Okay, so I was not sure what to expect when I read Joe Schreiber's Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, but I enjoyed reading it all the same. This is a good book for a teenage boy reluctant reader (15 or 16 and up). Perry's family has been hosting a foreign exchange student during his last year of high school, and as a last gesture of kindness before she leaves to go back home, Mom makes Perry take her to the prom. However, Perry soon learns that Gobija is not quite the person she seemed to be.... It's a fast-paced read, with short chapters and lots of action. It is humorous, but it gets intense really fast.
Last week I read Manga Man, by Barry Lyga, and it's pretty funny. The premise is that there is a Rip between our 3-D world and the 2-D manga world. Ryoko ends up in our world because of the Rip, and until the ex-army scientist doctor guy who made the machine that facilitated the Rip can fix said machine, Ryoko must learn to live on Earth. It's really well drawn (illustrator is Colleen Doran) and it's a light read. If you read a lot of manga and other types of comics, you will definitely appreciate Manga Man. I was laughing as I read it.
I read Volume One of Y: The Last Man: Unmanned, and I have also read Volume 2: Cycles and Volume 3: One Small Step. So far, so good! The first book pretty much sets up the story and introduces us to some very important characters. I don't want to go into it too much for those who haven't read it: I myself did not really know what to expect. All I heard was that the series was and is good. Sometimes, I prefer to let the story unfold as I read. This is definitely a series for mature readers.
This is just a picture of the first one, but this is an 18-volume manga series by Naoki Urasawa. I have finished the entire series. It's a really well-written and well-drawn mystery/thriller set in Germany, about a Japanese doctor who becomes entangled in a serial-murder case. Highly recommended!!
Liberator qualifies as steam-punk literature. It's pretty good, though I suggest reading Worldshaker first. Richard Harland is an Australian author, so the third installment may be a while in coming. Worldshaker establishes the characters and the overarching storyline: an alternate history where the major countries of the world have taken over different parts of it. Large populations of people from England, Russia, Japan, etc., live aboard huge juggernauts that are capable of traveling by land, sea, and air. Col Porpentine is a member of a high-class family on Worldshaker (that is the name of the British juggernaut, complete with in-residence Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert). In the first book, he meets a Filthy (one of the lowest social class-the people who keep the juggernaut running far belowdecks), a girl named Riff, who challenges everything Col has been brought up to believe. What follows is an adventure in which Col must decide where his loyalties lie and consider true nature of the current political and social system in which he has lived his whole life.
