Month: September 2016

Monstress

Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900’s Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steampunk, MONSTRESS tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the trauma of war, and who shares a mysterious psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, a connection that will transform them both.

Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Monstress by Marjorie Liu

I was able to read issues 1 – 6 from NetGalley, which comprise the first volume of the comic.  For me, I find reading comics a bit different from novels.  Which I know is stating the obvious, however with novels all the pictures come out of your own head.  It’s your imagination choosing how to portray things.  With comics, the pictures are there for you, and it’s something I have to remember to pay attention to as well as the words.  Especially because with the more condensed format of the comic, the pictures are a large part of the story and can tell you things that aren’t included in the writing.  I find that reading comics is almost harder for me because of this difference.

On the other hand, comics allow you to enjoy art that enhances the story.  There are so many styles, and the artwork for Monstress is gorgeous.  The cover art combined with the title is what drew me in.  The story is dark, and can be disturbing, which is reflected in the art.  It’s also beautiful.  

The story is intriguing as well and I want to know more about Maika, and the people she’s picked up as companions.  I feel like these characters can not be taken at face value.  There’s too much going on for that to be the case.

I’m interested in keeping up with this series, but I have a feeling I’ll wait until the other omnibus volumes come out, rather than reading each issue separately.  Here’s hoping it doesn’t take too long for the next one!


four-star

Cloud Nine (#13)

  • It’s fall!  I’ve been able to wear long sleeves, even a hoodie!  
  • Pumpkin Spice!!  I’ve already had cereal, cookies, and a pumpkin spice chai.  So yummy!
  • Kenshin Part 2
  • Intervention 7 – Got to see Juliet Landau and Alex Kingston.  Woot!  Plus yummy food from Smashburger.
  • Figured out how the usb drive worked for music in my Jeep.  I don’t have a cd player, and using my phone can be cumbersome.  The usb works awesome though, so now I need to buy a physically smaller one, and load it up!
  • I made it to book club this month!
  • Figured out at least the start of a concept for NaNoWriMo.

Still getting up early…

So, two months in and my method for getting out of bed is still working.  A brief explanation – I set my first alarm to the radio at 6:05, and my second alarm at 6:15.  I have to get up to give the cat medicine, otherwise I’m not sure this would work so well for me.

I’ve also instituted a Gold Star rating.  On my Google Calendar I have an event set up and made the color gold.  I just add a day to it every time I manage to get up like I want to.  On days where I might falter a little, I get a Silver Star and change the color.  And there are now two days where I didn’t give myself a star at all.  So here’s my rundown:

59 Gold Stars
2 Silver Stars
2 Zero Stars

That first day with no stars was a holiday and I was off work, so it was outside of my normal schedule.  I gave Reki her medicine and then I crawled right back in bed and fell asleep.  Woke up around 8 without any kind of alarm clock going off and it was glorious!  And yes, that is actually the word I thought when I woke up.  The second day was this morning.  I had been at a convention all weekend, and had a really crappy Saturday night/Sunday morning, so this morning the snooze button became my best friend.

Now that I have this one thing going well I’m starting to think about what I should tackle next.  I’ve read on other blogs where people do a reboot and tackle four or five things they want to improve, but I’m not sure doing so much at once will work for me.  I think I’ll pick one thing, and get that going in addition to the getting up early.  And keep building from there.

Although I guess technically I’ve tackled two things already.  As a bonus to my getting up early I decided to tack on doing French on Duolingo.  I don’t feel that much more fluent in French yet, but it’s fun and I still enjoy the language.