Why I Read It: Next in a series. The penultimate volume!!

This penultimate volume was considerably more exciting than the previous volume Ghost Circles. Thorn, Gran'ma Ben and the Bone cousins have finally made it to Atheia and are getting things ready for the final battle with Briar and the Lord of the Locusts. There's other stuff going on too: for example, since the royal family had to flee Atheia, it's been taken over by this a-hole named Tarsil and he's not keen on the royal family coming back. Also, Phoney is up to his schemes again and is convinced that there's treasure hidden in Atheia, so of course he wants it.

So really, this volume wasn't good because there was a whole lot of action, but there was definitely a lot of PREPARING for action to come, which is to be expected since the next volume is also the last one (which I've already read and it's AWESOME.) There was also a lot more humour in this volume than the last one, which was grim as hell.

As far as art goes, Ghost Circles definitely wasn't bad, but it needed to have a really plain and monochromatic colour palette because the group was navigating through a barren landscape; this time around it was much more colourful, which was nice on the eyes. Other than that though, it was the usual stuff you can expect from Smith, which is consistently good.

Final Verdict: This was great build-up for the final volume of the series. This volume isn't packed with action, but there's definitely a lot going on to keep things moving swiftly. There was more humour here as well, which was a nice reprieve from the grimness of the previous volume, and for a bit of a breather before the nail-biting finale (which I've already read and loved.) I love how this series started out as kind of slow and "okay" for me and has turned into something truly epic -- I can see why people love this series so much.