Previously: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5
Zadok, Pelonis, Laina, Baggot, and Iona have found a way up Luzien's Ladder. Balen and Kyra along with their army have spent their time waiting out the snow storm in Xian-Li. Now that the heroes are coming back down they've been met by the Balen's army. Xian-Li seems to be doing something in the background though.
Met with the horde of barbarians ready to kill them, the heroes all react somewhat differently. Zadok and Pelonis leap into action. The others kind of slink back into a defensive position.
Laina however, decides to put her faith to the test and lay down her weapons. Which seems to work. Without any real explanation. Not magic or appeal... the army just decides not to attack her. The others follow suit and Balen cannot get anyone to attack them. They do tie them up though.
Back in Xian-Li Kyra wakes to find Balen and the army has already left. She overhears Shaizan and another of the Xian-Li monks talking about how the army is about to face their doom. She freaks out on them a bit. Accusing them of tricking Balen. Shaizan explains that Balen will live and that the shadow soul has been using him. Kyra can't believe it but it is kind of clear that he's been led around with these 'prophetic dreams' and it was the shadow soul doing it. Kyra gets the vulcan death grip and taken away. 🤣
Back at the battle site, Balen tries to get his general to attack the heroes. The dragon reveals himself, having been disguised as the general, and pretty much goes on a rampage. After destroying Balen's army and flying around a bit, Shaizan shows up to greet the heroes.
He tells Laina thaht it is time for a change in the world. And they will spread the light's message. But first they will send a message to the shadow soul.
The dragon flies through the ground and burns up the shadow soul. Pretty much destroying it aside from a little gooy bit that gets away, presumably to maintain that balance. The group heads back to Xian-Li where they vow peace and put down their weapons.
With the happy ending they decide the light will prevail! Despite the age of ice coming...
Well... that is it for Warlands. Have now read every issue of every series that I know of. I have to say. That was extremely anti-climatic and kind of stupid. The story in this last couple of issues gets a hard F rating from me. The build up was good in the first few issues. Characters were interesting. We think there is this epic quest coming. And then the 'heroes' literally do nothing.
The Xian-Li and the dragon did pretty much everything and was pretty awesome. The only real saving grace. Half this issue was the bad ass dragon flying around laying waste to stuff. Incredible art.
However... story wise, it was just stupid. For one. The heroes are entirely irrelevant. If the Xian-Li had this dragon the entire time and know it could basically decimate the shadow soul like that. Why didn't they just do it? And this idea of spreading the light and being peaceful is also ridiculous. It is like a hippie was hired to write the last story... of Warlands. You know... a world of constant war... not to mention we already know there is no peace. The fact that this story was set in between the original and the age of ice, and they even acknowledge the ice age is coming, tells us that their peace mission fails. Ryotians are about to enslave the world... so yeah. Laina and the others, completely useless to this an all other stories.
This was a serious disappointment. I have to wonder how much of this was actually planned to be like this and how much was rushed to finish before the company went out of business. Even though the series ended and ended a decent amount of time before the company officially went under, they had to have known the end was coming by then.
The original Warlands was so good. The art, the characters, and story... It is a bit sad what all followed. Nothing else lived up to the original. Age of Ice had some great moments and was probably second best. Shidima and Banished Knights also were decent but felt extremely rushed in the end. This one though... just kind of sucked.
Anyway. I guess I'll stop complaining now. It is what it is. At least there was a really cool dragon!
I kind of like doing these write ups but they do take time. I've been struggling to fit them in lately. I am a slow reader so it takes about an hour to read, take pictures, and write the review. With that said, now that I am done with Warlands, I'm not sure when I'll do more. Or what I'll do.
If you like these things, let me know with a comment! That might help motivate me to do more. If I do more I'm thinking either sticking with Dreamwave but switching over to the Sci-Fi books. Either Echo or Dark Minds. Or maybe trying something more mainstream. Like a Marvel or DC book. I'm hesitant to do Marvel or DC books because then I'm looking at hundreds of issues at a time instead of 4-12 issue mini-series. 😅
I do want to keep reading comics either way though. I really enjoy it and had been neglecting it for far too long. Writing this stuff just helps give me reason to do it and reasons to post here on Hive. Which I like to do also. The few people I've talked with on here have been awesome.
Now I'm just rambling... so till next time!
The End!