September 13, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Fiction, Review, Uncategorized
HLF, Hugh Likes Fiction, Romance, Sci-Fi, Time Travel
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Audiobook read by Cynthia Farrell and Emily Woo Zeller
Published by Simon and Schuster Audio
The Skinny: Two time-traveling agents begin a correspondence that will have epic consequences.
This beautifully written novella follows Red and Blue, two agents of opposed possible futures working to ensure their side wins history, as they begin an exchange of letters that will, well, change history.
El-Mohtar’s and Gladstone’s writing is lyrical and beautiful. The locations for the two agents’ missions are tiny glimpses into beautiful and compelling worlds. From neolithic labyrinths to ruined battlefields on crumbling, distant planets. But the letters themselves are as fascinating as their correspondents’ adventures. The reader watches as their exchange starts as a taunt, gradually becomes more friendly as the two begin to understand one another, and eventually become something more intimate, in letters written on plain paper, and hidden in more devious methods, in the bottom of a teacup, in the rings on a fallen tree, or the boiled water in an abandoned hospital MRI machine. Each exchange is surprising and engaging, and the reader is left to wonder what they’ll think of next, and to worry as a shadowy figure stalks behind them.
The audiobook, although short, was particularly good, which a pair of excellent narrators that give the poetic descriptions and intimate epistolary sections real gravitas. Often an audiobook is either well narrated or well acted, and finding not one but two narrators that excel at both is a triumph in and of itself.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is a confection of time travel mystery romance that will leave you aching for more, and heading back through to see how they pulled it off when you’re done. It’s certainly award-fodder, and it breathes new imagination into it’s sub-genre. Don’t miss this one!
August 13, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized
Coffin Bound, Comics, HLC, Image
Coffin Bound
Written by Dan Watters
Drawn by DaNi
Colored by Brad Simpson
Lettered by Aditya Bidkar
Published by Image Comics
The Skinny: This tale of Action and Philosophy feels like how you remember 90’s Vertigo Comics.
Izzy Tyburn isn’t just going to die. She’s going to unlive. Living in a wasteland of philosophy and barbed wire, she has become the target of the unstoppable assassin known as The Eartheater. But rather than take the fight to the killer, she’s going to destroy her own existence first.
Coffin Bound is a comic about the ways we face or avoid entropy. It is intensely philosophical, and has a 90’s Vertigo vibe, which is not surprising, considering his other recent work is the relaunched Lucifer book from last year. The story features a figure whose head is a vulture skeleton, a strip club where the dancers don’t stop at their clothes, and an assassin who refers to himself, at length, as a ‘psychopomp.’ It is quite good, but it leans much more towards philosophers than action.
DaNi’s art also feels very reminiscent of 90’s Vertigo. There’s a particular panel of her lighting a cigarette which feels straight out of Sandman. I had a great sense of nostalgia for the period in reading the book, whether that was planned or not.
Coffin Bound is the start of a strange and Existential road trip that will feel almost nostalgic to longtime Vertigo Comics fans. You can buy the first issue from your local comics shop, or get it digitally from Comixology.
July 31, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Video Games, Review, Uncategorized
Hollow Knight, Indie Game, Metroidvania, Nintendo Switch, Team Cherry
Hollow Knight
Developed and Produced by Team Cherry
Played on Nintendo Switch
The Skinny: It’s as good as you’ve heard
Hollow Knight is a remarkable achievement of an indie game. It falls into a sub-genre colloquially known as a Metroidvania, which is to say it is a platforming adventure game with an emphasis on exploring one huge interconnected map, in which the player gains new abilities to reach new areas. It takes its name from the two best-known examples, Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. But Team Cherry’s achievement is more than just an imitator. And it is worthy of standing in that hallowed company.
The game sets you as a solitary knight descending into a lost civilization of bug people brought low by a strange infection. As you piece together the mystery of what happened and your own journey’s purpose, traverse miles of twisting interconnected corridors, meet dozens of charming NPCs, and discover untold secrets, all delivered in a gorgeous hand-drawn art style and brutal difficulty.
This game is tough, and it doesn’t hold your hand, but it usually doesn’t force you down a path, either. Once you get certain abilities, there are lots of paths and secret routes to uncover. If you get stuck at one boss, you can always find a new route and go a different way.
This game really nails (get it?) its aesthetic. The color palattes for each area are fairly simple, but paired with hand-drawn and animated characters and backgrounds, this adds up to a system where it’s always easy to tell exactly where you are in spite of the huge map. This also ratchets up the tension and messes with the player as they establish mood and atmosphere. Dirtmouth feels wind-swept and desolate. Greenpath is lush and vibrant. Deepnest is dark and terrifying. In fact, Hollow Knight manages to pull of a trick even most Castlevanias don’t in that I was legitimately frightened at several points due to a masterful use of darkness, tight corridors, and downright creepy sound effects.
Hollow Knight is a breathtaking modern example of 2D action adventure games, with clever challenges, tricky bosses, and charming characters. It is available from Steam and most major console eshops, and I highly recommend it.
July 29, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized
HLC, Hugh Likes Comics, Jonathan Hickman, Marvel Comics, Pepe Larraz, X-Men
House of X #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Drawn by Pepe Larraz
Colored by Marte Garcia
Lettered by VC’s Clayton Cowles
Design by Tom Muller
Published by Marvel Comics
The Skinny: Hickman’s first X-Men book is a bold first step. But where exactly is he taking us?
For decades, X-Men comics have been firmly situated in the ‘mutant metaphor,’ the idea that mutants, unjustly hated and feared for their superpowers, corresponded to real-life marginalized and oppressed people. Notable examples include Magneto being a holocaust survivor, and the island of Genosha, an apartheid state which enslaved mutants to provide lives of luxury to their human citizens. Usually, this metaphor brings the reader in and establishes sympathy for the characters. With his first X-Men issue, Jonathan Hickman is doing something completely different.
House of X takes a much more outsider perspective. It barely spends any time at all with familiar heroes, and when it does, there’s something decidedly off about them. They are truly outsiders to the readers in a way that they haven’t been since their inception. The story instead follows a group of Ambassadors taking a tour of a new ‘mutant embassy’ established in Jerusalem. Mutants have unified under Xavier’s banner and established a new nation on the Island of Krakoa, a sentient being that was the villain way back in Giant-Sized X-Men #1. Led by Magento, and assisted by a pair of characters that were previously dead, the humans get a tour of the plant-covered building. The rest of the oversized issue are vignettes and infographics that provide background details but also further establish the otherness of this new Mutant Nation.
Xavier’s motives and endgame are still very much up for interpretation, but the whole thing is decidedly sinister.
Laraz’s art is top-notch, and the graphics, designed by Tom Muller, really add to book and establish the stakes. This is, without a doubt, a well-written, drawn, and executed book. But I worry. For over fifty-five years, the mutants were the good guys, and a direct metaphor for oppressed people. If Hickman is flipping that script, what does that say for the politics of this story, and for the Marvel bullpen in general? Marvel has always made a firm stance on where it stood on oppression, right from the beginning. With the state of the world as it is today, this is exactly the wrong time for them to soften it.
I’m not sure where this book is heading, but I can’t deny that I’m hooked. You can get your own copy from your local comics shop, or digitally through Comixology.
July 22, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized
Christopher Sebela, HLC, Hugh Likes Comics, Indie Comics, Jen Hickman, Vault Comics
Test #1
Written by Christopher Sebela
Drawn by Jen Hickman
Colored by Harry Saxon
Lettered by Hasan Orsmane-Elhaou
Published by Vault Comics
The Skinny: Aleph Null is a test subject on the run. But what is he running towards?
Laurelwood, USA is the town where They are making The Future. Runaway professional test subject Aleph Null is on his way there, as soon as they can figure out what state it’s in, and evade the corporate recovery teams on their trail. But Aleph is a self-surgery junkie with schizophrenic tendencies, and possibly an actual cyborg.
Test is a difficult first issue to wrap my head around. We get flashes and stutters of reality as Aleph wanders their way through a warped and twisted American heartland. The story plays in to the unreality, showing Aleph’s journey in disconnected panels over two distinctly different narrations. One is Alpeh’s semi-lucid narration as they make their way to and observes Laurelwood. The other are reports from the corporations they escaped from, detailing their mysterious past and trail of violence.
Hickman’s art does a great job of framing the story. Everything feels a little off and unreal, and the reader can never be completely sure what is happening, and how it connects to the narration. Everything feels a bit off, in the best way for the comic. Saxon’s colors assist tremendously in setting the mood.
Test #1 is a post-modern medical thriller that is the kickoff to something great. You can find it digitally on Comixology, or in print at your local comics shop.
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July 1, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized
Canto, Comics, Fantasy, HLC, Hugh Likes Comics, IDW, review, Steampunk
Canto #1
Written by David M. Booher
Drawn by Drew Zucker
Colored by Vittorio Astone
Lettered by Deron Bennett
Published by IDW
The Skinny: A boy with a clockwork heart ventures into a dark world in this grim steampunk fairytale.
Canto’s people live in chains. Denied freedom, identity and even hearts, they toil for cruel masters bigger and stronger than themselves. But Canto believes in two things: A fairytale about a boy who saved a princess, and the girl who gave him his name. When she is injured by the cruel slavers, he’ll do the only thing he can to save her: Leave the confines of their labor camp and bring back her heart.
A sinister but none-the-less charming steampunk fable, Canto #1 opens with a familiar fantasy theme, but plays it expertly. Booher and Zucker’s steampunk fable starts on all the right notes for a great series. The story flows around the gaps in the characters’ knowledge, the questions that Canto will have to find the answers for. It is also doesn’t flinch away from the horrors of its world.
Zucker’s designs are doing a lot of great work here. Canto and his people are little clockwork knights, and their is brutal and violent without being gory. They don’t have or lose blood, but Time. It’s a clever and occasionally devastating use of metaphor that works well on the page. The designs are all funhouse mirror, with the squat, dwarfish slaves and their towering, bestial masters. Even Canto’s face looks like a mask. Astone’s moody colors are dark but also deep and rich. The art and colors are what really elevates the story.
Canto #1 is an excellent start to a story that looks to take a critical, or at least subtextual eye the tired quest motif. I can’t wait to see how far it goes with its material. You can find it digitally through Comixology, or pick up a physical copy at your local comics shop!
June 26, 2019
hughjodonnell
Gaming, Hugh Likes Video Games, Review, Uncategorized
HLV, Hugh Likes Video Games, Nintendo Switch, RPG, Steampunk, SteamWorld Quest
Steamworld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech
Developed by Image and Form Games
Published by Thunderful
Played on Nintendo Switch
The Skinny: A lighthearted but mechanically deep card-RPG sort of set in the SteamWorld Universe.
Each SteamWorld title is a little different. From the dungeon diving of SteamWorld Dig to the Tactical gunplay of SteamWorld Heist, each is a charming and innovative little gem of a game. The latest game in the series, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech, builds on that reputation.
A fantasy RPG, SteamWorld Quest is framed as a storybook being read in the main SteamWorld post-post-apocalypse setting. Like its predecessors, this game is short but deeply engaging. The hand-drawn art style and the snarky writing work well. There are lots of little sight gags and clever bits that only really work if as a fantasy story told in a world of steampunk robots. This seems counter intuitive until you meet the first mini-boss, a black knight with a birdcage for a head.
The card-based RPG combat, which are stylized punchcards, naturally, has a good balance of randomness as strategy. Each character has a deck of eight cards which represent attacks, spells, buffs, and healing. Characters also manage items, weapons, and equipment. In combat, you have a hand of cards pulled from all three decks, and play three cards a turn. Three cards from the same character creates a combo, with a variety of special effects. During combat, you have to build up steam by playing low level cards. More powerful abilities cost steam, so you have to balance your decks to be able to play better cards. As a veteran RPG player, I found it pretty intuitive, with a lot of depth and options over the five playable characters.
At around twenty hours, the game isn’t very long for an RPG but you can go back to previous chapters to grind for items, experience, and money, or to find hidden secrets. The story isn’t very complicated, but it is filled with charm and clever little references to games like Final Fantasy IV and other old-school RPGs.
SteamWorld Quest is a lighthearted but perfectly executed take on the card RPG. It’s available for PC and from the Nintendo Switch eshop.
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June 3, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized
HLC, Hugh Likes Comics, Marvel Comics, STEM, Untoppable Wasp
The Unstoppable Wasp Unlimited Vol. 1: Fix Everything
Written by Jeremy Wihitley
Drawn by Gurihiru
Published by Marvel Comics
The Skinny: After escaping from the assassin school where she was raised and establishing a lab for teenage scientists, Nadia Van Dyne discovers that her greatest enemy may be herself.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the over-too-soon first volume of Unstoppable Wasp, I was delighted that Marvel revived the series. This book collects the first five issues of the second volume, and is even better than the first, mixing superhero action with personal drama and super-science in a way that is accessible and compelling.
One of the things that really drew me to Nadia as a character was her optimism and sunny personality. In a world filled with gruff badasses whose personal traumas made them into tough loners, Nadia relished the opportunity to finally live the life she was always denied. She was a constant delight in a grimdark universe.
But of course nobody can be happy all the time, and Nadia’s father, the original Ant Man Hank Pym, had a history of mental illness that wasn’t presented as thoughtfully or carefully as it maybe should have been. When an unexpected super-villain attack catches Nadia by surprise and puts her friends in danger, she cracks. But Whitley and Gurihiru do an amazing job in how they present and resolve Nadia’s mental health crisis, as well as the reactions of her friends and mentors. This is rarely handled well in a medium where so many rogues galleries are littered with the ‘criminally insane,’ and it is all the more an achievement that it was handled so deftly and so frankly in a comic with a YA audience.
Whitley has managed a rare comeback with a character: building on the first volume and raising the personal stakes without falling back on the status quo. That’s an easy trap for comics to fall into, and I’m glad that he not only avoided it, but vaulted it. Gurihiru’s art is a perfect fit for the book as well. Their style is fun and poppy but still has that edge to it that the book needs. This book is a must read for its hidden depths.
Unstoppable Wasp Unlimited Vol. 1: Fix Everything is available digitally from Comixology, and you can also find it on Amazon and at your local comics shop.
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June 1, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Fiction, Review, Uncategorized
Christiana Ellis, Genre Mashup, HLF, Hugh Likes Fiction, Kindle
Phyllis Esposito: Interdimensional Private-Eye
Written by Christiana Ellis
Published by the Author
ARC provided by the author
The Skinny: This serial fiction project edited into a novel crosses genres as quickly and easily as the characters move between worlds.
To me, serial fiction and genre mashups go hand in hand. This tradition goes back to the pulps, where heroic adventurers were as likely to stop mad scientists and alien invasions as they were to travel to hidden lost civilizations and battle classically inspired monsters. It continues with superhero comics to this day, but Christiana Ellis’s delightful Phyllis Esposito: Interdimensional Private-Eye brings things back around with a modern twist.
Collected and edited from a web serial, the story follows the eponymous detective as she travels between dimensions with the help of the portal generator implanted in her arm. When an elvish femme fatale hires her to track down her missing brother, however, she’s soon caught in a web of intrigue involving dwarven gangsters, malevolent AI and a clairvoyant sorceress/loan shark. And soon, it’s not just her client, but the whole multiverse that’s in danger.
Split into three books, the first is the most traditionally structured as a detective story, and is my favorite of the three. But the whole collection is chock full of charming characters, clever writing, and most of all, unexpected consequences. It’s a fun romp around the multiverse, although if the author ever continues the project, I’d love to see this crew of characters travel a bit more widely than the ‘slices’ of multiverse we get to see here.
Phyllis Esposito: Interdimensional Private-Eye is available from Amazon and is a great addition to your Kindle. Why not take a trip to another dimension this summer?
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May 29, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Video Games, Review, Uncategorized
Castlevania, Dracula Season, HLV, Hugh Likes Video Games, Konami
Castlevania Anniversary Collection
Published by Konami
Played on Nintendo Switch
The Skinny: A bare-bones but cheap and well-emulated collection of vampire-slaying classics.
Regular readers of Hugh Likes Video Games will know that I like me some vampire killing, and I was saddened by Konami’s decision to move away from making new games. This collection of eight retro games isn’t a full reverse course, but it’s still a welcome development.
The $20 digital-only collection is a grab bag of the first eight games of the series, from the ubiquitous NES titles to the obscure Kid Dracula, which was never released in the U.S. The collection features games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Gameboy, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis.
This digital collection is pretty bare-bones compared to a lot of recent collections and retro devices like the NES Classic. While it does have a single save state for each game and a playback feature, along with a few different display options, that’s about it. There’s no rewind function, and the menu is very basic.
The emulation itself feels spot-on, and is as just as smooth, and in the case of the two Game Boy entries, just as clunky as you remember. The games look and feel great on the Switch in handheld mode. It also includes a digital book that serves as a manual, but has few interesting production art and interviews.
The Castlevania Anniversary Collection is a mixed bag of titles that is a bit ephemeral, but the low price point makes this greatest hits collection a steal for classic Castlevania fans. The collection is available from the PS4, X-Box One, and Switch online stores, as well as Steam.
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