Richard SalaRessenyes

Hilarious!! I am very surprised to have found this at the public library, hah! Steve, don't read it. ; P

A journalist gets caught up in a murder mystery when he takes over a horoscope column. It wants to be all Twin Peaks with oddball characters and secret societies and paranoia and weirdness, but I found the journey dull and the destination pointless -- sort of like Twin Peaks.

I think I'm just not much of a [a:Richard Sala|224666|Richard Sala|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1416201709p2/224666.jpg] fan. [b:Peculia|808944|Peculia|Richard Sala|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348273466s/808944.jpg|794885] seems to me to be more of a niche read; it's a well-done book but hard to enjoy if it's not your niche. I didn't enjoy/appreciate the way women were depicted throughout the book, either.

Completely unsatisfactory conclusion, unless there's at least one more book to follow-up on everything left unexplained.

The illustrations are fantastic - they jump off the page and are so effortlessly retro and vintage looking. The storyline however... is just ok. Poison Flowers and Pandemonium is a graphic novel omnibus that contains the following stories: The Bloody Cardinal 2: House of the Blue Dwarf, Monsters Illustrated, Cave Girls of the Lost World, and Fantomella. I've never read any of the work by Richard Sala so I was unfamiliar with the the Bloody Cardinal not having read the first one. Honestly that one is a bit jumbled and nonsensical and is my least favorite in this collection. Monsters Illustrated is cool - it's a bunch of pinups and monsters - many of them I'd like to have hanging. Cave Girls of the Lost World was fun and ridiculous - it seemed as if it was written by a middle school boy that like boobs and dinosaurs. Fantomella was short and sweet with a cool ending. I would definitely read more by this illustrator - supremely unique.

I'm a big fan of Richard Sala's work - it's so dark and quirky but I found this unsatisfying. It felt like Sala-lite using all of his usual themes - secret societies, eccentric characters and crime - but far too restrained. The ending is left wide open for a sequel but almost too wide to be self-contained. Art is top notch here and FirstSecond's books remain the best designed graphic novels published today.

I was going to tag this for my horror shelf, but it is not quite horror. It is more dark fantasy, and a mystery at that perhaps. It is the tale of some guy who falls in love with a mysterious girl. When the girl vanishes, he goes out to find her. What he finds in her town is a nightmare that threatens to envelop him from rude and hostile strangers to a very dark forest. The tale does have the makings of a good, dark fairy tale, but the author goes back and forth between dreams and reality to the point that it is just confusing. The ending seems to take us back to the beginning, leaving us wonder just who we were following. I honestly did not get into the tale because it just seemed to be one big sinkhole. The reason I liked this book was the art, which is very well made and very suited to the darkness of the tale. If nothing, the book can be read in one sitting, but aside from that, I will say this is one to borrow, not buy.

Definitely a good story line and the characters were likable. The mystery was neat to figure out, especially if you enjoy puzzles. I do wish some of the story elements were resolved at the end or that this had been a series with a follow up installment.

This is billed as a graphic novel, but really it's a graphic short story. The story is dark but amusing. Be sure to pay attention to the faces of the vampires.½

This book is very entertaining. The ending completely blew me away.

WTF did I read? This was dumb. Just dumb.

K has been raised in an orphanage to be a thief. When the orphanage is finally revealed for what it truly is, she is sent to a private boarding school where her aunt is working. The book starts when she arrives at the school. She soon finds that the school is not actually open and that there are only four other girls. All is not what she expected. This would definitely be a fun adventure story for tweens. There is a quick pace and the adventure and mystery will keep the reader interested. Secondary characters were not as well developed as they could have been, but K is well developed enough to keep the story going. I hope there is a follow up so we can find out what really happened to K's family.

K has been raised in an orphanage to be a thief. When the orphanage is finally revealed for what it truly is, she is sent to a private boarding school where her aunt is working. The book starts when she arrives at the school. She soon finds that the school is not actually open and that there are only four other girls. All is not what she expected. This would definitely be a fun adventure story for tweens. There is a quick pace and the adventure and mystery will keep the reader interested. Secondary characters were not as well developed as they could have been, but K is well developed enough to keep the story going. I hope there is a follow up so we can find out what really happened to K's family.

K has been raised in an orphanage to be a thief. When the orphanage is finally revealed for what it truly is, she is sent to a private boarding school where her aunt is working. The book starts when she arrives at the school. She soon finds that the school is not actually open and that there are only four other girls. All is not what she expected. This would definitely be a fun adventure story for tweens. There is a quick pace and the adventure and mystery will keep the reader interested. Secondary characters were not as well developed as they could have been, but K is well developed enough to keep the story going. I hope there is a follow up so we can find out what really happened to K's family.

K has been raised in an orphanage to be a thief. When the orphanage is finally revealed for what it truly is, she is sent to a private boarding school where her aunt is working. The book starts when she arrives at the school. She soon finds that the school is not actually open and that there are only four other girls. All is not what she expected. This would definitely be a fun adventure story for tweens. There is a quick pace and the adventure and mystery will keep the reader interested. Secondary characters were not as well developed as they could have been, but K is well developed enough to keep the story going. I hope there is a follow up so we can find out what really happened to K's family.

I adore Richard Sala and love his work. This is another twisted tale of a young orphan sent to a strange school where her talent for burglary is put to good use. Wonderful.

Gothic-esque graphic novel of murder and skullduggery on a college campus. Interesting drawings but otherwise eh. I’ve never read the teenage detective books it seems to be parodying so it was boring rather than charming.

Unlike the previous reviewer, I thought the graphics were integral to the work as a whole and added a great deal, particularly the gathering of the plutocrats. I liked the stylised artwork and vivid colouring.

What can I say about the plot without giving away too much, given its relative brevity? Inspired by Mary Shelley, a post-apocalyptic, mystery/conspiracy with some nice twists along the way, with a not-entirely unpredictable, but nonetheless satisfying "surprise" ending. I would have enjoyed a longer work in which the author had explored his world and themes in greater depth.½

I'm just not a graphic novel sort of gal. This one is obviously set up for a sequel, but I don't think I'll be looking for it. Nice artwork. Pretty sudden turnaround.

(Review reposted from another site, written June 10th, 2010)

This is a fun comic....though K's look reminds me of the Black Cat every time I see her. And a thieving school with only four students? Ok then...

This comic is filled with mystery, giving all background for K and a mysterious treasure just in Chapter 1! Mother Claude, the head of a thieving ring K was a part of earlier in her life, plays a part I never would have seen coming!! Still, I think it could have been done better. The girls disappear one by one, and K thinks they're running away?½

I wanted to like this more (it's about a school that trains cat burglars!), but I mostly found the story predictable, and K, the heroine, as thick and dull as a dried paste. It takes her forever to put together the "secrets" that I figured out within a few pages. Maybe this would be okay if this graphic novel was for little kids instead of teens, but it felt too simple all the same. Also, the ending perplexed me. There are a few other girls at the school who search for the hidden treasure with K, and we never find out what happens to them after each one disappears on one of the school's thieving missions. Have they been killed in awful ways? Are they being held somewhere, and if so, by whom? I'm not against cliffhangers, especially in graphic novels, but Sala himself said that while he had a sequel in mind, he didn't know if it would happen, and that he thinks "it also could end where it ends, with the heroine contemplating the start of a new adventure" (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=22958). Since he didn't give the other girls a proper ending, the story as a whole feels unfinished, and it bothers me. The other girls were what intrigued me the most, because we get hints of their backgrounds and how they ended up at the boarding school but not full stories, and frankly, they don't seem as dense as K.

Overall, it's a pretty unsatisfying story, and it gets only three stars because I like the artwork. It's different -- the characters look like normal people, stylized but not too cartoonish or too representative at the same time. The colors are strong, heavy on bright, rich (watercolor?) washes.

Sala's art is perfect for this deliciously creepy atmospheric modern fairy tale; inspired by snow white and seen from the Prince's view. Much is left unsaid, for it's a book that revels in mystery as we follow our hero in his search for the girl of dreams. we follow as he descends into dark nightmarish places, as the townsfolk mislead bewilder and confuse. Forget 7 dwarves happily singing songs this is haunting, sinister and fun, a comic that leaves a strong taste too and makes you want to revisit again soon.½

This is my first time reading one of Richard Sala's books and it's...interesting. I had to read this book twice to fully appreciate the story and the artwork, although I still have some mixed feelings about the book.

Overall the story is pretty fantastic. A strong young female character who can stand up for herself doesn't come along as often as it should in stories. And Sala does a masterful job of portraying K with her strength and weaknesses and has created a character that anyone can identify with, particularly young women I think. My mixed feelings come from a what appears to be a couple of plot holes with introducing characters that, at least in this story, have no real impact. Perhaps Sala is planning a second story in which this will be resolved, but I've found no evidence at the moment of this. I also had to read the book a second time to fully appreciate all of the aspects of the story, but I'm glad that I did.

The artwork isn't quite what I expected either, but it grew on me by the end of the book. The watercolor quality fits well with the story and gives it a almost ghostly feel to it. The villains of the story have a slight Gothic feel to them and are quite enjoyable as Sala expertly captures their emotions so that we are clued in early to who they really are.

Overall I enjoyed the book and would really like to see a sequel as K finds out what happened to her friends and parents. Hopefully Sala will create one for us.

Ugh. This. Was. Awful. K.'s an orphan, and thinks she's lucked out in escaping the evil woman who ran the orphanage she'd been living in. However, when she arrives at her new boarding school, she discovers that the headmistress expects K. to use the burglary skills she was forced to develop in the orphanage to find a hidden treasure.

The story concept is good: orphan forced to steal and pickpocket as a child, then is encouraged to put those skills to somewhat good use. However, this is a story that should NOT have been told in graphic novel format. Sala can't seem to rely on images to tell the story - often he has characters saying things like, "Someone's coming, I'd better hide!" Just painful! He also has characters speak paragraph after paragraph of backstory and/or explanation of various plot points. Like I said, painful. It's never taken me days to read a graphic novel before...½