"Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All" by Corinne Duyvis

 

            The following is a review of the prose novel “Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All” by Corinne Duyvis.

            If you know nothing about the Guardians of the Galaxy, I’ll explain them briefly of you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about (and I don’t want to chase you out of this post), but then again, even then you still might not know what I’m talking about, but whatever.

            Peter Quill, son of an earth woman and an alien emperor.

            Drax, the Destroyer.

            Gamora, the Deadliest woman in the galaxy, last surviving Zen-Whoberian.

            Groot, a Flora-Colossus, a walking, talking tree.

            Rocket the Raccoon, a talking raccoon (obviously).

            The titular point of this novel was about Groot. Groot is a living tree (all he can say is “I” “am” “Groot” exclusively in that order [yes, I took that from the movie, for those keeping score]), who is only supposed to exist one at a time. His essence is one. He is able to survive being destroyed, but if one piece of him is planted, he will regrow from that piece, but this only works on one piece, there can only be one Groot.

            At least that’s how it’s supposed to be. The Guardians encounter Tanaleer Tivan, known throughout the galaxy as the Collector (because yeah, he collects rare things) and find something rather unusual: he has been in possession of another Flora-Colossus who can only say “I” “am” “Groot,” exclusively in that order. The Guardians find out Groot has been regrown by Tivan and there are now Grootlings. The Grootlings are being sold out as a commodity. The seller is a mysterious woman named Kiya, a DiMavi, who was an assistant of Tivan.

            Except for two things. Kiya is not a DiMavi, but actually a Zen-Whoberian, and she had not been Tivan’s assistant, but his prisoner. Gamora is not the last of her species after all. She had escaped from Tivan with the Grootling and replicated him. On a side note, Tivan was also in possession of raccoons and was basically making a bootleg team of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

            The Guardians come into contact with Kiya and take her in to protect her from Tivan as she is the only one who understands the Grootlings. As it turns out, each Grootling is making the main Groot weaker and weaker and is killing him the longer they are cloned and go on to exist. So now the Guardians are trying to collect all the Grootlings to save their Groot’s life.

            The Guardians also learn that a celebration of peace between the DiMavi and Kree is meant to be disrupted by a poisonous Grootling and ruin this peace, and rush to DiMave to prevent this terrorist attack.

            Now for my review. For those who have never read one of my reviews before, I do several things; One: how I feel about the novel; Two: the accessibility of the novel to people with little to no experience of the characters or history of the characters; and three, my numerical rating on a scale of one to ten (one being so awful I regret reading this, ten being this book was so awesome I want to read this again at least one more time).

            This novel had three primary, interwoven storylines. In a prose novel, I really look for one or two primary focal points. In a graphic novel, several storylines are fairly acceptable as long as they don’t forget each other. The Kiya storyline was my favorite, I was so interested in the character. Duyvis thoroughly developed and expanded her story, her history as a prisoner of Tivan, who had been experimented on, how she bonded with the Guardians and particularly Gamora, being of the same species, and I was extremely satisfied with the payoff of her character at the end. However, the story of the Grootlings really wasn’t all that pleasing to me (despite being the titular story). When it comes down to it, the Guardians should have had a lot harder time finding the Grootlings. I mean, come on, how could they know how many there were and be able to track them down? I mean, Kiya knew her buyers, but how did she know they didn’t change hands, such as being a gift to a child (which actually did happen over the course of the novel, so why am I asking)? It just seemed too easy to me. And the terrorist attack didn’t really seem to be as necessary as it was portrayed. It just kind of distracted me. If it had been played down and not been a major focus, I might have enjoyed the story better. And on top of it all, half of all the dialogue was practically “I am Groot.” It was just said over and over again and got to be extremely annoying.

            Now to the accessibility. I do not think it was an accessible book to people who know nothing about the Guardians of the Galaxy, so if you read this review out of obligation to me and that’s your only reason for reading this, I highly do not recommend it. In fact, if your knowledge of the Guardians is just the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s not all accessible to you, either. Most of these alien races were not represented in the films, and the character history is vastly contrary to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is not an extension, it is a whole different Universe. To digest this novel to its fullest, I feel some background knowledge of the “Guardians        of the Galaxy” comic books is preferable. I’m not saying you need to read twenty years’ worth of comics, but maybe a couple of graphic novels under your belt would help. But again, my word is “preferable.”

            Okay, now, finally, my score. After all these words, I don’t think I totally have to explain my score because I’ve been writing this review for twenty-three minutes now, so I’ll just rate it and be done with it. I rate this with a four. Do I regret reading this? No. Would I read this book again? Probably not. But hey, that’s just me. If you’re a heavy “Guardians of the Galaxy” fan, read this book. You might have a different opinion than me. Now, let’s clear this up; I didn’t hate or dislike this book. I did like and enjoy it, but still I give it a four. Another thing I did not mention until now was that this book was an easy read. Perhaps a little too easy. The chapters were extremely short, which some people like, and I personally liked that myself. It wasn’t a heavy book. Some books have fifty page chapters, which can be very daunting. The chapter lengths being short were extremely digestible and I wasn’t afraid to really get into this book.

            So all has been said and done, I think that’s all I have to say for now, except for: Tim Cubbin… out!