Fables: Vol 1 & 2

Title: Fables: Legends in Exile and Animal Farm

Author: Bill Willingham

Series: Fables, vol 1 & 2

Genre: Graphic Novel

Published: 2011

Rating: 8/10

Review: Since I enjoyed 1001 Nights of Snowfall, I've decided to continue with Fables by reading volumes 1 and 2 of the series. Conveniently, they were loaned to me by a friend to whom I gave them for Christmas.

The premise of the story is that the characters of various fables, having escaped their respective worlds because of The Adversary, now live in two communities. One is in New York proper, where human-looking Fables live and the other one is upstate New York, hidden by spells, Animal Farm.

In Legends in Exile, Rose Red's apartment is discovered completely trashed and covered in blood. Bigby Wolf is the detective on the case with all the tropes of the genre written into the story. I liked the story-telling and all the nuanced pokes at the original identities of the characters. At the end of Legends in Exile, there is also a short story telling how Bigby came to look human and move to New York, which was a nice touch.

The second volume centers its action on the Animal Farm, the community of non-human fables. Snow goes to the community for her semi-annual visit and interrupts the conspirators in the middle of a revolution against their human community. References to Orwell's Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies are pretty fun to see and the ending has quite a bang to it.

I am pretty curious to see how the characters turn out, especially with a certain romance brewing in the story. I just might have to pick up more books in the series.