psocoptera

Destroy All Monsters, Sam J. Miller. This was definitely much more like Art of Starving than Blackfish City - I'll be curious about his next book, whether he's alternating or Blackfish was an exception. (An awesome exception and I hope he writes more like that.) Unfortunately this one didn't work for me as well as Art of Starving did (which I talked about here). The two-worlds "is this schizophrenia or is it a sane connection to a real alternate world" thing just felt sad to me. The ways that the two versions of people were different in the two worlds never felt like it added up to anything, and the "leaking" of magic into the mundane world felt like cheating. Miller says he is writing for kids in high school who are dealing with mental illness, which I applaud him doing, and I hope it finds its right audience among them. I wasn't it.

(Because I am me though, I of course want to read the minor character who draws with fire as Miller having read and been inspired by my Zuko story - I know I did not invent that idea and this is like one step away from thinking the people on the TV are sending secret coded messages to me personally, but Miller talks about his love for ATLA in his acknowledgments again, and a bunch of people actually have read that story, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that he could have been one of them and it could have entered his mental neat-ideas bank from there. As with the bit in Dragon Republic earlier this year, I was delighted to see it and get to ask myself this question, even if the real answer is probably "come on, dude, get over yourself.")