Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Black: The Birth of Evil


Oh guys, I really hate to say this, but this was not a good read. Let me explain a little further, you may still want to give this one a chance, especially if you prefer graphic novels.

Ted Dekker is an amazing writer. My husbands loves his work, I have many of his books, and I always look forward to them. In fact, I have the book Green which is book zero in the Circle Series, I just haven't had the chance to read it yet. So imagine how thrilled I was to find a graphic novel version of his circle series, sans Green though.

However, despite being a great storyteller, Dekker does not translate to graphic novel so well. I don't know, this is just my personal opinion and without the comparison of the books this series imitates, so take all this with a grain of salt.

The Circle Series follows one Thomas Hunter who falls asleep after a gunshot grazes his head and finds himself in another world, where he is just waking up. What follows is a crazy switch between two worlds, the second o which could be the future of this one if a giant talking white bat is to be believed. Thomas then continues to bounce back and forth between the two worlds to save one and live in the other (complete with learning to fight and wooing a woman). The back and forth is just too much for this format. I think it was missing a little too much in the narrative, something that you have to be careful with when writing a graphic novel. Because of this, I find some of the conversations and events to be a bit ridiculous. And it actually took me 2 days to finish this one.

That being said I sat down at my computer fully prepared to tell you that not only did I not enjoy this, I had no plans to pick up the next two installments. But, no, you know what, I think I will. After all, they are simply graphic novels, short and easy to read. Dekker took the time and believed that it was worth moving his story to this format, I can give him a little bit of my time to finish the series, see if it gets better. And even if I don't like these I will also be picking up the novels, because I already told myself I was going to read them, and I believe this concept will be great as told by this writer.

So I won't tell you not to read these, I just won't push it on you like I have other books. And check back in a day or two for the reviews of the next two books. I'll attach them to this one for convenience.

Edit: I finished the series and posted my review of Red and White.

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