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Carregando... The Old Guard, Book 2: Force Multipliedde Greg Rucka
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. This volume felt much more Andy-centric than the previous volume, to the detriment of the other characters. I thought Andy's character arc was good, but no one else's (not that anyone besides Nile even had much of an arc...). Booker was more MacGuffin than character, Joe and Nicky were...there I guess, and I just flat out do not agree with the direction they took Nile's character. I wanted to like this, but I can't because it felt like the last half of the last issue is a complete betrayal of all the characters (except for Andy) up to that point. Just as good as the first volume. The story is a touch more slight, but that's because there's more weight carried by the immortality theme. I like how this one grapples with what it means to live for thousands of years. What has one experienced? What has one done just to get through? And most of all, what does one lose along the way? A really good series. sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
Pertence à sérieThe Old Guard (Vol. 2 (Force Multiplied 1-5))
"Six-thousand-year-old Andromache 'Andy' of Scythia, Nicolo 'Nicky' of Genoa, Yusuf 'Joe' al-Kaysani, and twenty-seven-year-old Nile return to the fight ... When you've waged war as long as Andy and her squad, you've gotten your hands more than bloody. Now, the day has come to confront the sins of the past. But as Nile struggles to make peace with the team, the last person Andy expected to ever see again returns to challenge not only what Andy believes in, but what the team is willing to fight for."--Provided by publisher. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Art is interesting and with chosen coloring it is really good. There are certain elements like Andy's profile (Greek nose) that are very exaggerated to the point one might consider Easter Island's stone statues to be Andy's self-portraits. For someone who seems to originate from the Central Asian steppe aeons before the Greeks, I am not sure how [exaggerated] Hellenic facial traits play any role here (what, she gave birth to all Ionians?).
Story wise this book is in that weird and unsatisfactory role of teaser - some things are revealed from history of our heroes and some are hinted and ..... that's it. Wait for book number three.
But for me the most problematic aspect of the book is that, as it is product of the time it was created, it suffers from preachiness. As diverse our heroes are, they are actually homogeneous. Why you might ask? I do not know, could be due to the fact that offspring would not survive the parent (not to mention the partner) so idea is not to get involved and basically not have any offspring (very similar issue can be found in Highlander). Interesting, but ultimately boring.
Second aspect is angry-female phenomenon. For some reason strong (especially warrior oriented) female characters (again, because of the current philosophical, political and sociological discourse) need to be [for all means and purposes] male, but male stereotype that is constantly angry, needs to kick everything in the teeth, have that baleful eye and approach everything with shoot-first-and-do-nothing-later attitude. For some reason this aggression-first stereotype exists and predominates lately in the media. This is not Modesty Blaise, deadly to the maximum but cool under pressure, this is not Tara Chace of Queen and Country fame, nor Legs from Nathan Never (although she alone is very near this every-problem-is-a-nail-use-hammer approach), Axa, or even Red Sonja or Angela (all three are very capable warriors but also nuanced characters). No, Andy (and Noriko) are just angry people with huge blood-lust and that is it. They do good (Andy) and very bad things (Noriko) but they do it because they are just angry. They are given role in the universe, gift of the immortality and they are angry about it. While I can understand the problem of outliving everyone they love, reason for being angry all the time and not being able to accept oneself, just points to the fact that these characters are immature, forever children, unable to learn anything from their very long (and definitely deep, whether they like it or not) life experience. It is interesting how approach to immortality in Warhammer 40K through so called Perpetuals (very divisive element fan-wise btw) gives us much more mature characters than this book.
All of the above would not ruin my experience were it not for almost mandatory clash-of-generations.
All the actions of Andy and her team are inconsistent with actions of people who have seen and lived through a lot (again Nile is exception because she just joined and she is very young, 20-something when she joins the team). They all behave as video game characters that will just respawn on another location and continue on. No need to learn, no need to develop, just push forward. Andy does not want to lead, but Nile says she will lead - we all follow Nile (??!???!???!???!) While this might applicable in video games, in life people learn and adapt and dont behave as eternal teens.
As I said, all of these elements existed in volume 1, but 4 years between reading these books, and too much current-thing in a relatively slim volume ruined experience for me. Instead of giving the reader an interesting story of timeless mercenaries, there are some weird philosophical discussions (including ever present humans-are-vermin discourse) that are so cliche but are present in order for comic to take itself "seriously", and this just makes immersion very difficult.
Hopefully next book in series will go back to the adventure, thriller side of the story and no longer include nonsensical aspirations to be a "serious" literary work.
Interesting story, unfortunately ends with more questions than answers. Until volume 3 is released nothing makes sense. It might be best read (or in my case re-read) when vol 3 comes out. Additionally, if you have "allergy" to preachiness this book might not be for you. ( )