Review: Siegfried - Book One

A few weeks back I ranted and raved about part one of this book and much to my delight I finally read the entire first book of Siegfried from Archaia. It came as no surprise to me that I loved the rest of the book as much as I did the first part, but I couldn’t resist gushing about the book further.

I’m going to pick up where the story left off from my first review, so you may want to read that first so you’re not lost. The middle section of the story picks up with Siegfried in his late teens to early twenties. He’s now living amongst the wolves and trades with Mime for arrows, but no longer lives under his house. The wolf cub that we saw before has grown up and is Siegfried’s best friend, until Snow (the wolf cub) discovers a lady wolf. This leaves Siegfried to ponder his own singular existence and in doing so he leaves Snow alone to fight for his mate against his own father the big black wolf that scarred Siegfried. It ends in tragedy as Siegfried’s one and only friend is killed. Upon discovering this Siegfried challenges the wolf himself to avenge his fallen friend.

Meanwhile, Mime has a visitor to his shack that calls himself the Wanderer. Mime, as you can imagine from his personality, hates visitors and asks the Wanderer to leave. To get him to leave Mime is forced to play a game of three questions with the Wanderer in which he can ask him anything and if he gets one wrong he'll leave, but if he gets all three Mime has to answer the same amount of questions. It’s pretty obvious who the Wanderer is, but Mime is slow to figure it out due to his “sunny” disposition. Our Valkyrie continues watching the story of Siegfried and after getting caught up, puts no faith in him completing his task of defeating the Dragon.

Usually when reviewing a book I don’t go quite this far into the story so that there are plenty of good parts left to read, so I kept it pretty vague this time around. I loved part one on its own, but after reading the entire book I have to say that’s the only way you should read it. Not only did I re-read what I had already read for the third or fourth time, but I was entranced by the rest of the story. My heart was broken when Snow died and then overwhelmed when Siegfried defeated the Odin-esc wolf to avenge his friend. It was an intense middle act of the book that was followed with a great scene between Mime and the “Wanderer.”

There is not a single page of this story that is not captivating; from the art to the story every single bit of it is a masterpiece. The only downside of this book is that there are two more books that I will have to wait on and that is killing me already. There are very few books that I re-read over and over mainly due to how well I retain visual elements, but this book is one that I can’t help but want to look at over and over. The art is of course fantastic from beginning to end and I don’t know what other words of flattery I can use to describe the beauty of the art.

I read this book digitally, but you can bet that at the next convention I’ll be stopping by Archaia’s booth and picking this book up so that I can bask in its beauty. If you’re hell bent on digital then that works as well since it still manages to do the art justice. Whatever you’re preference just check this book out, if you need a sampling then check out our First Look or part one on Comixology just give it a chance regardless.

Score: 5/5

Writer/Artist: Alex Alice

Publisher: Archaia Entertainment

Price: $24.95

Release Date: 6/13/12