A review by cjordahl
Giant Days by Non Pratt, Boom! Studios

2.0

I love the comic that inspired this book so I was happy to spend a few days with Daisy, Susan, Esther and the boys in this novel. Easy breezy read. A handful of LOL moments. The translation from the comics into novel length prose was not entirely successful for me, though. The story (or rather stories... there are a handful of unrelated threads in the novel) would have suited handful of comics issues but felt a bit light for a novel. Scenes and situations that probably would have worked quite well in graphic form struck me as over-the-top in the novel. And I had some issues with how the girls in particular were written. The comic book Susan is lovably grumpy, but in the book she's just a mean jerk a lot of the time. Esther entirely loses her spine in her fawning pursuit of friendship with a peak goth princess. Mistakes and missteps that would have resolved in moments in the comics get stretched beyond plausibility in the novel. Plus also... I anticipated a good boss battle and it looked like we were going to get one, but it guttered to dark.

Having said all that... to be fair, I would never have picked up this book had I not already loved the comic. I wouldn't otherwise be interested in it, and it really isn't targeted to me in the first place. In other words, neither I nor the author (I assume) would have expected me to like it, and so it's no surprise to anyone that I sorta-kinda did but mostly didn't.