1513 ( )

Just burned through this, and got to say I liked it. It's a bit crazy, some bits don't make sense, and it rattles along at almost too fast a pace, but it manages to hang together in a 'raw' way - the central idea is interesting enough to keep you going. Almost gave it a 4, it's on the edge. Went with a 3 because it's not hugely groundbreaking. ( )

Faker takes some good ideas typical of Carey's work--like, it's heavy on the free will questions and the limits of personality-as-information--and drags 'em through the trash bin so we can spend 6 issues hanging out with foul-mouthed, stupid college kids acting like foul-mouthed, stupid college kids.

No one should have to do that. ( )

Mike Carey who has written for X-men, Fantastic Four, Lucifer and Hellblazer has 6-book series under a series called 'Fakers'. This is pure horror genre, 5 college kids are exposed to deadly, experimental hallucinogens...combined with their history, past trauma, they have to come to terms with reality first to get out of horror that faces them. Okayish. ( )

The blurb on the back made this sound a lot more interesting than it actually was. Sadly, what could have been a really disturbing, mysterious book was ruined by being terribly obvious. At the very least, delay your big revelation about what happened to erase these kids' memories by having their big drinking binge happen somewhere other than the mysterious secret chemistry lab. And if you're going to write a book about a small group of friends, you should try to pretend to give a damn about more than two of them. Instead, we get main character girl, other guy who must be interesting because he's sexually promiscuous, jock (because every group of friends has a jock), and other girl who can fill the hacker niche.

Simply by creating interesting characters, rather than types, and throwing in at least a few red herrings, this could have been a lot more engaging. ( )