Welp, I got sick yesterday. Woke up unable to breathe through either nostril, a hacking cough, headache, and lots of other seasonal unpleasantries. Since I'm all high risk for nasty bugs like the flu, I called my doc, she scared the crap out of me until I called in sick and went to see her, and now I'm housebound until Monday. Luckily, I do not have the flu, but I have my usual almost-November sinus infection, and all I want to do is eat really spicy Chinese takeout and drink (decaf) tea in my jammies. The snot monster visits this time every year. I don't know why I'm surprised this time!
I could be working on stuff for online classes right now, but instead I'm getting my bloggy fix since I've been without this week, and I'll be reclining in my cozy bed to read Tideland, by Mitch Cullen (thank you, Nymeth!) shortly.
In the meantime, I wanted to go ahead and review Gene Yang and Derek Kirk Kim's collaborative graphic novel, The Eternal Smile. I was browsing through Borders one day when I realized that this graphic novel actually exists. I hadn't heard anything about it up until that point, and it finally dawned on me to get it from the library a week or so ago. I considered saving it for the 24 Hour Read-a-Thon, but alas, I couldn't wait. There's a picture of my significantly chubby head next to the word "impatient" in the dictionary.
I LOVED Yang's first effort, American Born Chinese. Loved it. Did a little (big, jerky) happy dance when it won the Printz Award. I expected something similar from this little gem.
Not. So. Much.
Before you think I'm saying it's horrible, it's not horrible. It's just not as good (at all, nope) as American Born Chinese. Apparently Yang wrote the three loosely connected stories in this volume and Kim illustrated them. The first story is about Duncan, a prince who must retrieve the head of the evil Frog King in order to marry his hottie princess. There's a twist--a big'un--and Duncan finds out that nothing in the kingdom is as it seems. I won't tell you what the twist is, but it's a really sci-fi-teenager-nerd type of twist. Next!
The second story is about a frog--Granpa Greenbax--and his zillion scams. He's a Scrooge type character whose greatest wish in life is to have a "pond" so full of money that he won't hit his head on the bottom when he swims in his earnings. His assistant, Filbert, sees an odd smile shape in the sky, and it becomes Greenbax's next venture. He erects a cathedral and puts on his preaching robes to rob the locals of their cash as they worship the Eternal Smile. There's a big twist in this story, too, and again, I really can't tell you exactly what it is. However, I will say, everything is not as it seems in Greenbax's life either, and he begins to realize that maybe a pond full of money is not the pond he's looking for at all.
Finally, my favorite of the stories, and the most "down to Earth" of them all, was about Janet Ho, a corporate cog destined to go nowhere. She asks for a raise, her boss laughs it off, and shortly afterward she receives one of those SPAM e-mails from a mysterious Nigerian prince who needs thousands of dollars in cash to escape to America. Janet finds meaning in their e-mail exchanges even as she gives away her savings. Slowly, her washed out personality begins to change and she begins to see life in a new light...despite the fact that she's being had.
While each of the stories was perfectly yummy on its own, I was disappointed by the fact that they just barely seem to go together. They're thematically alike in big, vague ways, and I expected and hoped for a tightly woven narrative like that in American Born Chinese.
Oh well! It was a quick, light read, even if it didn't floor me like that other book I liked so much. Can't win 'em all!
