cops Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / March 13, 2016

Review: The Beauty, Vol. 1

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Modern society is obsessed with outward beauty. What if there was a way to guarantee you could become more and more beautiful every day? What if it was a sexually transmitted disease?

In the world of The Beauty, physical perfection is only one sexual encounter away. The vast majority of the population has taken advantage of it, but Detectives Vaughn and Foster will soon discover it comes at a terrible cost. Now, they’ll have to find their way past corrupt poiticians, vengeful federal agents, and a terrifying mercenary out to collect the price on their heads.

Collects the first six issues of the critically acclaimed, Pilot Season winning series by writer/artist JEREMY HAUN (Constantine, Batwoman) and co-writer JASON A. HURLEY.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Creepy cover is creepy. I admit this is why I requested it for starters.

This book gathers issues 1 to 6 of this comics series, in which “the Beauty” is a STD that a lot of people go out of their way to catch. Because once you’re infected, thinning hair regrows, fat and flab disappear, wrinkles go away, and it’s like a new chance at youth and beauty. The catch? Just a slight though permanent fever. Nothing to write home about, right? Until some of the infected people start to cough blood and self-combust. Not so nice anymore.

Time for detectives Vaughn and Foster to get into the limelight and try to figure out what’s happening. They’re part of a unit specialised in the Beauty—there are some anti-Beauty/terrorist groups out there, and their job is to prevent bombs from blowing up, hostages from being killed, and so on.

To be honest, I felt a few things were missing from this comics. While the idea was deliciously gruesome, I would’ve liked to learn more about the mechanics of the illness itself: apart from the constant fever, what would possibly make people self-combust/go headexplody in a matter of a few seconds? In itself, scientifically-speaking, it doesn’t make much sense. Although the graphics involved kept making me shiver: there’s something about that black blood, those black veins snaking along slim members, those shadows around eyes that can’t see anything anymore and mouths opened on silent screams… Part of me couldn’t look at the drawings, and another apart felt compelled to look.

The story also follows a somewhat typical “cops investigating a case and finding a lot of red tape (or worse) on their road” plot. It’s both good and bad. Bad, as it makes for a not so original premise; good, because when it’s the kind of plot you want to read about (and I did), then you get what you were expecting.

I found the art in general pretty efficient: in carrying the action, in depicting the horror of the half-mutilated corpses (that black blood, I tell you!), in

The “good guys” were a little bland at first (seasoned cop with younger/beautiful partner), but I grew to like them over these 6 issues. Foster wants to do what he feels is right, even though he knows it may get him fired—and then comes a surprise of his own he has to contend with. Vaughn is a strong person who doesn’t hesitate to bend some rules when it’s necessary, and has a vested interest in this from the beginning, since she’s infected and hates it. And this is part of one of the themes explored throughout this series. Is beauty worth it when you know, every passing second of your life, every time you look in the mirror, that you’re only “beautiful” because you’re sick? Isn’t it worrying? The Beauty appeared two years ago in that universe, and as every “young” illness, who can tell how it’s going to evolve and possibly mutate? Obviously, here it’s all about beauty being a symptom, but it can easily be translated into what some people in modern society are ready to do, the lengths they’re willing to go to, in order to stay young and beautiful for as long as possible. And can they be blamed? Nobody wants to get old and wrinkled and flabby-looking. (Seriously—I’m not particularly beautiful, but when I hear someone say “only beautiful women fear getting old”, I can’t help but think “that’s not true, this fear is somewhere in each of us, though not with the same strength”.)

The authors also tried to develop their villains. It didn’t work so well for some (I really couldn’t care less about the psychopath with a mask who guts out and mutilates his victims), but it was good to see that it went well for others, like the shady CDC scientist who happens to have a wife and children, and then turns her coat when she realises everything’s gone too far and it’s her duty to help.

In spite of the few things I mentioned, I could easily enact my my suspension of disbelief here, and enjoy the art and the story. I’d definitely like to read issues 7 and beyond, if only to know what’s going to happen: the end is half-cliffhanger, half tying quite a few things, so I’m wondering where it’s going to go from now on.

Yzabel / February 22, 2015

Review: Something Coming Through

Something Coming Through by Paul J. McAuley

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

The aliens are here. And they want to help. The extraordinary new project from one of the country’s most acclaimed and consistently brilliantly SF novelists of the last 30 years.

Something Coming Through and its sequel Into Everywhere will extend, explore and complete the near future shared by the popular and highly acclaimed short stories in the Jackaroo sequence, including ‘The Choice’, which won the 2012 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. They present new perspectives on one of the central ideas of science and science-fiction – are we alone in the universe? – through two separate narratives.

Something Coming Through is set in a recognisable but significantly different near future London: half-ruined by a nuclear explosion, flooding and climate change; altered by the arrival of aliens who call themselves the Jackaroo.

Into Everywhere moves from a desert world littered with the ruins and enigmatic artifacts of a dozen former clients of the Jackaroo, through a quest across a brutally pragmatic interstellar empire, to a world almost as old as the universe.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 to 4 stars.

This novel, while predictable in parts (in a more traditional, “cop-oriented” way), raised some interesting points in terms of what to expect in a near-future, or a parallel present, shaped by the presence of aliens. Namely the mysterious Jackaroo, who showed up some thirteen years prior to the beginning of the story with shuttles and fifteen wormholes leading to just as many new worlds for humans to colonise. Worlds ertswhile inahbited by creatures long gone and forgotten, leaving only behind strange, “Elder Culture” artefacts. Meanwhile, Earth is falling prey to memes, ideas birthed into the mind of people who have been touched by ~~the Vorlons~~ some of those artefacts. And who knows how exactly the Jackaroo were responsible for this? Or their unscrutable associates, the !Cha, story-lovers who use plots to gather information used in turn to woo their mates?

Intersting, because the Jackaroo never revealed their true purpose, and because their gift was definitely a double-edged sword. Sure, it allowed humanity to recover from ongoing problems (crime, pollution), but others developed in turn, and the fifteen worlds turned into mirrors of Earth, with McDonald’s and Starbuck joints popping up on Mangala and, no doubt, other places. Crime developed there just as it did on Earth, and a lot of things and events made it clear that humans basically did to these colonies what they had done to their motherworld—perhaps worse, even, due to the fact they hadn’t had to “work hard” to get to these new places, served on a silver platter. The “benevolent” Jackaroo, in other words, might just be trying to repeat an experiment they did with other planets and will do again, some kind of sick experiment to see what the “lesser” races would do when gifted with space travel they didn’t have to develop themselves.

The name itself is also reminiscent of the Australian word “jackaroo” and its potential etmology: wandering people, watching over cattle. At least, this is how it felt to me, and what I believe the author wanted to achieve: making readers question the purpose behind the Jackaroo’s actions, all the while swathing them under layers of a thriller-and-chase plot mixed with a more typical seasoned-cop-and-rookie-partner murder investigation.

The more typical parts, as I wrote above, were a little predictable, especially Vic’s, whose background is fairly unoriginal in that kind of story. However, I liked how they entwined after a while, and how you have to pay attention to the dates at the beginning of each chapter. This type of narrative can be frustrating, as you keep jumping from Chloe to Vic to Chloe to Vic again, and are left on semi-cliffhangers most of the time… but it’s a style I love, and so I wasn’t disappointed.

On the downside, the characters weren’t that much developed. Vic is moulded on a fairly standard TV-show cop-type (divorced guy, been working for the force for years, somewhat jaded but still trying to make a difference…), Nevers and Harris are also somewhat predictable, and I would have liked to know more about Fahad and his family. Chloe’s background was definitely interesting, yet it also made her somewhat aloof and distanciated—something that stood to logics, considering what happened to her mother, only it made it harder to feel involved in her quest, as she was more carried by the plot than truly active at times. (In her defence, she wasn’t a dumb heroine, and was definitely aware of who was trying to manipulate her, and who intended to off her anyway once she wouldn’t be useful anymore.)

Nevertheless, barring the somewhat weak characterisation, I found the world described here—drop here by drop there, with some info-dumping, but never too much to my liking—intriguing, and I wouldn’t mind knowing more about it in a sequel (or in a prequel).