Rating: WORTHY!
This was one of those advance review copies Net Galley offers as a 'read now', evidently because it isn't getting much attention. Unfortunately most of those are not very good, which is why they get little attention, but once in a while you can find one that is a worthy read, and I struck lucky on this occasion, because out of four such graphic novels I requested, three turned out to be pretty darned good, and this was one of them.
Written and illustrated by an assortment of creative people, the stories were somewhat spotty, but in general they were well illustrated and some of the tales were well-written. Others were unexceptional but readable. A couple were too trite to live. Overall though, I came away with a good feeling about this, so I was happy. It was not such a good feeling that I felt a huge compulsion to hunt down other volumes in this series, but this one was worth a look - unless you hate cats!
I'm not really a cat person, although I've owned cats. I'm much more in favor of dogs, and there was a dog in this series, which amused the hell out of me. The two cats were the main characters however. These were brother and sister, evidently. I had got the impression somehow, during my reading, that they were both females, but it was a refreshing change to have a female as a main character in a graphic novel, and that was another point in the graphic novel's favor as far as I was concerned. These siblings were the dour, cantankerous Grumpy, and her youthful and effervescent side-kick Pokey, who really needs a medicinal dose of Thorazine added to her feed STAT!
Pokey is typically the one who comes up with some crazy idea, such as: the cats should be detectives, or they should be super heroes. Grumpy is never on-board with the idea unless she can see some clear and present benefit to herself, which she often does, which is how she ends up falling in line with Pokeys ridiculous schemes - or at least falling only as far as she has to to make out like gangbusters from it. Grumpy tens to be lazy, but she actually cooks up one scheme to garner treats for herself at Pokey's expense.
Although, as I indicated, some stories (particularly the one page "stories") didn't impress me, there was enough to like and that's all I require from a novel graphic or otherwise. I liked this one, and recommend it as a worthy read.
