Review: Rat Queens, Vol. 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'rygoth

Rat Queens, Vol. 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'rygoth by Kurtis J. Wiebe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In some ways, you know exactly what you’re getting as soon as you open this one. The illustrations have a terrific energy, and that combines with a general irreverence in tone and story to make it something you can’t take too seriously and can’t put down that easily.

I enjoyed the first Rat Queens when I read it a year or so ago, but I’m not sure I saw a sequel in it. The idea there was a lot of fun: imagine a Dungeons and Dragons game of all female heroes. Mix up their ‘races’ – throw in a hobbit like cutie, a half-demon rage queen, a wizard, and a classic fighter – and you have something familiar and striking at the same time. That first story turned on a kind of betrayal, a trap that should have taken out all the town’s heroes but ours.

This one is a lot more complex, and I’m surprised that doesn’t bother me. I resisted volume two for a long time because I figured things reached a natural end in volume one. Suddenly there’s a richer back story than we had before; boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, and lost rivals all turn up, and all demand at least a partial re-thinking of the entire situation. There’s also a more serious antagonist, a priest who seems to represent a larger conspiracy that the women will have to face over time.

But, and this is a good thing in my estimate, I don’t feel asked to take any of it too seriously. There’s just enough of the Dungeon Master spiel to give this grounds to keep going, but not enough to make it a heavy-handed ‘high fantasy’ story. Instead, we never have to go long between battles, and those are always cleverly drawn. There’s frenetic energy, a lot of breaking of frames, a lot of blood, and just enough over-the-top humor to remind you why we’re here.

I think it will be a while before I pick up volume three, but I do think it’s likely I will. Sometime before too long when, like now, I’m distracted enough by other work to find it tough to read serious things, I’ll be glad to get back to the clever silliness of the Rat Queens.


View all my reviews