Bill Willingham – Fables, Vol. 11: War and Pieces
8. Fables, Vol. 11: War and Pieces by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, Niko Henrichon, Andrew Pepoy (2008)
Fables, Volume 11
Read My Review of Volume:
Length: 192 pages
Genre: Graphic Novel, Fantasy
Started: 19 January 2009
Finished: 19 January 2009, less than an hour later.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? After some fumbling of my reservation, I finally picked it up from the library on 17 January 2009.
Verdict? It has to go back to the library, but I’d love to have my own set of Fables if they weren’t so darn expensive.
How do you defeat
hordes of magical armies?
With big, honkin’ guns!
Summary: It’s all been leading up to this: full-blown war with the Adversary. No more scheming, no more preparation, no more waiting with bated breath: War. In the single-issue “Kingdom Come”, we get a glance at Boy Blue’s last-minute preparations, both tactical and personal. In the two-part “Skulduggery”, we follow Cinderella to Tierra del Fuego to retrieve a package of vital importance to the Fabletown Fables’ war effort. Finally, in the five-part “War and Pieces”, we get down to business, following Blue as he uses the Witching Cloak to act as messenger and courier among the various fronts of the war to reclaim the Homelands.
Review: Any good story has to have development of both its plot and its characters. This balance maybe even extra important for a serialized story like Fables, although any individual piece can swing to being more heavily character-based or more heavily plot-based. I generally prefer the former, and War and Pieces is pretty strongly the latter. Individual characters do get some nice moments, for sure, but it’s a war story first and foremost, and there’s lots of action that’s not character-based. I also wasn’t entirely satisfied by the way the war played out – not enough tension and suspense to keep me truly interested. Still, now that the plot that’s been running since essentially the beginning of the series is resolved, I’m extremely interested to see where Willingham & Co. go from here. 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: Not one of the better installments of Fables, in my opinion, but does wrap a lot of things up in a very interesting way.
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I had been saving your review for after reading this book, because I kind of suspect that the impulse I had today of going out, buying it, and then reading it in its entity was going to overtake me sooner or later :P
I agree with you. I prefer the in-between moments to the actual action, and so I didn’t enjoy this as much as the previous volumes. Plus we barely got to see the Cubs! Or Mowgli!
I’m really curious about what the next volume is going to be like. Meanwhile, Jack of Fables, here I come!
Oooh, Jack of Fables! I keep forgetting that that exists!
Hmmm… maybe I’ll finish the Sandman series first, then go for more Fables to hold me over until Fables #12 comes out (in August or something, I think).
I agree, there wasn’t a lot of character development in this one, but I enjoyed the story. It’s about time they finally finished with The Adversary! I was sad about Charming, which surprised me. He turned out…well, not good, exactly, but definitely okay. But Beauty’s reactions and Cindy awesomeness were my favorite parts. :)
Hooray! I’m finally going to be getting these!
Jessi – I did like Charming (at least as a character, if not necessarily as a person), so I agree, that was pretty surprising!
Ladytink – Hooray! I predict you’ll soon be as hopelessly hooked as the rest of us. :)