Reading Wrap-Up: April 2021, part 2

[justanorthernlight]

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Volume 3: Remastered (Doctor Aphra #14-19, written by Kieron Gillen & Si Spurrier, art by Emilio Laiso) - Hmm, it seems that with Kieron Gillen taking over the main comic he brought on a co-writer, and it's pretty obvious who wrote most of the dialogue, just about every character has developed a stutter. Also, I'm not 100% sure how we got from the endpoint of last volume to the start of this one. At least we finally get some actual F/F romance, though! (Hera Syndulla also makes an appearance.)
 

Last volume ended with Aphra drinking on a beach and fighting off a group of different criminals she had angered at some point in the past, this volume starts with her coerced into working for Triple-Zero and the Son-Tuul pride, first raiding the outpost the cute Imperial commander she let live back in volume one has been assigned to, then leading a ragtag band of more-psycho-than-usual criminals on a quest to recover Triple-Zero's earliest memories, hunted all the way by Commander Tolvan.

I have somewhat mixed feeling about this volume. The verbal tics introduced to the dialogue were pretty annoying, and the level of zaniness we got from the criminals was a little over the top to me. The romance was cute, I guess I'll hold my judgement to see where it goes in the next volume.

Star Wars Volume 8: Mutiny at Mon Cala (Star Wars # 44-49, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Salvador Larroca) - The Rebel Alliance needs ships, the Mon Cala merchant fleet has them. The Mon Cala are reluctant to face the wrath of the Empire again, so Leia concocts a grand scheme to break King Lee Char out of an Imperial prison. I liked this volume, it had a bit of everything: humor, drama, plot twists and turns. It really feels like it's building to the Empire Strikes Back.

These volumes must have come out just after Rebels ended, because Hera and Zeb have a cameo in a crowd scene here too.

The Longbow by Mike Loads - Nonfiction. An exploration of the history of the longbow, with an extremely narrow focus on its use in Medieval England. There is some interesting historical material here, like evolution of armor, the economics of arrow making, and the laws banning 'vain games of no value' and requiring archery practice in their stead, but the author also make a lot of conjecture and extrapolations based on his own experimental archeology/reenactor experience that I don't think hold up very well.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of experimental archeology and my dad was a reenactor all throughout my teenage years so I spent a lot of time around them, but reenactment is better at proving that something is possible/probable than it is at proving something in impossible/improbable. Loads spends quite a while at the end of the book railing against the idea of volley firing being an actual combat tactic, insisting it was most likely made up for movies and that contemporary written accounts of it are most likely chroniclers using poetic license, just because he and two members of the English War Bow Society he cites for much of the book couldn't pull it off.

(I received this book as a Christmas gift from a relative a few years ago when I was trying to get back into archery, it's just taken me way too long to get around to reading it.)

 

______________________________________________________________

I'm also about halfway through a lot of books, I'm halfway through The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle and Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce (Beka Cooper #2), as my overwhelming wave of childhood nostalgia continues. I also got about halfway through Star Wars: Dark Disciple by Christie Golden, and let's just say the reviews I read of it were pretty accurate.