Girl Genius, the multiple Hugo Award–winning steampunk webcomic by Phil and Kaja Foglio, now collected in hardcover! The Industrial Revolution has become all-out war! Mad Scientists, gifted with the Spark of genius, unleash insane inventions on an unprepared Europe. For centuries, the Heterodyne family of inventors kept the peace, but the last Heterodyne disappeared twenty years ago, leaving their ally Baron Klaus Wulfenbach to maintain order with his fleet of airships and army of unstoppable, if not very bright, Jaeger Monsters. At Transylvania Polygnostic University, Agatha Clay dreams of being a scientist herself, but her trouble concentrating dooms her to be a lowly minion at best. When her locket, a family heirloom, is stolen, Agatha shows signs of having the Spark in a spectacular, destructive fashion and captures the attention of the Baron—and the Baron’s handsome young son, Gilgamesh. Swept up to the Baron's Airship City, Agatha finds herself in the midst of the greatest minds of her generation, as well as palace intrigue, dashing heroes, and an imperial cat. Agatha may be the most brilliant mind of her generation and the key to control of the continent, but first, she just has to survive.
NaturalOne
Posted March 21, 2012
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The Good: This is simply a great book. It captures the whimsy and intricacy of steampunk high adventure. Girl Genius is at it's heart and adventure story, with elements of romance, danger, intrigue, and mystery. This collection of the Girl Genius books is very welcome, in a long lasting format (the paperback editions are cheap, but not very durable for repeated readings). Team Foglio's artwork is just as good in the beginning as it is now. Fans of Girl Genius or Phil and Kaja would do well to pick up this book.
The Bad: There are minor issues with the art that are easy to overlook. Some of the early backgrounds were sparse and gradiant-filled and some of the line quality didn't have much variety, but even in the first few chapters things improve. Also, since this is already an 11 book series, look elsewhere for quick or easy answers to some of the mysteries introduced in this book. While the answers may ultimately be gratifying, it is the ride that you should enjoy.
Book Review by Jessica for Book Sake
The sound of this book is fantastic: Mad scientists, genius, sci-fi, steampunk, but the problems with it outweigh what pulls through. The Jagermonsters, soldiers of some type of non-human form, talk with strong German accents…and it’s written that way. Thus a sentence that should take 2 seconds to read has to be sounded out letter by letter to figure out what they are trying to say. And this is over and over again throughout the entire book. Unfortunately the Jagermonsters aren’t the only ones with this accent and there is another character (or two) that speak like this as well. It’s so annoying that towards the end I found myself skipping their speech bubbles just to get on with things. Another issue is the setup of the panels and the flow of them. Often I was unable to follow the order of the panels as it wasn’t leading my eye from panel to panel, text to text.
The idea for the story was cool and I liked the basic storyline, but it was so drawn out it was strange. This graphic novel covers 319 pages and barely anything consequential happens. Often times I pointed out the weird sausage link body parts of the main character, Agatha. And usually there are some attractively drawn characters within a graphic novel – but these characters all look odd and as if a different artist drew them from panel to panel. Just because you give a girl big breasts and show her wearing only her underwear doesn’t make the drawing appealing.
Book Rating: 2/5
Book Received From: Tor for Review
Book Review by Chris for Book Sake
This book had too many execution issues for me to get fully invested into the story. The lettering is often confusing, the character expressions don’t quite jive, and some jokes fall flat. The art at times is unappealing, the colors are a sickly vibrant.
It’s not all negative though. The story has potential and you can tell there is a lot of love in it. Another thing to note is that this book started as a webcomic around 8 years ago. The pages in this collection came out in 2004. I viewed the newer pages and they look much better. The characters seem slightly more controlled and the colors are night and day.
Book Rating: 2/5
Book Received From: Tor for Review
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Overview
Girl Genius, the multiple Hugo Award–winning steampunk webcomic by Phil and Kaja Foglio, now collected in hardcover! The Industrial Revolution has become all-out war! Mad Scientists, gifted with the Spark of genius, unleash insane inventions on an unprepared Europe. For centuries, the Heterodyne family of inventors kept the peace, but the last Heterodyne disappeared twenty years ago, leaving their ally Baron Klaus Wulfenbach to maintain order with his fleet of airships and army of unstoppable, if ...