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Sesana

Sesana

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Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke
Siege
Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel
Scrivener's Moon - Audio
Philip Reeve
Batwoman, Vol. 2: To Drown the World - J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman, Amy Reeder, Trevor McCarthy There are some serious issues with the story here. The most obvious is the way that the narrative jumps around constantly, seemingly at random. So on one page you may be reading a scene with Chase that happened a month ago, the next you're reading the battle scene that's happening "now". Which makes the battle last for the entire six issues collected here. Telling the story non-linearly might have been a good idea, but here it feels more like the pages were dropped and put back together at random. You can follow the action, but it's horribly choppy.

It would help if the villains here had anything like a stated motivation. It's meant to be mysterious, but there isn't even a real hint until the very last page of the very last issue. So for six issues we don't have a single clue why the (horribly flat) villain is kidnapping all these children. Sure, you want him stopped, because kids. But it's really hard to invest in a crime that's so nebulous that it feels like the author himself hasn't figured out yet what's going on.

If I had liked the art any less, this would have been a two star book. No, it isn't quite as great as in the previous volume, (different artists) but it's still very nice. There are more awkward and improbably poses here than I remember seeing in the last volume. Batwoman herself is still graphic and stylish, though I know her paper white skin can be a love-it-or-hate-it issue. (It wouldn't have been my choice, not exactly, but one of my other hobbies has desensitized me to ghostly pale skin.) I like the creative panels on some of the two-page spreads, especially since they're mostly arranged so the reading order is still very clear. The art was good enough for me to raise my review to three stars, but no higher.