Amulet Series by Kazu Kibuishi Review
In this post, I’ll provide my review over this series and provide information on what I like and what I don’t like about the series.
What is the series about?
This series follows Emily on her travels and journey to save this alternate Earth called Alledia. She came across this new Earth when her mom was taken from one of the creatures who lives in Alledia. This series is written by Kazu Kibuishi.
I’m not going to review each book. For each of my reviews over the books, check out my Goodreads page.
Whose Kazu Kibuishi?
- Kazu Kibuishi was born in Tokyo, Japan and moved to California in 1982. This is what happened to my dad. My dad was born in South Korea and moved to California when he was 10.
- Kazu went to University of California: Santa Barbara for film studies in 1996, the year I was born.
- Amulet Series has taken him 15 years to write and illustrate
- Draws on his tablet or computer
- He started the Amulet series in 2008, and they haven’t been finished yet. It has taken him almost five years to finish the last book in the series, number nine. Yes. Number nine is coming out. Kazu got back to me on Twitter, and he stated he’s almost finished with it.
- A couple days later, he did tweet he has all the pages drawn and written, and the majority of the coloring down. The only thing he must do now is color the last pages he still has.
- The announcement for the book nine came a week later, and it was announced that it will come out Feb. 6th, 2024
My review:
The books only got better. I couldn’t stop reading them. I read the last four books in two days. Despite my busy schedule, I put everything aside and focused on this series. If I do that, then the series must be good.
What did I like?
The art:
Kazu does the art on his computer. He also will do some of the work by hand. He’s a great artist, which is shown in this series.
I love the pictures in the books. The color and the detail on the characters is insane. This is a big reason I’m starting to like comics more because I’m just fascinated in the art the author does.
Character Development:
The characters in the book are teenagers. Emily, the main character, and her brother must adapt quickly and start acting like adults. Everyone is counting on them to save Alledia. If they don’t, everyone dies. Pretty intense, but this story provides some great characters to grow quickly.
Emily becomes more confident in the way she leads. It helps she also learns more about her powers and how to control them. Emily is considered a stone keeper where this stone gives Emily powers. The problem is that the stone has the tendency to control the person. If the stone takes over, Emily’s mind including her memories disappear. There’s little time, so Emily must grow quickly or else everyone dies.
Not too much violence or death. There’s a scene where Emily’s father dies and a side character dies, but it doesn’t provide the graphic picture of them dying. If Kazu did this, it would have been considered more of an adult book. His general audience is geared toward kids, which I enjoyed. He provided the powerful message about death without it being too gory.
What did I not like?
Nothing. Again, another solid series. I haven’t read many books in 2023 that were bad. I only stopped reading one book, which was Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. This book was over Medusa, and I couldn’t get into it. Last year, it was a good amount of time before I had a book I could finish. Many of them sucked.
If you like graphic novels, you’ll love this series. This is a great series that I recommend reading.
Have you read this series? If not, will you.
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