Here are the latest graphic novels I have been able to read thanks to the public library.

The Fiction

I love the concept of this story, four childhood friends discover a book of strange books that lets them travel inside them to the stories. Unfortunately one of them gets lost and never makes his way back out of the book.They can’t tell anyone what really happened and have to live it for years. But now that they are all grown up, the past catches up with them and a second person from their group goes missing.

The other two, return to the story world to find him, and hopefully recover their long, lost friend. But what they find there is much different than the bright, fantasy world they discovered all those years ago.

While the concept is great, the story didn’t quite fulfill its promise. It reminded me a little of Netflix’s Stranger Things in that an evil presence lives just beyond our reality. It would have been nice to see the magic of stories translated a little bit better instead of just the horror.

Doctor Who: The Wolves of Winter

The Twelfth Doctor travels with Bill Potts to the 9th Century and comes across a band of Vikings. That is not all they find there though.

The story is a sequel to the 2009 special The Water of Mars. In a lot of ways, the portrayal of the Doctor in this book felt more like David Tennant than Peter Capaldi. While it is nice to revisit older characters, the current doctor needs to stay true to himself. That didn’t seem to happen here.

There is a second story in this collection that has them travelling to a large mall known as the ubermarket. This story captures the Doctor / Bill dynamic perfectly. Bill sounds and acts like Bill and it was great to see them together again. You could see and hear the chemistry between them just like it were an episode of the television series.

My List of 2019 Reads – my annual reading log with book reviews for each title