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A review by nancyboy
Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening by Marjorie Liu
4.0
Montress is amazing, it’s the graphic novel that I’ve been looking for! It’s an steampunk/epic fantasy graphic novel about a girl who is possessed by a demon trying to find out who/what she is.
Firstly, I want to say that the art is amazing, and I mean BREATHTAKING! I applaud Sana Takeda (the artist) for the amount of effort and time she put into this graphic novel. Every single panel is so detailed and the composition always captures the world so beautifully. As someone who is an artist (in the sense that I draw/paint a lot), I can only imagine the hours of work that when into making every scene and it really paid off. You get this extra layer of world building that you would never have gotten if it was just a written novel. You understand the architecture of buildings, the design of the clothing, and other smaller details that you don’t have time to explain in a written novel. You really feel immersed in this fantasy world just by the visuals alone. Takeda really excels in drawing landscapes, as well as people. I feel that a lot of the time the landscape are really lacking in graphic novels, as artist put so much time getting the characters to look distinct that they forget to make the world look distinct and sometimes the backgrounds look really rushed and uninteresting. But Takeda blew me away so many times! Honestly, I could go on about the art for hours it was just so good.
The world building goes hand in hand with the art, so I loved it. The world truely did feel alive as I explained earlier. The magic system was also pretty cool, I loved how the protagonist is possessed by a demon, that she can’t exactly control, but it’s what gives her all her power. I thought it was an interesting concept for a magic system and I’m excited to see how it develops.
Now the plot, overall I did like it, but at times I thought it was a bit rushed. The novel should have had another 50 to 100 pages to really flesh out the characters and their motives and actions. Though I did love a lot of the scenes, sometimes the overarching plot was a bit cliche and predictable at times because it didn’t have enough time to develop.
Overall, I highly recommend it, if you’re a fan of fantasy you should definitely give it a try! And I’ll obviously be continuing on with this series.
Merged review:
Montress is amazing, it’s the graphic novel that I’ve been looking for! It’s an steampunk/epic fantasy graphic novel about a girl who is possessed by a demon trying to find out who/what she is.
Firstly, I want to say that the art is amazing, and I mean BREATHTAKING! I applaud Sana Takeda (the artist) for the amount of effort and time she put into this graphic novel. Every single panel is so detailed and the composition always captures the world so beautifully. As someone who is an artist (in the sense that I draw/paint a lot), I can only imagine the hours of work that when into making every scene and it really paid off. You get this extra layer of world building that you would never have gotten if it was just a written novel. You understand the architecture of buildings, the design of the clothing, and other smaller details that you don’t have time to explain in a written novel. You really feel immersed in this fantasy world just by the visuals alone. Takeda really excels in drawing landscapes, as well as people. I feel that a lot of the time the landscape are really lacking in graphic novels, as artist put so much time getting the characters to look distinct that they forget to make the world look distinct and sometimes the backgrounds look really rushed and uninteresting. But Takeda blew me away so many times! Honestly, I could go on about the art for hours it was just so good.
The world building goes hand in hand with the art, so I loved it. The world truely did feel alive as I explained earlier. The magic system was also pretty cool, I loved how the protagonist is possessed by a demon, that she can’t exactly control, but it’s what gives her all her power. I thought it was an interesting concept for a magic system and I’m excited to see how it develops.
Now the plot, overall I did like it, but at times I thought it was a bit rushed. The novel should have had another 50 to 100 pages to really flesh out the characters and their motives and actions. Though I did love a lot of the scenes, sometimes the overarching plot was a bit cliche and predictable at times because it didn’t have enough time to develop.
Overall, I highly recommend it, if you’re a fan of fantasy you should definitely give it a try! And I’ll obviously be continuing on with this series.
Firstly, I want to say that the art is amazing, and I mean BREATHTAKING! I applaud Sana Takeda (the artist) for the amount of effort and time she put into this graphic novel. Every single panel is so detailed and the composition always captures the world so beautifully. As someone who is an artist (in the sense that I draw/paint a lot), I can only imagine the hours of work that when into making every scene and it really paid off. You get this extra layer of world building that you would never have gotten if it was just a written novel. You understand the architecture of buildings, the design of the clothing, and other smaller details that you don’t have time to explain in a written novel. You really feel immersed in this fantasy world just by the visuals alone. Takeda really excels in drawing landscapes, as well as people. I feel that a lot of the time the landscape are really lacking in graphic novels, as artist put so much time getting the characters to look distinct that they forget to make the world look distinct and sometimes the backgrounds look really rushed and uninteresting. But Takeda blew me away so many times! Honestly, I could go on about the art for hours it was just so good.
The world building goes hand in hand with the art, so I loved it. The world truely did feel alive as I explained earlier. The magic system was also pretty cool, I loved how the protagonist is possessed by a demon, that she can’t exactly control, but it’s what gives her all her power. I thought it was an interesting concept for a magic system and I’m excited to see how it develops.
Now the plot, overall I did like it, but at times I thought it was a bit rushed. The novel should have had another 50 to 100 pages to really flesh out the characters and their motives and actions. Though I did love a lot of the scenes, sometimes the overarching plot was a bit cliche and predictable at times because it didn’t have enough time to develop.
Overall, I highly recommend it, if you’re a fan of fantasy you should definitely give it a try! And I’ll obviously be continuing on with this series.
Merged review:
Montress is amazing, it’s the graphic novel that I’ve been looking for! It’s an steampunk/epic fantasy graphic novel about a girl who is possessed by a demon trying to find out who/what she is.
Firstly, I want to say that the art is amazing, and I mean BREATHTAKING! I applaud Sana Takeda (the artist) for the amount of effort and time she put into this graphic novel. Every single panel is so detailed and the composition always captures the world so beautifully. As someone who is an artist (in the sense that I draw/paint a lot), I can only imagine the hours of work that when into making every scene and it really paid off. You get this extra layer of world building that you would never have gotten if it was just a written novel. You understand the architecture of buildings, the design of the clothing, and other smaller details that you don’t have time to explain in a written novel. You really feel immersed in this fantasy world just by the visuals alone. Takeda really excels in drawing landscapes, as well as people. I feel that a lot of the time the landscape are really lacking in graphic novels, as artist put so much time getting the characters to look distinct that they forget to make the world look distinct and sometimes the backgrounds look really rushed and uninteresting. But Takeda blew me away so many times! Honestly, I could go on about the art for hours it was just so good.
The world building goes hand in hand with the art, so I loved it. The world truely did feel alive as I explained earlier. The magic system was also pretty cool, I loved how the protagonist is possessed by a demon, that she can’t exactly control, but it’s what gives her all her power. I thought it was an interesting concept for a magic system and I’m excited to see how it develops.
Now the plot, overall I did like it, but at times I thought it was a bit rushed. The novel should have had another 50 to 100 pages to really flesh out the characters and their motives and actions. Though I did love a lot of the scenes, sometimes the overarching plot was a bit cliche and predictable at times because it didn’t have enough time to develop.
Overall, I highly recommend it, if you’re a fan of fantasy you should definitely give it a try! And I’ll obviously be continuing on with this series.