Wonder Woman: Warbringer
Coming in on the heels of a successful movie, Leigh Bardugo's 'Wonder Woman: Warbringer' is another good relaunch of the character. Diana witnesses the destruction of a ship just offshore of Themyscira and manages to save a young girl. Bringing a mortal to the island is bad enough, unfortunately Alia Keralis is no ordinary girl. She springs from a cursed bloodline reaching back to Helen of Troy and is destined to bring about a destructive war simply by existing. Her presence on the island almost immediately causes sickness and earthquakes. Diana must bring Alia back to New York and break the ancient curse before it is too late.
Bardugo strikes a good balance between humor and action and succeeds in making memorable characters in a short span of time. This book is never just about Diana and her quest, or even about Diana and Alia. We have a post-millennium cast of the Breakfast Club to care about! The book scores a lot of points for the idea of shifting the focus of the story to character relationships instead of boss fights and keeping only the very best of the fish-out-of-water jokes of Diana's introduction to modern culture. Themyscira apparently has an updated library so Diana's able to understand and even make some pop culture references of her own, even if they feature the impressionists.
Where 'Warbringer' goes wrong is that the Breakfast Club teen melodrama approach of the book makes it feel...small. Diana and Alia's quest is to end a millennia-old curse that has contributed to the deaths of millions but the book never quite lets that sink in. When the time comes for an action sequence, or when secrets are revealed the narrative threatens to fall flat. The small conversations, the quiet bonding moments - with the exception of the romance which felt too convenient - those were the most effective.
There's also the minor concern that that the DC Icons universe is clearly very different from the DC Film universe which is different from the current Wonder Woman comic book. Wonder Woman is fantastic no matter what universe she's in, but there's going to be some confusion down the line. Keeping all that in mind, I liked the book, but can't go higher than that.
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Next: 'Batman: Nightwalker'
