Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen

Still gorgeous, still delightfully complex, but alas, probably my least favorite entry so far.

Spoilers ahoy for previous entries.

I'm serious.


At the end of the last volume, an old god was responsible for the destruction of a major pacifist city and refugee sanctuary, with more than 100,000 reported casualties. (See? Spoilers.) At the beginning of this one, we learn that the destruction was even worse than expected--the old god's death caused arcanics to go insane, killing and eating each other. On top of that, in areas where humans and arcancis have coexisted, the former have turned on the latter, slaughtering neighbors who they blame, incorrectly, for the destruction. Maika and Corvin make their way through this mess in search of show more Kippa, who was betrayed by Ren and kidnapped at the end of the last volume.

Pretty clear where this is going, right? Gonna be a big chase and attempted escapes and daring rescues, right?

Nope, all that's going to be swept under the rug in favor of slowing down the pace to introduce an entirely new and barely foreshadowed major power on the political chessboard. Granted, this is a much bigger surprise than the Lord Doctor, who did get foreshadowing, but it also felt like it came out of left field. While we're introduced to him and his faction, major players from previous novels like Ren and Zinn barely appear, and Kippa's excellent character development ("Adversity has made this little one wise." p. 156) is overshadowed by everything going on with Maika and, to a lesser extent, the Dusk/Dawn Court alliance.

In addition to missing favorite characters, I was a bit frustrated by the pacing. Perhaps it's because I've been reviewing Sandman in anticipation of the show. Gaiman provides information efficiently, distilling essentials down to a single page, covering decades while opening and closing issue-long subplots and planting the seeds of future plots at the same time. As time went on and Sandman got more prestige, there was less pressure to wrap up subplots in each issue. Liu's storytelling style seems to have begun where Gaiman ended. In this volume, Liu presents a lot of info over just a few days but takes a whole volume to do it. Whole pages pass with barely any dialogue. Granted, the difference in pacing may be in large part a product of the time and way in which Sandman was produced. My quite limited understanding of comics history leads me to make a comparison to the history of television, in which we moved from low-budget, self-contained episodes to mostly-self-contained episodes with a few multi-episode storylines, to seasonal arcs, and finally to bingeable shows that are basically big-budget 6- to 13-hour movies. If Sandman was the second, Monstress is somewhere between the last two.

Anyway, Maika does seem to get a little character development--if not as much as Kippa, who's finding strength in herself and growing into magical powers. Maika saves someone who she probably would have killed in an earlier volume, which is definite progress, but we don't really get to know when and why her principals shifted. Those narrative notes in which she talks to Tuya are almost totally absent here where I actually would have wanted them. And speaking of Tuya...Maika is right on the edge of discovering what's become of her. That, at least, is a very good carrot leading me to the next volume.

As mentioned right at the opening, the art is still gorgeous, but there were also a few places where something seemed...off. An arcanic character (p. 13) has horns that appear and disappear throughout the first issue before showing up in every issue after that. Since the tonal shifts didn't seem to correspond to the appearance/disappearance of the horns, it seemed more like a mistake than something deliberate. In one full-body image (p. 60) the warlord of the Dawn Court is missing her tails and seems to be missing an arm. The tails might be magic, but the arm...? On a story-related off-note, I couldn't figure out why the Lord Doctor was still eating people despite no longer having Zinn in his body. At least, I think he's still eating them. He attributes the rumors in the last two volumes about a flesh-eating ghoul to his habits. So...why? Do his allies not realize he's doing this? Don't they object?

Volume 4 may not have quite the cliffhanger that Volume 3 did, but there was a lot of upheaval--including the deaths of characters that I'd thought would be important, based on how much work went into establishing them--in the last few pages. So off I march into Volume 5, hoping that those seismic changes aren't ignored as much as Volume 3's happenings are ignored in Volume 4. show less

I keep claiming I'm done with this series, and keep coming back because it keeps ending up on the Hugo ballot. (In fact, it has won three years in a row!) I think, however, that this was my favorite volume since the first, though I still can't say that I love it or anything. This one had more focus on Kippa, the fox Arcanic and my favorite character. I can't say I think giving her a mythical destiny is my favorite thing (I much prefer her as an ordinary child caught up in horrible events), but I did like her steadfast belief in goodness, even in horrible events, and the sly cleverness she shows in this volume. This one also had a coherent story that I could follow from beginning to end. The political stuff, however, I don't care for, show more and the mythic stuff, I just can't follow. Plus I cannot be made to care about the main character's destiny or backstory.

The art is still very good, if not even better than it's ever been. show less

Hugo 2020 Nominations (Best Graphic);

My love for this series is, was, and continues to be unwavering. From the moment of discovering it in pre-production and reading it as an advanced copyreader, up through both the Hugo's of 2019 and the nominations for 2020. I will never be in disagreement about this comic earning the last three year's Hugo Awards in a row, and even with one more book to read in my six nominees, this will likely be my sweep away winner again.

The art in this book continues to be heartrendingly gorgeous. It only increases with time. I find myself caught on the simplest of features in frames, torn and frozen, captured by them interminably.

In this about 70% of our people all meet up, again (but not everyone as the show more wedding fallout still looms on our future horizon), we meet Maika's father, continuing to weave and unweave the past of her father, her mother, and Zhin. I'm glad to see that our team in mostly pulled back together, with a reunion of Maika, Kip, Corvin, and our Betrayer!Cat. Everyone is making choices, loyalties and justifications are shifting, as our power balances in the macro-world (of the courts, the races, the old gods) and within the microcosms of beings (especially as we're seeing more of Kip's burgeoning emergence, and we're getting more loyalty/true bonding between our half-wolf and old god, defending/consoling each other).

I'm still curious to all high heaven where this story will go. show less

This fourth collection of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's lush, violent dark fantasy/horror comic Monstress features a number of reunions, family and otherwise, and a looming war that may well result in truly unimaginable destruction.

I don't know that I have much to say about this volume that I haven't already said about the previous three. It's absolutely gorgeous, visually. The world-building is deep and rich. And the plot is complex and intricate enough that I suspect it might take real care to be able to follow it completely even if weren't for my fallible memory. I'm sure there are things I'm missing, or half-understanding, or losing the full impact of, just because I've forgotten far too many important details in the gaps between show more volumes. And yet, even given that fact, I'm still finding it pretty compelling.

Well, at least I am reaping a benefit from the fact that I was extra-slow to get to volume 4, because I already have volume 5 in my hands. Time to read that one while I'm still fresh from this one!

Rating: I'm giving this a 4/5, but if I ever do what I really should do, and go back and read the whole story in one go once it's complete, I strongly suspect my ratings of it all will go up. show less

I felt a desire to pull out my first three volumes of this graphic novel and re-read them.

Not only the artwork was there to be enjoyed, but the nicely deep storyline that keeps evolving in sometimes complicated but oftentimes traditional and satisfying ways reminiscent of some of the best mangas. But no. This is not a manga. It's lush, with lines very much unlike manga, but very reminiscent of it in the tentacles and oddities and mind-blowing depths of the imagination.

This is, and remains to me, an adaptation of the East to the West's purposes. Wonderfully so. The colors are freaking amazing.

And the story? Ah, we've got enough demand here that the comic can go all-out into epic awesomeness, as seen in this volume. War? The breaking out show more of all the old gods? Great SF elements as well?

It's all here. I'm loving it all. show less

I was warned that I should reread the first three before I read this one, but did I listen? No, I did not. Surely I’ll start remembering things after a few pages, I thought to myself. Alas, no. The plotting for this series is complex, and I really should have followed my coworker’s advice.
I think I sort of knew what was going on by the end. I knew who I was rooting for, anyway. And I knew that Kippa is the sweetest little fox girl in the whole world. And the artwork is incredible, just gorgeous.
So, yeah. I’m not sure I understood a lot of what I just read, but it gets 5 stars because the artwork is amazing, and because it’s my own fault I didn’t follow it very well. The next time, I’ll be prepared.

Ah finally the 4th volume! As expected loved every page. More of the fox girl and the most adorable dog ever! Besides the cuteness, this time Marika meets her father but he is not the father figure she expects and she escapes and finally winds up with the rest of her crew. Looking forward to the next volume out to see if the war does break out and what happens between Zinn and Marika!