Review: 42 Miles by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer and Elaine Clayton

If there's anything I like about Big Finish, other than Charley Pollard, it's that I'll occasionally pick up an adaptation of a tv programme I've actually never seen and end up enjoying it. Such is the case with Callan, which comes across to me as a less glamorous Danger Man, or a lot like series one of The Avengers (the UK tv programme, not the Marvel comic). So, read my review of Callan, Volume One at Unreality SF.

Hardcover, 73 pages
Published 2008
Acquired October 2016
Read October 2017

42 Miles by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
illustrated by Elaine Clayton

A book of children's poetry about a kid with divorced parents (one of whom lives in an urban downtown, the other of whom lives on a farm), with mixed-media scrapbook-style illustrations, is not really my thing. But it's set in the Cincinnati area, so here I am. It's okay. Distressingly little local color (it's not even clear what direction the protagonist's father's farm is from the city), so no points on that front. I think it mentioned Cincinnati chili, which is the bare minimum, but now I can't find it. As a book, it's not great either. I did like that the protagonist's parents have been divorced as long as she can remember, so it's not a blindsided-by-divorce book or a my-parents'-breakup-was-my-fault book, but rather a how-do-I-live-two-lives book. However, the reconciliation between her two "selves" comes very suddenly and seems unearned. I don't think it's up to much as poetry, either, and the illustrations were just kind of there.