seen from Mexico
seen from New Zealand
seen from Czechia
seen from South Africa
seen from Belarus
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Yemen
seen from United States
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States
seen from South Korea
Penn's Car is a 1986 Chevrolet Caprice.
After almost 40 years of being passed down by punks, roadies, and junkies, this vehicle has been imbued with some kind of supernatural will to survive. It's indestructible, but far from unstoppable.
In Penn and Hanna's backyard, it spends its summers baking in the sun and its winters covered in snow. And the Car wouldn't have it any other way.
Books I’ve read in 2021:
→ ArchEnemy by Frank Beddor
Title: Seeing Redd | Author: Frank Beddor | Publisher: Dial Books (2007)
Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor
"After a long silence, Dodge cleared his throat. 'I think I speak for all of us when I say, "Huh?"'"
Year Read: 2020
Rating: 3/5
About: There are spoilers ahead for The Looking Glass Wars. Alyss Heart is the newly instated queen of Wonderland, but the threats haven't stopped since Redd jumped into the Heart Crystal. She worries her aunt will appear in another form, and she's facing threats from Boarderland's misogynistic King Arch. When there's an attack on the Crystal Continuum and her personal bodyguard, Homburg Molly, goes missing, Alyss's queendom is threatened from within. Hatter Madigan will do anything to get Molly back including, even, disobeying his queen. Threats: death, parent death, some people being eaten alive, violence, blood, raging sexism and bigotry from the villain, fat-shaming, grief.
Thoughts: Sometimes my feelings about a series don't change that much throughout, and Seeing Redd is about on the same level as The Looking Glass Wars. The things I liked about it are consistent: solid characters, imaginative world-building, rapid pace. The things I didn't are the same: uninspiring villains, not quite enough descriptions of all the weird magic and weapons. There are maybe a few too many action scenes here, as almost every chapter includes a battle of some kind, and an overdose of sound effects. I started skipping everything in italics, since I'm reading a novel and not a comic book.
This also scales back the character development quite a bit, and I didn't see as much of Alyss coming into her power as I wanted to in this book. If anyone has development, it's Hatter, and it's easy to see that Beddor is more enamored of his stoic assassin than his Wonderland queen. (There's also at least one character in here that serves no purpose whatsoever, except perhaps additional angst.) I don't know that Arch is a better villain than Redd, but I certainly had more feelings about him, and they were all bad. The man can't say a word without offending the entire female species, and I look forward to the day Redd double crosses him and feeds him to her flesh-eating roses.
Seeing Redd also has the slight lull of second books in a trilogy. It sets up its own plot with renewed threats on Wonderland from Redd and its neighboring kingdom, Boarderland, but almost all of the closure is left for the third novel. While I like the characters and the world-building, the overall plot isn't all that different from a lot of fantasy and dystopian trilogies. Our heroes are fighting to overthrow an oppressive ruler and defend their king (or queen)dom. While books like this might have been setting the trend for that plot ten years ago, it's not one of my favorite stories. I like these, but I'll probably never love them.
Tiny Navajo Reads: September Update
Tiny Navajo Reads: September Update
Ridiculous! It’s October and I love October! This is my absolute favorite time of year as it cools down and the leaves start to turn colors. It’s FALL! And it’s time to tell you all that I read in September and what I’m looking forward to book-wise in October.
In all of September, I read a total of 10 books. Not as much as others, but I’m okay with
that. I read Everything That Remains, East, Good…
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But right now, as if she still had the power of remote viewing, she looked off in the direction of Boarderland, to where she knew Redd was already plotting another attack, and she longed for a single, unified imagination, neither Black nor White.
Frank Beddor, from Seeing Redd
Just One Word March BPC Day 14: Retelling
And this is Chuck. He plays bass guitar in Seeing Redd. I'd try to say more but every question I've answered about this guy gets "oh yeah that makes sense". So there's a good chance you already know all you can about this guy.
Penn has known him forever but they never seem to interact outside of simple acknowledgement and playing music.
