I’m starting to wonder about the wisdom of reviewing every part of this storyline. Granted, this is how it was all published and I’m sure Sim knew what he was doing. And reviewing any of this series is, by nature, sheer guesswork. That’s just the case with reviewing books about ongoing series when the series isn’t actually done yet. This particular book picks up where Flight leaves off, obviously. Cerebus is back from talking to Suentes Po and is confined to a tavern due to a law against Cirinists entering such establishments. Astoria is confined with her followers in a hopeless situation and Cirin is in a coma due to the Upper City being mostly destroyed. Everything is in chaos, basically. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone as their first book in the series by any stretch of the imagination, but if you are buying these one at a time or something, I’d recommend getting all of the Mothers and Daughters books all at once. Every one of them has an ending that is going to bug the hell out of you if you have to wait for it to continue.
There are a few new technical things in this book, I guess. Tracts from Cirin and Astoria about Cirinism and Kevilism, respectively, are spread throughout the book. It gives a fascinating look into just how much time Sim put into these religions that he made up for the sake of this book. Granted, both groups bear more than a passing resemblance to Republicans and Democrats, but these are done completely through the eyes of women, which is a completely different perspective. And I honestly don’t see how somebody who could spend that much time on it and seem to have this much respect for the opinions of women turn out to be a misogynist. Does anybody know if he still claims not to be a misogynist? I know he did after #186, but he recently released another rant that all but confirms that he mostly hates women. Or that he just has no respect at all for their opinions and/or contributions to society compared to that of men. But that’s a conversation for another day entirely. Bottom line for this book: not as much action as the last one, but all kinds of important stuff is going on in the background and there’s no way you can miss this and make any sense of the rest of the storyline. Once again, if you’re already reading this series then you’re convinced of how vital this book is, if you’re not reading it you probably aren’t reading this anyway. In other words, I’m mostly just pissing in the wind here…
