I found this book very boring. It has large fonts and margins, not a lot of content, none of it very interesting. Didn't like Thanos as a character, didn't care about anything at all really while reading this. This had a few saving graces of a chapter here and there but for the most part I am very glad this was not a dense 400 page novel. I'm upset I paid full price for the hard back though. Very upset. I hope my library likes it once they start accepting donations. ( )

Maybe because I’m a bit mad myself, I dunno, the bottom line is I actually think I “get” Thanos and why he did what he did. Granted, in the movies, his original impetus is equilibrium, whereas in the original comics, he’s just trying to impress Death, the object of his somewhat misguided affections.
Anyway, Lyga present’s the Mad Titan’s backstory here in a way that makes Thanos if not quite a hero, at least as a somewhat sympathetic character who just can’t understand why his desire to help is constantly met with utter scorn and rejection (as is the Titan, himself. Even his own mother hates him).
There were moments when I wanted to envelope the big purple guy in a bear hug and moments when I wanted to choke his neck. Sometimes I felt great empathy for him, and other times I was almost disgusted with myself for feeling so much compassion for a guy who... well, I won’t give it away.
This was a one-sitting read for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. ( )

This was either a five-star book, or a three-star book, so I went down the middle. There is a lot I loved about it, but also a big issue that weakened the story. Infinity War did a good job of building Thanos despite having only one film to do it in, but he was still mostly one-dimensional as an antagonist. The ultimate ecoterrorist who also loved his daughter. Liga never manages to make me sympathize with Thanos (as I did with Loki & Killmonger), but he does make him a more complex and fully formed character.

The worldbuilding, the society, and Thanos’ life on Titan are all expertly crafted and take up more than half the book. It was time well spent! The book absolutely shines throughout this part. Liga goes into detail about how Titan is structured, and where the flaws are in that structure. This was the closest I felt to identifying with Thanos. The tried and true Daddy issues are his foundation, but Liga builds upon that very well with his outsider status. The people of Titan come in many hues, but not purple. That is the color of death (hello, foreshadowing!) and Titans, despite being so technologically advanced, are superstitious about it. Very realistic. I also liked how the book focuses on Thanos’ super genius intellect, which was completely set aside in the film, that further ostracizes him from his people. He reminds me of Ultron. Thanos is the only one who can see, through calculation and data analysis, what will befall his homeworld. But, his moral compass is too skewed to see how his people were sure to react, or why his “solution” is wrong.

Unfortunately, the flaw in the structure here is time. The timeline of the novel feels VERY compressed - Thanos is an Eternal, but the whole story seems to take place in only 10-20 years. His exile from Titan, The Chitauri, the Fall of Titan, rise as a Warlord, Gamora – it all flies by in a rush after he leaves Titan. This is especially noticeable when Thanos just happens to fall into the lap of an army, the Chitauri, who send him straight to Warlord – do not pass go, do not collect $200. Liga made a valiant effort to make it work with the hive mind concept, but it still felt overly contrived. But, my biggest disappointment was that the Black Order received only a few throwaway sentences. They were nothing more than muscle in the film, and they get even less here. This may be a result of the book being written/marketed for Young Adults, but another few chapters would have helped. I was initially torn about the Loremaster. He was also an expeditious way to give Thanos information, but he was such a “comic book character” that I didn’t mind at all. He helped give the book a solid conclusion.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It was a great expansion of the MCU storyline. I would like to see a sequel going more in depth with Gamora and Nebula, vis a vis Thanos, and the search for the stones. ( )