The Adventure Zone vol 2 by The McElroys

Vol 2: Murder on the Rockport Limited! by Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy, illustrated by Carey Pietsch

​Your adventure zone friends are back with an Agatha Christie vibe. The three are officially part of the Bureau of Balance as "Reclaimers" - tasked with finding ridiculously powerful magical items and bringing them back to the Bureau to be destroyed. Their next assignment is to figure out where another reclaimer went wrong in obtaining one of the powerful magical objects. This lands them on the Rockport Limited, an express train with heightened security and relatively few passengers. They get assistance from Angus, the World’s Greatest Detective, and a fourth grader. Together, they must solve the murder mystery aboard the train, obtain the overpowered magical item, and have a hilarious time doing it.

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The overall vibe of this volume is quite a bit different from the first given the setting of the train.  There are many nods to murder-mysteries like Christie, but there are still some really fun fantasy/magic elements.  The humor still delivers as it did in the first volume, complete with the buttinsky DM trying to control things and pointing out flaws in plans.  Takko continues to be my favorite character because he's so dang funny! He's a kleptomaniac, which lands him into problems often, but he can smooth talk his way out of almost everything.  He does mercilessly taunt other characters, like one of the train's employees who has ineffectively allotted his spell slots to useless things.  Overall, I don't mind the change in mood from the first volume, and I'm interested to see where the third volume takes the "heroes."

Sara's Rating: 10/10
Suitability Level: Grades 10-12

Reviews of previous volumes in this series: vol 1

Publisher: First Second
Publication Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 9781250153715 (Paperback)

Tags: Rating: 10/10, Suitability: High School, Graphic Fiction, Fantasy, Humor, Magic, Action Adventure​, Mystery, First Second