An entertaining interlude with various fables, both known and unknown -- including our ever intrepid Jack -- in yet another geographical area. Gorgeous artwork. Action, adventure, intrigue, revenge. Big fan of Lauren Beukes so I was curious to see how the story fared in her hands. I have even more questions but I am not sad about that!

Man, I hate Jack.

The Fables universe branches out into Japanese folklore as it tackles Rapunzel's history. This had a lot more horrific/grotesque moments than a lot of the Fables series, but then that fits in really well with the yōkai of Japanese folklore.

I rather liked Rapunzel's dark past. There's some really interesting things done with how she had to survive, and it was neat to see a much darker side to the usual "good" Fables. This felt like a much stronger entry than the first volume as she felt much more fleshed-out than Briar Rose did.

very cool art in this one

The art gets more beautiful by the volume and the story is complex and brilliant, with Willingham bringing the Japanese pantheon to life in both ancient times and modern Tokyo.
I love that this series is giving the females of FABLES a chance to really shine, while bringing even more characters into the mix and adding to great mythos that Willingham has created.
A must read!

I really liked it. Ranks high as one of my top five favorite books in the entire Fables series.

The bulk of it is about Rapunzel. Her origins as the daughter of Frau Tottenkinder. Her time in the Japanese homeworld of the Hidden Kingdom. And an adventure she has in modern day Tokyo.

I especially enjoyed seeing the Japanese Fables. There's so many of them. From kappas to kitsune. There's even a fun twist to the ghost girl from The Ring.

It ends with a funny little side story about a date between a Dryad and Reynard the Fox.

This spin-off series from Fables enters its second major story line, and its first without creator Bill Willingham who remains as a consultant, with South African author Lauren Beukes taking on the writing duties. The art is handled by Inaki Miranda who has previously had some one issue credits on the main Fables title. The covers were all by Adam Hughes.

The focus of this story is Rapunzel and it is set back in 2002 before the start of the escalation of the war with the Adversary and Mister Dark - so we see them in their original residence, have Snow White in power, in all but name, and some old characters that have since passed on such as Boy Blue and Jack who has a fairly prominent role in the story. The story itself sees Rapunzel travel to Japan on the hunt for the children that she believes where stolen from her but instead she runs into an old lover from the Hidden Kingdom, a feudal Japanese Fables homeland where Rapunzel lived for a while after the loss of her children. The actions of the past catch up with her as her lover, now a Yakuza style gang lord, seeks revenge for the role she believes that Rapunzel played in the destruction of the Hidden Kingdom.

I read the first novel from Lauren Beukes, Moxyland, a while ago and I wasn't terribly impressed. For me there were no sympathetic characters for me to have an emotional connection with and so in the end I didn't really care what happened to anyone in the book. And the same problem affects this story line to a certain degree. In the end the story itself was fine and the broadening of the back story of Rapunzel was good - with enough left unresolved so that it could be revisited in the future - but the emotional connection was not there for me. Part of the problem may have been setting it in the past and so it doesn't connect with much that has happened in the main series but mainly there was no threat as we know the fate of a lot of the main Fables that appeared and so the drama was lessened. The arty Inaki Miranda was clean and cute for the most part but horrific and brutal when it needed to be. It remains to be seen if there is to be any impact of this story on the main series or upcoming story lines in Fairest but at the moment it feels like a throw away, standalone tale with no real weight as it was not written by the series creator.

Another one bites the dust, hey hey!
Now on to read the other 20 books I have checked out. :) At least 5 or 6 of them are graphic novels so I can get through them quickly.

This was a nice continuation of the Fables world with some interesting backstory on Rapunzel. I probably need to go back and reread some of the regular Fable titles though since I don't remember what all happened and which volume I read last. But still, nice story, nice artwork, and the teaser at the end was very interesting.

This was a random buy due to the cover being by Adam Hughes (I love his art) it turned out to be a good read to be honest!

It reminds me hugely of The Wolf Among Us in so many ways possibly one is what inspired the other!

All I know is that it was entertaining and I'll be looking to read more from this series in the future.