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A review by villyidol
Ascender, Vol. 2: The Dead Sea by Dustin Nguyen, Jeff Lemire
3.0
More 3.5 stars, I suppose. But I haven’t quite made up my mind about this series.
There were a couple of flashbacks to fill in the gaps between [b: Descender|25546167|Descender, Vol. 1 Tin Stars|Jeff Lemire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435054237l/25546167._SY75_.jpg|45338966] and Ascender. That’s something I was hoping for, as I loved that series and its characters, and I need to know what happened to them in the ten years that lie between those two. At the same time Lemire has to do a lot of worldbuilding to explain this new fantasy-setting that has replaced the SciFi world of its predecessor. It doesn’t leave him with a lot of room to move the actual plot forward.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m enjoying this quite a bit. But a huge factor in that are the characters that I know from a different series and the occasional look back to that world. And the thing I’m still most excited about is for more of those characters to show up here, and to find out what has happened to them in the meantime. Of course this is part of the appeal, as this is the follow-up to Descender after all. But almost all of the new characters leave me rather cold. Except maybe for Mila. And the backstory for Mother, which we got here, was so confusing that Lemire lost me somewhere along the way. Add to that the glacier-like plot progression at this point, and it becomes a little hard to give this volume another 4-star-rating.
There are some developments, though, that had quite an impact on me. And Nguyen’s artwork is still something special.
Oh, and werewhales! So, yeah, 3.5 stars it is.
There were a couple of flashbacks to fill in the gaps between [b: Descender|25546167|Descender, Vol. 1 Tin Stars|Jeff Lemire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435054237l/25546167._SY75_.jpg|45338966] and Ascender. That’s something I was hoping for, as I loved that series and its characters, and I need to know what happened to them in the ten years that lie between those two. At the same time Lemire has to do a lot of worldbuilding to explain this new fantasy-setting that has replaced the SciFi world of its predecessor. It doesn’t leave him with a lot of room to move the actual plot forward.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m enjoying this quite a bit. But a huge factor in that are the characters that I know from a different series and the occasional look back to that world. And the thing I’m still most excited about is for more of those characters to show up here, and to find out what has happened to them in the meantime. Of course this is part of the appeal, as this is the follow-up to Descender after all. But almost all of the new characters leave me rather cold. Except maybe for Mila. And the backstory for Mother, which we got here, was so confusing that Lemire lost me somewhere along the way. Add to that the glacier-like plot progression at this point, and it becomes a little hard to give this volume another 4-star-rating.
There are some developments, though, that had quite an impact on me. And Nguyen’s artwork is still something special.
Oh, and werewhales! So, yeah, 3.5 stars it is.