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crookedtreehouse 's review for:
Books of Magick: Life During Wartime, Vol. 1
by Si Spencer
I have yet to read any of the Books Of Magic series and think "This is a coherent, well-told story that I can follow and enjoy."
It's mostly a mess of continuity that never quite knows where it's from or where it's going. If John Constantine is involved (and he is in this one), he's always at least slightly out of character but still far more entertaining than anyone else in the story.
Here, we're thrown in the midst of a war involving faeries and humans (or "bred" and "born") while Tim Hunter, once a boy wizard, now a teen ne'er-do-well, does drugs and has sex in a pocket dimension he made so that he could have a normal life. I loved the in media res, and some of the concepts in the story but it quickly devolves into magic gobbledy-blah (which, I know, the series has magic in the title but I've read books where magic is explained or unexplained in satisfying ways but none of them were part of this series). the characters become indecipherable. There's a point late in the story where a character is killed, and it seems to be an important character we were following but he's called by a different name (and the character we were following already had three different names for some reason), and then the character I thought was dead shows up a page or two later like nothing had happened so ... I have no idea who died and why I was supposed to care.
That's a lot of what this book is. Supposed major events happen, unhappen, rehappen to characters I just don't care for.
It gets three stars because I was at least interested to see where the story was headed, even if it ended up not going anywhere particularly interesting. The art is a perfect blend of 90s/early 2000s Vertigo and Mike Mignola sketchy horror. I'm pretty sure I hadn't encountered most of the demons/faeries before but they all looked familiar in a way that filled me with positive nostalgia.
Who do I recommend this to? I don't know. It's tone is more adult than the previous books in the series but it's not really good enough to stand on its own. I guess if you love fantasy it's worth a flip through at a library. Unfortunately, the ten issues which followed this book were never collected into trade but are available in expensive hardcover omnibus form.
It's mostly a mess of continuity that never quite knows where it's from or where it's going. If John Constantine is involved (and he is in this one), he's always at least slightly out of character but still far more entertaining than anyone else in the story.
Here, we're thrown in the midst of a war involving faeries and humans (or "bred" and "born") while Tim Hunter, once a boy wizard, now a teen ne'er-do-well, does drugs and has sex in a pocket dimension he made so that he could have a normal life. I loved the in media res, and some of the concepts in the story but it quickly devolves into magic gobbledy-blah (which, I know, the series has magic in the title but I've read books where magic is explained or unexplained in satisfying ways but none of them were part of this series). the characters become indecipherable. There's a point late in the story where a character is killed, and it seems to be an important character we were following but he's called by a different name (and the character we were following already had three different names for some reason), and then the character I thought was dead shows up a page or two later like nothing had happened so ... I have no idea who died and why I was supposed to care.
That's a lot of what this book is. Supposed major events happen, unhappen, rehappen to characters I just don't care for.
It gets three stars because I was at least interested to see where the story was headed, even if it ended up not going anywhere particularly interesting. The art is a perfect blend of 90s/early 2000s Vertigo and Mike Mignola sketchy horror. I'm pretty sure I hadn't encountered most of the demons/faeries before but they all looked familiar in a way that filled me with positive nostalgia.
Who do I recommend this to? I don't know. It's tone is more adult than the previous books in the series but it's not really good enough to stand on its own. I guess if you love fantasy it's worth a flip through at a library. Unfortunately, the ten issues which followed this book were never collected into trade but are available in expensive hardcover omnibus form.