Sparks: An Urban Fairytale

Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Tale into the Heart of a Woman and her Friend.
Review: A surface skim of this book might suggest that this book is simply a female urban version to The Iron Giant. Well, this book is far more than that. It is a glorious coming of age tale about a young woman and a strange being who manages to open her eyes to the true glory of herself.

The girl, Josephine, is a wondeful lass who can find neither happiness nor peace outside of her job at a small auto garage as a good mechanic. Her home life is hellish with a fat bullying thug of a father and a doped up broken zombie of a mother in a spiteful neighbourhood that sees her as a freak. All of this takes their toll on her self esteem as she looks on enviously at the social life that other women seem to take on at ease.

It all culminates with a flight of fancy as she builds a construction of a idealed perfect man from spare auto parts. That little indulgence takes on a wonderous tone when a freak bolt of lightning strikes the construct and brings him to life. Eventually, the mechanical man and Josephine meet and the girl gains a companion she never anticipated.

In the story that follows, Jo struggles to teach the Robot, who soon dubs himself as Galahad from Arthurian legend, how to communicate and the complexities of life and existence. In return, Galahad helps make her see the true beauty of her nature that the world of fools around her cannot perceive even as she strives to fit in a square peg in a round hole kind of world. However, events take a terrible course of their own that will forever change the lives of the characters.

This book is American sequential art at its finest with a story that speaks to the human spirit while giving voice to those whom the world has kept silent for so long. It's quiet, funny and yet poignant in the beginning until the narrative builds to a shatteringly tragic but triumphant climax that will touch your soul. The truths expressed are age old and universal, but the telling will give them an immediacy and power that stay with you.

If you like comics, or want to see what the medium can be like in fiction, then you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Tale into the Heart of a Woman and her Friend.
Review: A surface skim of this book might suggest that this book is simply a female urban version to The Iron Giant. Well, this book is far more than that. It is a glorious coming of age tale about a young woman and a strange being who manages to open her eyes to the true glory of herself.

The girl, Josephine, is a wondeful lass who can find neither happiness nor peace outside of her job at a small auto garage as a good mechanic. Her home life is hellish with a fat bullying thug of a father and a doped up broken zombie of a mother in a spiteful neighbourhood that sees her as a freak. All of this takes their toll on her self esteem as she looks on enviously at the social life that other women seem to take on at ease.

It all culminates with a flight of fancy as she builds a construction of a idealed perfect man from spare auto parts. That little indulgence takes on a wonderous tone when a freak bolt of lightning strikes the construct and brings him to life. Eventually, the mechanical man and Josephine meet and the girl gains a companion she never anticipated.

In the story that follows, Jo struggles to teach the Robot, who soon dubs himself as Galahad from Arthurian legend, how to communicate and the complexities of life and existence. In return, Galahad helps make her see the true beauty of her nature that the world of fools around her cannot perceive even as she strives to fit in a square peg in a round hole kind of world. However, events take a terrible course of their own that will forever change the lives of the characters.

This book is American sequential art at its finest with a story that speaks to the human spirit while giving voice to those whom the world has kept silent for so long. It's quiet, funny and yet poignant in the beginning until the narrative builds to a shatteringly tragic but triumphant climax that will touch your soul. The truths expressed are age old and universal, but the telling will give them an immediacy and power that stay with you.

If you like comics, or want to see what the medium can be like in fiction, then you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Rating:
Summary: True Modern Fey
Review: This is a poignant, often sad fantasy about the life of a girl who considers herself a failure, leading a fairly miserable life even with her skills and a decent job. It truly lives up to its moniker of fairy tale, for it is as all good lore: Gritty, supernatural, with a few morals to impart and a decidedly imperfect ending.

It begins by introducing the characters, the young woman Jo, her drugged-up mother, her domineering cop father, her coworkers at the shop. She is an ace at fixing cars, but very depressed because of her family life and nonexistant social life. Staying late one night, she decides to build a humanoid out of spare parts, simply as a lark; but when lightning hits it, it comes to life. After understandable fright, she takes it home and installs it in a room on the roof of her tenament, and starts trying to teach it language and knowledge. He eventually picks up a name from the neighbor, who loves to play as King Arthur: Galahad. Jo slowly makes progress on teaching him, with the help of a spell-n-speak to give him voice, through flash cards and later many books from the library, particularly about astronomy.

At the same time she's trying to find her way around a social life with a few other young women, visiting clubs and going on double-dates. Each seems to become one disappointment and disaster after another; even an enjoyable and relaxed evening with a local magnate that leads to a night of passion, is a misunderstanding. Here and there, however, her very imperfect friends and even family reveal sides of themselves she never knew, giving her a glimpse into who they are deep inside. But all of that comes to an abrupt end when Galahad saves her from her father's drunken abuse one night, and they have to flee. The end is triumphant, passionate, and heartbreaking, and to say more would be to ruin the conclusion of a very fine story.

This is one of the few books that have truly affected me on a deep emotional level recently. It's drawn in a style very similar to PvP (pvponline.com), enough so that I was drawn to it and picked it up for that reason alone. But it's really a very melancholy story, full of sadness and pain and decadence, with threads of wonder and hope running through it, like any true fairy tale. The characters are all fully-realized, each looking almost like cut-outs only to expose their dreams and fears and become more real. The way that we do view people, simply as "others" that we pigeonhole, until we get a glimpse of who they really are, and then they suddenly become as human to us as to Jo. It is the story of one girl growing up, trying to come to grips with her past and her future. The inspiration may be fantastic, but the feelings are entirely real. We see her starting to live life again for the first time in years, her many disappointments and failures, and slowly discovering who she is in the world. And it is all done very finely, death and pain and escape and joy mixed in with such respect that you never feel this is anything but real. As a fairy tale should be, one written for our age.

The dialogue is also well-used, and feels very realistic. We never see into anyone's thoughts; we never need to, because our view is of Jo, though her thoughts are often written down in a journal or opened up to Galahad. The narration is very low-key, preferring to let the story tell itself once it's under way. The art, of course, is stunning, easily conveying emotions, clear events, and important details. Obviously a quite solid work that can bring new insights and hope to anyone struggling with their own future.

This book will definitely appeal to anyone who has ever been in this position, especially those in it right now. There is some violence and suggestive sex, but the emotional pain and turmoil far outweighs that. But the end offers a mixed hope, that life can go on.