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Revenge of the Librarians: Cartoons by Tom Gauld

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no.' 'Ryan please' 'No cyn. im sorry... Your stuff is not the only stuff that matters" "fine, i say quietly which is all i can manage. I turn and walk out."

Revenge of the Librarians: (Main) by Tom Gauld | WHSmith

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)"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. 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. 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. Confront the spectre of failure, the wraith of social media, and other supernatural enemies of the author 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.

Revenge of the Librarians’ by Tom Gauld: A Book Review ‘Revenge of the Librarians’ by Tom Gauld: A Book Review

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, 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. 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.Is this Revenge of the Librarians the best book ever created? It does have to beat some pretty stiff competition, but I’m still going to say yes! What Is Revenge of the Librarians? 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. 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. 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). The story is overall as quite a bit of energy and tension to it. It is funny and outspoken and has such vitality to it making it an unbelievable read. Knudsen keeps the pace up and the tension rising, but she does not lose those essential character dynamics, and she does not lose the humor. Everything she has done has made this novel incredible.

Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld | Goodreads

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. 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? I reiterate once again, The fact that the demoness said one sentence in this whole thing missed the mark. She was a pivotal role in the first book (as Cyn owed her 2 favors from the deal they made in book 1) and should have had a far bigger role in this story, involving pivotal interaction between her, Cyn, Ryan, And Peter. It should have been all around more crazy and chaotic (just like the first book), more humour, more exciting in a Buffy the vampire slayer sort of way, more snarky, a lot more of hell involved (literally and figuratively), more terrifying, and much more interaction between key characters. Perfectly composed drawings are punctuated with the artist's signature brand of humour, hitting high and low.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. In my opinion, It should have been Cyn and Peter fighting Mr. Gabriel together on an equal basis. But it was more Peter and less Cyn, despite this being her story. It also should have had Ryan and Cyn's other friends more involved. They should have been saving the mortals in camp from the demons using mortal mystical magic, but none of that happened. Ryan and her friends did very little. They sat on the bleachers watching Peter fight the demon (after drinking some power potion), only slightly aided by Cyn. There were no stakes of massive loss of campers life involved. Although prior to the fight several campers DIED while they waited, WAITED, for 2 magical items to be given to them by Aaron. They did nothing to prevent these deaths. Why...because no one was trained to fight them during the entire book, up to the very end of a non exciting fight on the soccer field. It seemed too neatly written to have Aaron, a consort of the demoness, give them the magical tools to fight the bad guy at the very end of the book. Again, what was infuriating is that Prior to getting these magical tools, for over 3/4th of the story, Peter said over and over again he had people looking into ways to fight the evil librarian. What people?. He had one guy who we know of who died right away. So all of this waiting slowed the whole story down. It was wasted time. Time to be used to train to fight these demons and to prevent their carnage. Carnage that should have been more explored. 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. I hated Jules so much. Like urhh. She reminds me of the Jules from TVD for some reason - just a pure b**ch. I hated the way she acted like she owned Ryan just because she knew himj longer and rubbed it in Cyns face.

Revenge of the Librarians Revenge of the Librarians

I seriously cried at this. Like seriously how could he do that1 I was like don't let that bitch Jules rule you!!! 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.

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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. 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. 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. 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. I could tell straight away that Peter was a demon. I dont know how but i just could. I will admit at first I thought it would also be the director.

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