Family Pets by Pat Shand

Title: Family Pets (no vendor found)
Author: Pat Shand
Publisher: Silver Dragon Books (no website found)
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Sarah Dill.

Thomasina lost her parents at a young age and went to live with her grandmother, but soon, for financial reasons, they had to move in with Thomasina's aunt and uncle and her uncommunicative cousin. Here life is pretty average, ordinary, normal and slightly annoying to her.

One morning, Thomasina wakes up to find her pet snake missing from its tank, and when she goes upstairs from her basement room which she shares with Abuela, she discovers that her whole family, apart from grandma, has been turned into household pets such as a dog, a cat, a parakeet, and a lizard.

Meanwhile, her snake is now a rather attractive young man. Somehow the snake knows how this happened and leads Thomasina to the culprit whom she actually, kinda, knows. He confesses that it was all a magic spell gone wrong, and he takes her with him to his native magic land where they hope to get things resolved.

The gray scale art work and the story were both excellent, and I fully recommend this story for how entertaining and unique it is. The main female character, Thomasina, can certainly show a heck of a lot of young adult female leads a thing or two about being a fearless, kickass, strong female.

The only issue I had with it was the poor performance on the iPad in Bluefire reader. This is a new iPad with a lot of memory and yet sometimes a page would take six seconds to load, or the page would fail to swipe until I had swiped or tapped it two or three times. To be fair, this isn't the only comic I've had this problem with, but it is irritating.

Robyn Hood Legend by Pat Shand

Title: Robyn Hood Legend
Author: Pat Shand
Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

Artwork by Larry Watts
Colors by Slamet Mujiono

I hate this graphic novel because it's so good and so cool, but really because I never thought of it first! Grrr! I mean it was there begging to be written and I let it slide right on by! But kudos to messrs Shand, Watts, and Mujiono for getting it done.

It felt like I was coming into this part way through, which was odd, because the story was all there, volumes one through five. This tells me that someone needs to write a prequel! The characters were cool, and all drawn from the Robin hood mythology - except for the orcs. Yes, I have to report that there were orcs. In fact they were orc-hestrating an attack most of the time, but you know how it is with those orcs. Maybe we should send them some orc-hids? Or would that be just orc-ward?

Robyn was amazing. The love interest was a little sad in more ways than one, but overall, Robyn was majorly Kick Ass in a comic book world where females are all-too-often just Ass with no justice and no kick. There was a nice mix of characters, nearly all of whom you'd expect: Marian (no gentile lady, this one - especially not at the end!), Will Scarlett, Sir Guy of Gisbourne, Much (presumably the Miller's son?) who had to do about nothing, Tuck (not everlasting), and Avella (not that I recall her from any legends in the Hood, but she was still pretty cool).

Given that this was a seriously upgraded Hood, with magic and portals to another realm (and created as a part of a wider series), I was a bit surprised that the Merrie men were all white Anglo-Saxon protestants. Yeah, I know that they - in the legend - are so for understandable reasons, but I thought the novel could have portrayed them in a more colorful light in this world.

Robyn leads a double life - here in our modern world, as a thief of some skill and renown, and then through the orc-king glass into the medieval world of magic and yes, orcs (led, presumably, by Stephen Orc-king?). Here they battle the evil sheriff or Orc-ingham, but believe it or not, Gisbourne is on the side of the good guys.

I love the way that Robyn and Marian partner-up at the end and return to our world to continue Robyn's other business interests! I recommend this graphic novel.