V for Vendetta

If you've seen the movie, this graphic novel will expand your knowledge and understanding with a deeper and more detailed background. If you haven't, then you're in for a treat. V for Vendetta takes place in a alternate but similar future England where fascism takes over. With Alan Moore's intense creative mind and David Lloyd's striking graphics, V for Vendetta will keep you peeled to the page until the end. This is a must read graphic novel. It sheds light to all crevices and holes of the human behavior. Every dirty and beautiful aspect of the human capacity. Even after you set it down, it will stay with you and tease your brain. Which is a good thing. Our society needs wake up and start using that organ on their shoulders.

When a mysterious masked man with a dark past who calls himself as "V" is responsible for the destruction of significant structures and the death of important figures, England spirals down into chaos. V vows to seek revenge for his painful suffering and defend his love: anarchy. Totalitarian England has forgotten to love. It has been sick with greed and power. Leaving the rest of the population powerless, defenseless, and left at the mercy of a cruel system. V for Vendetta is not a stereotypical story with "happily ever after." V is not a hero, he's a cleaner. He merely removes the destroyers and sets a clean canvas for the creators.

Even though this comic includes fictional events and characters, it can be reflected onto any present situation. Is it possible for our society to head into the same direction as the one in the comic? What would you do prevent the wrong thing to happen?

~Paige Turner

Look Out: Big Magic!

I adore Jasper Fforde, and not just because he has a redundant F in his name, although that is pretty wonderful.  Happily enough, he's written yet another witty romp through social commentary and literary conventions, but this time for teens.  The Last Dragonslayer is, in a word, fantastic. 

Jennifer Strange is fifteen years old and runs Kazam Mystical Arts Management, an employment agency for magicians.  Tempermental magicians whose powers are fading as the whole world slowly loses magic.  But when the whispers of of Big Magic start and a prediction of the last dragon dying is delivered, she suddenly has more problems than just tempermental magicians and forms to fill out in triplicate.  How can she save herself, her new trainee foundling, the Kazam agency, and the dragon while dealing with scheming magicians, crafty kings, and hordes of people waiting for the dragon to drop dead so they can claim his land?  And most importantly, who is the last dragonslayer and where is he?

P.S. - Also, there's a Quarkbeast.  Quarkbeasts are awesome.

~ Book Ninja