A few days ago was the digital release of “The Dead Shall Rise” - the Legacy of Kain graphic novel that was on Kickstarter a while ago.

It took me a few days to read and my thoughts have been taken in lots of different directions. Here, I’m going to focus on my thoughts about the book itself.

Though I write reviews here sometimes, I’m not a professional critic of anything.

I also think of anyone who uses terms like “bad writing” without elaboration as suspicious - there are far too many bad actors who use vague spurious criticism to mask their bigotry.

If you like something, or if you dislike something, it’s perfectly valid for that to be the extent of your opinion, even if you can’t exactly put a rationalisation for your opinion into words. Not everything will please everyone. That is fine.

Whilst reading the book, I was feeling quite anxious. Dead Sun was also official, after all, but from the reports it was so full of contradictions to the story I love that I was happy it was never released. Then, years later, more information came out to indicate that some of those contradictions were red herrings, which raised more questions.

This was giving me the same feeling. I’m not going into spoilers, but there were two main aspects that made me feel uncomfortable. The first would require time travel to resolve, and would be a bit convoluted. Not impossible, and matching the story, but I still felt suspicious.

The other would either require convenient amnesia, or would be a “Han shot first” moment. By that I mean that the change, when you focus on the events and story beats, doesn’t really change things, but it does change the character’s personal emotional journey.

Thankfully, by the end of the book, both of those issues were resolved. This gave me an immense sense of relief - the people in charge are keeping in mind the mechanics of the story, and not undermining the emotional journeys the characters go on. It is, generally, in good hands. Now it just needs to actually continue, rather than be left on a cliffhanger for 20 years again.

This story does introduce a handful of new characters, one of whom is the protagonist of the story. Her story ends on a “to be continued”, so we shall see how it continues - both in terms of story, and in terms of what media (if at all).

It also introduced another character, tied into the Hylden side of things, with some extra detail on how their magic works (“concequences” - it seems maybe a bit like “equivalent exchange” in Full Metal Aclhemist). I’m curious to see where that goes, and I’ll need to re-read it to see if something that I thought was implied actually was.

So, all in all, pretty good. No direct contraditions as far as I can tell at this point, with definite passion behind it, but I’m also a bit fed up with cliffhangers in the franchise.