Ronin by Frank Miller

I think I purchased this book either late in junior high or early in high school, but haven’t actually gotten around to reading it till now. I’m not sure why I waited so long to read it. I certainly remember flipping through the book a number of times; I even started and stopped reading it a number of times. I guess after 10 years of it sitting on a shelf I thought I should finally read it.

                The best thing I like about this book is that it’s nearly impossible to sum it up with just one sentence. I’d feel sorry for the poor guy who has to write the TV Guide summery for this book. The concept is that a master less samurai, a ronin, tries to avenge his former master by killing the demon responsible for his death. Just when it seems he is about to succeed the demon, Agat, thrust both the ronin and himself far into a dystopian future.  There the battle between them continues, only now there are robots, cannibals, and a super advanced AI along for the ride as well.

                This is a massive book, both in concept and in the art. The story hits the rails very hard right from the first page, and never really lets you go. There is a lot going on but it never feels overwhelming. With so many characters, and so many events, you’d think you might get lost among the pages, but it has a way of holding on to you. You’re being sucked into the world of the book.

                Art wise this book is amazing. When you look at the girls faces you can tell that it’s a Frank Miller book. Other than that though the book has an art style unique to itself. You can’t really point to another piece of work he has done and say, “That looks like a page from Ronin”. There are parts where you can point to it and see that Frank was learning lessons he would later carry over to Dark Knight Returns, but there is a much more European influence here. I’ve always been someone who loves to see the obsession of putting as many lines as possible on a page. This book definitely delivers on that front. If someone was to go through and count all the lines in this book the number might just close to how many human beings live on the planet earth.

                My biggest compliant about the book is that I just didn’t like the end. There is a very sharp turn at the end, which explains everything that’s being go on, that I just didn’t care for. It seemed like a bit of a letdown. I almost felt like Frank had a really cool idea for a story but his mind just wouldn’t let it be a simple story about a ronin and a demon fighting each other through the ages. It has to be bigger and boarder than that. I was also a bit confused by Casey’s sudden action at the end of the book. Was she really intended to do what she was doing, or was she hoping to cause the action that followed? Aside from that I thought this was a really great book and would definitely recommend it to someone who is not just a Frank Miller fan, but someone who loves great Sci-Fi stories as well.