This past summer, I read FTL, Y'all! Tales From the Age of the $200 Warp Drive, a sci-fi anthology of graphic short stories edited by C. Spike Trotman and Amanda Lafrenais. Because I finished it less recently than not, I'll keep this review short.
Perhaps most of all, I loved the diversity and representation among these stories. People of color, LGBTQ, protagonists from various backgrounds with varied goals, and more. The stories were imaginative, too, with no two quite like each other. All good for an anthology in my opinion.
That said, it is an anthology, so it has its ups and downs; not all stories in it are created equal. While on the one hand, that's the basis of its variety, it underpins both its rewards—and its short comings. There were a good many stories I genuinely loved, and even among the ones I loved less, there were several I still found thought provoking and felt were still very much worth having read. And those I really didn't click with? It may not sound like great praise, but really, there are certainly worse ways I could have spent my time, which given their brevity, wasn't a huge investment anyway.
As a big fan of sci-fi and comics, I definitely recommend this to the adventurous and free spirited and curious; it isn't—in its entirety, at least—for everyone, but I think many would find plenty interesting about it all the same.
Perhaps most of all, I loved the diversity and representation among these stories. People of color, LGBTQ, protagonists from various backgrounds with varied goals, and more. The stories were imaginative, too, with no two quite like each other. All good for an anthology in my opinion.
That said, it is an anthology, so it has its ups and downs; not all stories in it are created equal. While on the one hand, that's the basis of its variety, it underpins both its rewards—and its short comings. There were a good many stories I genuinely loved, and even among the ones I loved less, there were several I still found thought provoking and felt were still very much worth having read. And those I really didn't click with? It may not sound like great praise, but really, there are certainly worse ways I could have spent my time, which given their brevity, wasn't a huge investment anyway.
As a big fan of sci-fi and comics, I definitely recommend this to the adventurous and free spirited and curious; it isn't—in its entirety, at least—for everyone, but I think many would find plenty interesting about it all the same.