Title
The Books of Magic: Bindings

Words by
John Ney Rieber

Art by
Gary Amaro
Peter Gross

Story


Art


Overall


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The Books of Magic: Bindings

Having never really been sure that we liked the first volume, the chances of the second one coming along and really impressing us was fairly slim. Losing the creative force of Neil Gaiman wasn't likely to improve the series but you've got to give these things a try, so we did. Unfortunately our gratuitous assumptions were completely correct and we were as disappointed as we expected.

The story takes up with Tim Hunter where we left off, only a few questions that were raised and left unanswered in the first book are examined here. The main crux of the book, however, lies in a question we hadn't even known was a question in the first place; who is Tim Hunter's real father?

The dialogue isn't as tight as Gaiman's and the story revolves around one adversary. Admittedly, this reduces the character barrage we were faced with in the first book but we found the whole episode quite unexciting.

The artwork is positively average, especially after the original book was so stylistic, changing from place to place as Timothy visited different places and times. Bindings is mostly centred on Faerie, and the illustrations in this book fail to conjour the same level of magic about the place as the watercolour work in the first book.

Overall, an underwhelming experience.