How much of your past do you really want to remember?
Creative Staff:
Story: Kat Howard
Art: Tom Fowler, Brian Churilla
Colors: Jordan Boyd, Marissa Louise
Letterer: Todd Klein
What They Say:
A new storyline begins! After running away to Faerie, Tim Hunter finds himself forgetting why he fled home in the first place. Not that he’s complaining! Magic is so much more fun when consequences and math quizzes are no longer one’s main concerns. But what’s Titania, queen of the faeries, want with the young Tim Hunter, and why does it have Rose more protective of the boy magician than ever?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The slow burn that is the Books of Magic continues as it takes us further into the larger storyline now that we’re firmly in the realm of the faerie. Kat Howard isn’t rushing with events and seeing things slowly on both this plane and back home and that makes for something that comes together well, even if I do keep feeling like I need something more concrete and tangible to latch onto soon in order to keep going. You go into a series like this with some level of expectations. Tom Fowler continues to do a great job here and I like what Brian Churilla is bringing to it with the finishes, giving the faerie side of the storyline something that feels a little different than the real world in how we view everything and the designs.
Tim’s time since coming here has given him some real peace that he hasn’t felt in a while and it’s enjoyable seeing him play with some of the faerie and actually smiling through a lot of it. But we know, both in general and through the way Rose approaches dealing with Titania, that there’s far more going on here. Tim’s past when it comes to this place is still being kept from him as per the way it all unfolded before and that’s making things difficult. Rose knows that he needs to know in order to move forward but you see Titania not wanting to because she knows the path that it will put him on and for her own reasons she doesn’t want to see that. It goes beyond just the way the faerie operate in this regard and is something bigger that she won’t be able to help him with or prevent more pain from coming to him.
It takes a little time and some back and forth for it all to come together, but Tim getting those memories back is an interesting sequence over just a few pages. It’s a painful thing physically in a limited way as we see but the psychological side is brutal as everything that happened, all those that he killed, it all flashes before him as it’s unlocked. It’s like a tidal wave that hits him and emotionally it leaves him somewhat empty by the end. There’s a great sequence that we get when Rose catches up to him after his initial processing of the memories as you see him asking the right questions but also making it clear that he’s going to compartmenalize the hell out of this in his head in order to function. He has a friend to save and that’s paramount, but these new memories are going to eat away at his soul until he really confronts it.
In Summary:
I continue to enjoy Books of Magic but I keep feeling like it really needs to have that moment where everything clicks. Something big to really drive the narrative forward. We’ve had a lot of good character material and exploring what’s going on and having Tim and Rose on their journey definitely helps. We also get some additional time on Earth in this issue as we see how his father is handling everything, the investigators continuing to inch forward, and a tease of bigger plans afoot. But it’s all just out of reach, without enough weight to really make it feel connected and reay to make this a story worth reading and investing time in.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Vertigo Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: May 22nd, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
