thistle_and_verse's Reviews (299)

Received an ARC through Edelweiss. Opinions are my own. This comic melds horror with noir detective fiction with action. It's meant to be aesthetic fun. The art is a stand out. The dramatic poses and muted colors worked well with the melodrama. Even when blood isn't being spilled, the art of the vampires is still unsettling. I don't think the story was supposed to be that serious - megalomaniac big bad must be stopped. The characters are trope-y: hard-nosed detective dad, estranged son, love interest. If I'd been more into the history and this genre meld, I wouldn't have minded as much, but the story wasn't doing much for me.

A solid issue. I usually don't know what to make of poetry, but I really enjoyed the poems in this issue; "Umake: God of Hair" was inventive, "Bury Me With My Bonnet" had imagery I found oddly soothing considering the subject matter, and "Unbraided, Clean" was mournful and sweet.

"No Late-for-School" was a horror story where the main villains weren't terrifyingly malevolent as much as they were trifling, cowardly, and opportunistic - which made them uniquely frustrating and dangerous. I really liked the braiding magic system in "When Dragons Claim the Sky." I hadn't seen anything like it before, and I hadn't considered the ways hair could be threatening. I would love to see more adventures in this world. "In That Place She Grows a Garden" and "My Snakes" use magic and surrealism to push back on the ways Black hair is regulated and degraded.

A good comic. It was fun watching Malika strategize and square up against dragons. The fight scenes were nicely drawn.

I'm not sure how a book with this premise could bore me so much. I got a third of the way in and couldn't finish it. I was hoping for more science elements, but the book mostly focuses on the relationships between Rhett and the other characters. Rhett perplexes me. He doesn't seem to be particularly interesting or charismatic, but it seems like every single female character he meets wants to have sex with him.

YA with spellbinding characters and an unpredictable plot. Watch my full-length review here: https://youtu.be/Zh8Su_uJD2c

Everything read as exposition. I didn't feel emotionally connected to the story or the characters. I didn't understand how the magic system in this world worked or how the different pantheons interacted. The writing was awkward in places, especially during a sex scene. There were some interesting concepts (gods I haven't read about before, obayifo, etc.), but it wasn't enough for me to enjoy this book.

Auben is an engaging, morally grey protagonist. The voice of Icy Blue compels him to do terrible things, but he'd done not-as-terrible things before his possession. This is a society with 3 genders, and there's a trans side character. There's a lot of conflicts in this book - Auben v himself, Auben v Kasim, religious v secular factions, etc.. Towards the end, it felt like some things got lost in the shuffle and that not every plot line was given its dues. I generally liked that I didn't know where the plot was going and that the characterizations felt consistent. This was a thrilling read, and I zipped through it.

There were so many elements here I should've loved, but for whatever reason, they didn't stick. I kept losing track of the side characters and the finer points of the lore. I thought Arrah's relationship with her family was fascinating and tragic. Kefu was an intriguing setting - a seemingly sleepy town inhabited by demons where time doesn't work correctly. Rudjek was an adequate love interest. Towards the end of the book, he does some things that seemed pretty unbelievable to me. It wasn't angering as much as confusing. The story ended in a really interesting place, so I'm cautiously anticipating the sequel.

A good continuation of the series. There are a lot of twists and turns in this issue, and while I guessed some of them, I didn't see them all coming. The fight sequences looked good, and I'm appreciating Malika's character design more and more. It looks like the series will be moving away from the military strategy a bit, and I'm kind of disappointed. It was something I don't usually read, and it was growing on me, but it looks like Malika will be fighting more one-on-one now. In summation, a lot of good elements in this volume.