Quick! Get one more Book post done before your Birthday! Ok, voice in my head, I don't know if your a Literal, an Elemental, or if I'm just crazy, but I will listen to you anyway. Here we go!
So I've finished the middle third of the 9 volume Jack of Fables series, and I gotta say, it's really growing on me. It helped a lot when I learned that the entire run only lasts 9 volumes, which works our pretty well. There is really only so long a series like this can last. Between the meta narrative, the unlikeable protagonist, and the all around silliness, Jack of Fables is a story built to be brief. It is getting better though. The humor is landing much more, and the world seems to be really growing into it's own sense of itself. By the end of Volume 6: The Big Book of War, the storyline has reached a Douglas Adams' level of absurdity. Vol. 4 follows Jack on his quest through the American Fable world of Americana where he finally finds a treasure big enough to be worthy of his time. It's a nice nod to the more recent world of American Folklore, complete with a magical train that you can only ride if you have your hobo bindle on a stick.
Vol. 5 is mostly an old west tale that finds Jack as a leader of a ruthless gang. This story was very good, but I couldn't shake the image of Skinner Sweet from American Vampire out of my head. I don't know if one was influenced by the other, but it felt that way to me. This book finds Jack at his most despicable. Having recently fought in the Civil War, Jack has decided that since the mundane people (real people) don't value life, then there is no reason he shouldn't kill as many of them as he feels like as if they were only ants. It's a pretty heavy story, only lightened in between the episodes as we get Jack fighting to control is own narration which has been hijacked by the literal embodiment of Narration, who is a woman who has a much more realistic opinion of Jack. We also get a few more installments of the the ongoing inner life of a now miniaturized Babe the Blue Ox. These are one page comics featuring Babe's inner thoughts as he imagines absurd persona's for himself. It's like Snoopy and the Bulwer-Lytton contestants had a baby. (if you don't know what that means, Google it, and thank me later)
Vol. 6: The Big Book of War pits Jack, the Fables from the Golden Boughs retirement home, and there captors against the most fearsome Literal of them all: Bookburner. He's a mean SOB who wants to burn all of the tales in which the Fables are featured in order to wipe them all from existence. There are a number of great fight scenes, and we get the first appearance of Dex, the Deus Ex Machina. He does pretty much what he's supposed to do. The ending sets up the great Fables Crossover which so baffled me before. (I really should re-read that)
Overall, these books are getting much better, and serve as a great side dish to the Fables world. My favorite joke? At one point, Narrator, in commenting about the quality of Jack's character, points out the the title of his book sounds really gross when you smoosh the letters of the last two words together..... Like I said, this book rarely takes itself seriously.
9/10
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