Elska Bee reviewed Monstress, Vol. 1 by Marjorie Liu
Review of 'Monstress' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Lol I'm confused.
Don't get me wrong, I love the body horror/cosmic horror elements. I thought Ren the cat was pretty cool. I'm a sucker for a badass main character too who will destroy anything that gets in their way. BUT - I every 20 or so pages I was questioning whether I wanted to continue reading or DNF...
I felt overwhelmed with the amount of information, characters, lingo, etc. dumped on me from the beginning with little or no explanation. Then to have the "lecture" inserts that were so dry I couldn't bear to read them at all. I wish it was integrated more naturally in the story. This is a problem I usually have with anime and manga a lot (and this definitely felt a lot like those media forms). I also struggle when the main character's goals and motivations are unclear. It means I have no sense of direction in the story, no clear reason I should care about these characters at all.
The art is truly incredible. The amount of detail is astonishing and made me wonder if the illustrator loves torturing themself lmao. The horrors in this were so well done and so freaking cool.
A combo of the art and being very intrigued towards the end ( I was getting Naruto nine-tailed fox vibes which I love) might convince me to at least try the next volume, but as it stands I'm not sure I get the hype