Ughhhh, I need to write a review of this but I don’t wanna. Oh, I’m feeling so whiny today. But it’s hard! Writing a review of this is hard! It’s too smart and I have too much to say! WAHHHH.
I said in my original review that I might come back later and give this five stars, and indeed that has happened. I’ve only read through Vol. 6, but that’s enough to know how much stuff this was setting up, how much was going on under the surface that I didn’t even realize the first time I read it. Everything just hangs together so well! I love it when that happens. It’s so satisfying.
As for the book itself, this is the first volume in The Unwritten series, which is now finished, hence why I’m re-reading the first six, and tackling the rest now. It was getting to be too much to remember waiting six months in between books. So now I have seven all new ones to read and I’m so happy.
This series is incredibly hard to describe. It’s about the power of stories, essentially, but the way it does what it does is just so NEAT. It’s a story only a graphic novel can really capture. It goes back and forth between current events, illustrations of the famous book series the main character was the “inspiration” for, historical flashbacks, and pages entirely made up of internet chats, texts, clippings, etc. It’s basically brain candy for story nerds.
I HAVE SO MUCH MORE I COULD SAY. Like, how cool it is that Tom carries a literal map made out of literary history, or how much fun it is to watch him question what came first, himself, or the book series that made him famous. Like A.A. Milne did with his son Christopher Robin, Tom Taylor’s father supposedly did with him, only he and the series achieved a level of popularity that surpasses Harry Potter (which does still exist in this universe). Only Tom’s father disappeared when he was a teenager, leaving the 14th and final book of the Tommy Taylor series unfinished. Now, things are happening. Is Tom Taylor who his father claimed he was? Is he a character brought to life from the pages of a book? And who are these mysterious men and their cabal who seek to control the most prominent authorial voices in the world, or silence them if they can’t? And the artwork! Oh, it’s delicious.
I highly recommend this series, and I can’t wait to finish it and finally see what happens.
