Saga vol. 11

At the end of vol. 10, Alana, Hazel, and Squire’s treehouse ship was set on fire, stranding them on their current planet and rendering them homeless as well.  That would make things pretty bad for them… if the ongoing conflict between Wreath and Landfall hadn’t come to this planet as well.  So now they’re dealing with being in the middle of an ongoing conflict while Alana works at a Totally-Not-Space-Amazon fulfillment center, and Hazel and Squire beg for money on the street.  This allows them to eke out a living until Alana can find a way to get them off of this planet to anywhere else.  Which is what her magical contact, Miss Vitch, wants to help her with, among other things.  Things like being able to bring her dead husband Marko back to life.

Vol. 10 was a great return for this series as it managed to be both funny, surprising, and depressing in an interesting way that made me realize how good it was to have it back.  Vol. 11 isn’t quite firing on the same level, as it saves its surprises for the final two issues.  Everything leading up to those is still quite solid in the series’ way of filtering our world through a sci-fi/fantasy lens.  It’s only held back this time by how obvious the grift in the main story is.  Yes, I know that Hazel and Squire are young enough to fall for something like that, but anyone who’s reading this series (and is older than them) will be able to see through it in a second.

If nothing else, we do get some decent character development from the two of them over the course of the storyline, and I do like where things end up with them.  The business with The Will, Gwendolyn, and Sophie also has some nice moments to it as well, as does Petrichor’s storyline even if these all feel like they’re meant to set up bad things for everyone down the line.  We also get a final issue that sets up another ongoing subplot with more hopeful overtones and if this winds up being a final-issue-of-the-collection trend for future volumes, then I’m all for it.  Once the series comes back from its latest hiatus, that is.