I read book 3 of ‘5 Worlds’ this past week. I continue to enjoy the character development and storyline. I am particularly pleased to see how the evolution of each main character happens at a different pace. For example, in the first book the main character discovers her hidden power; in the second book, the android evolves into something more; in the third book, another main character is starting to grow.

The main plot of this African Science Fiction story starts with four alien races splitting up the earth into their own territories. Parallels to colonialism are the message and allow the reader to be educated on our world history. The presumption of the colonizers being welcomed along with the clash of technologies allows for the beginnings of a compelling story.

This is a middle-grade graphic novel series, but Siegel can tell a story that I believe is more well written than many adult fantasy epics that try to evoke a similar level of world-building. Others do it at the expense of character development, but Siegel weaves both internal and external conflicts for the heroes in a way that seems natural.

It was a fun read and one thing that Caleb is good at too is making sure the title is reflecting what the story is about. Issue one gives the reader a taste of where the overall story is going while throwing in an engaging origin story of the main character along with the origin story of the world he has created.

I backed Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos’ Kickstarter a couple of months ago, ‘Zine100: How Not to Be Colonized By Outreach Programs’. It was a fun and educational mini-zine that was handmade by Stephanie. Her passion and experience in community-based health advocacy are apparent and appreciated in the booklet. She tackles a challenging subject that is also not widely known with an approachable and accessible narrative and art style.

Frankly, I was very impressed by the quality of the story. I immediately connected with the characters and found the story’s backdrop of Eastern Africa engaging. Beserat is great at instilling some cultural-specific terms and actions that serve as a nod to his Ethiopian audience and as a cross-cultural educational piece for an uninitiated western audience.

Also the book boasts four different illustrators and they do a great job in capturing the fantastical science fiction and magical world that Siegel created. The colors and the character designs, along with the landscapes helped with the story immersion.

The description of the book is as follows:

Planet Jurassica is under siege. The sinister space pirates have raided the Imperial palace and stolen the famous Jewels of Jurassica. This looks like a job for . . . Captain Raptor!. . . hero of a thousand space missions; champion of truth, justice, and dinosaurs in space throughout the galaxy. If anyone can track down those marauding space pirates, it's Captain Raptor and the fearless crew of the Megatooth!

I have always loved Neil Gaiman’s stories. They possess an accessible amount of horror and whimsy while making incredibly niche settings easy to understand by any reader. There is no level of condensation to his narrative, and this book is a great example of it.

The story turned out to be a melancholy post-apocalyptic world where the three protagonists wandered around a destroyed world for food.

For me, it read like an episode of the show instead of a self-contained story.

Nostalgia abound! Much like other branching novel books, this is written in a second-person point of view. How this is different than other books, this is also mainly a solo roleplaying game. The reader first creates the character statistics. I love how this particular branching novel roleplaying adventure makes it extremely portable and accessible anywhere.

I really appreciated Khouri’s artwork, with its heavy linework. This book also shows how important color is to a story, for mood and setting. The entire book was presented in a warm palette of yellows and oranges, which insinuated to me, a planet with a different type of sun.

This past week I read ‘Aster and the Accidental Magic’ by Thom Pico and Karensac. What a fun book. Thom and Karensac created a great world for the protagonist, Aster to explore. I really love this type of youth-oriented graphic novel genre that has characters interacting with their day-to-day magical surroundings.

It is exciting to see the writer and the artist world build together and seemingly work so well as to play on each other’s creative strengths.

I mentioned on my Instagram that this book had some innovative storytelling through mapping and engineering designs, which I found interesting. Ying also sets up a grand backstory that is hinted at in the book, allowing the reader to feel satisfied while wanting to explore this world more.

It was a very fun and quick read, and much like all children’s books, it had a nice moral to its story.

I really enjoyed how Perreault weaved minimalistic frames with more detailed pictures. His style is also accessible enough for a reader to emulate.

Erica does such a great job developing the personalities of the three sisters in the book, allowing them all to have their own distinct and relatable journeys and emotional story arcs.

This past week I read the ‘World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King’ art book. I have been doing some research on character designs and background settings. I cannot think of a better way of doing world-building research than looking at art books for games and other sci-fi and fantasy settings.

It is a fun book about a janitor that travels to a new land with his dog. It is a quick 10-minute read and has great illustrations. I also really like Egielski’s way he uses picture borders to give the reader a sense that there is more outside the illustrations.

It was a fun book with its chapters split into separate stories. It read like 15-minute episodes of a nickelodeon cartoon. I got the impression that Knetzeger had a lot of fun scripting and drawing out the stories. The characters felt innocent, curious, and adventurous. Personalities that are found in early teen kids.

I have always been a cat person, so I found the game itself a delight to read. I do not know Bellingham personally, but it is greatly apparent that he loves cats and the magic system he created for cats is fun and creative.