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Beautifully and darkly poetic, there's a lot here about the value of life, the fallacy of human elitism, and the bleakness of history. It's not an easy read, and as far as stories go, it's not one with the beginning, middle, and end. But it is a slice of a very dark life, and not a bad read.

I can only imagine that it might be annoying that I rate all of the books in this series thus far as 5 stars. All I can say is that this is one of those rare series where I don't perceive of the individual books as separate pieces of media, but rather as parts of a whole.

EDIT: After yet another reread, I've decided that this is perhaps the best of the first six books. So many cinematic moments!

I'm a big fan of this series, and I enjoyed reading this collection. I will say, though, I hadn't recalled the casual homophobic slurs (Mark and William are constantly "jokingly" accusing the other of acting 'gay'--even Eve does it once), the slut shaming (while the abstinence-friendly tone could be ascribed to the comic's self-described labeling as a "family title", there are a couple of consequence-free usages of 'slut' that feel like red flags), or the "moral eugenics" arguments (the Unopan "solution" to the Viltrumite threat is to use breeding camps, and nobody bats an eye) when I was reading these issue-by-issue. It's clear that morality is a deeply personal topic in this series, and I see frequent attempts to highlight "doing the right thing, even when it's hard", but I'm not excited that these problems haven't been recognized or addressed.

I can't finish this. I'm sure this system works for some, and I have no doubt that every glowing testimonial is true and honestly shared. But there's something about this whole process that doesn't sit right with me, and until I can suss it out, I can't finish this book.

These were hilarious, and the focus on historical humor was a delight.

I really enjoy this alternate universe, and I'm looking forward to the next book.