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2.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't deliver on the promise of the story, November 13, 2009
This review is from: The Good Neighbors #2: Kith (Hardcover)
Kith is the second installment in The Good Neighbors, Holly Black's series of graphic novels about Rue, a young woman whose life is torn apart when her mother disappears. Kin, the first book in this series, traces Rue's discovery that her mother is a fairy princess who returns to her own people when Rue's father is unfaithful. Kith picks up the action as the fairy world fights for Rue to join her mother, and as Rue's grandfather, Aubrey, sets into motion a plan to bring the town where Rue lives into the fairy realm forever.
Ted Naifeh's artwork is as lovely as ever, with a dark and brooding presence that underscores the temptation that magic holds for Rue, even as she struggles to protect her friends from Aubrey and his minions. A scene where Rue tries to convince her mother to come back to the human world is particularly moving, and shows the inner conflict both through the artwork and the dialog.
However, the combination of Black's failure to establish identifiable characters for all of Rue's friends, and Naifeh's artwork that leans towards a preponderance of short, angular hairstyles, meant that I was frequently confused about what was going on in the story. At several points throughout the story I would reread several pages, trying to figure out exactly which characters were involved in the action. The final scene in particular didn't make much sense, and seemed to contradict the information we had been given in the story.
The disjointed story that followed has too many separate paths and keeps Kith from delivering the full emotional impact that is nascent in the tale Black is trying to tell. This second episode inThe Good Neighbors fails to deliver on the setup from the opening chapters. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend Kith.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, March 20, 2011
** spoiler alert ** Despite being a fan of Holly Black's writing in general, I'm very unimpressed by The Good Neighbors. Volume two, Kith, did little to change that. The characters remain unsympathetic. Most of their actions are driven by selfishness. They don't seem to care how their actions will make those around them feel. The only character who seems to be a decent, kind person is Amanda.
While the plot moved forward at a good pace considering how few pages Black had to work with, there were more than a few plot points left dangling. Why was Rue's friend given the love potion locket? What was the purpose of Tam giving Rue the knife when A) she didn't need it to get Ann out of the tree, B) There was already a knife in the tree anyway and C) You'd think that someone of Tam's knowledge of faeries would realize that Ann would come back different, and evil. Also, what's with Rue's boyfriend letting those water nymphs (or whatever they were) bite and drain him? I've seen this particular subplot before, it was on Buffy, and it was carried out a lot better than this.
I could forgive the dangling plot lines, and even unlikable secondary characters, but when the main character is so hard to empathize with, the whole book becomes hard to enjoy. Rue has a mother who doesn't appear to have a maternal bone in her body. It's unclear how Rue could be attached to her in any way. Her father can't make up his mind about what he wants, and it wreaks havoc on those around him. And to top things off, Rue can't seem to summon enough energy to give a crap over whether or not the faeries will take over the city. How are the readers supposed to care what happens, when the protagonist clearly doesn't?
All in all, pretty disappointing.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Can we tell the characters apart, please?, February 9, 2011
Holly Black, The Good Neighbors vol. 2: Kith (Graphix, 2009)
There is a somewhat common problem in manga, especially in shojo, of the characters being drawn so similarly that it's well-nigh impossible to tell who's who at times. (Major offenders in this regard are Sang-Son Park and Natuski Takaya, especially, in both cases, when drawing males.) I've never encountered it in American graphic novels to the entent one finds it in certain manga until now. A number of Naifeh's disaffected teens might as well be interchangeable... which is an even worse thing when Black seems to be relying on differences between characters for coherence, as she is not a big user of names in this story. Because of this, Kith gets hard to follow at times. And I also admit to being tired of the whole war-between-fae-and-humans gig, which is desperately overused these days. Still, there was enough here in the way of decent (when coherent) plotting to keep me reading, and I'll certainly pick up the final volume when it comes out (Amazon says that has already occurred; the buyers at my library system disagree). ***
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