Lower East Side Librarian

This second set of conversations between RE/Search publisher V. Vale and zine creators is a deft continuation of the first one. He gets a decent variety of zinesters, young to middle-aged, female, male, queer, straight, working and middle class, and focus on mail art, politics, and the weird. He's not quite as good at finding a race balance or more personal perzine authors, but I think it's okay to cut him some slack.

Somehow Elaine's annual zine got buried in my ever-expanding to-read pile, and I only just rediscovered it. Elaine is a school librarian now in school to become a school administrator--probably a vice principal. She discusses her personal politics that might make it hard for her to get a job as the head of a school, namely that she finds certain state statutes (regarding political indoctrination, e.g., de-facto mandatory pledging of allegiance to the flag) problematic to enforce. That passage reminded me of Ms. Finney from The Cat Ate My Gymsuit. Remember her?

Blue, a poor girl from a family of psychics meets up with a bunch of boys from a fancy private school that are trying to use ley lines to find a dead Welsh king. There's a lot going on in this story--a murder mystery, doomed romance, the hunt for the king, family drama, class issues, child abuse, and a bunch of magic. It's actually a bit too much, at least for my little brain.

An Irish woman in her mid-twenties spends a year (and a bit) working at an Orlando hotel and taking in the local attractions. She's a huge space program fan, and her description of the Kennedy Space Center made me want to visit. Her love of Disney isn't quite as compelling, to me, anyway. It's cute, though.

Twins Ysabel and Justin feel like a bomb has been dropped on their family when they learn that their father is transgender.

After how much I enjoyed Brigg's last Alpha and Omega novel, I was disappointed that this one was more like the first full-length novel in the series, in that the author seemed to be more in love with the idea of the dynamic of the relationship than in telling a story.

I anticipated this final entry to the Newsflesh trilogy with perhaps greater excitement than I did Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Mockingjay, though that may be that my desire was fanned by NYPL's dragging its ass on getting copies.

This is a reasonably compelling teen hackers novel with an annoying open ending.