One a day, plus iron

Yep, drawn by the same guy, I meant. Some of the expressions are... you can tell it's the same guy's art. That's kind of cool. You did (I checked back) mention it, but I apparently wasn't having one of my reading for meaning days. My bad. You get full marks on spotting the amusement potential, though. Good call, there.

Also, the huge and blinking neon similarity between Death Note and Hikaru no Go, for me, was the delightful and obvious appreciation of how the protagonist needs an opposite number against which to test his strength. It's so... pat. I love it. (Fanfic possibilities notwithstanding, even. I'd still love it.) I wish we got better antagonists in Merkin entertainment, but we don't. *sigh*

The novels are not all vampire-ish. The Peeps novel is, but I didn't like it so well as the other two. It wrapped up hurridly and into a neater package than I'm generally happy with in my novels. The delightful bits of parasitology in amidst the novel, though, I loved those bits. As I am also a huge fan of the boring-whaling-bits in Moby Dick, this should not be coming as a suprise. I like how there is real-world nonfiction (nonfiction that doesn't advance the plot, btw) scattered about in this text. It's a very Moby feature.

I might possibly would totally have enjoyed the nonfiction more if the tidbits of parasite biology had been selected and structured to carefully build a seeming nonsense in layer upon layer, like unto the coatings of wax and dye and wax and dye that cover a psanky as it nears completion. The general idea would have been "Where the hell are you going with this?!?" for the nonfiction bits, but they'd have to go together in a way that the reader couldn't really see. Then, see, in the last nonfiction example, the nonfiction bits would, like a psanky held to a candle's flame, resolve themselves and provide the reader (who up until this point would have been smothering under a thick coating of muddled and impervious details) with the theme of the book set forth in clear, vibrant, and amazing colors, just before the exciting conclusion of the story part of the book. That would have been sooooo cool. That would have r0xx0r3d. Unfortunately, near as I could tell, the nonfiction parts didn't do that. I may reread this in a day or so, though, to double-check that he didn't attempt to do so and just not have done a very good job of it.

(What the fuck is a psanky (http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/archives/2007_01.html)? (Scroll down to January 8 entry. There are pictures, including one of psanky-to-candle-flame.)

The other two novels (first two of a trilogy, the reading of which, for me is a bit like being a Toon with someone going all Shave and a haircut...) are about a dystopian future where everybody is born normal (ugly) and at sixteen becomes pretty (surgically enhanced to be as good-looking as they possibly can be, with the annoying downside that the medicos take the opportunity to bodge up the brains while they're buffing up the bodies). All of this, of course, is For Great Justice and a balanced and peaceful society. Or is it? The third tome-ette (Given the point size and the spacing of the words on the page, they're not really tomes even though they come in close to four hundred on the page count per volume. They're tome-ettes.) deals with the overseers of this dystopia, the Specials, the people who keep the rest in line. That'd be the book I don't have yet, so I can't review it at the moment. Watch this space for developments, though.