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A review by mariahistryingtoread
Bitter Root, Vol. 1: Family Business by Chuck Brown, David F. Walker
2.0
I find the premise of Bitter Root investing, but it moved much too rapidly to properly engage me. Changes happened on a dime with the overarching antagonist making a heel-faced turn inexplicably only a few pages after striving for compromise.
The synopsis states that the characters have all dealt with the massacre of their family in different ways which reflects their varied monster hunting strategies, but there was no time to explore what that meant. Character development was nonexistent and 4 characters out of 5 seemed to be handling it business as usual. Only 1 actually seemed to be deviating in any way.
Blink was supposed to be chafing under her grandmothers' condemnation of women working out in the field rather than focusing on the rootwork, but even that wasn't particularly special since Blink's mother was the trailblazer and her grandmother seemed to be acting out of grief over the loss of her rather than actual deep-seated internal values about what women should be doing.
The family remarks constantly about Cullen being poor at his job only for the volume to end with him not needing to do any work to get better; he's simply sucked into a different dimension and upon his return has now aged significantly into a better monster hunter. It completely eliminates any sense of satisfaction for the reader as his growth is unearned and unwitnessed.
Ford basically adopts a white man who was literally part of the KKK because the white man just joined for fun? I guess? He purportedly had no hate in his heart so he didn't turn into a jinoo, but I was confused how that could be possible when even if he didn't expect those men to lynch a Black man, he knew that they were going to harm him. There is no discussion of his background or what led him to this point. Ford simply ignores his prejudicial background and absorbs him into the story. I don't care if he takes him under his wing, but I think a KKK member needs to exhibit some sort of personal change or accountability before joining up with a Black man in the 1920s.
I also was very confused about how the entire jinoo system worked. I could have used an exposition dump at the beginning to firmly establish the world. It took some time for me to figure out that only white people turned into jinoo, for example, because it's only explicitly confirmed in like issue 3. I suspected, but I couldn't be certain because it could have been related to how the story was evolving at the time and merely a coincidence.
I also think the story relies way too heavily on the essays the end to explain its concept. After reading them I had a much better understanding of the themes and messaging, but that should have been augmented by the actual story not backloaded in the end outside of the narrative.
A decent story and very cool concept marred by its execution. It felt like a story that could have used 20 issues forced down into five.
The synopsis states that the characters have all dealt with the massacre of their family in different ways which reflects their varied monster hunting strategies, but there was no time to explore what that meant. Character development was nonexistent and 4 characters out of 5 seemed to be handling it business as usual. Only 1 actually seemed to be deviating in any way.
Blink was supposed to be chafing under her grandmothers' condemnation of women working out in the field rather than focusing on the rootwork, but even that wasn't particularly special since Blink's mother was the trailblazer and her grandmother seemed to be acting out of grief over the loss of her rather than actual deep-seated internal values about what women should be doing.
The family remarks constantly about Cullen being poor at his job only for the volume to end with him not needing to do any work to get better; he's simply sucked into a different dimension and upon his return has now aged significantly into a better monster hunter. It completely eliminates any sense of satisfaction for the reader as his growth is unearned and unwitnessed.
Ford basically adopts a white man who was literally part of the KKK because the white man just joined for fun? I guess? He purportedly had no hate in his heart so he didn't turn into a jinoo, but I was confused how that could be possible when even if he didn't expect those men to lynch a Black man, he knew that they were going to harm him. There is no discussion of his background or what led him to this point. Ford simply ignores his prejudicial background and absorbs him into the story. I don't care if he takes him under his wing, but I think a KKK member needs to exhibit some sort of personal change or accountability before joining up with a Black man in the 1920s.
I also was very confused about how the entire jinoo system worked. I could have used an exposition dump at the beginning to firmly establish the world. It took some time for me to figure out that only white people turned into jinoo, for example, because it's only explicitly confirmed in like issue 3. I suspected, but I couldn't be certain because it could have been related to how the story was evolving at the time and merely a coincidence.
I also think the story relies way too heavily on the essays the end to explain its concept. After reading them I had a much better understanding of the themes and messaging, but that should have been augmented by the actual story not backloaded in the end outside of the narrative.
A decent story and very cool concept marred by its execution. It felt like a story that could have used 20 issues forced down into five.