May 29

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home by Joss Whedon

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Season Eight: Part One
Graphic Novel: 9781593078225, $15.95

The Long Way Home doesn’t start exactly where the last television season of Buffy left off, instead it starts a little past that, after Buffy and her crew have restarted their lives. In some ways, things are very different, but in others, they’re exactly the same. Each character seems to have taken a level of bad ass as they push forward in the fight against evil in their own ways.

Training the new slayers for a fight that’s longer and more eventful than the epic big bad battle season seven kissed viewers goodbye with, Buffy still has issues, and still has a ton of problems, including; Andrew, Willow’s sometimes tenuous hold on her personal darkness, Dawn’s feelings of uselessness and need for attention, Xander’s everlasting support that might just be more than friendly and a cadre of teen girls to wrangle, train and keep alive.

On a part-training mission, Buffy and some of her trainees interrupt a demon ritual and discover the human prey all have the same strange symbol carved into their chest. More than just a casual encounter, the crew get to work trying to unravel the larger plot only to be distracted by a series of villains, who like good antagonists, never seem to go away completely. So between high school rivals, still bent on revenge, the military declaring Buffy’s operation a terrorist sect, giant sized little sisters and a mass zombie attack The Long Way Home doesn’t skip a beat, thrusting beloved characters right back where fans love to see them, with the same humor and mix of horror and fantasy that Buffy is famous for.

There couldn’t be a better continuation of the Buffy-verse and with such a There couldn’t be a better continuation of the Buffy-verse and with such a die-hard audience we can hope this new, more affordable, and in some ways more flexible, series will continue for a long time to come.

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May 27

Dying to Live: Life Sentence by Kim Paffenroth

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Trade Paperback: 9781934861110, $14.95

Dying to Live, both the original and this book, the sequel, are heralded as “the intelligent man’s zombie novel” and I can’t think of a better description than that.

The second book picks up twelve years after the first as Zoey, the baby rescued at the end of the first book, prepares to be inducted into life as an adult-in-training. Between Jack, Will (aka Popcorn) and Milton (the other zombie Christ figure) the survivors have branched out quite a bit from their initial encampment in a museum. Now part of a prosperous town, with the zombie threat so far diminished that terror and survival has given way to a ritualistic reverence of the ambulatory dead, Zoey concentrates with precocious skill on the nature of their existence and surviving in a new kind of world.

As she faces danger from zombies and other humans she slices into the nature of the people around her (dead, living and somewhere between) with a painfully keen intellect. Harder-core horror fans shouldn’t be disappointed. Through the commentary on human nature there are fights, gore, moaning undead and more.

There are also peculiar things happening among the dead, including a pair of zombies who seem to remember their lives before death, and who refuse to be dismissed as mere mindless creatures of hunger. Truman, once a philosophy professor, now a dead man, challenges the town’s perceptions of the creatures who destroyed the world with his refusal to eat flesh and his joy of reading.

And because Paffenroth himself is a shrewd flayer of human behavior, there are not-so-subtle reminders that the walking dead are far less sinister than the living who embrace cruelty and savagery.

It’s very readable, smooth and insightful. Intelligently horrific and outright beautiful in places, it’s a must-read for zombie fans looking for something more than a zombie uprising story of a motley crew being picked off one by one.

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May 25

Thin Them Out by Kim Paffenroth, Julia Sevin & R.J. Sevin

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Thin Them Out is short, tight chapbook that doesn’t so much tell a story, as set up two sides of a story.

On one hand you have the survivors of an unexplained zombie apocalypse, wound tight, desperate and ready to snap, no longer able to see whether the danger comes from the walking dead or the living around them.

On the other hand you have a most remarkable zombie whose thoughts and worries go beyond food and danger into places that are simplistically beautiful.

A fast read, buying a copy of Thin them Out is an easy, enjoyable way to support the small press.

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May 21

The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey

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Trade Paperback: 9780981639093, $13.95

“I am Portia Gyony,” she repeated, and the world bent slightly around the edges.

What would it be like to witness a battle between celestial beings? Sort of like The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey. Portia is a demon hunter and a Nephilim, a descendant of human and angel. Still mourning the death of her lover Imogen, yet protected by the ghost of Imogen, Portia is trying to complete her training to become a full member of the Gyony (demon hunter Nephilim as opposed to magic user or necromancer Nephilim) community.

Instead she is pulled into a plot to over throw the Primacy, the ruling council of the Nephilim, by a dark-hearted sect of necromancers, one of which helped her keep Imogen at her side after her tragic death. Portia isn’t just a tool in the necromancer plot, she is the plot, one of the rare “Pure Bloods”, a direct child of an angel and human.

The Convent of the Pure is a fast paced dark fantasy with steampunk elements. The world is rich and enticing, the only real flaw is it’s short length. The world really could support a full length book, if not a series as Portia and Imogen are engaging, their romance a sweet up point against the dark tenseness of the world setting. Portia is strong without being snarky or bitchy. There’s no stress over her ability to “hang with the boys”, no real issue of gender roles at all, which is refreshing. The action is large scale and satisfying without being too easy or overwhelming.

Overall The Convent of the Pure is an excellent, enjoyable tale sure to appeal to readers of dark fantasy, urban fantasy and even paranormal romance.

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