Indeed, it's gut-punch storytelling that shouts at the imagination.

It wouldn't help that you'd be happily plagued by multiple I-didn't-see-that-coming plotlines and a modern-not-modern heroine who fights misogyny, child-snatching, and being someone’s lunch.Īnd how wonderful is author Sunyi Dean's prose? Well, on the first page, she shoves readers into a dank apartment above a car repair business, and we can practically smell the rubber of new tires. It’s probably not even the kind of book a sensitive soul would want to read before bedtime the very idea of a world full of thick-browed dragons and exhausted princesses running parallel to ours could either keep you awake or give you nightmares.

Princesses, knights, and dragons, oh my! They’re there, plus everything else you want in a dark fable – tattered cities, menacing thickets, evil step-relatives, monsters – all of which makes “The Book Eaters” a fairy tale that definitely isn’t for five-year-olds. As he grew, so did the danger, and there’d be no Happily Ever After. And sometimes they just deal with stuff because who has the energy to fight every single day.Or she could run, as she'd done for three years now, as knights and dragons watched for her constantly and circled her everywhere and her boy was always hungry. They deal with microaggressive behavior, ignorance, and barriers to climbing up the career ladder. In fact, they are rather underpaid which isn’t a surprise for 2011 (the year this book takes place) or 2022. Things don’t always go to plan and, unlike the rosy lens TV likes to throw on certain industries, Gavino keeps things realistic. Her story opens their eyes in different ways. The trio also makes friends with a neighbor who is accomplished but chose to step away from a successful writing career. It throws in some very slice-of-life elements as they navigate being underpaid, hanging out as friends, eating, and simply existing as people. This special story follows three Asian American friends who work in different arenas of publishing for various reasons. (The shorter title is A Career in Books.) The latter is what Kate Gavino does in her new graphic novel A Career in Books: A Novel about Friends, Money, and the Occasional Duck Bun. Or what it’s like to tackle the tough world of publishing. Just like standard print novels, a graphic novel can be about whatever an author wants it to be. In her upcoming (and refreshingly realistic) graphic novel A Career in Books: A Novel about Friends, Money, and the Occasional Duck Bun, three Asian American womenShirin, Nina, and Silviatry. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. When most people think about graphic novels and comics, they automatically assume the stories are about wild fantasies, superheroes, horror, or something in the genre vein.

A Career in Books by Kate Gavino