Author: Ryan Burton
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WARTY!
Illustrated by John Bivens.
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
Baritone voice-over, sounding like molten chocolate: "In a world which has fallen to ruin, where the very air itself is choked with the ashes of the dead, and monsters roam at will, arises Sym, born of alchemy and sent back in time to destroy the very roots of this world's downfall."
Sounds great, huh? It wasn't. I couldn't get into this. The artwork was fine, if on the grotesque side of beautiful, but the story simply wasn't there. it offered nothing to interest me much less to draw me in. Paradoxically, given the premise, there really was nothing new here. We got Mona the Barbarian, but what did that bring us in turn, really?
The worst part for me though, is that I have to really question this idea of creating a female weapon. Why female? Why does a weapon need even a gender? It just struck me as exploitative, and nothing more than a cynical gimmick: one which is neither complimentary to, nor empowering of, the female gender.
I didn't read all of this, so perhaps there were some saving graces towards the end, but that would have been too little, too late for me even had I been able to generate the interest required to read this "story".
I have to mention, in passing, one other issue I encountered, and this was with the iPad Air rather than with this novel per se since I encountered it in more than one graphic novel. The iPad Air uses Bluefire Reader for books I get from Netgalley, and the iPad I have is new and reasonably powerful, but it encounters frequent problems with turning pages in graphic novels - it takes several seconds sometimes, for it to "register" that a page is "there", so if you try to swipe the page (turn the page) or tap the screen to change pages, it can take a few seconds before it notices that you're trying to turn the page!
Or worse, it half turns the page so you get this:
A half page!
This necessitates sliding the page that extra bit, which in and of itself isn't an issue, but when this happens repeatedly, I have to say it's a major annoyance. I expect better than this from Apple Corporation, and I'm not gettign it. I've been rather disappointed in my experience with Apple products - both the Macbook Air and the iPad Air have delivered noticeably less than I'd been led to expect. Just saying!
