Revenge of the Librarians: Cartoons by Tom Gauld

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After all, Gauld is just as comfortable taking jabs at Jane Eyre and Game of Thrones. Some particularly favoured targets include the pretentious procrastinating novelist, the commercial mercenary of the dispassionate editor, the wilful obscurantism of the vainglorious poet. Gauld comes up with some ingenious bits like generators for eccentric families for novelists to write about and thriller concepts that work really well. The “choose your own adventure”-style strips are fun, as is the Great Book Festival Race board game and the maze puzzle for helping a new book find its place in the market. The infographics (My Reading Year) are brilliant and amusing - some of these non-traditional strips were among the best in the book. In this second book, the characters are somehow even more flat (I got really tired of hearing how perfect Ryan is) and there is definitely no deepening of our understanding of the demons. The story hinges on the mechanics of the demon world- the fight for the demon throne, demon possession, a tether- but it's clear that the author doesn't care at all about writing a fantasy novel and really thinking through how these fantasy elements interact with each other and what life for a demon is really like. The plot itself feels rushed, underexplained, and overwhelmingly predictable. Perfect cheer-me-up”, is how a reader describes Revenge of the Librarians, Tom Gauld’s latest collection of comic strips, on an online forum. As a succinct critique of everything he does, it is a description that is hard to fault. It also reflects a statement of purpose he admitted to a few years ago, when he described his aim as “just to entertain people and hopefully take their minds off their worries for a few minutes.”

Revenge of the Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen | Goodreads Revenge of the Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen | Goodreads

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. When I originally read the first book, I thought it was a standalone book. I know that there was more story to be told if you consider the two remaining trips to the demon realm. With Ryan, her crush and now boyfriend by her side, Cyn takes off for summer theatre camp not expecting to encounter demons ... or Jules, Ryan’s “friend” who just happens to be a pretty blonde. I'm going to be honest, I kind of like Cyn more when she's with Peter. In this book especially, she seemed more comfortable and open with Peter than with Ryan. After she was no longer suspicious of course, Everything I loved about the first is dialed up in Revenge of the Evil Librarian. So much theater love (THEY'RE AT THEATER CAMP), so much romantic tension, so much evil seeping into the real world. I continue to adore how drawn demons are to musical theater. Cynthia continues to be one of my favorite female protagonists, throwing equal weight into her desperation to save her friends and her musing about makeouts and handsome boys. I love that she's an well-rounded character with enough reality to make me really, really relate to her. I'm not half the bad ass Cyn is, but I love reading about her. Everything in the story feels like it's happening the way it's supposed to; even though it's a supernatural story, it still feels grounded and organic. I put that down totally to the characters. Cyn is our narrator again, at theatre camp with her boyfriend Ryan, and their relationship works. There's conflict, of course, but it isn't manufactured for the purpose of piling bad things on the main character. It all makes sense within their history and the current story.Ryan and Cyn are together and going to camp together which is lovely until it becomes a love triangle...or rather square. As the title suggests the evil librarian tries to get his revenge with some help from his brother. Cyn is trying to win an award for best set design, dating Ryan, being jealous, having guilt over someone else, getting dragged to hell, being guilty for lying to Ryan as well as a big battle with the former librarian.

Revenge of the Librarians - The Comics Journal

Perfectly composed drawings are punctuated with the artist's signature brand of humour, hitting high and low. Edit: I really want to note that Cyn never once fretted over her appearance, or made a comment about her own appearance. I think this is really important, because girl rep can just talk about their looks or obsess about how they look. This is extremely important.I read the first book in this series several years ago and wasn't impressed with it. It didn't have the compelling characters and personal drama of a fun high school YA book or the interesting worldbuilding and speculative themes of a fun fantasy story, nor did I find it at all funny. However, I've been so desperate for stuff in this pandemic that I've been reading sequels to anything I found at all serviceable in the past. I kind of wished that Cyn would have been more honest and upfront with Ryan so we could have avoided some of the boyfriend drama (though that drama did end up playing an important role in her battle against demons, oddly enough), and I missed a little bit of the charm that the last book had for me, BUT as a musical theater lover, I was super connected to the fun camp setting and to Cyn’s connection to theater. I also still found Cyn to be a sassy and snarky narrator—a style that gets me every time. This installment got 4/5 stars from me. I steal a bite of syrup from waffle from Ryan's plate (thats right Jules, because hes my boyfriend and I can eat off his plate anytime I want)"