This second volume in the Books of Magic series (numbered, confusingly, as volume 1) further develops the character of Timothy Hunter and begins to explore his mythic origins. When Tim is drawn away from his world by his birth father Tam Lin, we witness his first true trial--capture by the manticore--and learn of his otherworldly genesis. Unfortunately, the story suffered a bit in some of the same ways that the first did--sometimes I felt as if I had missed large swathes of the story, I suspect because some action took place in some comic book or another that I missed--and Tim, though his characterization is drastically improved here, still felt a little thin.

However, there were a handful of stand-out scenes that made this book memorable: Tim's experiences in the manticore's den, his interactions with Death, and the rambling monologue of his surprisingly empathetic one-armed foster father. I'm having trouble evaluating this series so far as I normally do. The bits I like, I like very, very much, but as a whole, the graphic novels seem to leave me scratching my head. They're wispy and dreamlike, not always to good effect, but the parts that were well done were well done enough to keep me reading. We'll see if there's any improvement.