Graphic Novel Review – The Rise of Herk (Nnewts, Vol 2) by Doug TenNapel (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Middle Grade
Genre: Graphic Novel/Fantasy
Length: 208 pages
Publisher: GRAPHIX
Release Date: January 26, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0545676540
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Nnewts series
Source: Borrowed from Library
Rating: 3/5 stars
“In this exciting sequel to Escape from the Lizzarks, Herk is happy to have a new family and a new place to call home. But when the Lizzarks make an all-out assault on Amphibopolis using a giant monster, Herk must seek the help of the megasloth to save the city and his adopted family. Meanwhile, Sissy, Herk’s sister, discovers the dark truth about their long-lost brother Zerk.”
I got the first book in the Nnewts series to review last year and thought it was decent. I was hoping the second book would be even better, but I ended up being pretty disappointed in it. The high point of the book is the colorful illustration…the story however was frustrating to follow.
This graphic novel is all over the place right from the beginning. The story jumps between lots of characters and locations without ever giving the reader a hint of what’s going on; it makes this very hard to follow at first. Additionally the story spends a lot of time on inane things that just draw things out (I absolutely did not care about what one of the characters was going to eat for dinner and thought it odd that 5 or so pages were spent talking about this).
I love the color palette used and really enjoyed the illustration. The illustrations are beautiful and fun. It’s just too bad the story was such a mess. There is some humor in here which was fun but there were also a lot of long boring bits that could have been left out.
Overall this was a fairly disappointing graphic novel for me. I thought it was worse than the first Nnewt book. My 10 year old son also read this and found it just as confusing as I did. The story just jumps around too much. The illustration is very well done however and I am disappointed that the story wasn’t more interesting. I wouldn’t recommend.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– Graphic Novel Reading Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
