Series: Cadfael #10

Instead of investigating a murder at the monastery, Cadfael finds himself investigating a murder that occurred in London (from the monastery) and looking for a young man who might be connected to it since he has since disappeared. Plus more royal shenanigans.

Although I enjoyed the mystery in this book, I have to say that Peters's insistence on having a young couple get together in every book really stretches my suspension of disbelief here. I mean, marrying someone you met while on pilgrimage? Really?

I'm planning to use this as the book for door 8 (Penance Day): Read any book concerning a man / woman of the cloth.

This is what the artist thinks Gamora looks like?   She's badass, all leather and class and actually kicking your butt, but in this she looks like fifty pounds heavier in bad BDSM gear. 

Why, why, why?

The whole cast, by the way, looks fifty pounds heavier and not at all like the actors. 

Also, this isn't a volume two prelude; it's a volume one novelization...   Which is okay, because Rocket.

This was up for free on Comixology - I believe it still is - and I wanted to see what this book was like.   Call it morbid curiosity: Black Panther was okay, but I didn't think it was one of the stronger Marvel offerings.   I know that it got a lot of hype and that many, many people think this is the best Marvel movie ever.   What I mean is I may be in the minority.   I did appreciate how strong a role women - and women of color I should specify - took in the movie.   I appreciated seeing a Marvel movie that was all people of color, to be honest.

That being said, I think it dragged, I was already bummed about Vision's obvious role in Infinity War and I  knew he wasn't in this.  I also read Black Panther, but it's never been one of my go-to characters or books.   I didn't have the nostalgia factor or the emotional investment in this.   I also think that Civil War was a better movie that engaged me more, especially the parts with Black Panther in them.   

On a geek level, which I feel is less important than seeing strong black women in the movies, I enjoyed how Black Panther included so many of the characters from the comics while trying to minimize some of the racism in said comics.   (By having different tribes, the animal masks that represented different tribes and not using them much, they could have M'Baku - Man-Ape in the comics - without us thinking of him as an ape.  Or I didn't.   I saw him as a very human character with very human motivations, whereas in the comic booth his costume, the constant use of the 'Man-Ape' title and simplistic power-hungry motivations make him far less relatable and quite frankly make it easier to dehumanize him.)  

So I'm going over the movie because I saw it before reading the prelude.  I went in carefully: I was expecting to like but not love this.   The is the story of how T'Challa starts off as the Black Panther.   I found the storyline more engaging, but the lack of strong female characters was mind-boggling given how many strong women the movie is filled with.    In fact, I found the lack annoying in this comic. 

Good look at how he starts superheroing and what shapes and motivates Black Panther, but not sure I'll read the second.   Yes, it was good, but not great, and I am way, way behind on my comics right now.

I love to travel. I love to see new places, experience the sites and sounds of places I have never been. I have been a lot of places, and I will still go to more places. But there are some places I know I will probably never get a chance to visit. So I travel through books about real places. This is one of those books. Pilgrimage by Derry Brabbs is an amazing book to armchair travel and it is also a great guide book if you were to get a chance to actually go to the laces in the book. 

There are 11 routes in the book that Europe's Pilgrims used. From 3500 people walking the route from Northern Spain to the Shrine of St James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela in 1988 to 277,000 as of  2016. 

The book features amazing photos along the routes, maps, and lots of information about all the stops along the way and of course the ending point.  It tells you how many miles the route is and how many days it should take to cover the route. These routes are done by walking, they way the original Pilgrimage took place. I am sure some of the routes you could go by car but if you wanted to experience the routes they way the pilgrims did you would want to walk the route. 

I received this book from the Author or Publisher via Netgalley.com to read and review.

I only remember reading this series once but apparently I reread it two years ago? Huh. I related to the characters a lot more on this reread. I'm not sure what that says about me.

I think every time I read the series I think I'll never read it again but here I am on my second reread so never say never. It's a light series. Very easy to read. Definitely not perfect, but O'Malley is only getting better as he writes, so that's good.