I would say she’s grown significiantly as a writer and is one to watch for in the future. Recommended.

 

Contains: mention of suicide, mild gore, violence, dismemberment, body horror

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: The Cuckoo Girls is a nominee appearing on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Short Story Collection. 

 

 

Posted on March 29, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Eight Cylinders by Jason Parent

cover art for Eight Cylinders by Jason Parent

Eight Cylinders by Jason Parent

Crystal Lake Publishing, 2020

ISBN: 9781646693061

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

 

A motor with eight cylinders represents power, a strong machine that can outrun the competition with minimal difficulty.  That being said, Eight Cylinders is closer to a six, maybe seven cylinder story.  It’s a solid piece of machinery that will give readers a smooth ride to the destination, but it could have used a few more ponies under the hood to turn the story into a real road-burner.

 

This is one of those stories with little explanation for what happens: it’s a classic ‘here’s a crazy situation, how do we get out of it?’ story.  Seb McCallister is a lifetime crook who winds up on the wrong end of a shootout in a dope deal gone bad in Las Vegas.  Badly wounded, he powers out of Vegas behind the wheel of his V8 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, driving off into the desert.  He passes out from loss of blood, and wakes to find himself in a dilapidated camp in the middle of the desert, surrounded by mountains on all sides.   The camp itself is inhabited by a small group of vagabonds, some of whom have been there a long time.  When he tries to escape, Seb quickly learns that the mountains are riddled with caves occupied by a huge, tentacled monster that somewhat resembles a crazed land squid, and the squid makes mincemeat of anyone who tries to leave.  Within a day, Seb helps to convince the camp residents to make a run for it.  What follows is the inevitable Mad Max-style race across the desert, complete with tricked-out vehicles packing plenty of blasting power, both under the hood and in the form of armaments.  Seb and his new friends must outwit and outfight the monster if they want to escape the desert.

 

Everything in the story is a quick setup for the final chase, and thankfully, it’s worth it.  Jason Parent knows how to write an exciting, end of the book blast.   Complete with awesome vehicles, firepower, nitrous, and some nice creative touches with parachutes, the last forty pages are a full roar towards the finish, with all the excitement anyone could want.  This part of the story isn’t running on eight cylinders, it’s running on twelve.   It’s the part leading up to the end where the story could have used a little chrome and paint, in the form of more detail.  Little explanation is given for the backstories of the other characters, or the camp itself, or even where (or when) the camp and characters exist.  Another twenty pages or so to flesh out the beginning and middle sections of the story could have turned this one into a real monster.  Eight Cylinders is a perfectly good, exciting story, but it almost feels like a test run for what could be a much bigger version in the future.   The parts are all there in terms of character, mystery, and storyline, and the way the story ends, it could easily keep going.  The question is, will it?

 

This is certainly worth the read, and will likely leave readers clamoring for a novel-length sequel (this is only 100 pages)  There are a lot of unanswered questions in the story, and it would be nice to see where it goes next.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, mild gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on March 23, 2021 by , Reply
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