DC Icons #1
When I first saw the trailer for Wonder Woman, I couldn’t wait to see it. When I found out that Leigh Bardugo was writing a YA adaptation, I was even more excited about it! As as new-ish fan of Wonder Woman, I have been keen to get my hands on anything relating to my new feminist hero and when I found out there would be advanced reader copies of Wonder Woman: Warbringer, my coworker and I immediately set about pestering our publisher rep to send us some!
Synopsis
She will become one of the world’s greatest heroes: WONDER WOMAN. But first she is Diana, Princess of the Amazons. And her fight is just beginning…
Diana longs to prove herself to her legendary warrior sisters. But when the opportunity finally comes, she throws away her chance at glory and breaks Amazon law – risking exile – to save a mere mortal. Even worse, Alia Keralis is no ordinary girl and with this single brave act, Diana may have doomed the world.
Alia just wanted to escape her overprotective brother with a semester at sea. She doesn’t know she is being hunted. When a bomb detonates aboard her ship, Alia is rescued by a mysterious girl of extraordinary strength and forced to confront a horrible truth: Alia is a Warbringer – a direct descendant of the infamous Helen of Troy, fated to bring about an age of bloodshed and misery.
Together, Diana and Alia will face an army of enemies – mortal and divine – determined to either destroy or possess the Warbringer. If they have any hope of saving both their worlds, they will have to stand side by side against the tide of war.
Review
I love Leigh Bardugo’s books and I love Wonder Woman. So this should have been the perfect combination of the two, right? Well, mostly right. Wonder Woman: Warbringer is the first of four books in the new DC: Icons series, and also the first book Leigh Bardugo has written that has not been published by the same publisher who did her last 5 books, all set her self-created Grisha-verse. These two facts lead me to wonder, is Wonder Woman: Warbringer truly all Leigh? Anytime one is adapting an already existing character and world, it never feels truly like it is fully the author’s own creation and having read all of Leigh’s previous books, Warbringer left me disappointed.
Comic book stories and superhero adaptations are infamous for having multiple timelines – i.e. Wonder Woman is originally set during WWII, the movie is set during WWI, and in Warbringer, Diana doesn’t leave her home, Themyscira, for the outside world until the 21st century. While many comic book and superhero fans accept multiple timelines, it does get confusing and a little frustrating to accept time and time again. I’m a fan of continuity and linear time lines, it can be difficult to accept three different timelines for the start of Diana’s story.
However, from the start of the publicity push for Warbringer, it has been made clear that this is a different, stand alone book that can be read both by existing and new Wonder Woman fans and I fully support that approach to promoting the book – it is absolutely true – if you know nothing about Wonder Woman, you will love it, and if you already love Wonder Woman, you will at least mostly enjoy it like myself.
The characters are textbook Leigh Bardugo – funny, beautifully diverse, and thick and well-rounded with details and unique qualities. Alia’s friends Theo and Nim are great supporting characters, her brother Jason has his own unique destiny to fulfill and Diana, well, she is a fully realized Wonder Woman. Despite the sense of feeling like we are going back to the beginning, there is nothing lacking in Diana’s character development. Her confidence and charisma are evident, as is her desire to protect human life, despite risks to her own self. The plot is fun and well paced, I flew through Warbringer in 2 days, it definitely kept my attention, despite my occasional frustration.
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars
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