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brucemri's review
4.0
All the things I praised in my review of volume 1 continue to apply here. This volume reprints issues 14-30 of the original series, coming up to not very long before I discovered it in college. About half of this was actually brand-new to me - I simply never found back issues of a bunch of these stories, and so it was fascinating to actually get into pieces where I knew overall what had happened and had seen the aftermath unfold issue by issue.
Here we get further looks into the gladiatorial scene where Gaunt spent his formative years, and at the continuing cost of the blood sport to participants and survivors. Here too is the trade war storyline that was still echoing when I came along, but which I never got to see until now. It's fascinating to see how some of Gaunt's careful preparations against treachery by nasty people he needs to deal with end up becoming vital instruments of city-wide catastrophe in other people's hands - Ostrander is good at that kind of layered consequence.
There's fascinating unfolding characterization. Central to John Gaunt's personality is that he lives right on the edge in lots of moral dimensions. He's willing to shoot the old Demon Wars comrade who keeps threatening to kill him and then backing off; he isn't willing to shoot Mayfair in the middle of the trade wars. In both cases, we're given substantial reason to wonder just why, and how right or wrong he was...and the book will never give us a simple clear answer. It's also great to see Gaunt's past building up layer by layer, "a glacier made from layers of history's snow", as Jeff Johnson puts it in his song "I Move in This Flow". In addition to his awful childhood, we see more fragment of the Demon Wars, and then of Gaunt's dark time after failing to save the one great love of his life, and also a look at how he came to matter to some of his companions.
Visually, Tim Truman did so much to define Gaunt and his milieu. But Tom Sutton, who becomes the new regular artist in these stories, brings a vividness all his own. I don't think I cared for his art as much at the time, but these days? I find it excellent.
In short, more pure sf/noir/adventure satisfaction from Mr. Ostrander and his various collaborators; it's a shame there aren't more volumes after this one.
Here we get further looks into the gladiatorial scene where Gaunt spent his formative years, and at the continuing cost of the blood sport to participants and survivors. Here too is the trade war storyline that was still echoing when I came along, but which I never got to see until now. It's fascinating to see how some of Gaunt's careful preparations against treachery by nasty people he needs to deal with end up becoming vital instruments of city-wide catastrophe in other people's hands - Ostrander is good at that kind of layered consequence.
There's fascinating unfolding characterization. Central to John Gaunt's personality is that he lives right on the edge in lots of moral dimensions. He's willing to shoot the old Demon Wars comrade who keeps threatening to kill him and then backing off; he isn't willing to shoot Mayfair in the middle of the trade wars. In both cases, we're given substantial reason to wonder just why, and how right or wrong he was...and the book will never give us a simple clear answer. It's also great to see Gaunt's past building up layer by layer, "a glacier made from layers of history's snow", as Jeff Johnson puts it in his song "I Move in This Flow". In addition to his awful childhood, we see more fragment of the Demon Wars, and then of Gaunt's dark time after failing to save the one great love of his life, and also a look at how he came to matter to some of his companions.
Visually, Tim Truman did so much to define Gaunt and his milieu. But Tom Sutton, who becomes the new regular artist in these stories, brings a vividness all his own. I don't think I cared for his art as much at the time, but these days? I find it excellent.
In short, more pure sf/noir/adventure satisfaction from Mr. Ostrander and his various collaborators; it's a shame there aren't more volumes after this one.
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