Book Review Fables: The Great Fables Crossover by by Bill Willingham (Author), Matthew Sturges (Author), Russ Braun (Illustrator), José Marzán Jr. (Illustrator), Mark Buckingham (Illustrator), Andrew Pepoy (Illustrator)

The Great Fables Crossover is getting its own min-review because it's something of an oddity. I loved Fables, and I was devouring them as quickly as I could, but then I hit volume 13 and was thrown back.

You see, it mostly departs from an ongoing, rather urgent arc in Fables, to tell its own story. It's clear from bits and pieces here and there that the big tale is still continuing, but now there's another danger: Someone is trying to rewrite the world and in this case, that is entirely literal. If Kevin Thorne gets over his writer's block and decides what revisions he wants to make, the world we know will become an entirely different place. Jack discovers the danger and comes back to warn the Fables who set out to stop him, despite the way Thorne keeps writing difficulties for them.

This is a crossover with Jack of Fables, which I have yet to read. In many ways, I think it's more of a Jack story than a Fables tale. The good news is, I enjoyed the humor in the Jack of Fables Books. There is a visit by all of the genres incarnated as characters to offer the would-be reviser advice, and they're great. Fantasy, especially, is a wispy, elvish sort who keeps wanting everything turned into an epic while science fiction proposes manly battles. So: I will have a new series to follow, and that is good.

The bad news: The Great Fables Crossover comes smack in the middle of the battle with the Dark One and diverts everything onto a completely different path. I read it while saying "But what's happening with the Dark One? What are they going to do?" and the like. I suspect that for me, and for any beginning Fables reader, it will be better on the second read, and maybe after I've read the Jack of Fables series and learned more about the Literals.

Really, if you're plowing through the books for the first time, you may want to set this aside to read while you're waiting for Fables 19 to come out.

It does get bonus points, though, for having a fantastic fighter whose place of power is the library. YES!

My review of the Fables series as a whole is here.

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Links of Interest

The Great Fables Crossover on Amazon.