Book Review: The Sword Vol. 2 Water by the Luna Brothers

The Sword Volume 2 Water by the Luna Brothers

Dara Brighton is on the run from the authorities and on the trail of the three siblings who killed her parents and sister. Her best friend Julie and random funeral goer Justin are along for the ride since they are accomplices to her escape from killing some would-be kidnappers in the last issue. Justin was a student of Dara's dad who remembered fantastic stories the father told in his college class: a man named Demetrios lived 4000 years ago on the island of Crete. Four siblings showed up with miraculous elemental powers and demanded control of the island. One brother, Phaistos, wanted total control so the other three plotted against him. They created a sword that could kill him and would grant the wielder superhuman powers. They gave the sword to Demetrios who did the job. Then Demetrios turned on them (since the sword would kill them too) and forced them to live in hiding for thousands of years. In later stories, one of the siblings used to hang out in the Bahamas a lot. So Dara heads there with Justin and Julie to find him. After a long trip from Washington, D.C., to the Bahamas, and several days of fruitless searching, she finds the man and they have a massive fight.

I like the overall expanding story, with more information given about the history of the siblings. But the plot runs on lots of coincidences and contrivances. When Dara and friends make it to Miami they can't afford a regular ferry ticket but they happen to meet a family that's going over on their private yacht. The family eventually recognizes her as that crazy woman from TV that killed her family and a bunch of other people, but just in time some pirates attack the yacht. Dara is able to subdue the pirates and they escape, suddenly making the family trusting and helpful. The final battle is very exciting and over-the-top in a good way, so I am going to stick around to see what's going to happen in the next volume.

Parental advisory--like the first issue, this has a lot of violence, including hacked limbs and torsos, along with some foul language and an unlikely sexual relationship (with just a little backside nudity and discussion).