The Dragon's Promise

I started reading The Dragon's Promise right after finishing Six Crimson Cranes; I was eager to see where the story went!

The Dragon's Promise starts right where Six Crimson Cranes left off: Shiori and Seryu are entering the dragon realm of Ai'long. Of course, Shiori is not really welcome; Seryu's grandfather, the Dragon King and god of dragons, is upset that she took the starstroke to weave her net in the previous book. But she promised to bring him the broken dragon pearl, so she is granted an audience with him. OF course, Shiori being Shiori, she twisted her words: she didn't agree to GIVE it to him, so that makes the King wrathful once more.

And so begins The Dragon's Promise. Shiori goes from one encounter to the next, the literal incarnation of the saying "out of the frying pan and into the fire" as she keeps making pledges to people, and basically antagonizing the court of Ai'long for the first third of the book before magically somehow coming out of all the encounters in one piece.

And that's basically how the rest of the book went. Shiori seemed to have no self-preservation skills, no sense of decorum for a princess. She antagonized and lied to so many people, but somehow always came out okay. In Six Crimson Cranes, I enjoyed her character, and how she worked hard to make her way in the world without her privilege. But in The Dragon's Promise, when she once again has her privilege as a princess, she seems to not care about anything that comes with being a princess, and instead brute forces her way through everything. She somehow comes out okay in the end, but it gets really annoying along the way. I think after her adventures in Ai'Long, I stopped liking her character, which made it hard to actually finish the story. :(  But I persevered through her lies to her father, and her adventure with her brothers and Takkan to the Forgotten Isles of Lapzur looking for the Wraith (and a way to finally defeat the demon-king Bandur). 

I'll admit, I liked her solution to freeing the demons trapped in the mountain. After speaking with the Wraith (the half-demon, half-dragon who is the rightful owner of the dragon pearl), and talking to the shaman in Tambu about their nature (and how they are as much a part of the world as the dragons and the gods), she starts to look at them differently, thinking that maybe the Kiatan ancestors were wrong, and they shouldn't be trapped within the mountain any longer. But the Wraith also warned that, having been trapped for so long, they would take their revenge on the people. Her solution to free them but make sure everyone was safe was elegant.

So all in all, I wasn't a huge fan of The Dragon's Promise. I liked some of the ideas happening in the book, once I stopped liking the main character, it became a lot more painful to read. It also seemed to flit too quickly from thing to thing, and would have benefited being split into more books so the story could progress at a less break-neck speed and actually flesh out what was happening a lot more. I wish The Dragon's Promise had lived up to Six Crimson Cranes, but unfortunately I didn't think it did.

Six Crimson Cranes

Six Crimson Cranes is the story of Princess Shiori, who ends up cursed by her stepmother: no one will recognize her, and for every word she speaks, one of her brothers will die. Her brothers are also cursed, turned into cranes during the day. Penniless and voiceless, Shiori must find a way to break the curse and save them all while war seems to be breaking out around them. 

I enjoyed Six Crimson Cranes. It's a really fun, fairytale-like story (it's clearly influenced by the Wild Swans). There's some fun world building involving dragons and demons. And the story ends up taking you in some unexpected directions, especially at the end. I'm looking forward to reading The Dragon's Promise, which concludes the tale!

Hulk vs Thor: Banner of War

The same friend who lent me Dark Knights of Steel, Volume 1 lent me Hulk vs Thor: Banner of War.  I wasn't really expecting much from it, but wow was this a wild ride!

After a tragedy in El Pasco, Bruce Banner removed himself from the world, trying to stop anyone else from getting hurt. He separated his body and consciousness into three: Hulk's body was acting like a space ship, taking them out away from everyone. Hulk's psyche was powering the engines by fighting ever increasing (simulated) threats, and Banner himself was the captain of the spaceship. Unfortunately Thor gets wind of where Banner is, and tries to bring him back to face justice, resulting in an all-out brawl between the two! Unfortunately Hulk's powers/madness are contagious; is even the God of Thunder safe?

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did. One of the things that I really enjoyed was that Odin's ghost is currently inhabiting Mjolnir; after hitting Hulk, his spirit is able to enter the control room to talk to (and fight) Banner himself! The two of them ultimately work together to end the fight after Thor is infected; Mjolnir-wielding Hulk was a very unexpected but fun touch to the end of this story, too!

I'll admit that I didn't follow the story super well at times (I basically had to describe some of what happened as "space magic," even though I know it wasn't really magic at play at all). But it was really crazy, a lot of fun, and definitely worth the read!

Dark Knights of Steel Vol 1

A friend of mine lent me Dark Knights of Steel, Volume 1 awhile ago, and I finally sat down to read it today. Dark Knights of Steel sets Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in a medieval fantasy setting with an alternate history for Kal-El. In this setting, Kal-El's parents escaped the dying planet Krypton when his mother was pregnant; Kal-El is born on Earth. Batman's parents were the rulers of one of the three kingdoms, but after they were killed by the Green Man (Lex Luthor who found the Green Lantern ring and became the Joker), Kal-El's parents took over. Bruce was the bastard son of the Waynes (Thomas isn't his dad here) and so would never have been accepted as the ruler. 

While the Els rule fairly peacefully, magic is banned from their kingdom. Batman is tasked with rounding all of the magic users up and imprisoning them. Due to this, and a prophecy from John Constantine, the neighbouring Kingdom of Storms wants the Els dead. With the help of the Green Man, Green Arrow launches an arrow and kills Jor-El, starting the three kingdoms' descent towards war.

What's really fun is that Dark Knights of Steel takes you in some really unexpected directions. There were a few moments that I did not see coming because the story plays with what you know of the characters: for example, Dark Knights of Steel's Kal-El is not the same (Superman) Kal-El who we're used to. But you don't realize it until the story unfolds.

I thought this was a fantastic reimagining of the three superheroes, and I can't wait for Volume 2!!!!

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 9: Okay

Well, here we are: the finale of The Wicked + The Divine! Unfortunately the Comics Plus app didn't have Volume 9 on it, so I had to snag the physical copy from the library.

 

I had no idea where the story was going, beyond a few hints from Ananke's sister that the Children would have to find their own way out, and the ending she suggested to Ananke was false. Volume 9 also finally explained how Ananke (and Minerva) worked - Minerva appeared when the other Children's powers appear. They are basically the same person, but their consciousness splits until one of them dies. 

I was also really happy to see that reading Volume 8 was necessary: some of the things that happened with earlier pantheons (specifically the last two pantheons) directly came up in this book. 

I was really excited that some of the characters who were sidelined earlier by Ananke got new bodies! And Baphomet/Nergal made an amazing sacrifice that no one saw coming (not even the other characters). 

Laura Wilson managed to find her way out of the cycle first, at the end of Volume 7: she realized she wasn't a god, but still had her powers. It just took practice to make them work. When everyone confronted Minerva, she was the one who helped everyone end the cycle. It wasn't an exciting climax (in an action way), but it was a very fitting end for the whole series; you don't realize at the beginning how it's about the birth and death of stories, but that's honestly what The Wicked + The Divine is, at its heart. Not only their birth and death, but their power.

After that, the story wraps up with Laura accepting the punishment of her crime for murdering Ananke back in Volume 4. Then the book ends many years later, at the funeral of Cassandra, who comments on the good that the remaining members of the Pantheon have wrought now that they've broken free of the story and were able to live out their lives as themselves, not gods. 

All in all, Okay is a fitting end to The Wicked + The Divine. I'm glad I decided to reread/finish the series. While it is often quite brutal (there's a lot of gore, which I found very uncomfortable), the story is good; overall I enjoyed it.

The Wicked + The Divine Volumes 7 & 8

I decided to combine these next two into one review since I've been reading them so fast. Volume 7: Mothering Invention, is building towards the climax of the story. It's also explaining a lot of Ananke's past. Mothering Invention showed how this whole game started, and how it has played out through the millennia. 

But then Volume 8: Old is the New New, was completely different. I was excited for more of the story, and totally unprepared for this interlude: Old is the New New collects some short pieces that tell stories of other pantheons, and so isn't part of the main story. It was interesting to see different incarnations of gods like Lucifer (though I was really uncomfortable with how graphically gruesome the Roman story was). There was also a combination prose/comic story of the 1923 Pantheon created like an Agatha Christie mystery (specifically And Then There Were None) which was interesting but at times a bit hard to follow due to the way it was written (and the way the Morrigan spoke). The volume then ends with a collection of Funnies written in the world, which were amusing. 

I do wish I had realized what Volume 8 was sooner: Gillen suggests the reading order for these stories, and they may have been more effective if read where they were intended, rather than as a whole chunk near the end of the story. They may also have been better to read after the conclusion in Volume 9 (though we'll see - I haven't read 9 yet, so I can't say for sure).

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 6: Imperial Phase Part 2

Just a short one this time. The Imperial Phase, Part 2 was a quick read. Lots of backstabbing in this one, lots of death, and lots of drama. Cassandra, Dionysius, and Woden put together a show to power up the machine to try to figure out what it's for. Woden tries to use it to mind control all of the attendees. Meanwhile, Baal and company are hunting Sakhmet after she rampaged when she found out the Pantheon had lied to her. 

But the biggest surprise came at the end: it seems that Ananke may not be so dead after all. And she's trying to get one more head from a god or goddess to stave off The Great Darkness...

I definitely can't wait to see where things go from here!