12 Days of Best Covers of 2013: Day #3

For this new seasonal end of year list, the third book cover that I pick is Stephanie Saulter’s debut novel for Jo Fletcher Books, Gemsigns, the first novel in the ®Evolution near-future series which deals with the ethics of genetic engineering and whether or not those genetically engineered can be considered human or not. It is the most thought-provoking novel that I’ve read this year and also one of the best. Where most SFF novels content themselves with telling a story with good/great characters, this novel went the extra mile and actually made me think about the events therein.

And the third comics cover that I pick is the fourth and final issue of Mateus Santolouco and Erik Burnham’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Secret History of The Foot Clan, which Mateus drew as well. A short mini-series that delved into the origins of Shredder, the Foot Clan and Master Splinter himself, it stands as one of the best TMNT stories that I’ve experienced to date. Possibly the best. Which is a pretty damn big deal, all things considered. It reignited my love of the characters and the setting, something that I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

So without further ado, hit the break to see both the covers in all their glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.

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NANP: The Name Trail

Joining me on the blog today for the new edition of Names: A New Perspective is fantasy author Alex Bledsoe, scribe of the Eddie LaCrosse series and the Tufa novels among others. His fourth Eddie LaCrosse novel Wake of The Bloody Angel was the first of his books that I read around its time of release last year and just a few days ago I finished the fifth installment He Drank, And Saw The Spider. They’ve been very fun reads both of them, and he’s certainly one of my favourite authors to date. The genesis of the names in the Eddie LaCrosse novels sounds rather intriguing and fun, so here’s what Alex has to say on the matter.

Amazing X-Men #2 (Comics Review)

With all the dozens of X-books already on its monthly release schedule, Marvel added another one to the mix last month, and brought back fan-favourite Kurt Wagnar aka Nightcrawler, who’s been dead for a few years. The guy is still dead, but he’s clearly being setup for a resurrection of sorts since he happens to be in Heaven of all places. The first issue was pretty good in almost all respects. It had a really fun story, some really good art and it had Nightcrawler being all kinds of awesome. When you start off a new series with something like that, that sets expectations for the immediately future issues.

That’s one place where the second issue failed for me since Nightcrawler is here in only one panel, but narrates the entire story regardless. The action this time around is completely focused on the Amazing X-Men team sans Nightcrawler and while I kind of enjoyed it, I still felt let down in a lot of ways since there was a lot of a genericness to the issue, whether we are talking location or dialogue or what have you. Its not the issue I expected or needed or wanted.