So, this is cool. I’ve figured out what’s actually going on in Jack of Fables, way after the fact. (Probably way after anyone else who has read these books, for that matter.) Remember when he got captured by a bad guy named Revise who has been gathering up Fables and keeping them in a camp while making people forget that they ever had any stories, in the hopes of turning the whole world Mundane?

It turns out that Jack’s ongoing quest to garner increased fame, power, and wealth is actually beside the point, despite what he would constantly have you believe in his position as occasional narrator. Now that the war is over, this Revise guy is probably the most important thing happening in the entire Fables universe, and Jack just happens to be caught up in the swirl. I cannot decide if he would be offended by that or think it just and right that he’d be at the center of the action. (He would never admit he isn’t the center of the action, either way.)

Anyway, though, Americana: besides the other things that are obviously happening along the way as per above, Jack is now looking for a way into the American Fable country where he can find Cibola, the lost city of gold, and get, you know, rich. I’m glad that Revise’s three hot librarians[1] keep managing to keep tabs on Jack, though, because they are stuffy and hilarious, and I think he would be insufferable if left to his own devices.

[1] No, seriously. It’s not just comic art rendering everyone hot. There’s a t-shirt and everything! Also, in case you care, the three hot librarians are sisters.[2]
[2] Okay, I admit that knowledge to be gratuitous.

To start with, yes, I will be reading more of The Unwritten. It is about literature on every level: in plot, in theme, in voice, and I’m sure more ways that I haven’t thought of yet, and by gum, I don’t have this degree in English Literature for nothing. It’s really smart, really convoluted, and I expect to know more things at the end than I knew at the beginning, about the psychology of readers and reading as much as about the creation and function of stories.

As for Inside Man, aside from being obviously good enough to win me over, I can say a few things I suppose. In addition to following Tommy Taylor into prison (for a crime he didn’t commit!, no less) and into Nazi Germany, it explores the psychological impact of stories. On children and adults. On the stories themselves. On (at, okay, a more metaphysical level) the very earth upon which they occur. And then, after reading five issues’ worth of storyline that seems like it was made specifically to accommodate my personal interests, it’s capped off with a cautionary allegory set in Carey’s parody of the Hundred Acre Woods. So it may be fair to say that the closer your (non-horror, non-cult-classic) tastes match mine, the more you will like this series.

But man, there sure is a lot of foreign language in it, enough that I end up not trying to translate it. (This complaint is probably properly directed at me, not the book.)

The first thing to say about Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity is that it is undeniably a rip-off of Harry Potter. The second, more important thing to say about it is that while the first thing I said is not particularly true, I do have the sense that Mike Carey was trying[1] to pull off a comfortable homage before he yanked the carpet out from beneath the reader’s feet, in much the same way that The Wheel of Time rips off Tolkien for about 100 pages. Which is to say, I have started (and more importantly, will be continuing) a new graphic novel series, this time on loan to me instead of on loan from me. Still, I may well buy them too, ’cause, they’re good.

Unfortunately[2], I don’t really know enough to say where The Unwritten is going as a series. I know it is playing with the role of literature in life, in a mysterious and (to me, but I’m a sucker for lit-as-pop-culture) exciting way. I know that the main character is a little boring right now, in the way that characters who stand in for the audience always are, but I am extremely interested in two of the secondary characters and also I trust that Tom Taylor will coalesce into a real person once he gets his feet back under him[3], so that doesn’t bother me right now. And I know above all that I want to know more. Plus, perfectly satisfactory art if you care about that kind of thing. The introduction by Bill Willingham of Fables fame (while overselling the book to the point that I got halfway through it before I was sure if I was in or not) indicated I should know who Peter Gross is, but I don’t. Possibly you do?

[1] and I daresay succeeding
[2] at least in one sense, completely awesomely in another
[3] After all, Carey pulled the rug out on his audience-stand-in at the same time he did the audience, pretty much by definition.

A little bit hard to believe: I am still more than three years behind on the Fables series. There are just a lot of these, you know? It’s not that I mind being behind, especially when I compare with having to wait six months for every new Walking Dead. It just caught me by surprise that it’s as far as all that. I suppose it caught me even more by surprise when twinned with the realization that this book marks the climax the stories have been building towards since basically the very beginning.

Yep, true story. The Fables of Fabletown, around a brief spy-heavy interlude that I kind of loved, have launched their long-planned war against the Empire that drove them out of their homelands lo these many centuries past. And as you can probably see from the title, War and Pieces, that is the main focus of the entire book. Which is as it should be. So I guess what really surprises me about being three years behind is that this is the kind of war where it’s hard to envision what comes next. Either Fabletown loses, its back broken and our mundy world now ripe for plunder while the survivors fight a desperate holding action and things get really grim, or else Fabletown wins, and, well… this is what they’ve been working for all along. What comes next? Apparently, three more years’ worth of stories, minimum, either way. When I figure out more, I suppose I’ll let you know.

It had been so long since I last read one of these books, I was convinced I didn’t remember anything about the series. Luckily, I could remember two plotlines and had only read two previous books, so apparently I’m okay after all. But still, there’s a noteworthy gap, and I’ll be more careful in the future.

So, anyway, Jack, right? I’m not sure whether I should care about the ongoing plot of his personal arc, since it is so obviously a low-key romp with little or no seriousness or long-term impact[1], but it was certainly visible that he was mostly hijinx with brief reminders of the plot tacked on this time instead of the plot itself. The hijinx revolved around getting a slightly clearer picture of his place in fabledom as well as of his history, while only incrementally advancing the potential long term plot via the clarification of powers above the fables and via hints about Jack’s son, if such a creature still exists.[2]

But then there was a thing that made no sense at all, and it was the title. Unexpected cloning, sure, potential Fable Creators, okay, more devil-dealing than you can shake a pointed stick at, absolutely. But if there was any kind of prince buried in the book, much less a particularly bad one? I’ll eat my hat. And I can assure you, it’s a fantastic hat that I would regret losing quite apart from the digestive issues.

[1] The truth is, this book makes me question that assumption for the first time. We’ll see I guess!
[2] Spoiler alert: I’m betting yes.

I am having trouble coming to grips with The Good Prince. Not because there’s any question of it being good; if anything, it was the most fable-like story of any long arc I’ve read in the series. I started to point out that there’s a twist where the most unlikely character of all blah blah blah, but the truth is, that is as fable-like or moreso than every other aspect of an extremely fablicious storyline. But at the same time, that’s my problem; if it looks like a happily ever after is in reach (and I’m not saying one has happened, but I can see the road from here to there), does that imply[1] that there’s going to be a sudden, dramatic (and rather unlikely) reversal of fortunes? Or is the series going to be about something else entirely than what it has been about for the last good while?

Then I remember that it wasn’t about this war with the Adversary for the first two or three books, and I liked them plenty, and I stop worrying about it. So maybe less grip-trouble than I thought?

[1] I should add here that there are a lot of books left in the series before I catch up to present time, and it’s still being published.