Book Review: The Zodiac Legacy book #1: Tiger Island

Book: The Zodiac Legacy book #1: Tiger Island created by Stan Lee

Written by Stuart Moore with illustrations by P.H. Marcondes, color by Matteo Baldright, Roberta Marchetta and Paola Selene Fiorino and letters by Bryan Serika

Cover art by Andie Tong


Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

Six teenagers, who recently gained strange, magical superpowers, seek to find a new headquarters, when the Vanguard launches a surprise attack! Using innocent animals against Steven Lee and his friends, they hope to stop the young heroes forever!



Rating: 3 stars

Review:

The Zodiac Legacy series, is a children/middle grade book and comic book series that follows a group of heroes and villains who use Chinese zodiac animal powers.

To get unfamiliar readers caught up, book one opens with a summary detailing who the characters are and what their powers are. The beginning of story shows Maxwell the leader of the villainous group The Vanguard explaining to Mince his newly hired scientific genius about the Zodiac Legacy, how the powers were acquired and how he was betrayed by Carlos his former scientific genius and Jasmine's team. He also mentions that he already has a plan set in place for revenge.

Meanwhile, Jasmine and Carlos were at the state of art facility Mediterra on Tiger Island looking for a possible new headquarter for the team. However, Jasmine was suspicious and wanted the Zodiac heroes Steven who is the leader, Liam, Roxanne, Duane and Kim to go undercover and investigate to see if everything was as stated.

While the team investigated, two of Maxwell's Vanguard agents were unleashing some trouble in the form of rampaging animals terrorizing the island. It was going to be up to the Zodiac heroes to save the day. However, it appears that it was only a diversion with the team unaware of Maxwell's real plan.

Book one does a good job of introducing the characters and setting up the story and making it easy for those who have not read the novels. However, there were times when I felt like more information could have been given but it doesn't ruin anything. This is a fun and action filled story with a diverse group of characters. I love the idea of theses characters gaining powers from the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. The artwork is great, it's colorful and has an anime/manga feel to it.

I think this would make a good read for young reader but I would also recommend reading the novels to get more from the story as well as learning more about these characters.

Book Review for A-Z Title Challenge: Nancy Drew: The Demon of River Heights

Book: Nancy Drew: The Demon of River Heights (Nancy Drew: Girl Detective Graphic Novels book #1) by Stefan Petrucha with illustrations by Sho Murase

Rating: 2 stars

Review:

This was okay, definitely not as good as reading a regular Nancy Drew mystery book. It was way too easy to figure out.

In this story, Nancy and her two best friends Bess and George were trying to figure out what happened to two missing college students who earlier had been making a film in the woods about a monster. Was it possible that there really was a monster in the woods who had taken the students?

Besides trying to find missing students, Nancy was also asked by her father to see if she could keep an eye on entrepreneur Canton Agley II and his son Todd to see if they were up to anything suspicious.

The entrepreneur was in town looking for a new investment but Nancy's father didn't quite believe it.

This had a fast-paced story with a some what interesting mystery. There were a few scenes that were a little ridiculous (Nancy punching a bear in the woods, really) and I did find that the story wasn't as suspenseful and exciting as a regular Nancy Drew mystery. Also, Nancy didn't really find a lot of clues (she did look around a bit for one scene) nor gather a lot of information before the big reveal or should I say info dump.

There was also something else I didn't really like and that was the author made Nancy somewhat ditzy and forgetful, she couldn't remember to buy gas for her car. That to me just seemed as if it was only included as a way to move the story along. At times I thought all three girls seemed less than smart but something I did like about this story was the friendship between Nancy, Bess and George, it was probably the best thing about this.

Despite the few things I didn't like about this, it is a quick read but it just feels really dumbed down. The artwork wasn't bad it had a cartoony/manga look to it.

This might not have been the best but I still would like to read at least one or two more books from this series to see if perhaps the writing/mystery telling improves as well as the characters.