A review by haia_929
Mike's Place: A True Story of Love, Blues, and Terror in Tel Aviv by Jack Baxter, Joshua Faudem
3.0
This is a trimmed down version of my review, to view the full review visit The Book Ramble.
I received a copy of this book from First Second Books on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Mike's Place tells the true story of events that occurred in 2003 in Israel when two suicide bombers attacked a nightclub and killed 3 people. The club was having a documentary made about it at the time which has since been completed and released (Blues by the Beach). This book relates the making of the documentary and the events of the bombing. The book also promotes a message of peace and of hope for the future.
I found this to be an interesting read. At times it was a little hectic which made it a little tiring to me, but it was still interesting. There's a lot of political references as well which means its hard to understand with knowledge of the specifics of the political situation in the Middle East. I don't know that I was a huge fan of this graphic novel, its hard to find heavy content enjoyable, which is why deciding on a rating was hard for me.
An easy place to start is the art. I think the art was good though I'm not a huge fan of some stylistic choices. The proportions and overall body sketches were kind of weird to me at times, though not always. The amount of detail was good for the most part.
In terms of content I think it was well written and the choice of subject was really good. I'm not an expert on the political situation in the Middle East so I can't really comment on the political content of the book beyond saying I think the focus of the book, on the non-political and on the hope for the future, was very good and is an important part of education about the situation. I think the fact that this book tried to correct misconceptions that people have about the Qur'an, by way of several quotes from the Qur'an throughout the book, was really a great idea. I think the focus on hope and peace is also excellent. The overall message you get from the book was quite good.
I wasn't aware of this suicide bombing in particular, so reading about it was really interesting. I think it was informative which was a positive. The epilogue was extremely helpful in filling in any information I didn't even realize I was missing out on. I definitely think the content was excellent and had an extremely good focus. As I mentioned there are some problems with flow as the story follows a lot of characters and frequently bounces around, breaking up the flow of the book and sometimes creating confusion.
Overall, this is a very compelling story about some very interesting and wonderful people. I would recommend this book to readers of political science book as it may be a little harder for general comics fans to get into.
I received a copy of this book from First Second Books on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Mike's Place tells the true story of events that occurred in 2003 in Israel when two suicide bombers attacked a nightclub and killed 3 people. The club was having a documentary made about it at the time which has since been completed and released (Blues by the Beach). This book relates the making of the documentary and the events of the bombing. The book also promotes a message of peace and of hope for the future.
I found this to be an interesting read. At times it was a little hectic which made it a little tiring to me, but it was still interesting. There's a lot of political references as well which means its hard to understand with knowledge of the specifics of the political situation in the Middle East. I don't know that I was a huge fan of this graphic novel, its hard to find heavy content enjoyable, which is why deciding on a rating was hard for me.
An easy place to start is the art. I think the art was good though I'm not a huge fan of some stylistic choices. The proportions and overall body sketches were kind of weird to me at times, though not always. The amount of detail was good for the most part.
In terms of content I think it was well written and the choice of subject was really good. I'm not an expert on the political situation in the Middle East so I can't really comment on the political content of the book beyond saying I think the focus of the book, on the non-political and on the hope for the future, was very good and is an important part of education about the situation. I think the fact that this book tried to correct misconceptions that people have about the Qur'an, by way of several quotes from the Qur'an throughout the book, was really a great idea. I think the focus on hope and peace is also excellent. The overall message you get from the book was quite good.
I wasn't aware of this suicide bombing in particular, so reading about it was really interesting. I think it was informative which was a positive. The epilogue was extremely helpful in filling in any information I didn't even realize I was missing out on. I definitely think the content was excellent and had an extremely good focus. As I mentioned there are some problems with flow as the story follows a lot of characters and frequently bounces around, breaking up the flow of the book and sometimes creating confusion.
Overall, this is a very compelling story about some very interesting and wonderful people. I would recommend this book to readers of political science book as it may be a little harder for general comics fans to get into.