Unwritten by Mike Carey art by Peter Gross SF CAREY

Tommy Taylor is a worldwide phenomenon.  The boy wizard that has repeatedly bested the evil Count Ambrosio is beloved by people of all ages across the globe, and even has a almost religious following among his most fanatical fans.  Tom Taylor is just the son of the author and coasting on his celebrity as the 'inspiration' for Tommy.  Then a woman tells him he has it all backwards.  He IS Tommy and fiction is far realer than any of us know.  Happy to write her off as a raving lunatic, Tom changes his tune when he becomes targeted by a secret society dedicated to controlling all human history and destiny by controlling the stories we tell. This starts an amazing adventure beyond truth, fiction, fantasy, or reality.

This series just keeps getting better and better! It starts as a mystery/thriller and the story keeps twisting and turning and adding all sorts of amazing new layers.  The slower start really lets you get to know Tom and watch him grow and falter. It helps build the relationships between Tom and his two companions to something of real substance. What makes the series so great is that Tom isn't just a reluctant hero, he's not necessarily even a hero at all.  He has been written to be a hero by his controlling, reality-altering father for ;the greater good', but he balks at heroism at every turn.  The book's villains are definitely capital E evil, and raise the stakes remarkably well.  However, Carey isn't afraid to upend everything and start anew with Volume 7.  The book feels epic in scope and grandeur, without ever feeling forced or corny.  It has a lot to stay about the power and source of stories and builds a fascinating and ever growing world of fiction that lies underneath our own.  You will find yourself finishing one volume and jumping to the next immediately.  You will also find yourself rereading several pages over and over, or even whole issues to relive a big moment.  This book has serious complexity and depth and challenges the very notions of what is fiction and what is real.  It does it all with a mix of action, adventure, romance, humor, and philosophy that is hard to match in comics today.  

The art took a while for me to really appreciate. Peter Gross isn't the flashiest or most detailed artist, but he really does work for this project.  He helps ground the book in a sense of reality, so when they interact with the world of fiction it feels momentous.  That's hard to do in a comic book, where we are used to impossible things on every page.  This is an absolute must read for fans of serious comics, and I think it will make a lot of fans of comics for anyone that gives it a shot.

SIDENOTE: We have volumes 1-7 and a sort of prequel called Tommy Taylor and the Ship that Sank Twice.  I'd wait to read it until you've finished Volume 6.  That was when it was published and it fits really well there.

You can find the first volume of Unwritten in our catalog here.

More Than This by Patrick Ness YP FIC NESS

"Here is the boy, drowning.
In these last moments, it's not the water that's finally done for him; it's the cold.
It is too late for him.
He will die.
And he will die alone.

He dies."

He wakes up.  He's covered in weird bandages. Well, partially covered.  He's in a strange, desolate, dried up town that seems totally empty and totally dead.  Then he finds something that cannot be. His childhood home.  The one in England. The one an ocean away from where he died. The one he left years ago after the tragedy that no one in his family will talk about.  The tragedy that is all. his. fault.  It is a dusty dead, burnt out world. A world in which he doesn't dream, so much as relive his past life in painful, frustrating detail. Since he can't really be alive and he can't really be in England. He realizes that he must be in his own personal, private Hell.  But even in Hell, there has to be more than this!  Doesn't there?

This is a tough book to review, because so much of what I love about it would reveal plot twists that should go unspoiled!  I can say that Ness has hit it out of the park once again with his deft use of realistic reaction and emotion in fantastic and seemingly impossible situations. The boy, Seth is a scared and scarred teen trying to survive and looking for a reason to survive. His doubts and frustration in the dead world he wakes up in and in his reliving his past are so well conveyed they feel universal.  I found myself rooting for Seth whether he was gripped by loneliness and despair or searching anywhere for a glimmer of hope.  Ness is able to wring drama and action aplenty with Seth just wandering around his new wasteland home, before he ever begins to reveal any of the books mysteries. For the price of one book (free because we are a library) you get a weird sci-fi (maybe) apocalytpic adventure, a devastating and harrowing look at living (and dying) with grief, a TOTAL brain twisting look at the very nature of reality itself, a beautiful and painful contemporary romance (as told in flashback), and several other wonderful surprises I won't spoil!

Young Adult fiction definitely has a lot of books where the main character has a painful past that is revealed bit by bit every few chapters until the final cathartic reveal. What makes More Than This stand apart is that the structure isn't just used to string the plot out, it becomes a part of the plot and the deeper themes of the book itself. Also, unlike some books that use this device, you never want to yell "HURRY UP ALREADY!!!", because BOTH worlds Seth is living in are fascinating in their own way.  I highly recommend this to anyone taht wants to read something truly unique.  It is going SUPER high on my Best Of list this year, and I think it will top yours too.

Check our catalog for More Than This here.

Mangaman by Barry Lyga Illustrated by Colleen Doran YP FIC LYGA

Ryoko Kiyama is not your typical transfer student.  He isn’t from Japan.  He’s from Japanese comics.  Now he’s stuck in a world that he doesn’t understand, a world that fears and distrusts him: high school.   When he meets Marissa Montaigne he falls in love and has a dilemma: go home or stay with Marissa. 

This is a great concept.  Eastern comics meeting ‘realistic’ Western comics.  Ryoko has all the manga clichés we know and love: speed lines, giant sweat drops, deformed features in response to emotion, etc.  You can see how seeing these things from a person in real life would be very upsetting.  All this would make for a fun examination of some of manga’s sillier tropes, but Lyga does more with this story.  He uses it to examine the fabric of reality and the nature of the comic medium.  This is an absolute must read for manga fans and I think non-manga fans will enjoy it as a parody of manga. 

Every You, Every Me by David Leviathan YP FIC LEVIATHAN

“A picture is worth a thousand lies.”

Evan has a secret.  He loved Ariel even though she was with Jack.  Now Ariel is gone and all Jack and Evan have is each other and their memories.  But someone else has a secret.  Pictures start coming to Evan, pictures no one should have been able to take.  Pictures that unearth memories Evan wants to stay buried.  Reality, memory, lies, and truth are all part of the same picture.

This books is unabashedly Emo truly original.  We get to see all the photos Evan is sent and that adds a lot of impact to this book.  The photographs were sent to the author and he wrote his chapters as they came in, so Evan’s confusion and slow realization feels real. The narrator’s use of strikethrough to illustrate his fractured occasionally whiny thoughts really works to get you inside his head and see how his world is slowly unraveling.  This is a very quick read with diary style entries that are brief and many pages that have a single photo or just a few lines of text.  This makes this an easy nook to fly through to solve the mystery.  The books strange design and narration style are its greatest strength and weakness.  This really feels like a love it or hate it title, which I always love.  It’s quirky, original, and a great look at a single point of view.  It really tackles some big ideas about how we are all stuck inside our own versions of how we see reality and how that can affect us.  I recommend it to anyone that wants something that will challenge them and make them think.

The Unwritten Volume 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey Illustrated by Peter Gross YP FIC CAREY

Tommy Taylor is a Harry Potteresque Boy Wizard (but Tommy’s even more popular than Harry!) that fights the evil vampire Count Ambrosio in a fantastically popular series of books, movies, videogames, comic books, and a slew of merchandise. Tom Taylor is the son of the author of said books, Wilson Taylor who mysteriously vanished years ago. Unfortunately, vanished does not equal dead and the vast Tommy Taylor fortune does not belong to Tom Taylor, so he must go to book signings and conventions for a series he despises to make a living. When an investigative reporter claims that Tom is not really the son of Wilson he becomes an object of hatred for Tommy Taylor fans and marked for death by someone claiming to eb the real Count Ambrosio. After surviving an explosion set by the count, Tom is hailed as the Real Tommy made flesh and worshipped by overzealous fans. Worse yet, they may be right as a shadowy group pursues Tom and attempts to write him out of existence.

This is a mind bending treat. A comic book looking at the very fabric of reality versus fiction written in the style of an espionage adventure, Tommy Taylor is a bold and exciting first volume. The art by Peter Gross really works for this book. It has a simple appeal with realistic proportioned characters drawn with real skill. The art has a nice understated quality that pushes the story forward and keeps you interested even when characters are just talking. The real star is the writing by Mike Carey. He’s made an intriguing first volume about a world in which fiction can bleed into reality. The book ends with Tom coming face to face with evidence that reality and fiction are closer than he imagined and leaves the reader wanting to know what happens next. It seems like the fantasy elements that are at the edges will become more and more prevalent in future volumes. For comic fans that also love literature, this book is a real winner. The book is filled with illusions to literary classics, including a supplemental comic reimagining the secret histories of famous authors that builds some back story to the secret society that is hunting Tom. I recommend this to comic fans that want something new, I also think that fans of books like Harry Potter and The Lightning Thief will enjoy it too, because it’s a fresh look at the genre and what those stories mean to fans.