This book contains many stories, big and small, about and pertaining to the following things: Gods, monsters, mad kings, wise old crones, shamans, medicine men, brothers and sisters, strife, mystery, bad science, worse geography, and did we already mention true love?
I’ve had my sight on this graphic novel for nearly a year, so I was sad to see myself barely pushing through it now. The set up for The Encyclopedia of Early Earth sounded right up my alley, but the execution turned out to be less so.
Since this has many adventurous short stories set throughout the book, I was waiting patiently for some much need correlation to occur, but it never did… With Greenberg’s The One Hundred Nights of Hero I cherished the fact that each tale was either a prequel or sequel of sorts. But the narrative became tedious real quick with the many unrelated anecdotes thrown your way. You get to meet this new set of characters, but then you never see them again for it to make sense why they showed up in the first place. They had no real purpose other than to fill the pages of this book.
That’s not to say that all is bad, I did really enjoy the numerous fourth wall breaks and the skilled storyteller protagonist with his rather-quick-of-wit and savvy tales. Plus, the art had some heart-stopping moments throughout:
That last line in parentheses had me crack a smile.
All in all: Though my hope that Greenberg had penned another gem was squandered, I’m still grateful that I got to read this graphic novel after months of anticipation.
3/5 stars
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