Greg Rucka

Stories of immortals are always interesting and this one is no exception. While first book was very interesting at the time I read it, in last four years certain movements and related ideas have become so dominant they literary poke us in the eye. Due to this I have to say I did not enjoy this volume as much.

Art is interesting and with chosen coloring it is really good. There are certain elements like Andy's profile (Greek nose) that are very exaggerated to the point one might consider Easter Island's stone statues to be Andy's self-portraits. For someone who seems to originate from the Central Asian steppe aeons before the Greeks, I am not sure how [exaggerated] Hellenic facial traits play any role here (what, she gave birth to all Ionians?).

Story wise this book is in that weird and unsatisfactory role of teaser - some things are revealed from history of our heroes and some are hinted and ..... that's it. Wait for book number three.

But for me the most problematic aspect of the book is that, as it is product of the time it was created, it suffers from preachiness. As diverse our heroes are, they are actually homogeneous. Why you might ask? I do not know, could be due to the fact that offspring would not survive the parent (not to mention the partner) so idea is not to get involved and basically not have any offspring (very similar issue can be found in Highlander). Interesting, but ultimately boring.

Second aspect is angry-female phenomenon. For some reason strong (especially warrior oriented) female characters (again, because of the current philosophical, political and sociological discourse) need to be [for all means and purposes] male, but male stereotype that is constantly angry, needs to kick everything in the teeth, have that baleful eye and approach everything with shoot-first-and-do-nothing-later attitude. For some reason this aggression-first stereotype exists and predominates lately in the media. This is not Modesty Blaise, deadly to the maximum but cool under pressure, this is not Tara Chace of Queen and Country fame, nor Legs from Nathan Never (although she alone is very near this every-problem-is-a-nail-use-hammer approach), Axa, or even Red Sonja or Angela (all three are very capable warriors but also nuanced characters). No, Andy (and Noriko) are just angry people with huge blood-lust and that is it. They do good (Andy) and very bad things (Noriko) but they do it because they are just angry. They are given role in the universe, gift of the immortality and they are angry about it. While I can understand the problem of outliving everyone they love, reason for being angry all the time and not being able to accept oneself, just points to the fact that these characters are immature, forever children, unable to learn anything from their very long (and definitely deep, whether they like it or not) life experience. It is interesting how approach to immortality in Warhammer 40K through so called Perpetuals (very divisive element fan-wise btw) gives us much more mature characters than this book.

All of the above would not ruin my experience were it not for almost mandatory clash-of-generations. Nile, junior in every way, meets Noriko and what must be most cliche inspired event, gets intrigued by a reference to a Hamurabi's Code. Everything ends with Noriko saying, ask Andy to explain it to you. And Andy is terrified when Nile mentions this. Reason? Nobody knows, but apparently this part of Hamurabi's Code is about disciplining slaves and that brings Andy so low in the eyes of her team (again, what?), that Nile is all of a sudden new boss (and unfortunately yet another angry female lead) and she rounds everyone else and they leave Andy (even worse than team leaving Booker at the end of volume 1). So, to sum it up, Andy is apparently guilty for living in time of slavery and not writing on her Instagram and blog how she is offended by it. This spoiled the story for me in a great way - what, we are to judge people living through aeons of human civilization development because they lived in times when slavery was common thing (btw. we are talking about turning prisoners of war into slaves, people ending as slaves being of same ethnicity as the conqueror/winning side). It is not that Andy did not better herself and did some very positive things to help their fellow humans. No, she lived in times that were dark by today's norms and she "did nothing about it". This way of approaching history makes serious literary works look stupid, but in form of light entertainment such as this graphic novel it comes out as completely idiocy. This for some reasons breaks Andy (serious nervous breakdown) after which she says she cannot continue the fight - this upsets Nile even more, because this just shows how Andy does not want to do the righteous fight (huh?). And while Nile I can understand (she is from our modern times), rest of Andy's team just picks up their stuff and leave with Nile, without any comment and discussion. This then creates conditions for next extremely idiotic turn of events - Andy, left by her team is approached by Noriko and decides to join her. Why? Why, oh why? To have some sort of a sequel I guess.

All the actions of Andy and her team are inconsistent with actions of people who have seen and lived through a lot (again Nile is exception because she just joined and she is very young, 20-something when she joins the team). They all behave as video game characters that will just respawn on another location and continue on. No need to learn, no need to develop, just push forward. Andy does not want to lead, but Nile says she will lead - we all follow Nile (??!???!???!???!) While this might applicable in video games, in life people learn and adapt and dont behave as eternal teens.

As I said, all of these elements existed in volume 1, but 4 years between reading these books, and too much current-thing in a relatively slim volume ruined experience for me. Instead of giving the reader an interesting story of timeless mercenaries, there are some weird philosophical discussions (including ever present humans-are-vermin discourse) that are so cliche but are present in order for comic to take itself "seriously", and this just makes immersion very difficult.

Hopefully next book in series will go back to the adventure, thriller side of the story and no longer include nonsensical aspirations to be a "serious" literary work.

Interesting story, unfortunately ends with more questions than answers. Until volume 3 is released nothing makes sense. It might be best read (or in my case re-read) when vol 3 comes out. Additionally, if you have "allergy" to preachiness this book might not be for you.… (plus d'informations)