Mouse Guard Fall 1152
David Petersen
Hidden in the world, there exists an unknown kingdom of mice, long protected from the evils and dangers of the world by their noble Mouse Guard. They keep guard against predators, find safe routes between the secreted cities, and maintain a fierce loyalty to the guard and the mouse realm that is their home. Because of this, when there are stirrings of a traitor discovered in the ranks, three mice seeking a lost merchant find the threads of a plot more dangerous than they could have anticipated.
As a standing and vocal fan of Brian Jacques and much in the way of fantasy involving talking animals, I cannot imagine that anyone would find it a surprise for me to pick up, read and enjoy this book. Also, the art is simply entrancing--it's grittier than the Christopher Denise-illustrated Redwall books, but let's remember both of those covered special events rather than honest-to-goodness battles. The blood is there, the frightening scale of mice being substantially smaller than [and because of this I cannot allow a good friend of mine to read this book] the crabs fought at one scene.
As for the writing? Well, the build up for the story is well-paced and then angles allow the reader to start figuring out where different threads of the story may lead, the characters are acceptably interesting and the world is a clever sort of combination of the borrowers [purportedly set in our world, or at least a world scaled and filled with the regularly anticipated predators] and Redwall [talking mice, their own culture, buildings and fortifications, etc] but I will maintain the one complaint I had as soon as I finished it: Mouse Guard Fall 1152, for all its glory, is far, far, far too short. The content didn't feel so much like chapters in a story as like the bits of a TV show between excessive commercials. And the book itself didn't feel like a pilot episode so much as the first half of one--like when they split two-hour pilots up into single-hour episodes for reruns.
Yes, it completes a story arc but it does so in an almost choppy way, abruptly halting and leaving you in the middle of the world, stranded, staring at an end page.
This may be because I'm not accustomed to reading graphic novels right now, nor will I likely ever be, but one way or another, I left this book feeling as though, while I thoroughly enjoyed what I had, I felt short-changed.
Most likely I will eventually get the next...but I may wait until someone gives it to me.
If you see it in the library and you've got some time to kill, go ahead. It's worth a read and won't take you long at all.
David Petersen
Hidden in the world, there exists an unknown kingdom of mice, long protected from the evils and dangers of the world by their noble Mouse Guard. They keep guard against predators, find safe routes between the secreted cities, and maintain a fierce loyalty to the guard and the mouse realm that is their home. Because of this, when there are stirrings of a traitor discovered in the ranks, three mice seeking a lost merchant find the threads of a plot more dangerous than they could have anticipated.
As a standing and vocal fan of Brian Jacques and much in the way of fantasy involving talking animals, I cannot imagine that anyone would find it a surprise for me to pick up, read and enjoy this book. Also, the art is simply entrancing--it's grittier than the Christopher Denise-illustrated Redwall books, but let's remember both of those covered special events rather than honest-to-goodness battles. The blood is there, the frightening scale of mice being substantially smaller than [and because of this I cannot allow a good friend of mine to read this book] the crabs fought at one scene.
As for the writing? Well, the build up for the story is well-paced and then angles allow the reader to start figuring out where different threads of the story may lead, the characters are acceptably interesting and the world is a clever sort of combination of the borrowers [purportedly set in our world, or at least a world scaled and filled with the regularly anticipated predators] and Redwall [talking mice, their own culture, buildings and fortifications, etc] but I will maintain the one complaint I had as soon as I finished it: Mouse Guard Fall 1152, for all its glory, is far, far, far too short. The content didn't feel so much like chapters in a story as like the bits of a TV show between excessive commercials. And the book itself didn't feel like a pilot episode so much as the first half of one--like when they split two-hour pilots up into single-hour episodes for reruns.
Yes, it completes a story arc but it does so in an almost choppy way, abruptly halting and leaving you in the middle of the world, stranded, staring at an end page.
This may be because I'm not accustomed to reading graphic novels right now, nor will I likely ever be, but one way or another, I left this book feeling as though, while I thoroughly enjoyed what I had, I felt short-changed.
Most likely I will eventually get the next...but I may wait until someone gives it to me.
If you see it in the library and you've got some time to kill, go ahead. It's worth a read and won't take you long at all.
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