A new mystery opens.
Creative Staff:
Story: Rhianna Pratchett
Art: Derlis Santacruz
What They Say:
Lara’s quiet life working at the British Museum is shattered as she finds herself drawn into a dangerous game with her friend’s life at stake—a friend who was thought to be already dead!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Tomb Raiders makes a mild shift with this installment in a couple of ways. We get the start of a new arc, which is always good and something that the series can utilize well as easy jumping on points for new readers. We get Rhianna Pratchett taking over the writing chores completely in a fairly seamless wa and we get Derlis Santacruz handing the art chores with inker Andy Owens on board. The combination of all of this makes the book an easy one to get into, both for new readers and existing ones, as it has a sense of getting ready to move forward here and do some fun stuff while expanding on Lara’s world a bit more.
After all that’s happened, it is good to see the main group of characters all getting back into simply living their lives. Lara’s enjoying her time at the British Museum where, after hours of course, she gets to run around the place a lot as the security guards look the other way, which lets her practice her moves in a safe environment. Jonah’s dealing with being a chef and the kind of drama that comes from being the new employee there with a very particular head chef and we see that Sam is being Sam in that she’s buying cupcakes to just enjoy sharing with everyone. There’s small moments with each of them as they go about their evening that we see here and through the narration it’s easy to get a handle on the very basic characters that we do have. Of course, there has to be a little bit of a threat here and a connection to larger events, and we see that with mysterious men that are shadowing them along the way.
What they’re actually up to is just trying to get Lara a little information, as it turns out that they’re part of a group called the Snakes Who Walk and that they’ve got Lara’s friend Angus Grimaldi in their care. For at least a little while as they want five million dollars for his release, otherwise they’ll kill him. Considering Lara already thought he was dead, she’s not going to let it happen again and that sets things in motion. While it’s obvious that she’ll end up going after them, with others coming along as well, I like that we get Lara trying to go to her uncle first to get the money since he’s managing the MyCroft estate. That’s not been brought up at all in the series that I can remember and the way it plays out there is certainly interesting, though not surprising in that her uncle thinks she’s nuts with what she does and refuses to deal with her. Suffice to say, the money isn’t going to come easy.
In Summary:
While there are a few changes to the book going on here, it is by and large a solid continuation of the overall style and approach that we’ve had since the start, but also accessible for the most part to new readers. Pratchett keeps the crew moving along here by giving us a taste of all their lives and then bringing it all together so we can move forward with a rescue. There’s a good sense of progress and movement throughout the book with the artwork and panel layout that works really well and the book as a whole is smooth and engaging, not making you feel like things come out of left field – even when we get the reveal. While I didn’t have any doubts that the book would be fun after Gail Simone left, it’s definitely good to see it in reality and enjoy where it’s going to go next.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: February 2tth, 2015
MSRP: $3.50
