7 Billion Needles Volume 1 by Nobuaki Tadano YP FIC TADANO

Hikaru isn’t much of a social butterfly.  She prefers to hide behind her headphones and drown the world out, but there’s a new voice she can’t ignore.  It’s inside her and it says that if she doesn’t help find an alien called Maelstrom hiding in one of her schoolmates than the entire world will be destroyed.  Hikaru isn’t sure what’s worse: annihilation of all life on Earth or having to talk to her classmates!

This is a really clever idea and Tadano nails the execution.  This is a stand out from the crowded “normal teen gets super powers and fights evil reluctantly” crowd.  It works because Hikaru is such a believable teen and her reluctance is more believable. Almost any high schooler knows the sheer terror of having to talk to certain classmates.  It’s way freakier than fighting an alien!  Except this alien, it’s way freakier.  This book does the ‘enemy amongst us’ idea very well.  Maelstrom is seriously and legitimately creepy.  The drive to find him before he kills again and again and again makes this a very suspenseful read.  Top that off with top notch art and some great action sequences and you have a manga must read!  Last and certainly not least I am very happy that this is a four volume series.  I love when authors can resist the urge to tell never ending stories (I am staring so hard at you right now Naruto!).  So check it out, even if you hate it there isn’t that much of it to read!

Human.4 by Mike A. Lancaster YP FIC LANCASTE

You are obsolete.

Kyle Straker and his not friend/ex girlfriend (it’s complicated) Lilly agreed to be hypnotized at their small village’s crummy talent show so their friend wouldn’t die on stage. But after they wake up there is something different about everyone in town. Kyle, Lilly, and the two other hypnotees are the only ones that can move. When they are all about ready to completely go nuts they realize everyone is moving again. But now they’re different. And when Kyle and Lilly realize how different they will find that there is no going back.

This is a creepy, touching, sad, ingenious Sci-fi thriller that will make you think and feel. It is told through a future editor’s presentation of Kyle’s audio tapes. Occasionally the editor interjects a note for his audience to explain expressions that are foreign to his society. At first this adds an excellent amount of humor, showing how often anthropologists can misunderstand cultures and academics can misunderstand texts, but as the story goes on and Kyle and Lilly’s fate is revealed it becomes another part of their alienation. Really this book is a very eerie look at what would happen if everything you ever knew was changed in an instant. Like any truly good Sci-Fi it is a way to look at our world and lives through a different lens. Lancaster shows how technology can separate and alienate as well as connect people in an incredibly chilling way. What makes the story so effective is how realistically the characters react to the impossible seeming situation: sort of wander aimlessly, trying to figure out what’s behind the strange change in their town. I recommend this to anyone who wants to read something fun, thrilling, and thought provoking. Human.4 is an amazing debut novel and deserves to be a Sci-Fi classic.