Non-cruise books read this week (split up for import into MT):
First up is Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits, written by Garth Ennis. I’ve been meaning to try one of these for a while, and apparently this is one of the best places to start; it’s the semi-famous sequence in which John Constantine is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and weasels his way out of it. I thought it was well and cleverly done, a nice character portrait, and I’ve basically no interest in reading any more because of that. He’s a cynical bastard, he’s clever, Bad Things happen around him, and he hates himself for getting out of those Bad Things when the people around him don’t. The end. It doesn’t seem to me that he’s got many places to go as a character, because he wouldn’t still be Constantine if you changed any of those. And, well, I don’t feel the need to spend a lot of time with a person like that.
I don’t mind Constantine as a bit player, or out of his usual haunts (such as in the fun (work-in-progress) fanfic Hellblazer: Hogwarts). So I re-read the Books of Magic.