Not surprisingly some graphic novels and fantasy made an appearance at this BYOB Party. Siddharth got  Green Lantern/ New Gods Godhead by Robert Venditti. To understand Green Lantern, you need to know a lot of back story. For instance you need to know about Highfather who is the high priest of the DC universe.

Aniket talked about the bestselling manga series (over eighty books in the series) One Piece written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda. The story follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a man who has the properties of rubber because of a fruit he ate. He teams up with a crew of pirates to find the world’s greatest treasure called One Piece. The manga series has been adapted in an animation, a card game, video games, etc.

Arpit spoke about The Wardstone Chronicles, published as The Last Apprentice in the US. It’s a dark fantasy series by Joseph Delaney and the theme is about the seventh son of a seventh son apprenticed to John Gregory to become a figher of supernatural evil. In other words he becomes a Spook. What Arpit liked about the book was the way Delaney approached the topic in a highly original way with his knowledge of chemistry.

Fantasy is a favorite, with Riya talking about the Harry Potter series and how JK Rowling gets her formula right because she talks about the importance of love- be it between friends, teachers and their students, parents and their children, the crux of the world is based on this. There was mention about how Harry Potter was probably the most under-developed lead character of all time, as he hardly ever changed. Things always happened to him without agency on his part. Of course, this led to an overheated discussion about Harry Potter characteristics.

More books in Part 4.