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juniperjenn's review
1.0
I enjoyed the art style, but didn't care for the characters or the writing. Lots of interesting concepts (war profiteering, business ethics, public vs. private perceptions of characters, genocide, resistance movements, etc.) but nothing was fleshed out enough to be satisfying. Just not my cup of tea.
crookedtreehouse's review
2.0
Curtiss Hill is a gorgeous book about race car driving, philanthropy, patent espionage, journalism, and ethics during the Holocaust/WWII era that just didn't come together to form an interesting story. Much of the problem is the dialogue, where the characters just state what is happening in the plot. You don't really get a feel for anyone as they're being stolen from, falling in love, feeling betrayed, and all the developments that should make the reader take sides and really root for a character. It's like hearing an exciting piece of history told by someone with no sense of drama and a monotonous voice.
The art is how I imagine it would look if Eric Powell drew a story for a Disney adult line (not capital A "adult", but a story with no nudity or strong language but sexual situations). It kept me reading past a point where I normally would have put this story down.
I don't think Dark Horse does this story any favors by marketing it as "fantasy", while it's true that this is a hard book to categorize, I believe most people view "fantasy" as medeivalesque story about magic and supernatural beings. This is more anthropomorphic Speculative Fiction.
I do hope people pick up more books like this, as I like when companies take risks by putting out unconventional stories with gorgeous art. But I don't want to give it a higher rating because I read books because I love complicated stories with interesting characters, and this book lacked the latter so much that the former didn't engage me.
The art is how I imagine it would look if Eric Powell drew a story for a Disney adult line (not capital A "adult", but a story with no nudity or strong language but sexual situations). It kept me reading past a point where I normally would have put this story down.
I don't think Dark Horse does this story any favors by marketing it as "fantasy", while it's true that this is a hard book to categorize, I believe most people view "fantasy" as medeivalesque story about magic and supernatural beings. This is more anthropomorphic Speculative Fiction.
I do hope people pick up more books like this, as I like when companies take risks by putting out unconventional stories with gorgeous art. But I don't want to give it a higher rating because I read books because I love complicated stories with interesting characters, and this book lacked the latter so much that the former didn't engage me.
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