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A review by jayshay
Bookburners: The Complete Season 2 by Mur Lafferty, Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar, Andrea Phillips, Margaret Dunlap, Brian Francis Slattery
2.0
I found Season 2 a disappointment after the fun and focused adventure of Season 1. Sal is pushed into the background and it felt like a lot of pieces were being set up for Season 3 to be exciting, but there wasn't a proper emotional focus for these 13 episodes of the story.
The ad copy compares Bookburners, with its team of writer each writing individual episodes of an overall story, to various tv shows and I have to wonder how viewers would have felt if in Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had become the Giles the Librarian Show or the Xander Hour. The other characters are cool but I think the direction they went with this 'season' broke an implicit promise, at least to this reader.
From that perspective I found a lot of the episodes in this book were simply filler that should have been compressed and combined with advancing Sal and her brother's story to make for a more propulsive and exciting story. I felt like a lot of deck chairs were arranged painfully slowly in this season while I drummed my fingers waiting for the good stuff that never really arrived.
Just as there was no real main character for this season there wasn't really a satisfying climax either. The Christina-Demon thing? Or the election of the new cardinal? Both had about the equivalent emotional impact for me.
That said, the final scene in this volume promises that perhaps I will get my wish for Season 3 -- or it will go all Lost on me and try and tease me along.
I bailed on Lost somewhere at the start of season 3.
The ad copy compares Bookburners, with its team of writer each writing individual episodes of an overall story, to various tv shows and I have to wonder how viewers would have felt if in Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had become the Giles the Librarian Show or the Xander Hour. The other characters are cool but I think the direction they went with this 'season' broke an implicit promise, at least to this reader.
From that perspective I found a lot of the episodes in this book were simply filler that should have been compressed and combined with advancing Sal and her brother's story to make for a more propulsive and exciting story. I felt like a lot of deck chairs were arranged painfully slowly in this season while I drummed my fingers waiting for the good stuff that never really arrived.
Just as there was no real main character for this season there wasn't really a satisfying climax either. The Christina-Demon thing? Or the election of the new cardinal? Both had about the equivalent emotional impact for me.
That said, the final scene in this volume promises that perhaps I will get my wish for Season 3 -- or it will go all Lost on me and try and tease me along.
I bailed on Lost somewhere at the start of season 3.