The final installment in the Gloom Cookie collection. This time the artwork is by Vincent Batingale which is a great surname all things considered! Funnily enough Vermillion and Moon Raven take centre stage for most of the collection. She has got her man and theya re due to marry, but she isn;t who he believes she is. She has made herself out to him that she has magical powers, but in reality she is delusional and left the Carnival Macabre as they discovered her secret as well.

Sebastian and Lex need to face up to the realities of their relationships with Chrys and Damion respectively. Chrys has never really been her own person being brought to life by Sebastian. Damion is extra possessive now that the curse has been broken. All he has ever done is love Lex and has had to suffer watching her die in consequtive life times. He has become wary of Sarah and barely lets Lex out of his sight.

I wasn't sure about how all the ends tied up, but overall I did love this series. I came to really like Chrys and Moon Raven the most and felt sorry for them as the story played itself out to it's conclusion.A great mixture of art and gothiness, not ooky at all! ( )

I picked up Gloom Cookie 5 (The Final Curtain) and Y The Last Man 9 (Motherland) from Destination Venus in Harrogate the other day and just finished them both. No major spoilers.

I have to say that I found Gloom Cookie 5 somewhat disappointing. I absolutely adore the rest of the series - it's cute and funny, has wonderfully touching fantasy elements, there are characters one can fall in love with or be friends with. The artwork, too, has been consistently awesome, and that's one thing that is also true for The Final Curtain - Vincent Batignole, the fifth artist to work on the series, has done a great job bringing the characters to life. One gets the feeling, however, that Serena Valentino ran out of steam on the final volume. The structure and story-telling is a lot more-straight-forward, with hardly any of the tangents which made the story so poignant in earlier volumes. The dialogue feels clunky, stunted. Both these elements make the whole book feel rushed, like Serena was just trying to get it over and done with, and the reader can't necessarily follow the characters' motivations, changes and developments. Thus, when we get to the ending, it's unexpected, not really justified from the preceding story and not entirely satisfying. I shall still adore the Gloom Cookies, but I do wish they'd received a fairer, more passionate treatment in their last book. ( )