A fun reboot of the Venom story with Eugene "Flash" Thompson as the new Venom, working with the army he continues to serve, even after losing both his legs fighting for his country. Don't worry, they'll remind you of that plenty of times. And the fact his dad was an abusive drunk. It's a good thing I think Venom is super cool. And the fact they had an extra comic about Venompool which was pretty hilarious!

Well... uh....didn't expect THAT to happen to Villefort. Uh, so yeah, MUCH different than the anime.

Spoiler

And boy did it do a 180 where suddenly Valentine and her mom are basically dominatrixes and punish Villefort? Can't say I was a fan but whatevs.

So you only get to see him exact revenge on Villefort, which finishes up at the beginning of this volume, and then the rest of it is backstory on Edmond and how he escaped Château d'If and came in contact with Gankutsuou.

I really enjoyed learning more about the Gankutsuou and Edmond's escape, and also how the art in this started to become much more Japanese Horror-esque (think a smidgen of Ito). It deviates wildly from the original story of Count of Monte Cristo, but like they say in the manga, they wanted to do something different for the fans that watched the anime. Don't read thinking you'll get content based on the classic novel, do read if you are a big fan of the anime Gankutsuou!

Great art and I'm always a fan of Daniel Kraus. You can always expect something gruesome! I'm also a fan of single volume comic stories. So this is a great read for fans of fall and horror!

Holy moly, that was quite the complex soap opera! But gottdam was it excellent! I really must say that I was able to enjoy it to it's fullest because of two things: The audio book read by John Lee was the right choice. I think if I read it myself with my own voice in my head I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much and would have mixed up a lot of the French words in it. Two: Gankutusou is definitely my second favorite anime ever and really does a great job following this story (well, towards the end it starts to lean towards to more dramatic but whatevs. Oh, and Maximilian is secondary while Albert is the main character). Without having seen it many times I would have had all the names mixed up, but with a good grasp on the characters and an image in my head, it really brought much more depth and understanding to the original story, this classic, The Count of Monte Cristo.

In conclusion: SO GOOOOOD!!! I was not disappointed.

Congrats Brad on your first book! You have some very memorable and engaging characters in this book. Definitely its strong suit. I especially loved Matteo

Spoiler

(How dare you!)

and Izabella! It was also great how you had an obvious baddy (just love to hate that Cesar) and a not so obvious one! It was definitely a page turner that last day in Chapala, WHEW!! You did a great job with that pacing!
I know that as you read more books and write more of your own stuff you're going to get really good really fast! You definitely have the potential to write a best seller someday soon!
Can't wait to read the next one you come out with!