wulvaen's Reviews (313)

The Monster train keeps rolling!!! 🤯🤯🤯

I cannot say this enough, this is a truly special series so far. It is utterly thrilling. I love the psychological web we're thrust into, all the little stories that are interconnected in some way to either further the character development of Tenma or Johan is masterful.

There have been moments I was thinking "what has this to do with the narrative?" and it either isn't, or is, in some unexpected way. The non related little stories are beautiful and even tho it might not be connected to Johan, it is still furthering the feel or vibe of the world and I'm fucking loving it!

Oh...my....god.....🤯

This is somehow better than volume 1.
I am completely enraptured by this story, the characters, the world building.

The mystery enfolds, and new mysteries take its place. These new mysteries are all connected.
My initial read on Johan has now had a few wrenches thrown into it, his character, while not present, grew immensely through other characters revealing things little by little about him. He grew through their perspectives, their fears, their shared history. It was brilliant, a perfect way to utilise the mystery tone and also further the mystery behind Johan, and even Nina.

Tenma is such a brilliant character, he's so selfless, to his detriment at times. I love how he's being hunted by the police but keeps saving people along the way and they repay his kindness by not ratting him out to the cops that come knocking.

Tenma took in a child this volume, Dieter

The arc with him finding out the abuse little Dieter was subjected to, and him, as he does with his patients, freed Dieter from the shackles of abuse by getting the kid to make his own choice and to free himself and break his own chains. He held the abuser at gunpoint and asked the kid to make a choice, that tomorrow won't be black as night, but a good day. Just like he did with his patients, he didn't just cure any physical ailments, Tenma helped this boy avoid potential trauma by simply caring about him and giving him the courage to free himself.

It was beautiful.

However, I'm not sure about the author's choice to have Dieter accompany Tenma on his hunt to kill Johan. I think he's trying to make Dieter Tenma's anchor to his humanity (something Johan never had), and while that might work, it also means he is someone that will have to be rescued by Tenma, and I suspect if that's the case, it will get really annoying. The story is filled with so much depth that it really doesn't need a consistent damsel to be saved.

I love how both Nina and Tenma are on the same journey, purely good people who have took on training with a gun so they can kill a monster and further save lives.

The story hints that Nina might have an inner monster like Johan, it's a nice touch.

Now I will admit, the second extreme right-winged neo-nazi's were introduced into the narrative and it started talking about Johan being some chosen one to be the next Hitler, I was starting to check out. Just because the book is set in Germany didn't mean you had to take the easy route and fucking bring in Nazis 😑

But luckily, it was just another twist to fuck with us, for the neo-nazis we being used by an organisation familiar with Johan and wants him dead.

Nice twist,

glad the nazi shit was dropped.

This series, so far, is thrilling, page to page, beginning to end. I was literally in a hot tub earlier reading this on my Kobo, and I couldn't put the book down, I was in there so long, bubbling and shrivelling up like a raisin, because I forgot where I was and was so captivated by the story and characters 😂

Onto volume 3! 😎

Absolutely thrilling!

As someone who's watched the Anime, not all of it, but up to the point of volume 1 at least, this manga was just as eerie and thrilling.

The artwork is beautiful, not on the masterpiece level of Berserk, but it has the charm that old-school manga had that doesn't get used much anymore.

The characters themselves are complex yet relatable. Dr Tenma as the main protagonist in direct opposition to "The Monster" is both symbolically beautiful but also makes him a relatable character and someone with a lot of opportunity for growth and evolution.
The Monster does not respect life, it feeds it's inhuman hunger with murder. Dr Tenma respects life beyond the traditional Doctor, he does not just save his patients, but nurtures their healing by connecting with them and actually caring.
The Monster is a void of death and destruction, Tenma is a shining light of life itself.
However, Tenma really shines as a character when he tries to do good in the face of many obstacles and adversity, he's willing to sacrifice parts of himself in the pursuit of good, such as his job and his reputation. He is a very admirable character.

The story itself is gripping and leaves me on the edge of my seat. There is a strange supernatural undertone to the story that I very much enjoy, it's similiar to how the early seasons of the X-Files had an underlining supernatural feel to it but wrapped up in mystique and the question of whether something was real or not.
The beautiful tease that comes with the unanswered questions of reality.
Monster had the very same feel to it, was

Johan

psychic, for example? Who else is involved? Who is corrupted? Who is bought and paid for? This underlining tone combined with the mystery surrounding the murders, make this a very tantalising and satisfying manga that scratches a very specific itch of mine.

I'm very VERY excited to start volume 2 now 😊

I'm absolutely in love with the art and the world!

While I'm still loving this series, one issue I'm having is the names of the bug characters are so cringely alien that they're not memorable, I came to do this review to talk about the Wych woman Slade travelled with and my mind went blank.

This, so far, is my only criticism.
Other than that, the art is beautiful, the story is consistently interesting, and I'm loving the story so much than I'm now PISSED OFF I CAN'T CONTINUE BECAUSE I HAVE TO WAIT 8 DAYS UNTIL THE NEXT ISSUE COMES OUT WHYYYYYYYYY 😭😭😭 

I want MORE!

I'm really really enjoying this, the art is amazing and the story is gripping.

I love Slade's development, while it could be argued it's been accelerated almost beyond realistic pace, I'd disagree, because Slade went from being this awkward sensitive boy who loved looking after bugs and researching them (it was part of his way of being close to his father who was also a bug lover, despite him dying from bugs eating him), to feeling betrayed by those creatures he cared for once he was exposed to the dark realities that these creatures weren't misunderstood and gentle like himself, they were instead a savage, sex-fuelled, dung flinging, bloodthirsty warmongering bunch of bugs that killed his father. He's had so much bottled inside, that this emotional switch, this release, makes perfect sense. 

His anger when he's consumed by the amulet's power is so raw, you feel his pain, you see it in how it manifests, like a berserker, Slade goes on a killing spree to try unleashing all the pain, hate and sadness he's had bottled up inside since his father died and life's been consistently kicking him down, from his brother bullying him and having to move away from the life he knew.

It makes sense, and is beautifully raw.

Besides that, the world building is so interesting and I'm still hooked!

The world-building was really explored in this issue.

It's just so wild to me to imagine the grass in someone's back garden being host to a whole civilisation of uncivilised war makers all banding together to kill a common enemy, the giant being all fear, the doom bringer, the person that mows the grass 😂

Just makes me wonder now, every time I'm out cutting the grass, are a bunch of bugs staring up at me thinking I'm some dark God, mass murdering everyone around them, laying waste to all their surroundings? Probably not, but it's still a scary thing to ponder 👀💀

This is a super interesting comic!

Booktuber Captured in Words described it as
"A Game of Thrones mixed with A Bug's Life",
and I think it describes it perfectly!
I'm hooked, and I'm looking forward to how the story develops! 

The last comic I really delved into was the manga Fire Punch, which was a gripping, unfiltered and devastatingly emotional story.
From the first issue of Bug Wars, I can already gleam a similiar look into vulnerability and brutality. I feel like this series could fuck me up, explore themes of empathy, understanding, pain, vulnerability and pushing on through it all and finding your inner hero to save yourself from the pain and darkness.

Fuck yes, that's my kinda story! 

Ugh

I'm losing the will to live with this series, I really am.

I cannot even differentiate in my memory each book, they're all becoming a blur, they're all just so similiar and things happen and resolve so similarly.
This book series feels like a really messy wannabe Dresdan Files.

Something I'm really struggling with is how Valkyrie and Sculduggery have great chemistry and are funny at times, but other than that, they're shit. Why? Because they don't grow, they don't learn, they're super weak as themselves but overpowered as their evil alter egos, they are actually terrible at being the main characters because the only reason they progress or solve things is through sheer luck and contrived writing, most commonly in the form of them turning into their evil alter egos, being invincible, knowing all magic and just swatting their hands aside and lobbing heads off and then they easily return to normal form with zero consequences and nobody having noticed at all.

The bad guys were defeated at the end through this same contrived writing:

Valkyrie went Superwoman Darquesse mode and literally lobbed off the heads of the bad guys and ripped out hearts etc, then Sculduggery did some tapping beat on a surface which made the lights flicker in a certain way to induce a seizure which knocked out the main powerful villain and Darquesse, bringing Valkyrie back from the edge.

This

tapping

shit was developed off-screen and occurred at the end to solve everything, which is straight up disgusting writing.
These books are getting messier and messier as they go along, it hurts my head even trying to point out all the issues. It feels like each book is just bad guy pops up, they save the day, move onto the next book. Nobody is growing, nobody is getting more powerful or learning anything.

Jesue Christ the main bad guy, Argeddian, was a flip floppy interesting villain, while I enjoyed the philosophical undertone pertaining to his character and his motivations (such as being so anti-violent that you cause the very thing you're against, and giving everyone in the world access to magic power would somehow solve everything and stop I balance and war), I really enjoyed all of that and his character. But then Landy made the guy so powerful that the fact he got defeated at all is ridiculous, the guy can literally copy any magic he wants and understands and grasp it instantly, he literally understands magic and it's inner workings like a three year old with savant syndrome teaching itself to read. And yet, he needed to maneuver Scul and Val to go to another dimension to find his alternate reality version to team up with him? Why? Why not just shunt there himself? Why does he even need his other self? He can literally ressurect the dead and he can give powers to people, why couldn't he just take people's powers away and bring it into himself and make himself more powerful?

Landy made this compelling and relatable villain that was super interesting to try to understand, and then gave him so much overpowered powers on that him being defeated at all was absolutely ridiculous.
I'd have wrote his defeat as his beliefs being the very thing that bring his downfall, he defeats himself with his own naivety, make him the source of his own downfall so he could learn his lesson in the end and gain understanding of the nuance of the human condition.
But no,

Scul tapped him unconscious and he got taken away with no tension or battle or anything.

Absolutely ridiculous!

Landy needs to stay clear of theses world ending events and stick to the smaller stories, he needs to make the characters grow and evolve with each book, he needs to make the characters stop being so ridiculously brain dead and stop copying the same bloody formula from book one.

I AM BEGGING YOU LANDY! Pleeaaassse please please for God sake stop fucking this series up and do better, an Irish fantasy series is so unique and interesting and there's so much you can do if you'd stop it with all this dumb lazy shit like love triangles, angsty misunderstood teens and people being evil just because they're written to be evil (at least the villain in this book wasn't that, I'll give him that, but the teens he gave magic to were that, and it was painful to read).
Give us some goddamn complexity, give us some goddamn growth, give us some goddamn little moments, switch up the formula and give us unique moments that are memorable, impactful and connect with us.

The books feel both childish and adult, and instead of it being the right mix, it's a disjointed mess, it should have the humor and hope of a childish book mixed with the darkness and horror of adultness, it should feel like it has depth and complexity because the real world does have the good and bad, the hope and the hopeless, the dark and the light, and people have both inside them. Val and Scul's alter egos and their impact on them should be more, feel more.
All the interesting elements of these books Landy only visits like once or twice per book, instead of honing in on them, fleshing them out and watering them and caring for them to let them grow and bear fruit.

Swear to god the best comparison I can make is Onlyfans, OF people, at least the smart ones, don't show the goods and instead make their whole shtick the big tease, making the consumer believe one day they'll show the goods and they just gotta keep paying per month and waiting patiently. This is what it feels like reading these books, all the best parts are teased to us each book once or twice, and it feels like I'm one of these gobshites still tuning in to see if he'll finally show me the goods, and I'm feeling more and more like an idiot the more I read on.

The best books in this series were the smaller scale stories, it let him develop the characters more and flesh things out. The problem with having world ending events they save the day from is the same problem Marvel is having with their movies: power scaling.
With Infinity War and Endgame having the stakes so high, with galactic armies and half the universe's population being wiped out, it meant after those movies where could they go? What could be bigger than that? They couldn't top it, which is part of why this whole multiverse plot line is so unsatisfying and terrible.
And the Sculduggery Pleasant books have the exact same issue. Most books have a world ending event that needs to be stopped, and because Landy came out swinging with the first book, it means he either has similiar stakes for each book or his attempt at bigger stakes which will have to be topped in the next book, and the next book, and the next book.
With the Dresdan Files books, there's so many of them but the scales got bigger as thenseries progressed, instead of having the biggest stakes at the start. Jim Butcher knew what he was doing and he balanced that really well, Derek Landy either intended this series to be one book or he acted thoughtlessly to its future.

Yes this is a pretty critical review, but I would like to reinforce that I do love these books, with the iconic Irish wit and humor, the wacky but dark world being portrayed, and even the character dynamics, but these qualities are dwindling with each book as the humor becomes less frequent and not as funny, the world doesn't feel like we're getting to know it more and the character's aren't evolving or growing whilst Landy adds more and characters and stops showing some of the best characters.
It's really difficult to bring the positives to light when he keeps drowning them in the negative.

I am moving on to the next book, if it's just another reskin of a half assessed effort I'm actually gonna DNF the series and it'll be my first dropped series and I'll move onto The Expanse, I'm so fucking tired of this author and his bullshit, how can he keep reskinning the book over and over and over again with nobody growing? The only thing that's good is he's not afraid to kill people off, which is so refreshing! But that and the humor is so far the only admirable qualities remaining. 

One word: Yikes.

Yeahhhhh what the hell was Derek Landy thinking with this book? He's clearly trying to age up the series, but the way he went about it was ironically in the most teenage drama bullshit way.

So, I rarely add content warnings to my reviews, but some stuff was so jarring and prevalent here it needed to be added, especially going from the tone of the previous books.

The brain-dead love triangle between Valkyrie, Fletcher and Caelin continues and escalates in this book, to the point where

Valkyrie is actively cheating on Fletcher (and is portrayed by the author as something okay and normal, please don't normalise cheating for fuck sake) despite her being icked out completely by Caelin's behavior, age and the fact he's a skin-jacketed Vampire. He's extremely possessive and obsessive and she just finds it annoying as opposed to how troubling it clearly is. She's literally only cheating with Caelin because she thinks he's hot and dangerous!? give me a break! you couldn't have added some depth to this situation??? Fuck off Landy!

I've noticed the past couple books that Landy has been turning Valkyrie into Rory Gilmore, where she's written and portrayed really unlikeably because of how she treats people and

cheats on them

and is so selfish, it's literally the Rory Gilmore effect, and in this book it reached it's peak.
I absolutely hate reading Valkyrie, I really do, she's no longer the endearing funny but brave girl, she's condescending, arrogant, abusive, selfish and careless with other people and their feelings and doesn't care about anyone but herself. She consistently puts her baby sister in danger and rarely shows concern for others, unless she feels scared of herself turning evil, in which case she then suddenly cares for the sanctity of human life.

Also, Valkyrie doesn't even seem to have grown in terms of combat and magical ability, I swear the older she gets the more weak and helpless she becomes, how is it she was more badass as a child and now when she's almost 18 she consistently gets her ass kicked and overpowered. We don't see her casting new spells or doing new magic tricks or learning and evolving at all, despite having one of the most learned elementals (and most powerful necromancer) as a mentor, and all he necromancy magic is tied to that ring. I wish we'd see more elemental magic tricks, instead of just pushing air to make someone stumble backwards.

By far the best characters in this book were Fletcher and Skulduggery, the character development was brilliant, equally. I loved the scenes where Fletcher

stands up to Valkyrie and despite his understandable anger towards her, is still selfless and good enough to put his feelings aside to fight by her side or help save her from being killed.

He's the real MVP of the book and I'm so proud of his development and how he went from being so self-centered to being a true member of the team.

Skulduggery, holy shit, the twist half-way through the book was on par with the infamous Darth Vader father confession twist, it was completely unexpected and yet fits perfectly, adding whole new layers of depth to Skul's character. It was absolutely brilliant.

As for the plot itself? Atrocious.
Another world ending event on the scale of the first couple books, which is really predictable and exhausting now. I loved the previous book because the plot's stakes were significantly lower than a world ending event but it was done in a unique way that still built stakes and kept us on edge and provided many ways to explore the plot.
This book however, was just plain boring. We know straight away that

3 billion people aren't going to be killed by the Death Bringer and life and death walk side by side together,

it's obvious, it's like how certain stories won't kill off certain characters and they have massive plot armour which removes the stakes of combat and risk of death. It wasn't exciting, it wasn't interesting, it made me slip more and more towards the scale of a reading slump. Usually if the plot is weak we have the character dynamics and development to keep us entertained, but this seriously felt lacking in those two departments, apart from Skulduggery and Fletcher's developments.

This, so far, is the worst book, and has me considering not continuing the series.
I'm giving the next book a go, but we better stop seeing Rory bloody Gilmore in these books and stop it with that lazy childish love triangle shit.

So another new narrator for this series, a million times better than the previous guy as this guy put a lot of passion and effort into his performance, however, Rupert Degas is still a billion times better than the both of these. The newest narrator tried his best, and is the closest we'll probably get to hearing Rupert again, but this guy changed accents from how they sounded before and that was really horrendous.
Overall, it was a decent performance for the audiobook.