Epinions Recent Reviews for rmthunter

Dash: Once You Grab Hold, Don't Let Go

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 10:05:29 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Every so often you run across an example of manga that is so refreshing that you can't quite believe your luck. That's the case with Isaku Natsume's Dash, one of the most entertaining and surprisingly subtle yaoi I've seen. Akimoto came...

An Ordinary Crush is Hard Enough, Thank You

Sat, 6 Sep 2008 11:17:58 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Hyouta Fujiyama, who created Spell and Lover's Flat, both of which I have discussed in "Reviews in Brief" at Hunter at Random, has also ceated a complex of stories that begins with Ordinary Crush. Most of them take place at Kinsei...

Gravitation Vol. 1: Gravitation: An Inescapable Attraction Between Two Bodies

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 18:42:27 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Maki Murakami's Gravitation seems to fall somewhere between yaoi and "regular" shoujo manga. Graphically, it's close to shounen in that the layouts are fairly regular, although Murakami takes liberties with page design. The focus, however, is...

Makoto Tateno - Yellow: Yellow: Proceed at Risk

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:48:29 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Makoto Tateno is a mangaka doing yaoi whose work I've learned to keep an eye out for. The first series I happened across by her was Yellow, an action adventure involving two "snatchers," free-lancers who recover illegal drugs for various clients,...

Shades of Time and Memory: Wraeththu Come of Age

Fri, 4 Jul 2008 11:02:08 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - It's been a while since I read S
torm
Constantine's Wraeththu, although it's on my "reread regularly" list -- enough time for her to have come up with two sequels, of which The Shades of Time and Memory is...

Kazumi Ohya and Shinobu Goto - June Pride: Takumi-kun 1: June Pride: Life is good, but sometimes complicated

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 14:16:50 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - June Pride is the first volume in a series titled Takumi-kun, with story by Shinobu Gotoh and art by Kazume Ohya. In the first story, "The Romantic Troubles of Young Gui-Kun," we meet Takumi Hayama, who attends an elite school, and is, of...

Makoto Tateno - Ka Shin Fu: Ka Shin Fu Is After the Storm

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:21:56 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Makoto Tateno is one of the mangaka doing yaoi whose work I've become particularly interested in following: her stories seem so far to involve young men, rather than schoolboys, and move away from what is generally understood as yaoi or shonen-ai...

Basilisk: It Could Have Been Kurosawa

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:00:11 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Basilisk is the manga version (manga-ization?) of a 1958 novel by Futaro Yamada, The Kouga Ninja Scrolls. First published in Japan beginning in 2003, it generated an anime series and appeared in English translation in 2006-2007. Volume...

Yaya Sakuragi - Tea for Two 1: Tea for Two: And Sweets Besides

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:22:54 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Yaya Sakuragi’s Tea for Two is the first example that I’ve seen of yaoi. I’ve heard of it, although what I’ve heard made it sound much racier than the examples I have to hand. Yaoi (normally pronounced "yah-o-ee" if...

The Polaroid Book: High Art Meets Popular Medium

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:34:07 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - The announcement of instant photography in 1948 marked an insane surge in the popularity of an already popular medium. Kodak had revolutionized what had been a strange and difficult medium for artists and scientists in the early 1900s with the...

Black Cat: Don't Cross His Path

Thu, 29 May 2008 08:53:26 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Kentaro Yabuki's Black Cat is an ongoing manga series that has given rise to a TV anime series that aired in Japan between October 2005 and March 2006. Originally serialized in Shonen Jump magazine and collected in 20 volumes in Japan, it...

A Confederation of Valor: Huff Does Military SF

Tue, 27 May 2008 14:01:12 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Tanya Huff, who is one of the better (and wittier) writers of dark fantasy, also demonstrates that she is equally at home in military sf in A Confederation of Valor an omnibus edition of her first two Confederation novels, Valor’s Choice...

Vampire Knight: Adventure, Romance, and the Pain of Growing Up

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:06:42 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Well. I seem to have finally discovered manga. I suppose it was only a matter of time: I’ve been getting more and more interested in graphic novels over the past year or two (well, actually, ever since I devoured Neil Gaiman’s Sandman a few...

Man of Colours: Close to Pastel

Sun, 11 May 2008 14:40:37 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Released in 1987, Man of Colours is generally considered to be Icehouse’s best album, and was their most commercially successful. I found it most interesting that not a single cut from this one was included in...

Masks of Black Africa: Myth, Ritual and Art

Fri, 9 May 2008 18:54:42 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Masks have long fascinated me, as I think they probably do most people. They seem to have sprung up in every culture known, usually as ritual objects with a central role in the portrayal of myths. Ladislas Segy, in Masks of Black Africa, begins...

"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:11:22 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - That quote from William Butler Yeats stands at the beginning of Charles de Lint's Dreams Underfoot, another collection of Newford stories, rather different in feel than those in <
b>The
Ivory and the Horn...

Beethoven Symphonies the Old Way

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:59:10 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - In light of my continued fascination with the tension between traditional and contemporary sensibilities in music performance, it seems irresponsible not to comment on Roger Norrington’s release of the complete Beethoven symphonies. Norrington is an...

Great Southern Land: It's Not Dixie

Tue, 8 Apr 2008 10:28:44 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - OK -- a bit of history is in order: I first ran across Icehouse in the early '90s. One of the bartenders at my then-favorite watering hole had added "No Promises" to his mix, and the song just caught me. Got the album, listened to it for a while,...

Voyage of the Star Wolf: Adventure and Dirty Tricks

Wed, 2 Apr 2008 18:47:18 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - David Gerrold is one of my favorite examples of a writer who can consistently turn out workmanlike and sometimes inspired stories. He also wrote one of the best books on the craft of writing I’ve ever run across. Voyage of the Star Wolf is...

Works of Igor Stravinsky, by Himself

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:04:32 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Fairly frequently I have reason to consider the relative importance of tradition and innovation in the performance of music, usually coming to the conclusion that both have value, and that a successful performer will find a balance point between moribund...

Midnight Tides, Deep Waters

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:11:04 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Midnight Tides is the fifth book of Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen, and once again we find ourselves caught in a different but ultimately related history in this vast complex that Erikson has created. A prologue...

Charles De Lint - The Ivory and the Horn: The Ivory and the Horn: Windows on the Soul

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:24:44 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - With the creation of the city of Newford, Charles de Lint entered a new era in his own work and created a larger dimension for mythic literature as a whole. The Ivory and the Horn is his first collection of Newford stories, following the novel...

Lasar' s Olympic National Park: Sound Pictures of Dreamland

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:19:06 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - The Pacific Northwest has always been one of my favorite places, although I've not had nearly enough opportunity to visit. Physically, it is one of the world's three temperate rain forests (the others being in southern Chile and northern Japan), a place...

Svaha: Waiting for the Promise

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:19:33 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Svaha is Charles de Lint’s science-fiction novel. It seems that every fantasy writer must write at least one science-fiction novel, just as every science fiction writer must experiment with fantasy of one sort or another. As a dystopian,...

Into the Green: De Lint Goes Classic

Thu, 7 Feb 2008 16:55:27 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author rmthunter - Charles de Lint has become strongly identified with a particular kind of fiction that most of us refer to as “urban fantasy” he calls it “mythic fiction.” It is a blend of contemporary urban counterculture, mostly Canadian, and the...