CD Giveaway - Sam Shrieve, "Bittersweet Lullabies"
Ends Nov 29, 2009
The current student at Berklee College of Music has a rock 'n' roll pedigree, but delivers a pleasing and diverse collection of soft pop on his debut record. Enter our contest for your chance to win! |
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Book Review: Faradawn (The Fog Mound, Book 2)
by R.J. Carter
Published: September 21, 2007
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Publication Date: September 11, 2007
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Author:
· Susan Schade
· Jon Buller
Grade: A-
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There's a new breed of graphic novel hitting the market lately, a hybrid of traditional comic book format meets traditional text. Recent examples include the Abadazad series by J.M. DeMatteis and Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret. But probably the first time I can recall seeing the form used for sequential storytelling is probably with Susan Schade and Jon Buller's The Travels of Thelonious, the first chapter of The Fog Mound.
Now Thelonious the chipmunk is back -- along with Olive the bear, Brown the lizard, and Fitzgerald the porcupine... not to mention Bill, the mute, shrunken human that our heroes found in suspended animation!
The world of The Fog Mound is our world, set into a distant future where humans are extinct and talking animals habitate in the ruins of the cities that humans left behind. But their evolution may have had more than a natural boost, as our group learns when Bill finally gets around to (albeit haltingly) talking.
"How did you know how to talk to the dolphins, Bill?" he said.
"Ah!" said Bill. "My... sp-- ... sp--..." He looked around. "You say," he said to me.
"But I don't know what you mean," I said. "Your what?"
Bill thought for a while. Then he said, "What I do. Own job."
"Specialty?" said Olive from the back of the boat.
"Yes!" Bill jumped up, pointed at Olive, and put his finger on his nose. "Ha, ha!" He pointed from Olive to his nose. "Specialty!" he repeated. "Specialty!"
"Why is he pointing at his nose?" I asked nobody in particular.
"It's charades!" piped up Cluid. "It's a game we play. You act things out without speaking, and when somebody guesses the right word, you put your finger on your nose! Bill must have played charades too."
She had a thought. "Hey! I wonder if he taught it to the animals, you know, way back, before... well, when he built the Fog Mound. That is, if he..." Her voice kind of faded away.
Fitzgerald wasn't interested in games just now. "Your specialty is talking to dolphins?" he asked Bill.
Bill sat down again. He shook his head. "Animals," he corrected Fitz. "All animals."
"I see," said Fitz.
Bill beamed. "Talk to animals!" He pointed to all of us. "And animals talk to me!"
"Talk like humans!" he added.
Fitzgerald leaned forward. "You mean," he said, "you got animals to talk like humans? How did you do that?"
Bill said, "And thumbs! Give animals thumbs!" He pointed at Fitzgerald's thumb.
Uh-oh.
Fitzgerald drew back away from Bill and swelled up so that his quills stuck out through his fur.
"So what are you telling us?" he said in an awful voice. "You were a scientist who made genetic changes in animals so they would have thumbs and talk like humans?"
Fitzgerald's long-held anger for what he believes the ancient humans did to animals must take a back seat to the plot, however, for there are adventures still to be had. When Olive builds a boat to Bill's specifications, the group sets sail for a place Bill calls Faradawn -- an island where more answers to the world's mysterious past are to be found. More than that, there are talking birds to rescue from an army of evil crabs, who have a towering crab-giant who does their fighting for them!
The Fog Mound series is Planet of the Apes taken to a species-wide extreme, written with the affable charm of The Wind in the Willows. The pace is brisk, the characters unique and likable, and the adventure filled with twists and turns. Like its predecessor, Faradawn is fast and fun to read.
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