Revenge of the Librarians: Cartoons by Tom Gauld

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Jules and I both jump up to hug him, but without a hesitation he turns to me first, I close my eyes so I don't have to watch the expression on her face at being second in line" 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. 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.

Revenge of the Librarians | Tom Gauld | 9781770466166 - NetGalley Revenge of the Librarians | Tom Gauld | 9781770466166 - NetGalley

To be honest, though, I read the first book a couple of summers ago, but when I read this book I was instantly enthralled all over again. There was some serious character growth, and now that this series is a trilogy, I'm very excited to see how the rest of the series plays out. Especially Cyn and Ryan slash Cyn and Peter. The book is full of strips showcasing Gauld at his inventive best. Like clever new German words for readers (“buchverlusterliechgterung” = relief upon finding that you have lost your copy of a book that you weren’t really enjoying), Further Instalments of the Famous Six Word Short Story “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn”, useful abbreviations like tl;dr - “rb/gb = Read a Bit, Got Bored”, and Summer Reading for Conspiracy Theorists: Slaughterhouse 5G, The Old Man and the CIA. 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. I read and enjoyed the first one, so I requested this without reading the synopsis and just read blind...and I was a bit disappointed. Overall, this book didn't seem to have the fun, campy atmosphere the first one did. I debated DNFing; however, I was curious about the ending. If there is another book, I doubt I'll be reading it.

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The first chapter was a little shaky (but was largely a 'previously on Evil Librarian' entry), but once they got to camp the writing and the story hit its entertaining horror-comedy stride. Theatre fans will feel right at home as Cynthia and her boyfriend Ryan head to theatre-camp and encounter a little mundane drama--Cyn is new to camp, but Ryan has been going for years and has tons of camp-friends, including (to Cyn's dismay) a real leading-lady of a girl--and soon enough some supernatural peril as well, when it turns out one of the campers is not human. Though this new figure claims he's not evil, how can Cyn be sure? And she still hasn't told Ryan about the deal she made with the demoness to save their lives, but hopefully that won't come up anytime soon...right? Cyn’s narrative and voice are probably the most compelling parts of the novel. She is funny and smart and just thoroughly entertaining and relatable. Her voice and snippets that often break the fourth barrier with expert construction. She is a fun character, a strong character who makes many mistakes believing she is doing what is best for everyone. Cyn does believe she can do this on her own, but she does not want to, and that is part of what makes her a great character. She is a flawed hero, a girl who wants to keep the people she loves safe, who does not want to ask for help on the risk that they are hurt or lost. Moreover, Cyn’s funny quips that Knudsen inserts into the text bring to life her personality only further serve to make her more relatable. Confront the spectre of failure, the wraith of social media, and other supernatural enemies of the author

Revenge of the Librarians | Review - Good Comics for Kids Revenge of the Librarians | Review - Good Comics for Kids

At first glance, Cyn appears to be an average teen bent on having the best summer of her life. She's a talented set designer, she's going to a camp for theater enthusiasts with her cute boyfriend Ryan, and she has an amazing group of friends. But Cyn isn't a typical teenager, and this isn't going to be an ordinary summer for her. As Cyn faces obstacles, both human and supernatural, she will learn the true meaning of love, friendship and inner strength. 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. 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.”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. Complicating matters is the attractive play writer, for the new production Cyn is assigned as the set designer, just happens to be a demon! The stage is set for a fiendishly dramatic summer at theater camp for Cynthia and her boyfriend, Ryan. With no demons at all. Right? Is he a good or bad demon?! Is there even such a thing? Can he read her mind? How does he know she would love to use Jules as demon bait?! Hahaha!

Evil Librarian Series by Michelle Knudsen - Goodreads Evil Librarian Series by Michelle Knudsen - Goodreads

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 have the honour of owning an original drawing of one of the strips featured here, the one about a writer having a great idea… for lunch. It was cool to see it in full-colour here for the first time, I’ve been looking at it for at-least a couple years now. I keep it above my desk because in the mornings having a great idea for lunch is really the only great ideas I can conjure up. A reader can tell whether they’ll enjoy this book by the second comic, in which a monstrous villain (in top hat and cane) informs the young woman that “now that you are my bride, you will never leave this castle!” She doesn’t care, because he has an amazing library. Anyone who’s with her on that, who agrees that enough books and the right place to read them is all that’s needed, is the perfect audience for this. This was the sequel to The Evil Librarian book and in its own way was just as good. The first book had the surprise of demons being real, having so many invade the school, quite a few deaths, romance and suspense. But, the second book was set at camp without any parents, involved the relationship of the couple established at the end of the last book with an added complication, demons, jealousy, and guilt along with a trip to the demon realm.It was clever, although there were some which I flat out did not get. I appreciated when he took a group of books and changed their titles in a particular direction, such as, classic novels with added positivity: Merriment on the Orient Express; Life in Venice; Twelve Agreeable Men; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spa; Portnoy's Compliment and Finnegan's Birthday Party. And there was classics reissued with lower standards: The Adequate Mr. Ripley; George's Passable Medicine; Reasonable Expectations; The Mediocre Wizard of Oz and The OK Gatsby. Those were fun. 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. As for the comics... they're cute, and the illustrations are reminiscent of a colorful, less crudely done version of "xkcd." Many of them have jokes that book aficionados will love, and anyone who's ever struggled with trying to write a book will identify with. It knows its audience and caters heavily to it, which is in no way a bad thing. I seriously cried at this. Like seriously how could he do that1 I was like don't let that bitch Jules rule you!!!

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

Getting a few high 5s from some of the bunk 6 girls and a few of Ryan friends who are sitting close enough to reach out to me as I go by." It’s summer and Cyn is flush from her victory over the Evil Librarian Mr. Gabriel, who had nearly seduced Cyn’s best friend Annie into becoming his demon-world bride. 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. My issue is that after a bit, some of the jokes get rather repetitive. I can only take so many jokes that take the same five book titles and do unimaginative wordplay with them twice before I start rolling my eyes. And all the pandemic-related jokes, while they may have been timely when the comics circulated on social media, feel like basically every quarantine meme you've seen on Facebook. If you’ve read any other Gauld comic strips, you know a bit of what to expect. Short witty strips usually about literature (being a professional writer, struggling through the classics, enjoying a book on the beach, fun strips to help you develop plots for your next novel).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.