Zachary Bonelli's Blog, page 91

Graphic Novel Review: “The Mark of Aeacus” Volume 1 by Zan Christensen and Mark Brill

The reviewed graphic novel contains adult conent. Downtrodden Jack picks up a guy at a bar and retreats to a hotel for a night wanton pleasures. The next morning he finds himself ill and uneasy. Suspecting he picked up a disease, he seeks medical assitance. But thugs accost him on his way to the clinic, ...

Graphic Novel Review: “Saga Volume 2″ by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Reviews of intermediary episodes in an adventure usually fall into one of three buckets: This episode continues the adventure and nothing more. This episode doesn’t appear to accomplish anything besides moving us closer to the conclusion. This episode does its own unique thing, but also adeptly enriches the established world. Saga Volume 2 falls into ...

Transitions

Hear that sound? Chirping crickets. Been kinda dead here, recently. Time to liven things up. I’ve got a lot of posts planned: an Insomnium cover reveal, a review of the second Saga graphic novel, and reviews of some comics from Northwest Press. The reason for my absence? I’ve been in the middle of a job ...

On Handling LGBT Characters and Themes

I’ve hesitated for a long time about writing this post. It’s a collection of observations I’ve been sifting through. There’s not much discussion about these topics on the interwebs (at least that I’ve found). I know that LGBT characters and situations are more prominent in fantasy than in science fiction, so if you are aware ...

The Cheapening of Life

The New Yorker released a fantastic article yesterday by George Packer titled “Cheap Words”. At the moment, [readers] are obsessed with how they read books—whether it’s on a Kindle or an iPad or on printed pages. This conversation, though important, takes place in the shallows and misses the deeper currents that, in the digital age, ...

Book Review: “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K Le Guin

It’s very rare for one to read a book at the absolute perfect moment in his life. I have read books and dismissed them, suspecting I would have appreciated them more had I read them a decade earlier. I have read other books and thought them tedious, only to gain appreciation for them later in ...

On Moving Publishing Forward: Gatekeeping

I started this series first by posting a long description of how I see the current state-of-affairs in the publishing world. I decided that analyzing the current situation was not enough. I wanted to lay out a path forward for the publishing community, so I followed that up with a disscussion about what constitutes ‘quality’ ...

Cover Reveal: “Here Lies Love” by Dan Thompson

Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Thompson. He interviewed me about Insomnium and also reviewed Voyage Embarkation. Dan’s about to release his latest book, Here Lies Love, and he’s allowed me the honor of sharing the cover reveal. When she is sold by her father, Abbey discovers that nightmares can occur when ...

On Moving Publishing Forward: Quality

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on this blog about the stories we tell ourselves in the world of publishing (self, traditional and otherwise). My central point was about two very prominent, conflicting stories circulating at this particular moment in human history. On one side, there are those who pine for the good ...

Awake (Insomnium #12) Released

Awake (Insomnium #12) is out today, completing the series. The episode is from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, iTunes and Smashwords.