Saga: Volume 5

Well crap.  This is it.  The last Collected Edition of Saga.  Saga: Volume 5 ends with Chapter 33.  According to the Image Comics website, Saga #32 is coming out next week.  So even if I rush out tomorrow to get the comics, I can only get one more right now.

Anyway, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.  Volume 5 takes place a few months after Volume 4.  Marko and Robot Prince IV have been chasing after their families but haven't yet been successful.  Meanwhile, Dengo, the Robot janitor, has contacted the Last Revolution, a group of rebels who want to end the war.  Of course, the Last Revolution aren't good guys: they've blown up daycare centers and decapitated thousands of innocent civilians.  Alana and Klara (Marko's mother) try to warn him (while simultaneously trying to escape) but he insists on talking to the resistance.  Of course, as soon as they open their mouths, Dengo realizes Alana and Klara were right.


Meanwhile Marko gets high thanks to Yuma (Heist's ex wife), which puts his whole expedition at risk when Robot Prince IV is forced to call a doctor to help.  And Gwendolyn, Sophie, Lying Cat, and The Brand (The Will's Sister) have fun adventures trying to get the magical ingredient they need to save The Will: dragon semen. 

Things all come to a head when the Last Revolution makes a deal to exchange Hazel for hundreds of their people who are imprisoned.  Unfortunately the government they make this deal with is not the ally of the Robot people; they demand Dengo's death before a deal can be made.  Dengo and Klara manage to get away but are split up.  Klara (with Hazel) attempts to free Alana but is recaptured in the process.  Dengo and Alana escape the ship thinking Klara and Hazel were already off it.  The ship jumps away, separating Alana from the rest of her family.  But luckily Marko has made it to the planet, so she is reunited with him.  Unfortunately for Dengo, Robot Prince IV is there too.  He is reunited with his son.


So yeah, that's where Volume 5 leaves off.  So much has happened.  And there's still so much going on!  I want more like right now!  Unfortunately I'm going to have to wait though. :(

On a super awesome note, thanks to my Saga reading marathon, I have caught up with my Goodreads reading challenge!  At the beginning of the year my plan was to read 50 books off the List.  But that didn't happen (and honestly, not a whole lot of reading has been happening this year), so I decided to count all the books I've read this year, bringing me up from 24 List books to 48 total books (including all five Saga volumes).  I kind of feel like I cheated a bit, using graphic novels to inflate the numbers a bit, but realistically I've only got two weeks left to hit 50 books and I wouldn't have been able to do it without them.  I'm not quite sure what I'm going to read for the remaining two books yet, but at least I'm now on track! 

Saga: Volume 4

Wow.  Saga: Volume 4 takes place a bit after Volume 3.  Hazel is a toddler now.  Alana has been working for the Open Circuit, which seemed to be a television network.  The troupe wears costumes, so it was a safe place for Alana to make money.  Unfortunately the hours are long and she gets involved in drugs, pushing her further and further from her family.  For his part, Marko tries to give Hazel a normal childhood.  He signs her up for private dance lessons with a woman who likewise has a distant husband. 

Meanwhile, Robot Prince IV's wife has their son.  Not long afterwards, a Robot janitor kills her and takes the baby, intending to start a revolution.  Robot Prince IV is informed of his wife's death (although he seemingly has no memory of even having a wife).  He heads first to his father for help.  But getting none from that quarter, he gets help from an unlikely source: Special Agent Gale.  Gale sends him after his son.  Robot Prince IV arrives just in time for his son to blast off in the tree rocket along with Alana, Hazel, Marko's mother, and Izabel.  Marko and Robot Prince IV join forces to find their families.

Oh yeah, and Sophie and Gwendolyn have discovered a spell that might cure The Will!  Now they just need to go about finding the ingredients.

This volume was awesome!  I hope Volume 5 continues at this pace!  (But even if it doesn't, it'll still be good!)

Saga: Volume 3

Well here we are: Saga: Volume Three.  Some really crazy things happened in this one!  The Will, Gwendolyn, and Slave Girl landed on a planet to repair their ship before continuing pursuit of Marko and Alana.  But the planet's food infected them all, trying to get them to stay as hosts for some sort of parasite.  The parasite appears to The Will as The Stalk; he almost listens to "her," but at the last minute decides to continue pursuing Marko.  Or at least that is his plan, until Slave Girl stabs him in the neck by order of the parasite (appearing as her mother).  Gwendolyn, with the help of Lying Cat, figures out what's going on. Finding The Will almost dead, she realizes the only person who might be able to heal him is Marko.  So she heads to Quietus where she knows he will be.

But of course, Prince Robot IV has already beaten her to Quietus.  He arrives in the home of D. Oswald Heist, the author who wrote the book that inspired Alana in the first place.  Heist claims he wrote the book for a quick paycheck, trying to cover for the fact that the fugitives are already in his place (and have been for a week!)  Things go horribly wrong when Marko's mother tries to save Heist from the Prince and Gwendolyn and Lying Cat storm in. 

Volume Three is another interesting romp by Vaughan and Staples.  I can't wait to see what happens next!!!

Saga: Volume 2

So of course after finishing Saga: Volume One last night I went and put the other four volumes the library has on hold.  And luckily they were all in at the branch I work at!  So I now have volumes two to five to fly through!  :D

Volume Two picks up exactly where Volume One left off.  Marko's parents have shown up.  They knocked Izabel (the ghost teenager who helped them in exchange for going off world with them) onto a nearby planetoid.  So Marko and his mom go to find her.  Meanwhile Alana makes an alarming discovery about Marko's father - he has a terminal illness but refuses to tell his family (he doesn't want his last month to be full of pity). 

Meanwhile Freelancer The Will is off moping because the woman he loves, The Stalk, was recently killed.  But Gwendolyn, Marko's ex-girlfriend who works for the Secretary General of Wreath high Command, comes looking for him.  She agrees to help him save Slave Girl from Sextillion as long as he will stop moping and get back to his job (which is to kill Marko and Alana).

Volume Two is full of a lot more backstory than Volume One, which kind of made it not as good in my opinion.  But by "not as good," that basically means it's a 4 or 4.5/5 rather than the 5/5 I gave Volume One on Goodreads.  So yes, I am still excited to be reading this story and can't wait to see what happens next!!!

Saga: Volume 1

Wow! I was totally blown away by Saga! Volume 1 is about the birth of Hazel. Her parents are from opposing sides in a galactic war. Both sides know she has been born; they're hunting her little family in the immediate aftermath of her birth.

Hazel's parents come into possession of a map that will lead them to a rocketship forest on the mostly unexplored planet of Cleave. While avoiding the people pursuing them, they meet the ghosts of Cleave's natives. One of them offers to help them in exchange for taking her off world with them.

My explanation makes Saga sound kind of boring, but honestly it was anything but! It's full of all kinds of crazy creatures including the robot people and the cat who can detect lies. Hazel's parents are badasses who are willing to fight the galaxy to keep their family together and safe (well maybe not her dad, Marko, who is now a pacifist). This was an awesome story and I can't wait to read more!