Red Sonja Worlds Away, Volume 1 by Amy Chu (via Hoopla Digital)

Red Sonja Worlds Away, Volume 1
by Amy Chu [Hoopla Digital] 

This graphic novel is the beginning of Dynamite’s Red Sonja volume four. In the first few issues Red Sonja, barbarian from fantasy times past, is in battle with a sorcerer named Kulan Gath. During the battle she is transported to modern day NYC, meets and befriends a cop, makes some other friends and has a face off again with Kulan Gath, who also had been transported to NYC, although quite a while earlier. At first I really liked it as a fish out of water story. They even had her speaking in Hyrcanian rather than English, so there were language barriers amidst the multiple Sonja versus authority encounters. I thought it was neat that through this language barrier she finds a police officer who can understand and talk to her in Hyrcanian. We later find out that he too was transported (as a very young child) to NYC from Sonja’s world and while he can’t remember this, he does remember his birth parents and their language. They team up and have no problem finding Gath has he’s a multimillionaire whose name everyone knows. While I liked the idea here and the early issues did get me hooked on the story, it started to drag on a little too much. I also didn’t like that there was a switch somewhere that Sonja could all of a sudden speak English perfectly. I understand gradually learning words and phrases, but the language barrier went out the window before this novel was over. It is in my opinion not worth re-reading, as I enjoy the older Red Sonja comics by Marvel too much, however if you have not read Red Sonja before and don’t like barbarians very well, but do like strong female leads in modern day settings, you this might be for you.

[ official Amy Chu web site ]

Recommended by Kristen A.
Gere Branch Library

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