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Graphic Novel Review: The Night Eaters, Volume 1: She Eats The Night by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

 

Cover art for The Night Eaters Book 1: She Eats The Night by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

 

The Night Eaters: Volume 1, She Eats the Night by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Abrams Comicarts, 2022

ISBN-13: 9781787739666

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

 

The creative team behind the Monstress comic series have created another world for readers to visit in The Night Eaters: She Eats the Night, the first in a trilogy.

 

Chinese-American twins Milly and Billy are in their early 20s and own their own business. They struggle to keep their restaurant afloat while navigating COVID-19. They also struggle with personal relationships and life in general. Billy spends his free time locked away killing virtual monsters, while Milly comes to terms with dropping out of med school and pining for her ex-boyfriend, who she still visits. Their parents, emotionally distant mother Ipo and laid-back father Keon, are in town for their annual visit. Ipo and Keon, immigrants from Hong Kong, have supported their children throughout their lives, but the parents worry that their support has hindered rather than helped their children. 

 

To test their strength and fortitude, Ipo forces Billy and Milly to help her clean the house across the street, which was the scene of a grisly murder, and where dolls move on their own. Ipo has been hiding a deadly secret from them their entire lives. In the span of one night, everything is revealed to the twins, but they are left with more questions than answers.  

 

Liu’s storytelling is great. The family dynamic is well-written, with tension, love, and humor, and the four of them are just dealing with each other at the forefront of the story. Milly and Billy have a believable sibling relationship, with antagonistic details on display. We get glimpses of Ipo and Keon’s relationship told in a series of flashbacks. We gradually find out more about them as a couple, as well as who they really are as people. Ipo spends more time with her plants than she does with her children, something which infuriates Milly. Keon is at times insufferably relaxed about situations that would send others into a panic or downright anger. Yet, they work as a couple, and their children are stronger than they are given credit for, especially by Ipo.

 

Takeda’s artwork is something I have sought out since I started reading Monstress. Her comic panels are beautiful. There are a few illustrations that feel like they were rushed, but her skill is still evident. Liu and Takeda give us another beautifully haunting, and haunted, in The Night Eaters: She Eats the Night. The next volume will be released in 2023. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on March 4, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, foreward by Lisa Kroger

Cover art for Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith

Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, with a foreword by Lisa Kroger.

Black Spot Books Nonfiction, 2023

ISBN-13: 978-1645481300

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

I read an uncorrected ARC of this book.

 

Unquiet Spirits is a collection of 24 personal essays by women across the Asian diaspora, grounded in the authors’ family history, relationship to their culture, and the supernatural.

 

One of the takeaways from reading this is that the Asian diaspora is far from monolithic. Each of the authors has a distinct background and set of circumstances: one certainly cannot speak for all.

 

Some of the authors include Nadia Bulkin, who is Javanese-American, Geneve Flynn, who is a Chinese-Australian born in Malaysia, Rena Mason, who is a first-generation immigrant to America of Thai-Chinese descent, and Tori Eldridge. who was born in Hawaii and is of Hawaiian, Korean, and Norwegian descent, all of whom approached their essays differently.

 

The diversity of the authors and their choices of what each individual focused on is what really drew me in. That I read almost 300 pages in tiny print on a PDF is a testament to the quality of the writing.

 

I learned a lot from these essays: in Lee Murray’s essay on displaced spirits I learned that Chinese immigrants to Australia expected to be returned to China for burial, or become hungry ghosts, and from Nadia Bulkin’s essay that the terms “amok” and “latah” originated in Indonesia, to name just a few. The authors wrote about growing up feeling out of place, feeling unwilling or unable to meet expectations about filial duty, marriage, and motherhood. They wrote about hungry ghosts, fox demons, and yokai
They wrote about finding and using their voices.

 

I read this a few essays at a time. There’s a lot to think about in each one, so I think that’s a good way to approach this book. I highly recommend taking the time to do so.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 7, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Women in Horror Month: The Year I Flew Away by Marie Arnold

(  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

The Year I Flew Away  by Marie Arnold

Versify, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-0358272755

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Ten-year-old Gabrielle has left her home, family, and friends in Haiti to live in America with family she barely knows. Arriving in New York City in the winter, she is being bullied, having a hard time learning and understanding English and fitting in. She knows better than to trust a witch, but determined to be accepted, she accepts three slices of mango from the witch Lady Lydia. Each piece Gabrielle eats will grant a wish, but take something else away.

Gabrielle is a character who squeezes everything she can out of life. At the beginning of the book, she is mischievous and playful, active, curious, imaginative, loving, strong-minded, and brave. Marie Arnold sets her story to be descriptive of all the senses: flavors, textures, colors, and smells.  As much as Gabrielle loves her home, there is still poverty, hunger, and violence, and her parents, unable to get papers for themselves, decide to send her to America on her own, to stay with her uncle’s family. The qualities that serve Gabrielle well in Haiti, though, aren’t appreciated or apparent in New York City.

When she meets the witch, Lady Lydia, Gabrielle is wary, but after turning Lady Lydia away several times, Gabrielle finally decides she wants to belong enough to accept the consequences. Lady Lydia warns Gabrielle that if she eats all three pieces of the mango, she will have to give her essence to Lady Lydia. Gabrielle wishes for perfect English, and gains friends (Carmen and a talking rat named Rocky) but she also loses understanding of her home language, Haitian Creole, meaning she can no longer speak to or understand her family. What will the next wish take away? Gabrielle, along with help from her friends, must save herself and her family from Lady Lydia and figure out how to balance fitting in as an American with pride in her Haitian identity.

Arnold does a really wonderful job depicting the varying characters in the book, and addresses skillfully tough issues like racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. She presents a rounded picture of Gabrielle’s aunt and uncle, Carmen’s large family, and even the girl who bullies her. The tricky Lady Lydia is dramatically and vividly depicted, as is her nearly completed and disturbing spell. This is an entertaining, thoughtful, witchy, #OwnVoices book for middle grade students, and although the protagonist is a little young, could also be enjoyed by middle schoolers. Highly recommended for ages 8–12.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on February 7, 2021 by , Reply
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