Defalt
The duel
Again the art style and the atmosphere are fantastic. And I can’t get enough of one of its great qualities—each soldier's outfit looks different. Also there are a few very beautiful landscapes.
Starts pretty slow, but eventually presents some very brutal action scenes of every kind, especially the long and really intense duel. And we get some more interesting background about Thorffin's father and Thorkell.
But there are a bit too many reaction shots and an unusual philosophy about love, not sure if it is needed here at all.
The ending is nice leading to some big events.
Can't wait to read the next volume!
Riddle me this: where’s another Zero Year volume?
The art style is still nice with a lot of pink elements, cool panel layout and some scary episodes. Also smoke and rain look amazing.
Riddler proves to be even smarter with every appearance and the riddles get progressively more difficult. Also Gordon's character is very detailed and provides a new point of view from inside the police.
Still very confused about the scenes with a crossbow, though. And some flashbacks are a bit strange.
Sadly there’s no next volume, at least this one is really large compared to most other volumes.
Berserker
Miura's super detailed art really stands out in this edition!
Awesome, large scale battle against trolls where everyone uses some unique weapon and there are a lot of various close ups on troll faces showing all kinds of emotions. Ogre and kelpie look so nasty and weird. Also all kinds of water—rain, flood, river, spirits—look incredible. And the sea is really beautiful.
Again many various, new enemy designs after 25 volumes—crazy looking, animal shaped, extremely weird armour, giants, huge crystal dragon, demon knights, very nice armour with a lot of crescent elements. And there’s the astral world's cave filled with all kinds of eerie, terrifying stuff and a very creepy castle.
And we finally get the Berserker armour with a lot of full page panels and an incredible cape!
Interested to see how the story goes after this one.
Unique adventure
Surprising quality and amount of details for a black and white comics. Backgrounds are often solid colour but this is compensated by a fantastic range of emotions and gestures from really distinct characters.
It also features an insane swarm of locusts, nasty and fascinating monsters and intriguing villain.
Looking forward to reading the next volume.
Frog people
Still great, unique art style with very cool depiction of the underworld, fantastic faces with all kinds of emotions and awesome action.
Also it’s still really funny and has some new character development. And there’s a great, large one shot co-written with Nicholas Eames!
Can't wait to read the next one!
Too short
A great opportunity to see a lot of familiar characters in their prime or just youth. Although some stories are pretty simple in plot, they all have that beloved First Law style and atmosphere.
It could be just a bunch of stories in the same places, for the fans, for nostalgia, but this is Joe Abercrombie. He gives us an adventure with the same character over many years, multiple points of view and even a story with chained points of view about stealing a package! And the story that is written by Sworbreck feels fascinating and fresh!
Hope there will be more some day.
Pink
Panel layout throughout the whole book is insane, especially in the beginning where the truck scene is shown from all possible angles on just two pages! Although the art style is pretty typical for comics and not very detailed.
Overall there are some really interesting features in this origin story, but the first villain is really not threatening, even tells his whole plan at one point.
Looking forward to reading the next volume.
Nice YA and grim dark mix
Great intro giving a lot of information with only necessary descriptions just in 70 pages. And overall the story is fast paced and gripping and presents some twists and betrayals very early. It also features awesome, realistic action and many really different, detailed environments. Some episodes are a bit too nice, though, for example the oaths.
The main character struggles a lot and his growth is really visible and understandable, although he’s a bit too lucky but that's fine. And all the other characters are really varied and interesting. The ending is very cool and intriguing.
Can’t wait to read the whole series!
Dark and action packed
Incredible, really detailed art featuring reflections in helmets and glasses, a lot of cool close ups on scary faces, amazing issues covers and great two page spreads. Also flashbacks are done in a different, very suitable art style.
And the story has a surprising amount of other DC characters and some cool twists with the villain. The ending is a bit too sudden.
Gotta read more Batman comics!
Creative, classic sci-fi
Not another boring sci-fi about serving the army, although still describing very familiar and painful army drafting in the beginning, with a lot of fantastic features—dangerous, out of nowhere spies, simple conversations about life, a lot of really funny situations. And the harsh reality of the army service is just to the point, unlike Starship Troopers.
It’s just one old fashioned, sci-fi idea after the other in really various environments. Also some descriptions, which are very few here overall, are really imaginative.
However, the ending is a bit too rough.
Makes me want to reread The Stainless Steel Rat and other great Harrison's stories.
Murderbot comes to the rescue
Again there are a few reminders about the events of the previous—now three—books, still not a fan of this.
The plot thickens but it's still not too deep or difficult to follow. Although all of the main character's actions are mostly familiar they still feel interesting because of different situations and environments and the action is pretty cool. Also there are a few personal, emotional conversations so I have to rate this one higher even considering the length.
And the ending is really nice!
Still can’t get enough of this series, and the novella size should make it fun to reread.
Confusing time jumps
There are some nice features—grand, fascinating, new sci-fi ideas like dark forest deterrence game theory and other dimensions, interactions with 4th dimension, dark forest proof, sophon in human society, shocking action episode with heavy consequences, some creepy anomalies. But these features happen so rarely over the course of the 700 pages book and are made insignificant by everything else in the book. Like Singer is so interesting, unusual and excellently shows a perspective of a super powerful civilization. Why is there only one small chapter about him?
It reads like a documentary in some chapters describing a character's biography and history and jumps around time periods that were already explored in the previous books. Overall there are a lot of time jumps here with too many explanations. And the very long and vague fairytales holding some very important secrets that require too much time to decipher, yeah, that’s what we need in a sci-fi story about dark forests and aliens. And author being too sexist in places—introvert scientist who "had never even touched woman", very feminine men who look strange to the main character who is a woman—like it’s from 1970s, not 2010.
Also after a few disasters with the same kind of solution in a row it becomes really hard to care, especially when the main character who is much less interesting than those in the previous books and with the dialogues being terrible in places. The last part of the book, about 100 pages, being really dark doesn’t help at all.
I hope this story can be presented in a more exciting way in the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the series as this world has a lot of potential.
Frozen Madness
Really beautiful, mesmerizing snow landscapes and various, giant, frozen equipment and the caves look bizarre and really odd, though faces can look just a bit strange in some places. Fascinating mirages of an ancient city and old fashioned dialogues.
Too much time is spent on the exploration with no interesting results and a few scenes are not very detailed.
Interesting to see where the story goes next and how it ends!
Detective Murderbot 2
The intro tells how our murderbot got into a new situation but overall it feels like a direct continuation of the previous book (if we just remove a little recap about some events). Again a lot of exploration in the first third but then the action starts very suddenly.
A few really nice features—the global plot thickens, cool and dangerous detective work, really heart breaking moments here, nice ending with a hint of what to expect next.
Can’t get enough of this series!
Dead Cthulhu waits dreaming
My first time reading a Lovecraft story and it’s still a good read, though a bit old fashioned—some investigations or written past events can be a bit hard to follow.
The black and white aesthetic and dark atmosphere really suit the story with great two-page panels of The Great Old Ones and their city, some really horrifying scenes and the fantastic looking storm at sea.
Can’t wait to read other adaptations of Gou Tanabe.
Detective Murderbot
Our beloved murderbot tries to blend in the society and struggles with new kinds of anxiety. There’s a lot of mystery and detective work here and just one action scene.
The simplicity of descriptions is kinda refreshing after most other books and reminds me of some classic sci-fi like Stainless Steel Rat. But there’s a bit too much recapping of the previous book, especially considering that they’re both pretty short.
Also it features some new, interesting sci-fi concepts like future forms of money and communication between bots. And the ending is fine, leading to the next adventure.
Wish it was a bit longer, but I'm still glad that it exists.
Inquisition
The commander character feels so weird after everything we've seen before. Horrifying fight in the night and not many events over all.
There are some more kingdom wide consequences and interesting foreshadowing about the hawk. Great art for some crazy armour and the gang of inquisitors. Guts finally gets some time to think and we get cool blacksmith's philosophy.
Monster horde returns
Features the same great style, atmosphere and a few cool characters from the first book and short, to the point intro—the first fight against a giant, dangerous monster is around page 50. However it feels a bit more overwhelming compared to the first book with too many events in parallel which can feel chaotic. And there’s a very annoyingly curious main character.
Even though there are still a few really large, epic battles, overall it's much less about epic and more about dramas and tragedies and mysteries about everyone. And the ending is nice, hinting at new adventures.
I hope the next book is a bit less tragic.