Netgalley gave me all the Marvel books…

Throughout the year I have been lucky enough to receive several of Aconyte Books´ Marvel books, and I have enjoyed most of them. And then I found myself with 7 unread books on ´my shelf´, five of which were Marvel. So I did a little readathon! One of these I already picked up in September so will have appeared in that month´s wrap-up… but I will showcase it in here again as well.

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I had to DNF this one at about 20% in. It was definitely a case of me and not the book though. There were elements in here that I really enjoyed (mostly Venom), but I just haven’t read enough of the comics for this story to make sense to me. I am a bit lost and constantly find myself Googling things, and it just doesn’t make for the best reading experience. I have read several of the other books in this ‘series’, and I had no problem with placing the story and the characters then. But now I am out of my league. I will definitely come back to this book once I have read more of the comics though.

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Heimdall versus shape-shifting zombies… Of course I wanted to read this!!! The characters switch between Heimdall and Uschi (a pretty awesome Valkyrie Captain) as they try to find out how to stop the zombie curse, have family dillemas and have to prevent a war between Frey and Odin. You do not need any prior Marvel knowledge if you want to pick this one up. Actually, if you had told me this was part of Norse mythology I would have easily believed you. And the writing style feels that sense of myth as well… which is both a good thing and a bad. It is perfect for the story and really sets the atmosphere, but for me it isn’t the easiest to get sucked in to. The characters also felt a bit underdeveloped because of it. The battle scenes in this were superb, but everything in between (especially the dialogue) just lacked a bit of elegance. Still a very enjoyable read.

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Rogue Untouched is a Rogue origin story. Again, my comic book knowledge is too limited to say how accurate it is… but from what I know it is definitely closer than the movies. This being a YA book (I guess??) it was very readable. I read about half of this whilst being bored at work and it was very easy to follow whilst dipping in and out of it. There are some small irks I have with this, such as an Austrian character being made German (for no reason). There are also two female characters in here who we know are lovers in the comics, but that is never acknowledged in the book (while quite a few of the other books in this series have done a great job of including diverse major characters). There were some plot holes, things that didn’t quite make sense at times and the ending was quite rushed. But overall a very fun and easy read. You do need to have some prior knowledge regarding several mutants to get the most out of this book I think though (and very few of the characters we see in the movies appear in this book – which I appreciate but I can imagine might be a disappointment to some).

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School of X is a collection of short stories following the next generation of X-men… and I didn’t really care for it. To be fair, it has two major elements that I’m not a fan off: teens and short stories. Some of these stories were fine, others I ended up skimming through. But overall, I didn’t find myself care throughout any of the stories. I could have put this book down at any point and not be bothered to pick it up again. But yeah, short stories just aren’t for me.

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This being the fifth Marvel book I read in a row I was scared I would be burned out of it. But no, I really enjoyed this one. Ghost Rider teams up with the Witches to hunt down one of Lucifer’s fragments. And they work together so well. I loved the relationships and dynamics between the characters. The banter, the bickering, the support… it was all spot on. I also love how Carrie have made the ladies move on from what they are in the comics. They joke about the clothes they used to wear, they acknoledge toxic relationships and grow in self confidence and power. I really liked the witchy stuff in this book, as well as everything Ghost Rider did. All four of the characters come with a load of baggage and have a lot to process, which was great to see. But… at times it was a bit too much character development and it became a bit too repetitive. I also found the dialogue to be a tad cheesy at times. But those really are my only irks with this book… and that final battle with Lucifer makes everything totally worth it.

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And that concludes my two weeks of reading Marvel… and I actually had a very good time with it. It probably does help that these were fairly diverse books. These also cover the books that Aconyte is bringing out till the end of the year, so I am done reading Marvel for a bit now. I have seen what is coming in January-April and I am semi-intersted…

Hoping you are well,