Jeff Mccomsey

The summary for this book reads as follows: "Fifteen year-old Lily shape-shifts into a boy to get the girl. Chaos ensues from pretending to be someone she's not. While coming to terms with who she really is and what she's done, Lily learns that life as a boy is just as difficult."

I find that this summary spectacularly fails to represent the actual content of this book, which leans much more heavily into a political thriller at certain points where we contend with top-secret federal show more experiments and assassins plotting to capture our main character. Lily's problems are less to do with her crush and pretending to be a boy at school, and more to do with the fact that her household is perpetually on the run from various enemies and she is a genetically modified child who can shape-shift at will and also heal herself. IDK, I found this whole plotline half-baked and not to my interest.

I also think that this summary would not lead you to expect the amount of violence that takes place in this work. While I don't think it's to the point where it would be inappropriate for (older) teens to read, there is a fair amount of gun violence and injury happening. There is also a pretty graphic depiction of domestic abuse happening to a classmate of Lily, if that's something you like to be aware of before starting a book.

I did like Lily's relationship with both Saffron and Penelope. The parts of the book that I thought were the strongest were when Lily / Jesse were grappling with their identity in relation to both those around them and themselves. Honestly, I think the novel would have been far more interesting had it just stuck to that premise - a lot of Saffron and Jesse's relationship is glossed over, and I think it could have been cool to explore more of their insecurities in the relationship that caused so much conflict between them later on in the story. But this is coming from a reader who prefers meandering literary fiction to thrillers anyways. :)

TL;DR - Definitely different that what one would expect going into it. Kinda disjointed - maybe it cleans itself up in later volumes, but it's a rough start with some interesting concepts. Points for genderfluid yuri. show less

A decent and straightforward biography of a storied and much decorated Marine Corps general. I’d never heard of Smedley Butler before, but he seems to be a colorful character and his career and post-military activism are interesting.

Unfortunately, his career spanned some of the U.S.A.’s most imperialistic military actions, including involvement in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, and the United States occupation of Veracruz, Mexico. The book show more glosses over the problematic nature of these conflicts, especially the looting and other atrocities that occurred after the capture of Beijing. The author gives much care to humanizing the people involved in the Bonus Army protest in Washington, D.C., during the Great Depression, but the people of Cuba, China, the Philippines, Haiti and Mexico are just black hats to be cut down or outwitted. show less

This will serve as a review for the entire 4-issue run of this series.

So, this story is as old as the hills, yet McComsey and Edwards put a fun spin on it.

Imagine [b:Beowulf|52357|Beowulf|Unknown|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327878125l/52357._SY75_.jpg|189503] spun together with the back woods criminals of the Justified TV series, with a dash of Sons of Anarchy and you get a sense of what's going on here.

On the plus side, the characters are excellent show more (though, to be fair, I could have taken a couple more issues just to get to know them a bit better), and the visuals, for the most part, are extremely well suited for the storyline.

On the negative side, it's pretty much Beowulf, right down to the twist. And, when the killin' starts, this is the one area where the art kind of falls down. Tommy Lee Edwards' action doesn't do enough work to allow for the reader to fluidly fill in all the missing bits, and it becomes a little hard to figure out precisely what's going on.

Overall, though, I'm an absolute sucker for any riff off Beowulf, so I'm quite happy with this, overall. show less

A riff on the central horror of Beowulf and so the surprises aren't if you know that story. Artwork is a little rough for my taste, but it works with the story and was appropriate. The biker theme, especially the women bikers, was a bit forced, but it carried. The ending could be continued into another book, but it's not necessary as there is finality there with a little bit left up to the reader to imagine.