Édouard Cour

Wow. The art in this is gorgeous, and I think Cour does a fantastic job of conveying Heracles' negative characteristics (brutal, thoughtless, overemotional) without losing sight of the traits that make him sympathetic and admirable (regret, loyalty, longsuffering in the face of the cruel vagaries of the gods). The humor, dark and wry and snagged subtly in the lines of the artwork, left me struggling to muffle snickers in public more than once.

This book grew on me. At first I didn’t care for it, but by the end I was entertained and interested to see who the story plays out. Herakles, is the Greek equivalent of Hercules so the story is very familiar. He is sent on his trials and tasked to impossible quests. This Herakles is more a Game of Thrones type character than a Disney character. He is brash, gruff, and very rough. We travel with him to complete four or five labors, and they are not pretty. They are violent, but not bloody show more as drawn in this book. I now want to see how this author/artist bring this story to completion. But at the same time, I don’t find it so unique and great that I would buy it for my library. show less

I think this volume would be easier to get through if it was read back to back with volume one. Herakles is still working on his impossible tasks to be made a god, but he is still under others control. Including Hera. I didn’t like volume 2 as well as I did one. The story skips around a lot and many of the illustrations are so dark they just look like black blobs. This could possibly be unfinished artwork since the copy I am reading is a galley, but it does not feel that way. To me the show more story was too choppy and unfinished to really like the book. But I enjoy the sass of Herakles, and the illustrations so I imagine I will be sticking around for book 3.
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