A review by trike
Lazarus: The Second Collection by Greg Rucka
5.0
This was even better than the first collection, with a much deeper look into both the world and the characters. Intrigue! Family squabbles! Internecine duplicity! Sword fights! Superhuman abilities! Futuristic combat! Doublecrosses! All in a futuristic world run by oligarchs who have strangleholds on various industries and technologies. Good stuff.
One of the things I enjoyed most was that a lot of the worldbuilding was implicit rather than stated outright. All of the background stuff like news broadcasts, propaganda posters and designs lends to that, and there’s a comprehensive collection of those things at the end of the book.
But there are similar things which go unremarked on either within the story or in the supplemental material, such as the fact that the Japanese Lazarus of the Inumara Family has a computer-like font for his square speech bubbles which have a lightning bolt-style arrow to them, strongly implying that either he’s an android or a telepresence robot being manipulated from afar. He also lays out an analysis of another Lazarus’ poker playing that sounds rather computerish. No explanation is given at all, so perhaps that will be a revelation for later.
Things like that hint at a larger and more complex world than even what we’re shown. And the story is really propulsive.
The art is continually terrific, and the cover art by Owen Freeman is consistently remarkable. So much so that I sought out his work online, and he’s done a lot of amazing stuff.
One of the things I enjoyed most was that a lot of the worldbuilding was implicit rather than stated outright. All of the background stuff like news broadcasts, propaganda posters and designs lends to that, and there’s a comprehensive collection of those things at the end of the book.
But there are similar things which go unremarked on either within the story or in the supplemental material, such as the fact that the Japanese Lazarus of the Inumara Family has a computer-like font for his square speech bubbles which have a lightning bolt-style arrow to them, strongly implying that either he’s an android or a telepresence robot being manipulated from afar. He also lays out an analysis of another Lazarus’ poker playing that sounds rather computerish. No explanation is given at all, so perhaps that will be a revelation for later.
Things like that hint at a larger and more complex world than even what we’re shown. And the story is really propulsive.
The art is continually terrific, and the cover art by Owen Freeman is consistently remarkable. So much so that I sought out his work online, and he’s done a lot of amazing stuff.