Richelle Mead's The Dark Swan: Storm Born #1-4

The ARC was provided by the publishers Sea Lion Books. Thank-you very much for requesting a review.

I have to say I have not read much comic books (in fact I think this is my second one) and after my experience with the first one I read I was worried that I would not enjoy the very little amount of pages I get with one issue. With graphic novels and manga you get at least 100 pages. I was worried that the story would feel rushed or lacking development but I am relieved to say that that never happened here.

Dark Swan starts us off with our protagonist in the middle of exorcising a death spirit from a shoe and although she gets tossed around a bit our heroine gets the job done with the calm and ease of a person who has done this sort of thing for awhile. And right before this job is even done Eugenie has another job offer, something for more dangerous than banishing a dark looming Keres. A job that would require her to cross into the Otherworld physically to rescue a kidnapped girl from faeries or as the tricky folk prefers to be called - Gentry.

I haven't read the Storm Born novels yet which wasn't a problem at all because there didn't feel like there was anything important missing that I needed to know, the pacing was perfect and I enjoyed the casual revelations of Eugenie's life. She enjoys puzzles in her downtime, she has a roommate who gets himself laid with faux Native American poetry and she isn't the only shaman in the family.

Eugenie's also not the cold, calculating person she pretends to be. She may be able to kick ass and say she isn't going to risk getting herself killed by saving a girl she's never met but that doesn't stop her from mulling it over and seriously consider the idea of potentially falling into what looks like a trap.

The art is also something I really enjoyed, facial expression and emotion were portrayed very well and objects (like Eugenie's tattoos) were detailed enough to show that the original novel was given proper attention without distracting the reader from the story itself.

A great start to the story, if you enjoy your heroines tough but still feminine and your stories with magic and action then pick up Dark Swan on Wednesday when it comes out. We can all then whine over the cliffhanger together.