I’m all caught up on Saga, now. Which should be a good thing. But I’m not feeling so joyful. I now have to wait for the next volume to come out. Whenever that is. The silver lining is that I don’t have to worry about spoilers and I feel like I’m now “in” with the Saga fans since I’ve read them all as they came out. Now to just find a comic-con.
Volume 5 still continues the well thought out plots and character developments that have 
become characteristic of the series. Alana and Marko are still trying to find a safe place to lay down roots and raise their daughter. Robot IV and the bounty hunters are still in play, although their reasons for pursuing have changed. While the character development was the driving force of Volume 4, the plot becomes the vehicle for action in Volume 5. For readers I think this alternation between plot and characters is a good way to pace the action along with the depth of the characters.
My only concern is that Mr. Vaughan and Ms. Staples are starting to become too much like G.R.R. Martin for my taste. It seems like the characters I start to like usually don’t last long in Game of Thrones, and it’s starting to become a similar motif in Saga. I’m still holding out hope, though, that Mr. Vaughan and Ms. Staples will give us a reasons for removing characters from the plot.
While the conflict has started to reach a fever-pitch, it doesn’t feel like it’s spinning out of control. Instead, many of the background characters are stepping into the lime-light more and more and there are rays of sunshine in the increasingly cloudy world of our protagonists. I can’t wait to see what happens next!
