A review by octavia_cade
Locke & Key: ...In Pale Battalions Go… #2 by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodríguez

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

3.0

The sudden death at the end bumps this up another star for me. I don't usually have a lot of time for fridging, but the family relationships aren't coming back from this and that's a conflict I'm actually interested in. John is a stupid kid, but this is a consequence he doesn't deserve and can never escape. As for the war elements of the story... they're effective, but this story suffers - through not fault of its own - by comparison with the gas warfare scenes from <i>Pretty Deadly</i> which was a five star read from me, if I recall correctly. The art here lacks the vividness of that, and the tragedy of it was muddled a little, I think, by the fantasy elements of the story. They felt like intrusion, which is an apt description considering the intrusion into the Keyhouse that followed.