Reviews

Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening by Marjorie Liu

alexandria_m's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

3.75

onetrooluff's review against another edition

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5.0

Wowwwwwwwww. Very intriguing world-building, interesting plot, and STUNNING artwork. I want to push this on many people and make them all read it.

aimeeboo's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

2.75

voldemin's review against another edition

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4.0

This is like my first real graphic novel ever and did I regret it? No!
Because this graphic novel was pure perfection, greatness and awesomness!
Art style: 10/5 stars, the art style is unique, I never saw something so simple, unique and beautiful like the work in Monstress and I wish I discovered this sooner. Just beautiful and great. I'd read it again just for the beautiful art work.
Story: lmao I don't know? What happened? I can't say for shit what's the plot of this one because I understand like 15% of the whole story and I'm still confused but the 15% I understood were great! The problem is the never-explaining, like come on, would it hurt to tell us what's going on? The story is probably the reason why I'm giving it only 4 stars.
Charas: I really love Maika - she reminds me a lot of Celeana of Throne of Glass, her sassy attitude and bruteness and she's always like: 'lol idc bitch don't annoy me' and I LOVE THE LITTLE FOX BOY HE'S SO CUte i wanT TO CUDDLE HIM
World building: I was surprised how dark and bloody it is. Somehow I expected the world and story to be a nice travel-fantasy story. For sure it's a travel-fantasy story but dahell so much goreness and torture and dead bodies.
More great points: The greatest of all great points (and I only noticed it when I almost finished this great piece of greatness) is there is like 99,5% woman in the story and the 0,5% man which are forgettable side-characters. Just let it settle down: a fantasy story where the woman are villains, heroines, goddesses, soldiers and side characters. This alone is the reason you should read it. (And there is even lgbt+ content I'm a happy mess)

Merged review:

This is like my first real graphic novel ever and did I regret it? No!
Because this graphic novel was pure perfection, greatness and awesomness!
Art style: 10/5 stars, the art style is unique, I never saw something so simple, unique and beautiful like the work in Monstress and I wish I discovered this sooner. Just beautiful and great. I'd read it again just for the beautiful art work.
Story: lmao I don't know? What happened? I can't say for shit what's the plot of this one because I understand like 15% of the whole story and I'm still confused but the 15% I understood were great! The problem is the never-explaining, like come on, would it hurt to tell us what's going on? The story is probably the reason why I'm giving it only 4 stars.
Charas: I really love Maika - she reminds me a lot of Celeana of Throne of Glass, her sassy attitude and bruteness and she's always like: 'lol idc bitch don't annoy me' and I LOVE THE LITTLE FOX BOY HE'S SO CUte i wanT TO CUDDLE HIM
World building: I was surprised how dark and bloody it is. Somehow I expected the world and story to be a nice travel-fantasy story. For sure it's a travel-fantasy story but dahell so much goreness and torture and dead bodies.
More great points: The greatest of all great points (and I only noticed it when I almost finished this great piece of greatness) is there is like 99,5% woman in the story and the 0,5% man which are forgettable side-characters. Just let it settle down: a fantasy story where the woman are villains, heroines, goddesses, soldiers and side characters. This alone is the reason you should read it. (And there is even lgbt+ content I'm a happy mess)

annabrewer972's review against another edition

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3.0

The artwork in this is STUNNING - it's worth a read just for that. However, I found it extremely hard to know what was going on. The plot is too convoluted; this tale lacked the skilled storytelling needed to make such a complicated plot line understandable. For example, there are a lot of different characters, locations, and time periods, but it was hard to distinguish between them. In addition, I don't think any of these elements were explained as well as they could have been and so I found myself frustrated, unable to figure out exactly what was happening. That being said, I did like the themes and ideas that I did understand - identity, family, connection with the darker parts of yourself, all wrapped in magic, steampunk and some slightly darker practices!

All in all, I enjoyed this for the art but wouldn't recommend it for the plot. I shan't be reading the next volume.

kenyuen1's review against another edition

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5.0

I was warned that this book would be violent, and man was it. The body count and body horror was genuinely affecting.

However, the world building is top notch. The art was fantastic. It's a lot to take in, but I definitely want to read more.

It's intriguing how there's humans, and then there's the sentient animal species. That's part of the horror, what if humans treated sentient animals the way they do animals now. It's gross and uncomfortable and the human villains don't treat each other very much better. Seems like there's some cosmic horror too?

There's cute stuff too. The cats are sentient and they have multiple tails like mystical Japanese foxes. The cat characters are super cool, there's one big grey one with scars and an eye patch and two swords. So cool. There's also a fox kid who's cute.

Merged review:

I was warned that this book would be violent, and man was it. The body count and body horror was genuinely affecting.

However, the world building is top notch. The art was fantastic. It's a lot to take in, but I definitely want to read more.

It's intriguing how there's humans, and then there's the sentient animal species. That's part of the horror, what if humans treated sentient animals the way they do animals now. It's gross and uncomfortable and the human villains don't treat each other very much better. Seems like there's some cosmic horror too?

There's cute stuff too. The cats are sentient and they have multiple tails like mystical Japanese foxes. The cat characters are super cool, there's one big grey one with scars and an eye patch and two swords. So cool. There's also a fox kid who's cute.

emosheeran's review against another edition

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2.0

I didn’t have as much of a hard time as others seemed to in terms of understanding the story; I just simply don’t care for it. There was nothing about it that kept me interested. 
The art style is not my favourite either. It's got an uncanny touch to it that I’m not meshing with. 

sammywammy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.5

abditoryalive's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

2.0

What on world did I stumble into 

jenikki's review against another edition

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4.0

4.5 stars. The illustrations are exquisite, the story is fantastic. It opens quite gruesomely and horrifically, so be prepared for graphic depictions of torture and murder, but the main character is so extraordinary and the story so gripping I kept going, and was so glad I did. I can't wait to pick up volume 2.

Merged review:

4.5 stars. The illustrations are exquisite, the story is fantastic. It opens quite gruesomely and horrifically, so be prepared for graphic depictions of torture and murder, but the main character is so extraordinary and the story so gripping I kept going, and was so glad I did. I can't wait to pick up volume 2.