Reviews

Assassin's Creed: The Ankh of Isis Trilogy by Éric Corbeyran

snowwolf75's review

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4.0

Really good collection of stories told around the events in the games, primarily about Desmond and his time outside Animus. Any fan of the games should also enjoy this compilation.

hughl's review

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fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

dorinlazar's review

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2.0

Sadly, while the story of the Ankh of Isis tries to be the link between the events happening outside the AC games, it fails. The story is not very good, the drawing is not amazing, and the plot is full of immense holes.

But if you choose to read it, it can be fun. But you have to try, very hard. :)

roxanamalinachirila's review

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2.0

I would have rated this book higher, had it not been so remarkably unaware of the rules of its own universe.

So, Assassin's Creed is based on the neat premise that you can access your ancestors' memories through some sort of genetic mumbo-jumbo. As pointed out very clearly in the second game in the series, this means that the moment your ancestor has a kid who's your ancestor, your memories jump towards the kid, they don't stick with the parent. Which makes sense.

The Ankh of Isis starts with Abstergo thinking that the main character's ancestor died in battle. Because he was in battle and he got wounded really badly. Erm... then who would carry on the line?... Hell if I know. It doesn't help that Desmond gets really badly shaken by the death of said ancestor a bit later on (thankfully, they remembered to make the ancient guy's wife pregnant to keep the line going).

Then, the ultra-secret assassins hide in Monteriggioni, the home of Desmond's ancestors which they enemies, the templars, have known about since at least the Renaissance.

People have been carrying out the same family names or name themes since ancient times, let's not forget about that: the descendant of a guy named for a vulture is named for a vulture; the descendant of a guy named for a hawk is named for a hawk. The descendant of a guy named for a raven is called... well, Crow. I assume that at some point the last of the line of Raven, a woman, dashed madly around the world looking for someone with the right name. Alas, no ravens, but she still found one of the Corvus family.

The trilogy ends with the ancestor Raven guy's recorded message saying that the ship he was on, carrying a very important object, is sinking. The object will be lost forever and he will die in the shipwreck. They must have put the recorded message on a lifeboat, then, because by my thinking it was supposed to have been at the bottom of the sea, with his bones and the very important object.

Gah, inconsistency much. (also, talking about Ravens, Vultures, Hawks and Eagles at the end was getting a bit silly - I assume Desmond was eventually descended from too many birds, so he flew a lot of Miles, which is how he got his last name)

It also messes with the Assassin's Creed universe, sticking close to the games in some places and inventing entirely new things in others. It felt odd, since the universe isn't large enough yet to require rewrites, or to accept them easily. I'm not sure why the writer found it necessary to do things the way he did.

Overall, not very impressive, although I did have a bit of a laugh with fridge logic. The art is okay, the story could be better if done better, but then, couldn't that be said of almost any book?

thenovelbookshelf's review

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mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

lewis_fishman's review

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4.0

ive been a mad assassin's creed fan for absolute ages and heard about this trilogy of comics and was never able to get my hands on it until now. it's great. assassin's creed is great. you're great

stedali's review

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adventurous

3.0

homosexual's review

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3.0

My Booktube

it feels very weird to see Desmond and Lucy again lmao

The story/art were both hits and misses with me. There were times it felt really solid and other times where it felt unfinished.

Also just really weird how they tried to handle Desmond having to relive these memories... I feel like there was a much easier way to show it than how they tried lol And because of that issue 1 was basically just a speedrun of the first AC game when... a lot of that could've been cut out so we got actually page time for developing Aquilus and the Ankh. Shame we didn't see more of Aquilus' face head on, though i think that is an artist quirk because basically NO ONE outside of like Lucy and Desmond got full-frontal shots of their face

magneto's review

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medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

If you've played the games, these stories add little to the plotline. And if you've not played them, you'd have no context for the stories. 
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