It’s time! Our Cosplay Fashion Runway is right around the corner. When is it? Well here you go:

Cosplay Fashion Runway
CANCELED

Cosplay is a hobby where people create handmade costumes that celebrate their favorite characters from anime, manga, television, film and comic books. Here are a few photos with examples of cosplay in action:

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The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
This book deserves 5 stars

This book is a futuristic novel about a boy named Matt who is a clone. When he realizes that the people who created him only want his death, he knows he has to escape to survive. This book really made me stop and think.

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The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson

“Kneel Before Zod!” - General Zod (Superman II)

We are all familiar with the story of Superman. The last son of Krypton falls from the sky and is raised in Kansas only to gain super powers and become Earth’s defender of truth and justice. Superman is one of the 20th century’s most popular and traditional messiah/Christ figures.

Kevin J. Anderson’s The Last Days of Krypton takes us back before the birth of Kal-El and the destruction of Krypton. The novel focuses on the lives of a super scientist, Jor-El, and a high level government bureaucrat, Commissioner Zod during the final year or so of the planet Krypton. Both have high hopes for the future of their planet that will help their fates to cross for both the good and ill of the planet. Krypton is a self-proclaimed paradise, yet its development has stagnated due to isolationism and an entrenched distrust of change. We all know before the first page that the planet is doomed (or else there would be no Superman). What follows is a tragic political drama that is a fairly gripping read, because while we know how the story ends, we don’t know how the characters get there.

That being said, I would recommend this book for advanced readers, or those who are really into Superman and comic books. A lot of my enthusiasm for this book is based a lot upon me geeking out about Superman. So if you have ever heard of the Bottle City of Kandor, or know where Supergirl is from, then you HAVE to read this book!

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Feed By M.T. Anderson
This book deserves 3 stars.

I liked the book overall but Anderson puts you directly right into the future with no dictionary so some of the words he used such as mal, meg, brag and more would confuse me when sometimes used. The plot was different but it was good. I enjoyed this book

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Godland by Joe Casey & Joe Scioli

What a wonderful graphic novel. This comic is a new riff on the Kirby Fantastic Four. Adam Archer is an astronaut that gets evolved into a superhero by a group of aliens. His powers transform his body so that it totally looks all glow-y; like he is about to explode. Not only that but he has super strength, the ability to fly, can shoot energy projectiles, and even teleport. He has an extensive supporting cast: three sisters (the supportive one, the adventuresome one, and the who looks after him), an alien ally (a giant green dog, like 15 feet big), the US government, and a cadre of colorful villains (a floating skull, a robot, and a dude in a big castle and his daughter).

This is the most fun I have had reading a graphic novel since the first hardcover of Invincible Vol. 1. It feels like anything can happen at any moment any where. The locales range from Mars to the Arctic, to New York and Las Vegas. The villains are appropriately over the top and continually challenge Adam Archer to explore the limits of his new powers. This volume also sets the groundwork for mythology of this comic universe, literally how the universe was created and its impact on Adam Archer and Earth. It’s mind boggling delightful.

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The Declaration by Gemma Malley

Dystopian novels are an interesting bunch.  They present a bleak vision of the future where some current social problem is magnified to an enormous extent.  While these books a great, and it’s always interesting to see what the world could potentially look like, there tend to be a number of cliches that arise from this genre.  The main character tends to be indoctrinated completely, believing wholly in the system they were brought up.  This is a way for the author to establish how his or her universe works.  Then comes the second main character who can see how things are wrong and together with the main character, they fight the system.

The Declaration follows this formula, but still manages to be a good read.  This strength comes from the nature of the world Gemma Malley has created.  The year is 2140 and pharmaceutical advancements in the form of a drug called Longevity allows humans to live forever.  But if everyone lives forever, we’d run out of space pretty quick.  In order to begin taking the drug, you must sign a declaration stating that you will never have a child.  You are required to make this decision by 16, and you must actively say no, or you have made the declaration by default.  The story follows Anna, who was born illegally and is considered a Surplus.  It is implied that other countries readily kill Surplus children, but England, where the story is set, is more evolved and tries to give Surpluses a purpose, training them for menial jobs like house cleaning and hard labor.

Malley is very good at slowly giving out clues about this future world.  She doesn’t spell it all out on the first page.  We learn slowly that the worlds resources are gone, and there are harsh restrictions on energy, food, and water.  Christianity appears to have been replaced with a more naturalistic religion.   Mother Earth is constantly referred to, and people seem to be afraid to disappoint her.  Surpluses like Anna are indoctrinated into believing that they are a strain on the natural order of things, that their very presence is an affront to Mother Nature.  It basically boils down to old people refusing to let go of their power, and making new generations illegal.  This is ageism taken to the extreme.  There are also hints that poorer countries are not given Longevity as freely as wealthier nations.  There is something very sad about this world.  It reminds me a lot of the movie Children of Men.  The world is just tired and in need of new blood.

The outsider character is Peter who refuses to be indoctrinated and convinces Anna that she can fight too.  Frankly, I didn’t care too much about this aspect of the story.  The world, and how it works, held my interest more than Anna’s discovery that there should be children in the world.  This may be that these are little more than cardboard cutouts of characters.  The villain is genuinely sinister, but when her backstory is given, I didn’t sympathize with her because I had already guessed it.  If Malley had made a more intriguing story set in this amazing world, I would have loved this book even more.

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Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Game is a classic within the sci-fi genre. The book is about a young boy named Ender who is chosen to go to an elite military academy that is in outer space. There he learns to become a master tactician and advances in rank rapidly. The other half of the narrative follows the academy’s commander as he converses with other offices about how well Ender is progressing. They take such a keen interest in Ender because the Earth faces a deadly threat from an alien race, the Buggers. They are secretly molding Ender into a lethal fighting machine so he can lead the forces of Earth in a genocidal attack on the aliens’ homeworld. The problem with their machinations is that Ender doesn’t want to be a violent person. He struggles with opposing forces; goodness and survival.

I read this book quickly and was pretty riveted to it. I would recommend it to anyone who really enjoys sci-fi, war, and action/adventure yarns. Appropriate for all ages.

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