Thinking like a fangirl: | Book Review | Monstress Vol. 1

Hello book nerds!
Sorry for being so off on the blog lately, I'm trying to write as much as possible for my second book before college starts again, but I promise I'll be here more frequently from now on.

Today I am bringing you my very first try on a graphic, and what an amazing first ride!

I was generously given a copy of this book by the Portuguese publisher Saida de Emergência, for this reason I’ll be looking not only at the story but at the translation as well.

Review:

Let’s state, in case I sound really dumb through the review, that this is my first graphic novel. I was so excited. Anyone in the book community knows Monstress, the internet exploded with this series so I had to read it! Yes, I am one of those people who gets excited by other people getting excited. I was going to buy it in English but then got the chance to work with Saida de Emergência and I had to say yes. The quality of a Portuguese book, compared to an American/English paperback, is superior so the drawings pop out even more.

I’m a sucker for pretty artwork and I loved, loved, loved, every single drawing of this book.

On this alternative Asia, we follow the story of Maika Halfwolf, a girl who survived a cataclysmic war. She struggles with herself, with what she had to do and become to survive. Her life is ruled by the need to know what happened to her mother and she is finally ready to go get answers.

This is not a story of the faint of heart, it’s action-packed and full of death and blood and gore. I’m nineteen and I’ve seen Game of Thrones so that’s little that can be done to surprise me but I still had to pause sometimes. Monstress uses foul language, be aware and it is pretty graphic.

Still, it’s a great story. Character development it’s not a problem, specially with Maika and Master Ren (Guys, cats talk on this book! If that’s not the indication of a great book, I don’t know what it is). However, they evolve too quickly and I found myself quite sometimes confused about what was actually happen. That’s one of the problems of this book, it follows multiple points of view and it has so many characters and so many storylines to follow that by the middle I still didn’t know who was who.

My favourite part of the book is, without a doubt, Kippa the little fox-human baby. He’s so cute * - * Look:

I can’t wait to know more about him and how he got into this mess.

The book ends with pretty bad cliff-hanger so now I have to go and get the second one to find out what’s happening next.

Saida de Emergência did a great job editing this book. The pages have a certain shine that makes the drawings pop out and I found no grammar mistakes. The only thing I’d point out, that annoyed me a little, was reading things like ‘’gasp’’ untranslated. However, I don’t know how they would translate that…

Hum…

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Rating: 4 stars