From Publishers Weekly
If there's an heir to the comics writing tradition of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, it's Carey, who currently writes the spinoff series Lucifer and peppers his stories with Gaiman's brand of clever, learned theology. This tale is a sequel to Gaiman's Sandman book The Kindly Ones. (Both titles, in fact, refer to the Eumenides from Greek mythology.) Those who haven't read Gaiman's book will likely be baffled by a few significant plot twists in this one. Lyta Hall, a former superheroine (and half-Fury) whose life has been shattered by the loss of her infant son, gets involved with an American theater group in Athens at the same time as the Greek gods decide to use her as a pawn in their internecine war. She ends up traveling through Hades, questioning the sort of vengeance her ancestors prized, and ultimately learning the fate of her bloodline. John Bolton, known for his painted comics, provides the art. This time, though, he seems to have represented most of the characters by heavily manipulated photographs, treated to appear in a "painterly" style that blends in with his purely fantastic images. Carey has a lot of irreverent fun with his mythological sources-in an early scene, Proteus murders kindly old Baucis and Philemon, who were turned into trees for their piety-and if the result doesn't quite have the scope of Attic tragedy, it does satisfyingly wrap up some of Gaiman's unresolved plot lines.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Booklist
This spin-off from Neil Gaiman's phenomenally durable Sandman series begins with its heroine in custody for assaulting a man she picked up in a bar. No prostitute, she just wanted to feel something in the wake of her infant son's kidnapping and death, but the man inadvertently triggered her rage. Meanwhile, another man, walking the countryside, stops to talk to two trees--the ones Baucis and Philemon became (see Ovid's Metamorphoses). He is Cronus, last of the Titans, builder of Olympus, and long seeker of vengeance on the Olympians, of whom only Hermes remains. Meanwhile again, an acting troupe prepares for a performance in Greece. Of course, all these characters meet, with the Furies dogging some of them for varied sins of patricide. Out of the encounter Hippolyta, whom we first met in handcuffs, and an actress whose father recently died emerge to renewed life. Bolton's excitingly lurid artwork, based in painting over photographs, compensates for Carey's lurching scenario and an undercurrent of New Age be-your-own-goddess sentimentality. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
