Random Rapid Reviews - Scurvy Dogs and Sidekicks

Dippin' into the AIT/Planet Lar box yet again. This time it's Scurvy Dogs.

Scurvy Dogs 1-3 by Andrew Boyd and Ryan Yount: Oh my. Um. Well. Yikes. Er. Uh. Eh. Ok. These are... bizarre. As the books say, Pirates are the new Monkeys. You wanna sell a book? Stick a pirate in it. And these books take the premise and run with it. But you wanna know whether or not to buy them, right? That's a toughie. I original thought I was going to say these books are full of low-brow humor. But, although some is low-brow, it's more bizarre than low-brow. And, you know, you can't say that something is low-brow when you've laughed at the jokes... which I did, in some cases. I just can't say I loved it. I didn't hate it, either. And I can't really recommend it. I know a lot of folks who would find these books hilarious and well worth the time to read... but I'm not one of them. So I'm going with a neutral rating on this one.

Moving on, let's hit another series sent to me for review. This is from the Sidekicks series. Also check out my review of the first book.

Sidekicks: Operation Squish (hardcover) by Dan Danko and Tom Mason: The first book was all set-up, despite the cool adventure in space. I see that now. In this second book, our hero gets to take on a Giant Robot and deal with girl troubles. There's also a couple of tantalizing hints of more depth to this universe than even Guy Martin thinks there is. All-in-all, this one makes me want to read the third one even more (it's in my reading pile), and cements my decision to get the fourth book as soon as it comes out. Highly recommended for young readers (ages 9 to 12, says Amazon) and anyone young at heart. I particularly recommend it to people who want a gentle deconstruction of the whole idea of superheroes. Definitely worth a read.