Category Archives: Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The Wet Hex by Sun Yung Shin

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The Wet HexThe Wet Hex by Sun Yung Shin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Out: June 14, 2022

This is a varied collection of poems. It includes sparse free verse poems as well as prose-style poems. There are a number of stream-of-consciousness poems that read like surreal free writing, but there’s also a narrative poem and a number of clean prose-like poems.

The poet is of Korean ethnicity, and her heritage and the experience of being a transplanted individual both feature prominently in her poems. (Though Greek Mythology is also about as common as Korea Folklore in the poems.] The poems also display a fascination with words and as well as with violence.

The poems are divided into five sections. Section three is unique in that includes the collection’s longest poem, a narrative poem, which is presented with some simple, geometric artworks.

I enjoyed reading this collection, it employs clever language and interesting approaches to verse, both among the more cryptic, freeform entries and the neater, more “business-like” poems.


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BOOK REVIEW: The Dark Room by Gerry Duggan

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The Dark RoomThe Dark Room by Gerry Duggan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Out: June 29, 2022

The MacGuffin of this dark fantasy story is a camera that shows scenes not as they appear to the photographer, but in a way that reflects the blessings or curses of the photographic subject. There’s a demon looking for the camera, and he’s focused his search on Dounia, proprietress of a cabinet of curiosity style collection of usual objects. Dounia is a plucky young woman who’s well-connected within the supernatural community.

The setting of the story is a New York that’s a bit like the London of Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere” book, which is to say normal on the surface but overlapped with a city of mythic and magic beings.

The art is clearly drawn and uses color boldly, particularly given the ghastly subject matter. Different color palettes are used for different realms, and the cast does move around among the homes of folkloric and fantastical beings. I liked the color and don’t think it detracted from the macabre content, and – it should be noted – that the tone always retains a level of humor and lightheartedness.

I enjoyed reading this comic, and thought the art was skillfully rendered. If you’re interested in dark fantasy graphic novels, you might want to give it a look.

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BOOK REVIEW: Introducing Game Theory: A Graphic Guide by Ivan & Tuvana Pastine

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Introducing Game Theory: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...)Introducing Game Theory: A Graphic Guide by Ivan Pastine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This book is meant to provide a non-mathematical introduction to the basics of game theory, using examples that make the subject readily intuitively grasped. With this objective in mind, the book does a great job. Game Theory is an interdisciplinary subject that seeks to explain behavior in strategic games, a strategic game is one in which all players make decisions that can influence the outcome of the game. Let’s clarify, using a literal “game.” In chess, it’s meaningless to ask what the best move is without considering what the opponent has done and is likely to do – i.e. one’s best move must always take into account what the other player has done. This is in contrast to games of skill or chance (like a running race or roulette, respectively,) in which one doesn’t really need to respond / adapt to what the opponent has done (or will do) in order to win.

The reason I mention using an example that is literally a game is that Game Theory is used in a wide variety of domains, from military to business strategy, most of which don’t involve “games” in the common use of that word. The book draws from many disciplines, usually the ones where the concept at hand was initially developed – e.g. nuclear weapons strategy or marketing. While the book is a bit more heavily loaded with examples from the business world, it doesn’t ignore contributions from other sectors. Many of the games discussed will be familiar to the general reader at some level from the outset (e.g. the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, Battle of the Sexes, etc.) but one should finish reading with a better understanding of ideas like payoffs, equilibria, efficiency, sequential play (v simultaneous,) and coordination – all of which are crucial to applied strategic decision-making.

If you are interested in a starter book about strategic decision-making, this one is worth reading.

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BOOK REVIEW: Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief by Maurice Leblanc

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Arsene Lupin, Gentleman ThiefArsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief by Maurice Leblanc
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Out: July 5, 2022

This is a beautifully illustrated edition of the first collection of stories featuring the fictional burglar-extraordinaire, Arsène Lupin. While some of the nine stories reference others, they each read standalone.

Arsène Lupin is the Sherlock Holmes of crime. Like Holmes, he’s extremely intelligent, gifted in observation, with deep insight into human nature, and with a range of practical skills from hand-to-hand combat to disguise, but Lupin puts these talents to use for the purpose of theft. While one might think of Prof. Moriarty as “the Sherlock Holmes of crime,” Lupin operates by a code, eschewing senseless violence, carefully targeting his victims, and returning items he feels inappropriately taken. (Mirroring how Holmes occasionally lets a [technically] guilty party go free due to extenuating circumstances.) Besides cameo references to Holmes in multiple stories, the final story pits England’s greatest detective against France’s greatest burglar (though in a way that mostly allows each to retain an unblemished record and mutual admiration.)

I found these stories to be enjoyable to read, and generally clever, but – having been forced to make the comparison due to the repeated references to Holmes – I couldn’t help but see their inferiorty to the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Lupin is more one-dimensional and fantastical than Holmes. In Holmes, one recognizes that one is unlikely to get extreme intelligence without some sort of countervailing cognitive challenges – e.g. Holmes is an addict who needs to fill his days with work lest he fill them with heroin, and for all his great observational skills, Holmes frequently doesn’t recognize when he’s offending others with his brusque nature and sense of superiority. Lupin can come off as an arrogant jerk (he recognizes that he’s being narcissistic, but doesn’t care) but it seems we’re supposed to conclude that he’s just that good. Lupin is a fantastical mix of super intelligence, preternatural charm, and zero weaknesses – i.e. a perfect being made for pure escapism.

The stories are enjoyable and the art is beautifully rendered, and if you can avoid comparing it to Sherlock Holes and take it as mere escapism, you’ll likely find this book pleasing.

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BOOK REVIEW: Bone Orchard: The Passageway by Jeff Lemire

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Bone Orchard: The PassagewayBone Orchard: The Passageway by Jeff Lemire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Out: June 21, 2022

A geologist from the Geologic Survey is dispatched to a remote lighthouse island to investigate an unusual hole in the rock, and what he finds is beyond expectation.

I must admit, I might have found this book more intense were it not for my own recent reading history. In the past year or so, I’ve read more than one book placing a stranger on a lighthouse island, and so it feels cliché. I can’t say for certain whether it’s truly an overused plot device or a fluke of my reading selections (though they were all new releases.) The lighthouse is a visceral setting by virtue of its isolation, with only an antisocial lighthouse keeper for company.

The bigger challenge for me was the decision to let the art do much of the heavy lifting at the climax of the story. This created a great deal of ambiguity, and I couldn’t tell whether it was purposeful / strategic ambiguity or whether it was just a misunderstanding of what the reader would glean from the rapid succession of stylized panels. The artist did a good job of capturing the stark and frightful imagery necessary to achieve the requisite emotional palette for the story. However, I was distracted by so many questions: “Is this meant to be real or a dream?” “Why does the island work that way?” “What is the story’s base reality?” etc.

The book’s art and premise are good (if overly familiar,) but I felt the story was given short shrift, possibly the author was more focused on the overarching story and not enough on this as a standalone entity. Long-story-short: it’s okay, and maybe as a whole the series will be more promising.


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BOOK REVIEW: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TimeThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Christopher Boone, an autistic teenager, decides he must solve the murder of his next-door neighbor’s dog, Wellington. Boone is extremely bright, but nearly dysfunctional in high-stimulation environments. He displays a number of the characteristics common among those on the Autistic Spectrum, including: constructing an exacting routine and set of rituals for living, the inability to tolerate deviations from said routines and rituals, and challenges in dealing with emotions and physical contact. The book isn’t really the murder mystery or Sherlock-style crime fiction it sounds like (though it does play on those genres and references Sherlock, a character that appeals to Christopher,) but, ultimately, the book is about the humor and drama of family life as both are impacted by the presence of a special needs child.

The book is humorous, and if you’ve seen TV shows like “Young Sheldon” or Netflix’s “Atypical” you’ll be familiar with the kind of humor – i.e. the humor of the disconnect between how neuro-atypical characters experience / perceive the world as opposed to how “neuro-typical” characters do so. Where this book does a better job than those shows is in its comfort of going just a bit further with the math and science jokes and references, presumably recognizing that readers are likely to follow the thinking a bit better than the average tv viewer. In fact, the book uses diagrams and even the rare equation to distinguish how Christopher sees the world.

What I think this book does best is putting the reader into Christopher’s shoes so that when he is doing something that most of us would consider a routine act of living, e.g. taking the subway, we are as on the edge of our seat as we would be in any hero’s journey that featured monsters and mayhem.

I’d highly recommend this book for all fiction readers. It’s highly readable, engrossing, funny, and, at times, heartrending.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman

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The Books of MagicThe Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Timothy Hunter is a young man faced with a big decision: take up magic and become the powerful sorcerer that he’s prophesied to become or live a magicless existence among muggles. The story’s structure is reminiscent of “A Christmas Carol,” except that instead of three ghosts showing the protagonist what a jerk he is, it’s the four members of the Trenchcoat Brigade (John Constantine, Mister E, Doctor Occult, and the Phantom Stranger) introducing Hunter to the good, the bad, and the ugly of the magical world. There’s much more adventure than in Dickens’s story, owing to the fact that there’re many who don’t want a powerful new magician coming on the scene, and so Hunter is being hunted.

This is a quick read and a straightforward story. It’s a little unusual in that Timothy, the protagonist, so often doesn’t have much agency, but in many ways it’s as much a Trenchcoat Brigade story as a Timothy Hunter story. Also, it’s hard to avoid with a character who is just a regular boy among powerful practitioners of magic.

There’s a lot of connection to the Sandman universe as well as references to the broader DC universe of characters.

I found it to be an intriguing story, and I thought the art captured the trippiness required of this kind of story. If you like Gaiman’s DC / Vertigo work, you’ll enjoy this book.


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BOOK REVIEW: The Romance of Reality by Bobby Azarian

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The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic ComplexityThe Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity by Bobby Azarian
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Out: June 28, 2022

This book presents a metaphysics based on the relatively new (but increasingly mainstream) sciences of complexity, chaos, and information. It boldly explores some of the major questions that consume both philosophers and scientists, such as: how life came to be, what life’s purpose is (to the degree it has one,) what consciousness is and does, and how come we live in a universe finely-tuned to generate and support life? (Particularly, if one doesn’t like explanations that are audacious and unprovable like “god did it” or “there are infinite parallel universes.”)

The book starts out in territory that is fairly uncontroversial among physicists, arguing that life comes about (and does so with striking speed – i.e. fast abiogenesis) by a process through which nature moves the ordered / useful energy that Earth has in abundance into disordered / useless energy (e.g. waste heat,) a process that runs on rules not unlike Darwinian evolution (molecules have an informational existence that allow something like hereditability [passing down of “blueprints”] and mutation [distortion in copies, some of which will make the molecule or organism more efficient at using energy.])

The book then ventures into territory that is quite controversial, arguing that life has a purpose (beyond the tedious one of moving low entropy energy into a high entropy state,) and that purpose is to be an observer – i.e. to be the first stage in a self-aware world. I should point out a couple things. First, when I say this part is controversial, I mean that it couldn’t be called the consensus view, but that’s not to say that these ideas don’t have a following among some high-level intellects. Second, I think we need people to consider ideas that might seem a bit “out there” because there is a danger of not progressing because we’re trapped in morass of assumptions. Science has quite a few self-appointed guardians who mock as pseudo-science any idea that strays from scientific consensus or from a rigidly reductionist / materialist / Copernican worldview. The author doesn’t abandon a scientific point of view, even though it might seem he does to some because he abandons the nihilistic view that’s taken as a given by many in the scientific community (i.e. that life is a happy accident without purpose, significance, or influence on the universe – and that life consists of automata, playing out programs — devoid of any kind of free will.)

I don’t know how much of Azarian’s metaphysics will prove true, but this book was superbly thought-provoking and opened up to me whole new vistas of possibility about the big questions of philosophy and science. I’d highly recommend it for readers interested in the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

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BOOK REVIEW: Iphigenia in Aulis Adapted by Edward Einhorn [from Euripides]

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Iphigenia in Aulis: The Age of Bronze EditionIphigenia in Aulis: The Age of Bronze Edition by Edward Einhorn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This illustrated play is an adaptation of Euripides’ drama of the same name. The title character, Iphigenia, is the daughter of King Agememnon and she’s lured to Aulis by her father to be a human sacrifice, but under the fraudulent claim that she’s to be married to Achilles. [Because, you know, people tend to not show up if you invite them to be murdered, but they’re much more amenable if you invite them to marry a hunky half-god.]

It’s a simple and straightforward story, but one that is never-the-less evocative and dramatic. Agememnon’s will to kill his daughter falters for a time and when his wife, Klytemnestra, scores Achilles’ support for the cause of saving her daughter, it’s unclear how things will unfold. It’s a story that encourages one to reflect upon fate and the virtue of sacrifice, while showing that different chains of causality applied to the same event can radically alter the perception of justness. When Iphigenia’s death is seen as the means to get back Helen (who eloped with Paris to Troy,) it’s vile and despicable. However, when it is viewed as the means to get the fleet moving in order to restore the honor of those assembled nations pledged to fight, that’s a different matter.

I found this play to be compelling and well worth reading.


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BOOK REVIEW: Introducing Chaos: A Graphic Guide by Ziauddin Sardar

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Introducing Chaos: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...)Introducing Chaos: A Graphic Guide by Ziauddin Sardar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This book provides a brief overview of the mathematical and scientific concept called “Chaos” (as opposed to the colloquial definition.) Chaos theory is most popularly associated with “the butterfly effect” in which small changes in initial conditions can result in large and / or unpredictable variations in outcome (e.g. the Houston butterfly that causes a typhoon in Hong Kong.) Chaos profoundly changed the landscape in many domains of science. Before Chaos, it was generally assumed that if one had a relatively simple model without random elements that one could make short work of developing predictions. Scientists working in Chaos discovered that this wasn’t necessarily the case, despite the intuitive appeal. In fact, one could have a relatively simple model without random elements that still resulted in irregular behaviors / outcomes.

Chaos overlaps with a number of subjects including the science of Complexity and Fractal Geometry. The book explores these connections, and gives the reader a basic understanding of how those subjects differ and what they share in common with Chaos. The book also draws examples from a number of different disciplines including meteorology, biology, city planning, etc. This is a beneficial way to broaden one’s understanding of this fundamentally interdisciplinary science.

I’ve read many titles in this series because they are available on Amazon Prime and provide readable overviews of subjects that are suitable for a neophyte reader. I found this to be one of the better titles in the series. I thought the author did a good job of explaining the concepts in clear, approachable language, aided by graphics. If you’re looking for a non-mathematical overview of Chaos theory, this is a fine book to consider.


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