A review by mitskacir
Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening by Marjorie Liu

4.0

The art in this is amazing. Full color, amazing detail, and easy to follow the action. The story is quite complicated and you're thrown into the middle of the world without much exposition. By the end, I think I figured it out (except for the mysteries that are left for the subsequent volumes), but I'd like to read it again so that I can better understand the action at the beginning. So far some of the themes are a bit "been there, seen that", but there is enough unique world building and magic to hold my attention. I hope that in the next volumes the themes become more nuanced as we learn more of the backstory. Would not recommend to the squeamish - there is graphic detail on nearly every page.

Merged review:

The art in this is amazing. Full color, amazing detail, and easy to follow the action. The story is quite complicated and you're thrown into the middle of the world without much exposition. By the end, I think I figured it out (except for the mysteries that are left for the subsequent volumes), but I'd like to read it again so that I can better understand the action at the beginning. So far some of the themes are a bit "been there, seen that", but there is enough unique world building and magic to hold my attention. I hope that in the next volumes the themes become more nuanced as we learn more of the backstory. Would not recommend to the squeamish - there is graphic detail on nearly every page.