1811 ( )

Great stories, fitting for this incarnation of Red Sonja. (Provided by publisher) ( )

Twelve murderers hunt Red Sonja. Each has a different reason to track her down, as told by different authors and illustrators. As a bonus we even find out in one of the tales how Sonja acquired her trademark scale-mail bikini. ( )

A collection of the 5-issue miniseries.
This is a collaborative work: Gail Simone gathered an all-female group of writers for this revisitation of everyone's favorite female barbarian fighter.
The framing story is: a group of vicious mercenaries is traveling through the countryside, searching for Red Sonja. Out for revenge, they question those they meet along the way. Nearly everyone has a tale of their own encounter with Sonja.
Those tales are the ones written by the guest authors.

Overall, they're not bad. However, with the limited space allotted to each (there are two full stories per issue), there isn't really time for any of the authors to really develop an involved story. My favorite was the first one, "Eyes of the Howling God," which was written (I didn't check until after reading!) by my already-favorite one of the contributing authors, Nancy Collins.

The book also contains the covers for each of the 5 issues by original Red Sonja artist Frank Thorne. His work is classic; his Sonja is both cute and sexy. For each issue, there's also a full-page, pin-up style artwork by Jay Anacleto. This guy's good - he presents a more modern, alluring Sonja. I like his art a lot. Unfortunately, the interior art is both inconsistent and a little amateur-ish - I wasn't impressed. (Some more anatomy lessons would seem to be in order.)

Recommended for all of Red Sonja's fans...

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy - as always, my opinions are my own. ( )

I’ve read the Red Sonja comics that Marvel produced as well as being aware of her presence in the Robert E Howard books. This collection is equally enjoyable and is an excellent contribution to the sword-and-sorcery genre.

The central theme that runs through this book is Red Sonja being pursued by the Grey Riders for the murder of their Prince. Around this other stories are told about how each Grey Rider and the people they encounter on the way came into contact with Red Sonja.

The artwork varies but most of it is very good as is the story-telling.

For fans of the sword-and-sorcery genre, of Red Sonja, Conan and similar stories
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