Customer Rating:  
Summary: The story continues and grows
Comment: Willingham and crew continue to do a great job with this entertaining and imaginative series. For those of you who came in late: fairy tale characters are real - and living in exile in New York. War has driven them from their homelands, and inner divisions have threatened their secretive society in our mundane world.
The story moves smoothly, with all the things that a long-lived series needs: old threads to wind down, new ones to explore, and continuity to pull us along. The old involves Bigby wolf, living in self-imposed exile. It turns out that his unique skills can help Fabletown in a daring counter-attack against the nearly-unstoppable opponents. A year-long search ends his absence and, at the same time, starts a new phase in the ongoing war. Another new element arises near the end of this collection, when emissaries form a tottery alliance with the cloud kingdom at the top of Jack's beanstalk. Continuity comes from Jack's family, the charming litter of six-plus-one children and their mother, Snow White, and their new life together.
I recommend that you read these books in order. Collections 1 through 7 set the background of events and characters taken for granted in this, the eighth. I really just recommend that you read them, though. The series sustains its energy well and, even more than at the beginning, I really want to follow the lives of these wonderful characters.
-- wiredweird
Customer Rating:
Summary: Yay!
Comment: My second favorite of the series so far. So much happens in book 8... Things readers have been waiting on since book 5 come about and there's romance and violence and politics and general badassery from my favorite characters. Can't wait to get the next one!
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite series - still loving it.
Comment: This is a welcome addition to the series. It was a little shorter than I would have liked but it left me satiated.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Big events dominate one of the best books in the series
Comment: Warning! Spoilers below!
This is one of my favorite books in the entire FABLES series. It is built around several major events. First, Mowgli continues his long and ultimately successful search for Bigby Wolf, partly because Prince Charming wants him to carry out a mission behind the Adversary's lines and partly to fulfill the requirements to allow the early release of Bagheera for his role in the farm uprising (see Book 2 in the series, ANIMAL FARM). Enlisting major allies in the cloud giants who inhabit a parallel dimension in the sky, Bigby is able to appear near the magic woods surrounding Gepetto's hut, completely destroying them and making it impossible for Gepetto to make new puppets for a few decades when the forest will regrow. Mission accomplished, Bigby and Snow White marry (old hokey ceremony and all, the kind of offensive one where the woman pledges to honor and obey and it concludes with them being named man and wife -- come on Bill! It is the 21st century, even the Fables would have junked that old dusty routine) and settle in the valley where the giants used to sleep. The book concludes with a diplomatic mission to the cloud giants by Cinderella to urge them to finally sign a mutual defense pact. Clearly, in the event of a major conflict, the Fabletown residents are going to need some major help. Having allies who are both giants and accomplished will surely help. But what of those who Cinderella inadvertently offended? Will that one day come back to haunt the Fables?
All in all, another spectacular addition to an outrageously fine series of graphic books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ties it all up
Comment: Volume 8 kinda ties things up in a way that the series probably safely could have ended here (though I see a new one is coming out in June). Bigby and Snow are back. Things just seem to happen. The problem is that it is the weakest of all the Fables volumes so far. It almost makes me nervous about the next volume, but I do mean almost. As a whole this is (and I was a bit surprised) one of the better comic books out there.
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