She Sees Color (original) (raw)

Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures, by Walter Moers – Rumo of Zamonia made a brief appearance in the first book in the Zamonia series, but this story does not intersect with that one, although it takes place in the same bizarrely fantastic country. It also does not feature as much exploration of Zamonia, and has a somewhat less chaotic feel, although it does have many tangents. While Bluebear largely stumbles into one weird experience after another, there’s more of a connecting thread to Rumo’s experiences, if a loose one at times. Rumo is a Wolperting, a name associated with a sort of weird taxidermy creature in German culture, often a rabbit with antlers. In Zamonia, the Wolpertings are basically dogs with antlers, known to be skilled fighters, and possessing fine motor skills despite having paws. Rumo himself is particularly talented at woodworking, and learns fencing. After escaping from giants with help from a sea creature named Volzotan Smyke, he makes his way to the city of Wolperting, home of his kind, where he attends school and falls in love. That is, until everyone in the city disappears, with the place revealed to be a trap set up by the inhabitants of the Netherworld to capture new victims for their arena. Rumo, armed with his talking sword (actually more of a knife) that houses the spirits of a troll and a demon, journeys to the underground realm to help his fellows. There are several stories that seem to be just distractions at first, but that actually become important later on, like how the founder of the city of Wolperting found the place already built and deserted when he arrived, how Smyke is more relevant to the tale of the Lindworms than he initially pretends, and what happened to the brutal robotic Copper Killers. The ruler in the Netherworld has brain damage that causes him to mix up words in strange ways, and I have to wonder how that worked in the original German.

The Monstrous Misses Mai, by Van Hoang – Cordelia Mai Yin, a Vietnamese-American living in Los Angeles, has a cold relationship with her family. She tries to get her own place and career, and ends up living in a loft with three other Asian women, all of whom have the middle name Mai, hence the title. The guy who helps them to get the apartment turns out to practice a kind of witchcraft called lura, which apparently isn’t based on any real tradition, but it’s sort of a multi-level marketing kind of thing that requires practitioners to bring new people into the fold. The Mais go along with it to help achieve their dreams, but end up getting in way over their heads. The relationships between the characters were interesting.

Red Side Story, by Jasper Fforde – It’s been a long time since the release of Shades of Grey, about a post-apocalyptic society organized based on color vision. The protagonist, Eddie Russett, continues his relationship with Jane, one of the Greys, despite his being married to a Purple woman for political reasons. He also begins thinking more about what might exist beyond Chromatacia and its strict rules of order, and eventually finds out after the destruction of his hometown that it was created as part of an experiment to see if people can learn skills by exposure to colors. There’s still a lot that isn’t explained, though. Eddie’s wife Violet, whom he doesn’t like, ends up joining forces with him and Jane for their escape. Fforde is known for working in a lot of bizarre details for his imaginary worlds, and this is no exception. The title is also that of a musical in-universe, as part of the story is that Romeo and Juliet has been changed into a lesson on proper social order, and Red Side Story is an adaptation of the play. There are more Oz references here as well, like robots called Tin Men and references to flying monkeys.

A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin – The fourth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series is shorter than the preceding three, or at least it feels like it is. Martin’s own explanation is that there were so many characters he wanted to write about that he decided to split their experiences into two volumes, which is why many of the major players aren’t featured in this one. In a change from earlier books, some of the chapters are called by descriptions of their main characters, rather than their names. And it mostly takes place in the southern part of Westeros, although in two cases that’s because Arya and Sansa Stark have gone incognito. The war between the kings is coming to an end, with eight-year-old Tommen Baratheon as king and his mother Cersei Lannister as regent. It’s a bit difficult to keep track of what’s going on with all these different people, although the notes at the end do update everyone’s status.