The latest Minx book, Confessions of a Blabbermouth, actually has a decent reason to be on the X-Axis.  It's co-written by Mike Carey, who's thoroughly familiar in these parts.  And it's drawn by Aaron Alexovitch, who has no X-related credentials at all.  But he did create Serenity Rose, which I adored, and that's good enough for me.

Carey's co-writer is his teenage daughter Louise, who apparently writes a "Diary of a London Schoolgirl" column for the London Metropolitan Archive website.  In the name of diligent reviewing, I tried to check it out.  Couldn't find it.  If anyone knows where it is, do let me know.

Tasha Flanagan is a teenage blogger.  Her divorced mother hooks up with the intensely annoying Jed as her new boyfriend, and Jed's daughter (and amateur journalist) Chloe duly shows up at Tasha's school.  Chloe is just as irritating as her father, and as the reluctant editor of the school yearbook, Tasha is stuck with her.

If you're expecting a story about blogging... well, no, it's not really about blogging.  There's blogging in it, to be sure, but it's not really the focal point that the title might lead you to expect.  But then, there's an awful lot of things fighting for space as the focal point of this book.

It's a story about an unlikely friendship between two teenage girls.  It's also a story about unwanted stepparents, and it's also a story about father/daughter relationships. It's kind of a story about authorship, and it's even a bit of a story about bullying.  At one point it teases becoming an issue-of-the-week story, but fortunately, that turns out to be a feint.  But quite an effective feint, because I figured out the ending very early on and at least the story got me wondering whether it was heading somewhere else.

But you get the point.  There's an awful lot going on here, thematically.  And depending on how you look at it, that means it either packs a whole lot of stuff into one book, or it's a bit of an unfocussed mess.  I'm leaning towards being positive about it, but I have to admit that I could easily understand someone taking the other view.  Tasha's blog doesn't quite fit into the framework, either - it's there because the plot needs it to be there, rather than because it fits into any of the various themes.

Still, I liked it.  Tasha is a nicely developed version of a fairly standard teenage character, and it's all quite sparky throughout.  Alexovitch's art lifts the book.  He's a cartoonist by inclination, and neatly magnifies everything in the story.  Sylvie, the school bully, is a fantastically absurd caricature.  The characters are lifelike, and the art is full of fun details.  I'm really looking forward to his upcoming solo effort, Kimmie66.

There's room for improvement, but it's got plenty of life to it.  Perhaps it's trying to do too many things at once, but I think it mostly pulls it off.

Rating: A-

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