L.J. Writes

In the course of researching for my novel, which takes place in ancient Korea and parts of modern-day China, I turned to e-book bookstores among other sources. It seemed an easy start, a way to dip a toe in the waters without devoting too much space and money from the first go.

Unfortunately, that water I was dipping into? Actually sort of scummy. Now I did fish out one excellent book, a work of non-fiction that I liked so much that I read it all the way through even though only a small portion was directly relevant to my research. Unfortunately the other books I found on Google Play were all duds, particularly the historical fiction.

( Bad history, horrible writing, and terrible art )

I am duly traumatized by my attempts to begin research via e-books. I'm not even getting into the nonfiction fails--bad history books based on a known forgery don't even make the cut after all the crap I've been treated to. Now look what you've done it, awful historical fiction--you've raised the bar so high, or sunk it so low, I can't even get a proper hate-on for run-of-the-mill bad books.

So yesterday I finished reading the Korean translation of the five-book deluxe edition of Y: The Last Man, the comic book series about every man and every male mammal dropping dead at the same time from a mysterious cataclysm. This leaves humanity in very real danger of dying out within decades. The protagonist Yorick is the last surviving man on Earth who becomes a piece in a vast game of women and nations working to secure gain or to give humanity a chance at survival.

It's an intriguing premise, post-apocalypse with a twist. It explores a lot of feminist issues in a world populated solely by women, and avoids the most obvious cliches like Yorick becoming a harem-master or a stallion. In fact his driving motivation is to find his girlfriend Beth, who was stranded in Australia at the time the worldwide gendercide happened. It's an exciting, very human start which, alas, did not sustain the drama. More on that below.

( On the art and writing )