Tony Chu is a cop with a secret. A weird secret. Today we depart a little from standard book reviews and delve into the world of comic books. As I mentioned in my review of the iPad, it’s a brilliant device for reading comics on and one of the comics I discovered was Chew published by Image Comics and written by John Layman and drawn by Rob Guillroy.

Chew is set in an alternate time line where the bird flu actually became the pandemic some thought it would. As a result chicken has been banned and the FDA (yes, the US Food and Drug Administration) is now one of the most powerful police forces on the planet with the mandate of enforcing the chicken ban. Then main character Tony Chu, Tony is a Cibopath. A what? A Cibopath is someone who, when they consume food, will get images and feelings about everything that happened to that food from it’s growth to it’s preparation. What does that mean? Not much if you eat a banana, you’ll see the plantation, the workers that cut it down and the trucks or boats it rode on to get to you. If you eat a burger? Well you get to see how the cow died in an industrial slaughterhouse. Needless to say, Tony is a vegetarian.

His unique talent also allows Tony to be a great murder investigator, you see if he takes a bite of a corpse he can see how the person died. This leads to many great sequences in the books where Tony has to consume something quite unpleasant.

The writing in Chew is top notch. There is a brilliant mix of humor — food puns abound — and suspense that keeps you wanting more. Since it was originally slated to be a 5 issue mini-series they’ve stuck with that style of story telling. Now on issue #11 we’re into our 3rd distinct story line. While the characters and their experiences carry over from the previous serise there is a clear deliniation of story-lines that you don’t get in a lot of comics giving this book a nice tidy feeling.

In addition Rob Guillory has a very unique artistic style. His character drawing is almost abstract, Tony is a skinny rod of a man with stringy muscles while his partner at hte FDA, the massive Savoy (another Cibopath, one of only 3 known) is a hulking gorilla of a man with a massive chest and skinny legs. The environments are richly detailed with lots of little ‘easter eggs’ tossed in here and there (Rob and/or John are clearly LOST fans).

Overall Chew is one of the best comics I’ve ever read. After a long hiatus from reading comics Chew and the iPad comic experience really sucked me back in. Sadly they’re only doing a 60 issue run so we’ve only got about 4 years of Chew goodness left, but oh well, I’ll enjoy it while I can. Pick Chew up in your favorite comic shop, grab the awesome Comics iPad/iPhone app and buy it on there, or pick up the volume 1 & 2 anthology issues at Amazon below.

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Chew Volume 1: Tasters Choice

Chew Volume 2: International Flavor

I think that one of the greatest things in the world is a free book.   A typical trip to the book store for me can end with my spending $100, so to stumble upon a free book is wonderful.  It’s one of the reasons I bought the Kobo, remember, because it came with 100 free classics.

A while a back, on Twitter, @randomhouse posted a link to the Suvudu Free Book Library, where you can currently get a copy of Naomi Novak’s “His Majesty’s Dragon.”    Thrilled, I went to the site and downloaded the ebook and loaded it on my Kobo, except it wouldn’t work!   For some reason, the Kobo said the file was locked and to get the key from Kobobooks.   So, I went to Kobobooks, and lo and behold, they had it for free, also!   A bit of messing around later (long story), and soon I had a new free book, and I was happy.

“His Majesty’s Dragon” is the story of the Napoleonic wars, if there were dragons involved.  I was thrilled by the concept!  I absolutely love historical fiction, because I’m a big history buff, and to add a fantasy element, particularly dragons, is fantastic.   I love dragons!   The story is told from the perspective of a British Navy Captain, Will Lawrence, who unwillingly harnesses a newly hatched dragon after capturing the egg in a battle.   He has to give up his position in the Navy and join the Aviators, those who provide air support on dragons during battles, as well as acting as messengers.  The story is of his growing relationship between himself and Temeraire, his dragon, and the development of his role as an aviator.    Sprinkled throughout the novel are exciting battles important to the Napoleonic Wars, but the novel is really a coming of age novel, between a man and his dragon.

The language of the novel is incredibly formal and sophisticated, given the perspective of a well bred English gentleman, and often left me thinking in an English accent and using big words.  While this certainly did a lot to add to the feel and personality of the novel, it was also a weakness, as when discussing something unfamiliar, like arial tactics and maneuvers, the formal language made it difficult to understand and easy to gloss over.   There was a lot of discussion and planning of tactics in the novel that I’m sure I ended up skipping over, simply because I couldn’t easily envision them in my head.

The other thing I had trouble envisioning was the scope of size of the dragons.   The size of the dragons was often referred to in tons, however, to say something weighs ten tons means nothing in my mind and I can’t see the size in my head.  Therefore, I was a little shocked to find that dragons held a complement of gunners, bombers, spotters, etc., upwards of 20 men, because in my head, the dragon wasn’t that big.   At the very end of the book, there was an appendix, of sorts, giving more detail on European dragon breeds, that also gives dimensions of the dragons in feet, the knowledge of which would have been helpful in the story.

All in all, this was a great story, excellently researched which lead to a feel of sincere authenticity.  The main characters of Lawrence and Temeraire were well developed, though supporting characters were left a little shallow.  As a result, the length of the novel made it easy to forget who a minor character was.  The novel wrapped up well enough in the end that it could act as a stand alone novel; it doesn’t force the reader to get another book to complete the story.   The excerpt of the next novel in the series is tempting enough, however, to  encourage further reading.  There are six books in the series, at the moment, and I think they will all be worth reading, if they hold up to the same standard as this one.

While the ebook is free on kobobooks.com, Amazon.com and at the Suvudu Free Book Library, you can get the paper copy here:

His Majesty’s Dragon

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