I want to review Isolation Play, and give it a full in-depth analysis because it’s an interesting novel that deserves to be broken down. But I can’t write a review without giving away major spoilers. I just can’t do it. Trying to review it that way dances around the issues and doesn’t do the book justice. So here’s the deal. Follow these simple steps, and together we’re going to give Isolation Play a great review.

1. Buy the book
Do it. It’s good. I swear to you it is. Read it as soon as you can.

2. Come back here and tell me what you think
Let’s start a discussion. I will respond to every single comment in this article.

That’s it! Easy, right? A lot of you preordered Isolation Play, so telling you it’s good and you should buy it is a moot point (I can say that you won’t be disappointed). But for those that haven’t bought it yet, go get it! Whether it’s at Further Confusion this weekend, on the Sofawolf Press site, or in ebook format (but not fucking pirating it!).

I’ll see you back here soon.

Anyone who’s ever been a teenager knows that those years are full of awkward changes, and not just in a “Peter on The Brady Bunch” way. You’re starting to become an adult, but you’re not there yet. Your relationship with your family starts to warp dramatically. You have a really tough time figuring out what you do and don’t want.

Some of us have even more drastic changes that we go through. In Bait and Switch, our protagonist Fenton Cobbler has to cope with the fact that he’s turning into a cartoon fox.

This isn’t your typical furry book set in a world populated by animal-human hybrids; instead, this is a world where humans live alongside actual cartoons (picture Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and you have exactly the right idea). The twist: the whole toon thing is a fairly recent development, and the toons themselves don’t just spring out of nowhere—regular people turn into them.

The whole toon thing is the story’s obvious LGBT parallel (and admittedly so). A few years back, Fenton’s best friend Benny turned into a cartoon rabbit, and while the rest of their crowd all turned their backs on him, he and Fenton are still good friends. There’s the worry, of course, that continuing to hang around with Benny will cause him to turn into a toon, as well, leading into the societal debate as to whether becoming a toon is something that’s an innate part of you, or just a choice that you make.

To further complicate things, Fenton’s father is spearheading the anti-toon movement. A whole lot of people are riled up by toons flaunting their antics in public (and, much like the real world anti-gay movement, most of the reasons they cite are unfounded B.S.), whereas other people find the whole toon thing charming and harmless. There’s even a subculture of people called “painters,” who paint themselves up to look like cartoons and hang with the toon crowd, resulting in something that’s equal part fursuiter and fag-hag.

The story itself is fairly straightforward coming-out material: Fenton in slowly becoming a fox, he’s in denial about how much he truly wants it, and he’s afraid of disappointing his anti-toon father. A small number of friends try to convince him to just give in and be himself, while the rest adopt an attitude of, “It’s cool if you are, but it still weirds me out.” Also, a close family friend runs a program that attempts to “Realize” toons back into humans, though the results are less than reassuring.

For the most part, the whole “toon” thing works pretty well from a narrative standpoint, though the analogy isn’t a perfect one, and the way it fits in with the setting isn’t completely flawless. Even as far as a third of the way into the book, the details on how Toon and Real interact are still subject to further explanation, and in the end, it’s still not completely clear if the toon world exists alongside the real world, or in its own pocket dimension, or possibly both. It is pretty fun, however, and it’s clear that the author has a lot of passion for “old-fashioned” cartooning, which isn’t something that you see much anymore.

Perhaps the most glaring thing is the way that toon antics are handled. The book makes it blatantly clear that toon-style “gags” are both their equivalent and substitute for sex. Sometimes it’s played off innocently, but even the characters still maintain that that’s what it is. This leads to the occasional disconnect, such as in one scene where two toons force each other to (harmlessly) swallow grenades in the living room in front of their human friend, and are then completely surprised by his shocked and disgusted reaction at their having effectively having had sex right in front of him, after it’s already been established that that’s basically what they just did. Also, the main point raised by the anti-toon brigade isn’t that they want to ban toons altogether, just that they don’t want them to be performing gags in public—I still can’t tell if that’s an unflattering portrayal of gay pride, or a brilliant bit of social satire about homophobic fears.

(Also, for some reason, whenever an example of a gag is brought up, nine times out of ten, it involves grenades, which makes me wonder if there are people with a grenade fetish out there.)

Still, in the end, the narrative is a solid one, and the logical inconsistencies that are bound to arise from such a fantastical premise don’t detract much from a pretty poignant story. In particular, the resolution of the main plot is quite satisfying in its non-cheesiness. Folks looking for a unique take on a coming-out story could do worse than to pick up Bait and Switch, especially anyone who might currently be dealing with sexuality or gender-identity issues in their own life.

I have to admit that what hooked me on this book was the book video. I’d read Catherynne Valente’s Palimpsest and enjoyed it, but the myth of Prester John–which I’d never heard of–was really interesting, and Valente sells it well in her video. With Star Wars and comic book figures.

In brief: Prester John is the supposed ruler of a fantastic kingdom which includes the Fountain of Youth, fabulous creatures, and untold riches. A letter, purportedly from him, was sent to the Emperor Manuel I of the Holy Roman Empire. It circulated throughout Europe and fired up imaginations, sparked quests and adventures, and began many religious arguments–Prester John was supposed to be descended from one of the Three Magi, and was a Nestorian Christian (they believed that Christ was a mortal man and that the spirit of God was a separate part of him, to over-summarize it).

So: we have a mythical kingdom that has inspired men for centuries, a sort of Dark Ages version of Shangri-La or El Dorado. And how can an author possibly do this justice?

This is only book one of three, but so far, Valente does an admirable job. In her hands, Pentexore, the kingdom of Prester John, has an element of wonder that is rare in modern fantasy. We expect dragons and wizards; Valente gives us blemmyae and panoti. She takes the various myths of the Prester John stories and weaves them together into an enchanting world where there really is a fountain of youth, where strange creatures live peacefully side by side, where the demons Gog and Magog have been imprisoned, where the ground is so fertile that anything buried in it will sprout a tree: beds, dead bodies, and books.

It is to a tree of books that the narrator of this tale, Brother Hiob, is brought by a mysterious woman in yellow. From the tree, he takes three books, which turn out to be Prester John’s own story of how he came to Pentexore, the story of Hagia, the blemmye who becomes his wife, and the story of Imtithal, a nurse to three royal children whose tale has become famous throughout Pentexore. Through Prester John’s eyes, we see the mystery and wonder of Pentexore; through Hagia’s, we see Pentexore’s bemusement and attempt to integrate Prester John into their traditions; through Imtithal’s, we come to understand the history of the land and how its traditions came to be.

Having reached this land of wonder, Prester John attempts to integrate it into his Christian mythology, with varying degrees of success. His quest in this first book is to find the tomb of Thomas Didymus, who supposedly came to Pentexore and died there. That quest carries the story through the first book, but it is really impossible to convey in a short review the sense of beauty and wonder that infuses every page of this book. For a furry audience intent on furry characters, there is plenty to love: a gryphon named Fortunatus who gives wise advice and a red lion named Hadulph who loves Hagia are among the wondrous creatures we meet.

Valente herself is (according to various bios) pretty familiar with various types of fandom groups, though not specifically the furry fandom. But the culture of Pentexore reminds me in some ways of the culture of fandoms in general: diverse, open, accepting to a fault, and fairly unashamed about sex. Into this mix she throws Prester John, the symbol of the establishment, trying to fit the land and its people into the preconceptions he has rather than accepting them as they are. The blemmyae are people who have no heads; their eyes are in their chests, where nipples would be, their mouths in their navels. The women therefore must bare their breasts, of course, and this disconcerts John to the point that he views them as sinful and avoids talking to them. But of course, it is with these most strange of creatures that John eventually falls in love.

Habitation of the Blessed is volume one of a trilogy, and while it tells a fairly complete story, it also leaves the reader anxious to find out what happens next. The tension of the story does not suffer from knowing the eventual end, not one bit. It is a lovely, beautiful story that leaves the reader with a lot to think about, and I would recommend it to any lover of modern fantasy.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you liked Heathen City Volume 1: Always on the Run. It had action, it had suspense, it had a lot of gay sex. It even ends on a cliffhanger! So you wait a year for Volume 2: Paved with Bad Intentions, to find out what happened to all these characters you’re interested in, only to find out that the second issue is going to be all flashbacks and origin stories. Well, ok… I mean at least Malloy is in it a bit, even though the story takes a very different turn, going from a shallow, but action packed conspiracy thriller to an overly complicated supernatural tale.

So now it’s 2010, and Volume 3 is finally out, and you’re going to find out what destroyed that city. Or maybe what was up with those cowboy ghosts. Hell, at the very least we’ll find out what happens to the protagonists that have been missing from the entire second volume.

Oh wait, no. Nevermind. None of those things happen. And here are no less than 12 new characters for you to wonder about.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this story is not near as interesting as the author thinks it is. The real strength of these books are the characters, but they never quite get the treatment they deserve. There’s only so much ham-fisted dialogue I can stand before I begin to feel ill. For me, it was when the panther, who is Italian I guess, really hammers in that he is both a tough-as-nails cop, and bilingual, with a thank you that reads like a parody of every bad cop film: “Molto-fucking-bene.”

Author Alex Vance has a nasty habit of raising questions and never answering them. Vance has said in interviews that he’s teasing the story out on purpose, but this is absolutely the wrong way to do it because it looks like he’s confusing vagueness for subtlety. Every page reads like he made it up on the fly. Twists and betrayals and some crazy-ass shit are thrown in here, but I still don’t know what the motivation is for anyone, even after an entire volume that tried (and failed) to provide exposition for the major events of the story.

Malloy is really the one character I can do without. He’s one of the most egregious Mary Sue characters in literature. At one point in the story (spoiler alert, kids!), Malloy realizes he can’t carry all his friends out of a building about to explode. It’s totally set up for Malloy to lose someone he cares about, the first tragic death of one of the heroes. Then on the next page you find out he managed to save them all anyway, and even had time to write a mean note to one of the villains. Nevermind that one of said friends seemingly died from being riddled with bullets 10 seconds prior. Nope! He survived somehow.

This has been an unfortunate motif through the entire series. Vance sets up these “How will Malloy get out this time?” situations, then he just breezes through it, no sweat. It makes him boring to follow because he’s apparently invincible.

But what makes Joker to the Thief even worse is that Malloy doesn’t really get out of shit. He pulls out some grenades in Volume 1, ends up killing dozens of people (cause he’s a bad dog, get it?), get’s rescued by somebody, gets sold out, then gets captured by the very same people he tried to escape at the end of Always on the Run. Plotwise the story hasn’t progressed an inch, and none of these new characters got enough to development for me to figure out if they’re important or just throwaway side characters.

I haven’t even mentioned how off the rails the story gets with the main villain and his mom. Actually is Caufield even the main villain? Who the fuck knows! It’s clear that Vance just wanted to write a story about him, though, which makes sense because he’s the only character with any development. That alone automatically makes him the most interesting character in the series, and I actually found myself getting intrigued by him. The supernatural element gets spiked up to a serious degree, and it makes the story go a bit too crazy. Make that a lot too crazy. Honestly if I could have Vance answer any question about his story it would be, “How did Caufield’s ghost travel in time to kill his mother and take her through alternate realities, then merge with her soul then travel in time again and do it all over as a single hermaphroditic entity?”

I’d also throw in, “WTF dude? Seriously.”

If these books were coming out every couple months, this ridiculously drawn out plotline would just be annoying, but for an annual series, it’s unforgivable. Volume 2 was already really annoying in that it about faced, so this was Vance’s chance to get the series back on track. The fact is, the entire graphic novel can be summed up with “Malloy gets captured, but escapes again. Caufield dies, but then doesn’t”.

The book is illustrated by a team of 14 talented artists of differing scales and styles. Each of them illustrates a different part of the narrative thread, or sometimes a splash page. It’s jarring to keep turning the page and have the art style significantly change, and I felt like I wasn’t able to fully appreciate each artist because I kept having to switch around every time a scene changed. Still they all do a good job, and I wish it was easier to figure out who did which part because some of the art in here is very good.

At this point, my professional advice to readers is to abandon ship, unless things turn around drastically. My advice to the author is to take this story, sum it up in, oh, eight pages, and really work on tighter storytelling. Figure out who the protagonist is (Owen, Malloy, Italian Stereotype Cop? …Caufield?), and work on strengthening the core characters. Figure out the end game. Write one more volume, stop wasting our time, and just finish the god damn story.

If there’s anything my partner and I have learned from repeated visits to comic conventions, it’s that there are a whole lot of comics out there featuring animal-people that do not identify themselves as “furry” because the creators don’t. We’ve long been aware of Kazu Kibuishi’s beautiful and charming webcomic Copper, the story of an adventurous boy and his more cautious canine companion (also available in collected form from Scholastic—just sayin’). A few years back, we picked up the first volume of Kibuishi’s new story series Amulet, and were hooked.

Amulet is the story of Emily and Navin, who are moving with their mother to an old family home after the death of their father puts the family in financial stress. The house was the property of Emily’s eccentric great-grandfather Silas, so it’s not long before the kids discover an old workshop where Silas built his many toys. And it’s not much later before a creepy monster that looks like the offspring of an octopus and a lamprey swallows their mother, leading them back through a magical passage in the house’s basement to a strange world.

If it weren’t for the odd amulet Emily found in the workshop, the kids would not have survived their fight with the octolamprey (technically called an arachnopod). But the amulet speaks into Emily’s mind and gives her the power to fight off the creature, if not to free her mother. The amulet then leads them to a house and a strange collection of friends, and the quest to recover their mother becomes something much greater.

The furriest thing in volume 1 (“The Stonekeeper”) is a stuffed pink rabbit named Miskit, who’s been built by Great-Grandfather Silas to be Emily’s companion and guide. But in volume 2 (“The Stonekeeper’s Curse”), the kids arrive at the city of Kanalis, and meet its inhabitants, who, Miskit explains, “are very slowly being altered by an ancient curse. It is what gives them the appearance of animals.” Emily says how terrible that is, and Miskit replies, “I don’t believe they see it as anything quite so negative. This curse has affected them for so many years that the new generations see it as simply a fact of life.”

And yes, the book is full of animal-people. Mammals, birds, even mollusks and other, odder creatures. But it is not spoiling anything to tell you that the most important one is a fellow named Leon Redbeard, who is a fox (he’s on the cover, see, not just of the second book, but also of the third, “The Cloud Searchers”). He understands the power of Emily’s amulet and knows much more about the shadowy figures now hunting her because of it.

Even without the furry element, these books would be recommended. Kibuishi has a good sense of storytelling and an even better sense of art and design. His style is a lovely, simple fusion of Japanese and European comic styles—think Moebius drawing manga. The simplicity of the characters makes them appealing and distinctive, and although his art tends to simplify, Kibuishi is certainly capable of rendering lush, gorgeous backgrounds.

The coloring really stands out as well. Like the art itself, it’s deceptively simple. Kibuishi is a master of light and shadow, in which even the simplest panels take on life. Though the story is worth reading, I often found myself just flipping through the comic to look at the art in some of the more detailed panels.

And the story complements the art well. Emily’s rapport with her family is shown very nicely in a few pages, and although her story is somewhat reactive at the start (her mother is kidnapped and she must give chase), Emily is given plenty of choices to think about and make along the way. The amulet promises power, but makes no secret of its price (though it does not tell the whole story all at once, of course). And the mysterious stranger stalking the children as soon as they arrive in the new land has his own story, which proves to be intertwined with theirs.

Amulet is accessible to children, but the stories are complex enough to be enjoyed by adults, too. If it takes a heroic fox to get you to look at the book, so be it. You won’t be disappointed.

(You can still find Copper online, as well as Kibuishi’s other projects, at http://www.boltcity.com/. )

Even by themselves, the terms “amateur,” “adult,” and “furry” can all give one pause when it comes to fiction; when all three apply to the same work, there can be even more reason for hesitation. Still, when it’s only a mere ten bucks to see whether someone’s debut novella is any good, it can be worth it to gamble from time to time, and in this case, for the most part, that gamble has paid off.

Basecraft Cirrostratus tells the story of Elor Kaya, an esteemed professor who is wanted for sedition and indoctrination against a totalitarian regime. Fleeing the country with the secret police hot on his tail, he escapes into self-imposed exile aboard the titular Basecraft Cirrostratus, a massive flying machine that operates in international airspace. Once there, he seeks out the only connection he has left: Vinz, his ex-lover from a decade prior.

Problem is, Vinz doesn’t want anything to do with Elor anymore, having moved on both personally as well as romantically. Instead, Elor is forced to turn to the organized crime syndicate that acts as the true power within the decks of the Basecraft Cirrostratus, which, as it turns out, is home to many a political refugee aside from Elor.

The plot itself is actually quite solid and very breezy. The pacing is good, with events never dragging and the story never going off the rails. Lamar clearly has a good handle on the setting, and the political backdrop and behind-the-scenes machinations play very well into the events of the book as they unfold. Things get a little heavy-handed at some points, but only very occasionally, and it’s never bad enough to induce eye-rolling. The ending lacks some emotional punch simply because the emotional framework didn’t have time to develop thoroughly enough during the course of the plot, but the plot itself does have an arc (as do the characters, to be fair). On two notable instances, dumb luck sees things through where it would have been preferable to have direct action on the characters’ part, but for the most part, the plot itself stays together fairly well.

When it comes to amateur writers, one of the biggest pitfalls one usually comes across is the author belaboring points too much, or taking too long to say what needs to be said. Here, though, I had the opposite problem: much of the time, I wanted the author to slow down and take some more time to build on things, especially as they related to the characters and their relationships. For example, there’s a love triangle that serves as an emotional focus for much of the story; I definitely bought into one of the relationships, but not the other—we’re told that they’re in love, but it never really comes across on the page. A bit of a textbook example for the caution of “show, don’t tell,” which might have been avoided if more time were taken to develop things.

This is also an adult story, with the erotic aspects being entirely male/male. Sex, though, happens on page as something that’s important between the characters, and (with one marked exception near the very end) it’s never gratuitous, and it serves itself as part of the story and not a goal of it. Most of the sex scenes are actually pretty tasteful, and, like much of the rest of the book, never slow things down at the expense of the plot.

The best thing I can say about the book is that it’s very cinematic. With the right special effects (and maybe a little less on-screen sex), this would actually make a fairly decent action thriller flick, the kind you watch with a big tub of popcorn without needing the story to shatter and rewrite your world.

In the end, Basecraft Cirrostratus bears some hallmarks of amateur writing, but when taken as a whole, it does more things right than it does wrong. It’s good—not great, but certainly not bad, and Lamar certainly shows promise for future offerings. If it were maybe half again as long, with some more time spent making some of the character relationships a little more believable, and if the point of view were a bit tighter (it gets kind of loose in some points), Basecraft Cirrostratus could have been better. Still, as-is, if you’re the kind of person looking for a dieselpunk action thriller and don’t mind some gay sex and relationship drama thrown in along the way, you could do worse than check this book out.

The Peculiar Quandary of Simon Artyle is the second in FurPlanet’s line of Cupcakes novellas. The Cupcakes series are intended to be “short and sweet” novellas, and for better or worse, this fits the bill. Those familiar with Kevin Frane’s longer works are likely expecting a whirlwind of action, political machinations, subtle manipulations, and a healthy dose of sturm und drang, but if that’s what you’re looking for here, you’ll be disappointed. The stories contained within are both fluffy and sweet.

I say stories because the title of the novella is a bit of a misnomer; it’s not really a novella, but a binding together of two tangentially related short stories, the eponymous “Simon Artyle” being the headliner. The second story, “Changes for the Better,” was originally published in New Fables, but it shares the setting, so it’s included as a bonus, and presumably to pad out the book.

“Simon Artyle” is the story of a somewhat disconnected wizard and his attempt to maintain his relationships with, and eventually choose between, a young vixen he is courting, and his middle-aged raccoon apprentice. The story opens with a rather dense narrative style crammed chock-full of parentheses; it serves well to set the stage, but is a bit forced, and so when it disappeared into Frane’s more comfortable prose by the third page, I wasn’t sad to see it go. The tale dithers a bit in a kind of courtship romance until magical things begin to happen, and this is where the story really becomes interesting. Artyle is disconnected from everyday emotion, and largely unflappable, so his mild-mannered, disaffected way of dealing with extraordinary circumstances, and his attitude toward his two much more affected objects of interest, serve to keep the story whimsical, but also prevent it from having much weight. Nonetheless, the aforementioned quandary itself is interesting, and I found myself reading primarily to see how it would be solved. The story shines most when focusing on its more magical elements, and when Simon is drawn out of his comfort zone and forced to deal with the conflicts in his life.

“Changes for the Better” is set in the same world as the first story, and passing references are made to those characters, but otherwise it is its own beast, and deals with Vanessa, a haughty weasel sorceress living alone in a tower in a rural town. The story revolves around her interactions with a raccoon who asks her to create a companion for him. She apparently loathes him, and seems at first glance to be motivated to help him by boredom. I found resolution to this story a bit iffy; while on subsequent rereads the ending is seeded, it didn’t feel like the surprise at the end was entirely earned.

The two stories do suit each other well, similar in theme, subject, and tone. Frane tells them using his easy, comfortable style that allows you to slip right in. He knows the stories he is trying to tell, and tells them well. His characters are distinct, recognizable, and maintain clear and persistent voices throughout, and his plots compel you to read through to the ending to see how everything turns up. But this Cupcake is a bit too sweet and light for my tastes. It may be a nice follow-up to a meatier novel, but on its own, I found it a bit cloying.

One of the things I like about New Fables as a series is that the stories within are not strictly “furry”, nor are they explicit. Many of them touch on some very adult themes, but it’s the kind of book you could give to a family member or friend to ease them into “that weird animal thing that you’re into”. The Summer 2010 collection keeps up the tradition, and has the added bonus of featuring some of my all-time favorite stories ever printed in these books.

The list of names inside this year’s Fables is a mix of familiar faces and newcomers. Whether it was serendipity, or some really clever planning on the part of the editor, it turns out that the two names I recognize also have the two longest stories in the book, which serve as bookends for the shorter content between. It also happens that these two stories, – “War Dog” by Malcolm “foozzzball” Cross and “How the Schoolteacher Got His Song” by Ryan Campbell – are the highlights of the collection. Both authors are adept a using humorous tones throughout stories that are largely heartbreaking or melancholy. Cross’ tale of a young canine soldier trying to forget his training and live a normal life is an interesting psychological sci-fi story. Campbell’s ironic old west parody of Native American folklore is crammed full of sardonic wit. These two stories alone are reason enough to pick up the collection.

The other stories in New Fables are also very good, and equally varied in terms of topic and tone. CM Cooper’s glimpses into the minds of the horses at Napoleon’s most famous battle is an interesting mix of history and fiction. Steve Wade’s story of utmost loyalty even after death is touching. And A Merc Rustad goes the mythology route, bringing an exciting, violent fantasy tale to the table. There’s even a poem in the middle, serving as a literary intermission between the halves of the book. All of the stories are well told, though Cooper’s is a little jarring after one of the longer stories, because it’s more of a series of excerpts. And the ending to Rustad’s labyrinth epic leaves something to be desired. But honestly those are minor quibbles.

I keep urging readers to demand more of their writers, to raise the bar for the quality this fandom produces, and New Fables proves that it’s not an unreasonable request. This is a well crafted book full of very talented authors, many of whom have had other things published. If you’re unfamiliar with the names, pick the book up, and use it as a starters guide for people to follow.

Few modern authors have the talent of blending the classical with the modern that Neil Gaiman does. In Odd and the Frost Giants, he melds that talent with the not inconsiderable feat of writing a good children’s book. Finally, he adds that rare gift, writing a book with a fox in it*, to make a delightful little tale.

I grew up on Greek and Norse myths, and so, apparently, did Gaiman. He’s invented a little one here, in which Thor, Loki, and Odin (the Big Three of Norse mythology) are transformed into animals and cast out of Asgard. The longer they stay in animal form, the more the animal nature will take them over. Enter Odd, a staple hero of children’s books, a young man who isn’t understood by his community. He’s too quiet and introspective to be a good Norseman (shades of How to Train Your Dragon), and his penchant for taking long, solitary walks in the woods has left him with a permanent limp following an accident in which a tree fell on his leg and shattered the bones.

One winter seems to go on forever, and the Norsemen, trapped in their lodges, become more and more edgy and belligerent. Odd decides it will be more peaceful out in the woods, even if it is still winter. In the course of his travels, he meets a fox who, curiously, entices him to follow it to a bear with his paw stuck in a tree, surrounded by angry bees. Odd sees the problem immediately, and decides that the animals seem non-threatening enough that it’s worth taking the chance to free the bear. Not only do they not kill him, they follow him to an abandoned woodcutter’s cabin he knows of. He invites them inside and they stay the night.

In the middle of the night, Odd wakes to hear the animals arguing in human voices about whose fault their predicament is. Blame seems to settle on the fox, despite his protests. When Odd sits up and confronts them, the animals reveal themselves as Odin (eagle), Thor (bear), and Loki (fox). They explain their predicament: a Frost Giant has taken over Asgard. This is the cause of the endless winter, as well, and so if Odd can help the gods return to their home, his village will also benefit.

Gaiman bases this tale in an old Norse myth, in which Loki helps the gods cheat a Frost Giant by seducing his stallion. The Frost Giant in this book, it turns out, is the other’s brother, and has taken over Asgard on a mission of revenge. The anchoring in actual Norse myth gives the book a hold in reality that makes it more compelling. I felt at times as though I were reading a newly-discovered Norse myth.

And yet, Gaiman brings a modern sensibility to the characters. Though they are undeniably Norse, they talk in modern English. For example:

“I think,” said the bear, “as a responsible adult, I should point a few things out.”
“Talk is free,” said Odd, “but the wise man chooses when to spend his words.” It was something his father used to say.
“I just thought I should point out that we are wasting our time. We don’t have any way of getting to the Rainbow Bridge. And if by some miracle we crossed it, look at us—we’re animals, and you can barely walk. We can’t defeat Frost Giants. This whole thing is hopeless.”
“He’s right,” said the fox.
“If it’s hopeless,” said Odd, “why are you coming with me?”
The animals said nothing. The morning sun sparkled up at them from the snow, dazzling Odd, making him squint.
“Nothing better to do,” said the bear after a while.

This is a very short read (by my estimation, about 15,000 words), but an enjoyable one, with a satisfying conclusion. About the only fault I can find is that Loki doesn’t remain a fox*. But as the trickster god, I’m sure he took on the shape again at some point in his life. As he says in the book, “It wasn’t the first time I had turned into animal form—I was a horse once, you know—but it was the first time it was imposed on me from the outside, and it wasn’t a nice feeling. Not a nice feeling at all.”

Odd and the Frost Giants, though, leaves quite a nice feeling. I was swept up in the book, and Gaiman expertly weaves all the trappings of myth into the story. So if you grew up on Greek and Norse myths, like I did, you will enjoy this non-traditional addition to the library.

* I’m joking, of course. There are many very very good books without foxes in them.

I want to encourage amateur authors to make that leap into professional writing. God knows it’s hard to write a novel, and it takes a lot of guts to put it out there for everyone to read. This kind of thing should be encouraged. The world needs good writers and I want to find those people that have the talent and the drive to write great literature. As a critic it’s my job to not only praise the authors that produce quality work, but also to critique authors, in the hopes that they become better.

That said, Save the Day is not a good book.

I wish it was, I really do. And not just because the book is about superheroes (I love superheroes!), but because the entire book is so earnest. Author DJ Fahl cares a lot about the characters, and the world he’s created, and that shows. It’s a good trait to have, but that alone doesn’t make a novel worth reading.

Save the Day is the story of a superhero named Star Coyote, who is struggling with his life in tights. He has to balance saving his city, keeping a job, and having a boyfriend. Add on to that the fact that he’s in the closet with his teammates, the superhero squad knows as The Extraordinaries. It’s not so much a superhero story as it is a coming out story, that happens to feature superheroes.

First of all, DJ Fahl should immediately fire his editor. They are awful, just… so terrible. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors abound. I always feel like a tool bringing that up, but these are really basic things like commas, “then/than”, “affect/effect” and proper tense. Hell, even character’s names get misspelled. This is a published novel, it’s inexcusable.

Secondly, there’s just too much shit in this book. Save the Day is a monstrous, bloated beast of a novel. It’s seriously the longest furry book I’ve ever read. And unfortunately most of that is because the author over explains everything. Every little tiny detail about every hero mentioned is laid out in the book, usually in a giant hunk of exposition that just gets slapped down in the middle of a chapter. It’s like having that friend that can’t tell a story without interjecting all those useless details you don’t care about. If this book were a person, I would grab it by the shoulders, shake it, and yell, “Get to the fucking point already!”

It’s a book about superheroes, I don’t give a shit about the scientific reasons behind every little thing. A bit of that is fine, but when exposition is overdone it becomes annoying, and it ruins the pacing of the story. Plus the more the author explains everybody’s powers, the more ridiculous it sounds, making it harder and harder to suspend my disbelief. Don’t try and tell me that flying into a tornado in the opposite direction to neutralize it makes sense, because it doesn’t. Just do it and don’t apologize because it’s a fucking superhero story!

It doesn’t help that there are just way too many characters. It’s like Fahl is trying to create an entire universe in a single novel. Look, DC and Marvel have these huge rosters and massive backstories because they took decades to tell them. It’s not fair to try and cram all this in one book and force readers to digest it. And not to get nitpicky, but the “furries in the real world” scenario is tricky. It raises too many questions. Every time the author says “man/woman” it makes no sense. Or when he talks about Nazis. Who was furry Hitler? Why couldn’t Power Puma just be a “feline supremacist” and we could skip the furry Holocaust (is it like Maus)?

Maybe if the characters were interesting it wouldn’t be as bad, but for the most part they’re not compelling. The two main characters, who tell the story in alternating first-person perspective, read exactly the same. It not only makes the book hard to follow when it switches perspective, but keeps it from being believable or compelling. I couldn’t get into it, from the very first chapter when Jay comes off like an enabler (You bought a house with a dude you think is cheating on you? Are you high?) and Ted comes off like an emo whiner. Yes, coming out is scary, but stop being such a bitch about it.

Nearly all of the side characters are useless (in terms of the plot) and should have been combined into a couple characters. Sure, all of the heroes and villains get together at the end for a massive battle, but it was wholly unnecessary to have that many people in there, since most of them are completely one dimensional.

The plot is a coming out story, but that’s a pretty flimsy plot to drag on for hundreds of pages. It takes forever for things to get rolling, and then once they do it seems like it should be wrapped up pretty quick, but instead the “oh I hope my teammates don’t find out I’m gay” thing gets dragged out. Really the plot doesn’t even really get going until the last couple chapters. The rest of the book feels like a bunch of short stories with no overarching plot, jammed together. The final battle is an attempt at tying the previous scenes together, but it feels rushed and comes off really hokey.

Everyone in this book is a grown-ass adult, but they all speak and act with a level of immaturity that makes it feel like Smallville instead of The Justice League. There’s a lot wrong with the story, that could have been easily fixed. For example, characters talk about all these heroes who died in the past, and we’re supposed to care, but nobody important dies in the course of the book, missing a major opportunity to add emotional weight to the story. Or hell, if one of the superheroes actually did have a problem with Star Coyote being gay, then I could understand his hesitancy, but the fact is that all of them are really cool about it (the only guy who gets mad does so for a totally understandable reason).

On top of everything, the author doesn’t seem to know anything about the places he’s writing about. Sure, while it’s not a big deal to have a scene in Minneapolis not have any sort of landmarks or knowledge of the city, it becomes a much bigger deal for the main character’s hometown of Portland Oregon. Remember the entire plot is about Star Coyote being afraid of coming out, and how everyone is going to hate him. So why set it in Portland of all places? Oregon has a higher percentage of openly gay elected officials than most states. Portland is one of the most liberal cities in the country, and has had an openly gay mayor since 2005! The only way this scenario could have been more ridiculous would have been to set it in San Francisco.

When Fahl finally shuts up and actually starts writing about superheroes doing what they do best, it’s actually not so bad. I found myself enjoying the battle scenes. The action was intense, but it was easy to follow. Every character has a unique power, and Fahl clearly knows how he wants them all to act. I perked up each time the plot moved towards an actual superhero scene. I want more of this. More superheroes being superheroes, and less melodramatic arguments between people I don’t care about. Stories don’t always need to be romances, and this one really didn’t. If more work had been put into tying all these villains together, or leading up to some huge event that required the Extraordinaries to trust each other, it would have had more resonance than having everyone talk about their feelings.

Also of note are the illustrations by Vince Suzukawa, which are one of the highlights of the book. Suzukawa knows how to draw his muscular furries, and superheroes is a good fit for his style. The illustrations also match well with the story (it’s a pet peeve of mine when they have continuity differences).

With the right editor, Save the Day could have been a decent novel. It’s twice as long as it needs to be, crammed full of inconsequential fluff, and riddled with spelling and grammar errors. But Fahl isn’t a bad writer. There are parts in here that are engaging and exciting, and I want to see him develop his writing more and keep going. But I can’t recommend this book.