Another fun romp in the steampunk universe of Agatha Heterodyne. Not to disparage Phil Foglio's artwork, but I'm just not a visually oriented person and don't find graphically presented stories as satisfying as text or audio. But it would be a shame to have missed these characters and tales. So I am deeply grateful to the Foglios for text-novelizing their web comic/graphic novels. And the audiobook is a wonderfully enjoyable job by reader Angela Dawe. ( )

Adventure! Romance! Giant holograms in revealing dresses!

Like the first Girl Genius novelization, [b:Agatha H and the Airship City|9874196|Agatha H and the Airship City (Girl Genius)|Phil Foglio|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1291998058s/9874196.jpg|14765901], this book is a page for page novelization of the graphic novel. Like it's predecessor, it's not as good for a novel as the comic is for a web comic, but that's a incredibly high bar. The novelization gives insight into the characters and plot that just don't work as well in a graphic novel. For fans of Girl Genius, this novel is a must-read supplement. ( )

Now, I managed to get my hands on an advanced uncorrected copy of this (I love my job!) and jump right into it with out even realizing that there was already a history and story line and all that jazz. And to be honest I’m pretty happy about that. But more on that later.

Basic Plot: This is the story of Agatha Clay, who is actually Agatha Heterodryne, the lost daughter of Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish. When the Baron realizes this Agatha and Krosp, her faithful talking cat, escape for their lives and hide in plain sight in a traveling circus.

What I liked:

I really liked Agatha, she was smart, spunky, loyal and wasn’t afraid to work. There were times were she was a little too naive but other than that it did keep the story flowing.
The footnotes were great! Normally footnotes drive me insane but these were well done and there weren’t so many of them that it got distracting.
Krosp-I have a thing for heroines with talking cats, or maybe it’s just a talking cat thing, either way I always love a talking cat.
The Circus was full of diverse if somewhat under developed characters
I loved how there was still a pretty dark undertone to the book-it was funny throughout but there was still that darkness to it to keep it well rounded
What I didn’t like:

Having never read the comic before reading the book I did have some issues with Krosp and his movements-was he a real cat? or was he a flexible, human-esque cat with opposable thumbs? In the end i went with real cat.
The Jagers- they were great characters but having such a heavy accent written for them got old fast
The ending-while i know the story goes on in the comic I wish the ending didn’t have so many loss ends.
While I really enjoyed the book I don’t think I’ll be keeping up with the comic, I’m just way too far behind and I honestly don’t like reading comics any way- I either focus too much on the words and forget to look at the pictures or the other way around. Also I now have set images for what I think all the characters look like and I’m not overly fond of how they look in the comic.

Happy Readings!

( )

I'm continually torn between the novels and the graphic novels. I can't decide which I like better! ( )

More reviews avalable on my blog.

I’m a big fan of the Girl Genius comic, so when I saw this in my local Oxfam, I had to pick it up.Novelisations are weird beasts. Because they add more internal thoughts and more background action to a work, they can change it in subtle ways. This is certainly the truth with Agatha H. The comic is a riotous fun thing with a great deal of colour and life. It has dark moments, but they are always lightened by the art.

Girl Genius is a lot creepier and darker in novel form. The monsters are more frightening, the situations more deadly. When we know peoples internal thoughsts and desires, you become more sympathetic to some characters and less sympathetic to others.

Its… I almost prefer it to the comic, to be honest.

The writing is generally OK – the Foglio’s take the chance to fill in some detail, background and description that they don’t have the chance to in the comic – but it suffers from far too many cliched descriptions and expressions. Sometimes it can be clunky, or generally conjour up weird images. It’s perfectly good most of the time, though.

Because I already knew the plot of this from the comic there were no surprises, though I have to say (love it as I do) that a novelisation reveals plot-holes that were easily covered up by the webcomic. More detail is good, but often it can do this – point out places where coincidence and deus ex machina have been used to get the writer out of a tight spot. Interestingly, it can also make the emotional impact of certain things deeper and more lasting.

It’s a damn good adventure tale. One of my lasting regrets is that the straight-forward, swashbuckling adventure story is not as popular as it used to be, having been swallowed up by novels that are just grim and ultra grim piled on top of some rape and murder. Sometimes it’s nice to read something where people just have an adventure, and while there is darkness and horror, it’s mostly just fun.

And that’s what this is. It’s not great literature, but it’s fun and decently-written and you can read it over and over again. But does it have appeal to people who don’t know about the Webcomic? I think so. It doesn;t rely on you knowing the webcomic at all, and I think readers of adventure fantasy and steampunk would easily enjoy it without even knowing about Girl Genius.

You should give it a shot. At the very least, it’ll make travelling go faster. ( )