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rushthatspeaksReview of the book I read Monday, July 25th, yay almost being caught up. My goal is to be caught up before I have to go to Otakon this weekend and fall drastically behind again.
Well, this latest installment of Ursula Vernon's semi-graphic-novel Dragonbreath series is at least better than the immediately previous, Lair of the Bat Monster, which just didn't have any spark to it. This one suffers from being set in a very confined space, and from not having very much of the truly spectacular weirdness which is Vernon at her best. In fact, the story beats of this one are all pretty much predictable as soon as you know what genre she's working in, and I was moderately annoyed by that.
Anyway, Danny Dragonbreath and his friends go trick-or-treating. One of his friends is his usual sidekick, Wendell, and the other is Christiana, who is such a confirmed skeptic that she doesn't even believe that Danny is a dragon instead of some kind of big lizard or something. They get tricked by the school bully into going into a house that's supposed to be haunted, and hey, what do you know, it is.
The best things about this are the running jokes about Wendell's and Christiana's parents, who are devoutly bent on being Educational At All Times and have consequently made their children dress for Halloween as a hydrogen atom and a salmonella bacterium. Also, Ursula Vernon draws a reasonably creepy evil clown. But most of this is the party of friends wandering through the house and being scared, and it just kind of gets old after a while. Where by after a while I mean pretty quickly.
Still, as I said, it's better than the last one, so maybe this series is looking up again. The next one is apparently set at a summer camp. That has potential.
Well, this latest installment of Ursula Vernon's semi-graphic-novel Dragonbreath series is at least better than the immediately previous, Lair of the Bat Monster, which just didn't have any spark to it. This one suffers from being set in a very confined space, and from not having very much of the truly spectacular weirdness which is Vernon at her best. In fact, the story beats of this one are all pretty much predictable as soon as you know what genre she's working in, and I was moderately annoyed by that.
Anyway, Danny Dragonbreath and his friends go trick-or-treating. One of his friends is his usual sidekick, Wendell, and the other is Christiana, who is such a confirmed skeptic that she doesn't even believe that Danny is a dragon instead of some kind of big lizard or something. They get tricked by the school bully into going into a house that's supposed to be haunted, and hey, what do you know, it is.
The best things about this are the running jokes about Wendell's and Christiana's parents, who are devoutly bent on being Educational At All Times and have consequently made their children dress for Halloween as a hydrogen atom and a salmonella bacterium. Also, Ursula Vernon draws a reasonably creepy evil clown. But most of this is the party of friends wandering through the house and being scared, and it just kind of gets old after a while. Where by after a while I mean pretty quickly.
Still, as I said, it's better than the last one, so maybe this series is looking up again. The next one is apparently set at a summer camp. That has potential.
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Date: 2011-08-05 01:32 pm (UTC)Anyway, someone should tell her to add moar weirdness.
--schreiber