Reviews

Agatha H and the Airship City by Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio

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bookswithbets's review

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adventurous lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

erikars's review

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4.0

This is a novelization of the first story arc of the Girl Genius comic. The novelization captures the charm of the original and gives interesting new insights into some of the characters and their background. Although I must agree with a reviewer who said that this was not as good as a novel as the comic is for a web comic, that is only because this is a good novelization of a superb comic.

If you're a Girl Genius fan, you should definitely give it a read.

xavier_reads181's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

5.0

shane_tiernan's review against another edition

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4.0

Seeing as I started playing D&D about 33 years ago, the Foglios are like old friends. It's great to see their stuff getting popular. I was told about the Girl Genius web comics by the same friend that introduced me to D&D (and hence Phil and Dixie) and Robert Asprin's Myth-series (illustrated by Phil). Of course between kids and work and dogs I never found time to read them. I even saw the book heavily discounted at a Borders "closing sale" and didn't pick it up. Obviously fate/god/the flying spaghetti monster meant me to get into this series. Because a few weeks later there it was on my Amazon Vine list - Free and Audio just go so well together I couldn't resist.

At first I thought the narrator's voice was sub-par but once the accents kicked in I really liked it. The story was fun and filled with the type of characters you'd find in Robert Asprin's myth novels (sorry but it's hard to separate them when in both series' you're picturing Phil's artwork). Lots of action and the mystery of Agatha's background. Plus you're never sure if Gil is really a good guy or a bad guy. This is not serious stuff but unless you're just completely new to the Foglio's style you knew it wouldn't be.

The biggest problem I have with the book is it's ending. It really seems to just stop in mid-scene. Like the budget ran out or something. It's definitely a cliff hanger and it sounds like to find out what happens next I'm going to have to check out the webcomic or buy the newest graphic novel (not free and not audio). So hopefully karma (or Santa Claus) will drop a copy of it in my lap sometime in the next 4 months.

booksandlemonsquash's review

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3.0

I really struggled with this. The concept should be amazing. It's well articulated, but not terribly well written if that makes sense - you're just thrown in the deep end of it and I struggled to keep the characters straight or parse the universe specific words or understand the part speak of the jaegers. Ugh. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did, but it's not bad at all.

mnemex's review

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3.0

This is fun. Its original is fun, and almost the entirety of it is in the novel. But (with the exception of a few new scenes) it's all fun that's in the comic, and the comic has art.

So it's more recommended for the completist -- or those for whom the comic format doesn't work that well.

I enjoyed it, though.