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A review by otherwyrld
Fairest: In All the Land by Bill Willingham
3.0
Whilst this is labelled as a Fairest story, it has much greater connections with the main Fables story than previous books in so much as it involves the return of the long-lost business office. It is also a murder mystery, something we haven't really seen in this series since the very beginning.
Someone is murdering Fables, two at a time, and Cinderella is tasked to try and find the murderer and stop the killings. She is a reluctant detective as she doesn't see it as her strength but.
Needless to say, it involves an old enemy with a very big grudge against the Fairest in the Land, not to mention a magic sword and a car that can take a person anywhere - including, it seems, the missing Business Office, where all the most dangerous magical objects can be found. It's not too difficult to realise that Cinderella succeeds, but the cost is high - the magic sword can return people it has killed back to life, but only one out of each pair killed, and only within 7 days.
Cinderella gets to choose who to save, and she chooses all of the "fairest in the land" princesses who died rather than the other more mundane people. I admit I had a bit of a problem with that no matter how Cinderella justifies her choices. It harks back to an issue I had some time ago when Snow White told us that beautiful people are allowed to get away with being mean and nasty, but the rest of us mere mortals have to be nice because we're not beautiful. Author Bill Willingham kind of acknowledges the flaw in that argument in this story without giving a solution to it, which is about as good as its going to get.
A word about the art - there are more than 30 artists involved, each drawing no more than a couple of pages. I thought that this might be a problem, but I actually quite liked the different styles in this book, and I never lost track of what was going on because o the artwork.
In conclusion, there is a lot happening in this book, and a lot that was enjoyable but I couldn't give it more than 3 stars. That niggle I had about the Fairest deserving more just because, just doesn't sit well with me and making this the primary motive behind the story dragged the whole thing down.
Someone is murdering Fables, two at a time, and Cinderella is tasked to try and find the murderer and stop the killings. She is a reluctant detective as she doesn't see it as her strength but
Spoiler
she has to do that because Bigby is dead, and when did that happen because I don't remember seeing that in any storyNeedless to say, it involves an old enemy with a very big grudge against the Fairest in the Land, not to mention a magic sword and a car that can take a person anywhere - including, it seems, the missing Business Office, where all the most dangerous magical objects can be found. It's not too difficult to realise that Cinderella succeeds, but the cost is high - the magic sword can return people it has killed back to life, but only one out of each pair killed, and only within 7 days.
Cinderella gets to choose who to save, and she chooses all of the "fairest in the land" princesses who died rather than the other more mundane people. I admit I had a bit of a problem with that no matter how Cinderella justifies her choices. It harks back to an issue I had some time ago when Snow White told us that beautiful people are allowed to get away with being mean and nasty, but the rest of us mere mortals have to be nice because we're not beautiful. Author Bill Willingham kind of acknowledges the flaw in that argument in this story without giving a solution to it, which is about as good as its going to get.
A word about the art - there are more than 30 artists involved, each drawing no more than a couple of pages. I thought that this might be a problem, but I actually quite liked the different styles in this book, and I never lost track of what was going on because o the artwork.
In conclusion, there is a lot happening in this book, and a lot that was enjoyable but I couldn't give it more than 3 stars. That niggle I had about the Fairest deserving more just because, just doesn't sit well with me and making this the primary motive behind the story dragged the whole thing down.