New releases in fiction, non-fiction and comics that catch our eye.
Harper
Normally a book about a teenage love triangle wouldn’t be my thing, but I decided to give it a go after reading so many glowing reviews and was immediately drawn to Louise Erdrich’s prose. There’s a love triangle, yes, but Mighty Red it is more than that. It covers a lot of ground, including the struggles of a farming community facing economic decline, soil degradation and concerns about the chemicals used to keep the soil fertile.
Mighty Red It follows the characters Crystal and Kismet, a mother and daughter, and the people in their orbits in rural North Dakota. There’s a tragedy that underpins much of the story (and a hint of the supernatural), but there’s also quite a bit of humor.
W W Norton & Company
Often I’ll be minding my own business, just going about my day, when I’m suddenly reminded of the terrifying possibility that a small asteroid could someday hit Earth and cause unimaginable damage. The mood was broken. This exact scenario is something that scientists have been researching for decades and developing tactics to prevent. I promise they have achieved some great things in recent years. In How to Kill an Asteroid: The Real Science of Planetary Defensescience journalist Robin George Andrews takes a look at ongoing efforts to develop a planetary defense strategy such as deflecting asteroids.
The beginning of this book reads like an apocalyptic nightmare, which means it’s pretty compelling. As Andrews moves from hypothesis to reality—the history and science the book is all about—he keeps it interesting with a conversational writing style that makes even the jargon feel readable.
Oni Press
Although enthusiastic Cult of the Lambit took me a while to read the comics, the first one was released in june. I finally picked up issues 1-4 this week after the fourth and final book of this arc came out and it was a lot of fun reading them. The comics (so far) repeat the already established lore of the game – how Lamb leads a sect, why they fight the bishops of the Old Faith, etc. knows the story very well. New to me at least (did you know Clauneck is a duck?).
Managing a cult is a complicated thing, as anyone who has played the game can attest, and the comics delve into the emotional intricacies of that burden. It’s as sweet, yet creepy, as you’d expect Cult of the Lamb to be funny. issues 1-4 are collected in the volume named will be out this December, but you can find them individually at your local comic shop or digitally.
