Monstress Vol. I-3 by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda

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Title: Monstress Vol. I-3
Author: Marjorie Liu
Illustrator: Sana Takeda 
Published: 2016-2018
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Steampunk
Format: Kindle & Comixology

Review*:
   I decided to review these three together because I didn't care for the first book. If I were on the fence about this series and/or wanted to look through some reviews prior to starting and came across the review I would have done for just Volume I, I wouldn't have even bothered. Trust me, it gets better, especially if you listen to a Tool playlist at the same time.

   I am going to preface this now, if you do not like blood, mutation, body dismemberment, sex, or slavery, please do not read, look at or peak at this series. It is fucking FULL of it.

   That being said, I didn't care for book one to the point that I thought about not continuing the series. It felt really chaotic and disorganized. Not a lot was explained regarding what was happening to the characters, specifically our main character. The art was really nice and the beginning kind of hooks you in with the whole dismemberment bit and the witches. Then it kind of tapers into this madness of introducing new species, not explaining the world really well, the main conflict and why it's happening.
  Volume two builds a bit more of the plot and story. We learn a lot more about our main character, what she is, the projection of her story. There is character development that was lacking in the first volume, specifically between our three major characters. A bit more is explained as far as the conflict of the other characters in the book.
   By volume three, we start to get to a climax. There is still A LOT to be explained, which is my own gripe with the series. I enjoy that we are slowly fed more information, it really hooks me into the story and is why I flew through Volume 2 & 3 and as I type this, I am considering if I immediately purchase 4 and wait for who knows how long it will take for the next one to come out. For as addicting as I found the books, it's like riding Space Mountain but instead of just seizure inducing lights they've decided to add a story line.  
   I'd love to break down what is going on but it's kind of hard to wrap my own head around. Our main character, Maiko has this old god 'living' inside her and she has a hard time controlling it's hunger which gets her into a lot of trouble, obviously. Throughout the series as both Maiko tries to understand what her mother kind of aligned for Maiko's destiny, we see both her and the old god develop a relationship. Kippa is important but we aren't really ever told why, or even eluded to a hint of why. Outside of being a red fox, which is apparently uncommon they seem like a normal fox child. The rest of the supporting characters kind of rotate their importance. There is a lot of emotions that Maiko has towards this sort of two-faced character, refered to as the Dutchess but Maiko doesn't know she's the Dutchess. A lot of what seems to drive the story line is the relationships and conflicts between people, either Maiko trying to figure out her agency with this old god or Kippa being the moral compass.
   The world has many different facets to it. There are many races of beings, like humans, ancient ones, arcanes. From the setting and what we learn of these characters, the world seems like a giant hole getting ready to collapse into another war. This species has started a slave trade of this species for whatever reason, there isn't much of an over-all democracy and the ones we do see kind of seem like a joke. 
   The art is really beautiful, there are several pages, specifically from Volume 3, I would definitely purchase posters of. It all reminds me of the imagery I would consume and surround myself with ten years ago when I was considering becoming an illustrator. I really loved the format for graphic novels because it's not just one image for someone to interpret but tells an entire story. I was specifically interested in graphic novels because they tend to be more popular with dark subject matter, rather than cartoons, which are generally more PG 13.
      For the rest of this series, I think I'm going to review each novel individually. Usually there is at least one released a year and if I were to wait for the next three I would have to wait two more years to review them and I'm sure I'd forget everything by then. I will also most likely pick up a physical copy as well in the future or as I see them on sale.

*This section may contain spoilers.