A review by vigneswara_prabhu
Asterix and the Banquet by René Goscinny

3.0

The new Roman Inspector General Overanxius has build a wall to keep the Village of defiant Gauls from spreading their seditious ideas to Roman lands & to starve them into submission. While it might be a simple matter for them to break it all, Asterix makes a bet with the IG just to spite him. That they will travel of all major towns across Gaul, get the local cuisine from each and host a banquet for the General. So starts the traveler's guide to all towns in Gaul, in antiquity with their modern counterparts.

There is surprisingly little I have to say about this story. Because even though we go through a number of new locations, and meet all manner of characters, some allies, some enemies and some in between, little goes on other than Asterix & Obelisk entering a town, getting into trouble, steamrolling through said trouble onto the next leg of the challenge.

I'm sure the locations and references were relatable to someone native to France/ Europe, but most of it went over my head. And there is the overused gag of Obelisk and him being fat, which sort of makes you loose some of the likeness to the character.

We do however get a whole gamut of new Hurricane pun names to giggle over. Some of my favorite
Inspector General Overanxius
Fishfingus; Spongefingus
Unpatriotix
Poisonus Fungus
Uptotrix
Villaus & Unscrupulus

Well, all series have their ups and down, but for the sheer amount of world building we got in this iteration, I'll give it a tentative 3 out of 5