2016 book 115

Bob Proehl's A Hundred Thousand Words
Proehl's debut novel was right up my alley--and will probably be right up the alley of any comic book or sci-fi nerd. It centers on a woman who once starred on an X-Files/Fringe-ish tv show, and married and had a child with her co-star--but after things went badly, she took the little boy and headed to New York. Now she's on her way back to Los Angeles for the first time in years, stopping to make appearances at comic book conventions along the way. We also get the POV of her son, a budding storyteller, along with the only woman comic book writer at a DC-ish comic book company (or maybe it was the Marvel counterpart--I got a little confused with the fictionalizations of all the real life stuff), and a young male comic book artist working on a smaller press book. I actually thought this was a really woman-friendly book--I worried about how the issues surrounding women and comics would fare with a male author, but he did a pretty good job (I especially appreciated his takedown of the Alan Moore analogue). The writing here is strong--I like stories about stories--and I found it all satisfying--I loved how all the threads came together. I /did/ wish for just a little bit more from the ending, but I can see why Proehl wrapped it up the way he did. Really, I had no major complaints--this managed to be both fun and moving. A-.