{"id":529,"date":"2014-09-04T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=529"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:41:34","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:41:34","slug":"thursday-review-wrenchies-by-fare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=529","title":{"rendered":"Thursday Review: THE WRENCHIES by Farel Dalrymple"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
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Click to embiggen. Totally worth it.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Two things to get out there right away: 1. I received a review copy of this book from First Second, and 2. I’d definitely recommend this one for an older YA\/crossover audience, due to some fright\/violence\/swearing moments. <\/p>\n

I’ll also come right out and say THIS: this one is WEIRD. It is surreal, and it is bizarre, and yes, it all holds together in an utterly take-it-as-it-comes, magic-realism sort of way. It is layered, stories within stories, meta upon meta. Sometimes it’s confusing. Is it the story of Sherwood, a kid who walked into a cave with his brother, ended up killing a scary, zombie-esque Shadowsman and finding an amulet and never being the same again? Or is it the story of Hollis, kid-in-a-superhero-costume, decades later, next-door-neighbor to grown-up, alcoholic, troubled Sherwood? Or is it the story of the Wrenchies of the title, a gang of kids in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, fighting zombies until they reach their inevitable adulthood and become zombies themselves? (Hmm, symbolic, that\u2026) Are the Wrenchies simply a comic book created by Sherwood, or are they real? YOU DECIDE. (No, really. And then come tell me, because I haven’t decided what’s real and what isn’t, in this story\u2026or maybe the point is NOT to know.)<\/p>\n

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Oh, and the artwork. The artwork! This one has some of the most memorable, amazing, jaw-dropping artwork I’ve seen in a comic in a while. Scratchy and dirty and grim, yet fully-realized and beautiful; horrifying and gorgeous by turns (and sometimes at the same time). There were so many individual panels, small and large, that I felt were just little stand-alone masterpieces on their own. I can’t even imagine how long this one took to draw. Or how the writing proceeded, for that matter\u2014in a way it’s almost free-form, stream-of-consciousness, but it’s got so many layers, and things do sort of come together in the end. Kind of. <\/p>\n

If you like stories you can easily follow and know what’s happening, The Wrenchies<\/i> might not be for you. But if you don’t mind taking a ride through a strange world, with a lonely young boy named Hollis as your sometime adventuring companion, there is some fascinating stuff here. It’s just\u2026super difficult to talk about.<\/p>\n

You can find THE WRENCHIES<\/i><\/a> by Farel Dalrymple online, or at an independent bookstore near you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click to embiggen. Totally worth it. Two things to get out there right away: 1. I received a review copy of this book from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,2,30,12,32,74,63,5],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adventure","tag-af","tag-crossover","tag-fantasy-sci-fi","tag-graphic-novels","tag-guy-appeal","tag-magical-realism","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8196,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/8196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}