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Parliament of Rooks #1-5
Parliament of Rooks (Comixology Originals) Vol. 1
An Architect wakes from a dream, finds he is beginning a strange and violent transformation, threatening his long standing affection for a Princess.
Confronting the ghosts from the past that return to haunt him, he searches for the truth of his curse, ultimately becoming torn between two worlds and two minds.
Confronting the ghosts from the past that return to haunt him, he searches for the truth of his curse, ultimately becoming torn between two worlds and two minds.
- GenresComics
205 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 8, 2025
All right, so, I will start with the disclaimer that I cried during the last chapter so this will definitely affect my rating
Anyway. Concept? 5/5. Artwork? 10/5 oh my God. What stops me from giving this 5 stars is that the pacing is... a bit off, which doesn't really give me the chance to get attached to characters, get a sense of what's going on, etc. I feel like this is unfortunately the kind of story that would have worked better in novel form - and it pains me to say it given how gorgeous the artwork is. But it does lead to it being a style over substance story, which is a shame, because there is so much raw potential here. Just impeccable vibes all around - it's goth Howl's Moving Castle, basically.
Anyway. Concept? 5/5. Artwork? 10/5 oh my God. What stops me from giving this 5 stars is that the pacing is... a bit off, which doesn't really give me the chance to get attached to characters, get a sense of what's going on, etc. I feel like this is unfortunately the kind of story that would have worked better in novel form - and it pains me to say it given how gorgeous the artwork is. But it does lead to it being a style over substance story, which is a shame, because there is so much raw potential here. Just impeccable vibes all around - it's goth Howl's Moving Castle, basically.
August 4, 2024
Collecting issues #1 to #5.
Art&lore: 5/5.
Definitely the selling point of the series. Beautifully haunting, and the whole symbolism with the moon and corvus reminds me of old folktales.
Plot&Characters: 3.5.
It's my fault for not seeing it was a Gothic Romance story. Everything happens so quickly, there isn't enough time to care about what the characters are going through. Hell, I might have been more attached to Rosa than any of our MCs. Please don't let this deter you though!
Unsure why it's tagged as Vol. 1. It's pretty straightforward with a solid ending.
My one glaring issue is the use of a certain G slur. It's 2024, we can do better, please.
Art&lore: 5/5.
Definitely the selling point of the series. Beautifully haunting, and the whole symbolism with the moon and corvus reminds me of old folktales.
Plot&Characters: 3.5.
It's my fault for not seeing it was a Gothic Romance story. Everything happens so quickly, there isn't enough time to care about what the characters are going through. Hell, I might have been more attached to Rosa than any of our MCs. Please don't let this deter you though!
Unsure why it's tagged as Vol. 1. It's pretty straightforward with a solid ending.
My one glaring issue is the use of a certain G slur. It's 2024, we can do better, please.
February 15, 2025
Full series review (minimal spoilers):
Opens with a post-story prologue to couch the narrative as a retelling while spoiling a ton of the story for no real benefit (Will these lovebirds fall in love? Will they die tragically?) I took a simple read through that prologue and considered, Hm, it seems pretty obvious that this is satanic winged MC coming out of the gates of Hell to meet his lover on rare occasions, but surely almost the entirety of this story wouldn't be reducible to a single subplot in (view spoiler) Surely it wouldn't deliberately tilt its hand of the entire story with something so absurdly predictably obvious...? Sigh... It did... No suspense. You know one needs a reason to justify achronological storytelling. Otherwise you just end up making it worse, like this.
Barely anything actually happens in the first book beyond that though, mostly just an introduction to the characters.
Having finished the story, a ton of it is pointless. It often veers cloyingly into cringey action-superhero comic book pomp cliches, smearing tropey action, quips, plots, and jazzy (ACK!) sound-effects (so much sound-effecting so excessively) on top of a somber gothic story as if entirely tone deaf to its genre.
The writing & dialogue is often so poorly done as to be worse than books translated from foreign languages. (On top of being edgy/sappy wordiness cramming itself everywhere to try to blot out the art with superfluous narration & pointless exposition).
There is a lot of effort to include symbolism in the story. Unfortunately pretty much all of it reduces to: sun, moon, raven/demon/angel, architect(artist self-inserting), and generic witchy occultism, repeated ad nauseum, and all of the symbolism is entirely pointless beyond foreshadowing the deus-ex apotheoses story and done so on-the-nose hamfistedly (and yet the story goes even further to avoid any suspense in the art, and literally exposition dumping it in writing/dialogue to tip its hand as much as possible from start to finish). This dismissiveness of the symbolism may sound unfair, however even the story didn't care about them: the sun was entirely irrelevant (literally just a dude, unlike the moon), the angels/heaven it went so far as prophesizing about were literally never even in the story (let alone having an entire war between angels and demons as prophesized)(though perhaps it poorly handled going for the 4 generic angels to be MC and the three Fates (conflating Heaven & the world) which is just not good and why doing a prophecy cliche is a lose-lose hamfisted foreshadowing achronological technique).
The art is nice, gothic and atmospheric, though a little repetitive. Some of the designs are very good, others are a bit silly. Personally I'm not a fan of the faces style either, everyone looks weirdly older than they seem to have been meant to be (especially the FMC). Overall the art style is a little lacking in technical effort/skill (a bit sloppy rather than rigidly realistic or fantastically painted).
There are barely any characters of any importance in this aside from the MC, FMC, and antag. Pretty much all of those others can be summarized as: contrived to have done nothing until dies.
The plot/story as mentioned isn't much, but it is quite short to read. It's not the least bit intellectually stimulating. It's not really romantic... nor horrifying. Frankly it's right at home in the massive pile of Western superhero action comics that have been done to death for almost a century, gothic aesthetic aside. But if that's your jam then by all means, you could certainly do a lot worse in that pile.
If you like this (borderline short)story of the tragic fantastical romance between this MC & FMC you can find a dozen almost exactly like it in the game: Slay the Princess.
2/5 (where 2.5 is average)
Opens with a post-story prologue to couch the narrative as a retelling while spoiling a ton of the story for no real benefit (Will these lovebirds fall in love? Will they die tragically?) I took a simple read through that prologue and considered, Hm, it seems pretty obvious that this is satanic winged MC coming out of the gates of Hell to meet his lover on rare occasions, but surely almost the entirety of this story wouldn't be reducible to a single subplot in (view spoiler) Surely it wouldn't deliberately tilt its hand of the entire story with something so absurdly predictably obvious...? Sigh... It did... No suspense. You know one needs a reason to justify achronological storytelling. Otherwise you just end up making it worse, like this.
Barely anything actually happens in the first book beyond that though, mostly just an introduction to the characters.
Having finished the story, a ton of it is pointless. It often veers cloyingly into cringey action-superhero comic book pomp cliches, smearing tropey action, quips, plots, and jazzy (ACK!) sound-effects (so much sound-effecting so excessively) on top of a somber gothic story as if entirely tone deaf to its genre.
The writing & dialogue is often so poorly done as to be worse than books translated from foreign languages. (On top of being edgy/sappy wordiness cramming itself everywhere to try to blot out the art with superfluous narration & pointless exposition).
There is a lot of effort to include symbolism in the story. Unfortunately pretty much all of it reduces to: sun, moon, raven/demon/angel, architect(artist self-inserting), and generic witchy occultism, repeated ad nauseum, and all of the symbolism is entirely pointless beyond foreshadowing the deus-ex apotheoses story and done so on-the-nose hamfistedly (and yet the story goes even further to avoid any suspense in the art, and literally exposition dumping it in writing/dialogue to tip its hand as much as possible from start to finish). This dismissiveness of the symbolism may sound unfair, however even the story didn't care about them: the sun was entirely irrelevant (literally just a dude, unlike the moon), the angels/heaven it went so far as prophesizing about were literally never even in the story (let alone having an entire war between angels and demons as prophesized)(though perhaps it poorly handled going for the 4 generic angels to be MC and the three Fates (conflating Heaven & the world) which is just not good and why doing a prophecy cliche is a lose-lose hamfisted foreshadowing achronological technique).
The art is nice, gothic and atmospheric, though a little repetitive. Some of the designs are very good, others are a bit silly. Personally I'm not a fan of the faces style either, everyone looks weirdly older than they seem to have been meant to be (especially the FMC). Overall the art style is a little lacking in technical effort/skill (a bit sloppy rather than rigidly realistic or fantastically painted).
There are barely any characters of any importance in this aside from the MC, FMC, and antag. Pretty much all of those others can be summarized as: contrived to have done nothing until dies.
The plot/story as mentioned isn't much, but it is quite short to read. It's not the least bit intellectually stimulating. It's not really romantic... nor horrifying. Frankly it's right at home in the massive pile of Western superhero action comics that have been done to death for almost a century, gothic aesthetic aside. But if that's your jam then by all means, you could certainly do a lot worse in that pile.
If you like this (borderline short)story of the tragic fantastical romance between this MC & FMC you can find a dozen almost exactly like it in the game: Slay the Princess.
2/5 (where 2.5 is average)
April 11, 2025
Fantastic concept, absolutely gorgeous art. It was an absolute treat to look at. But, alas, I couldn't really care about the romance. I feel like if there was history between Seraphina and Darius, it might've fleshed out their desire for each other. Or if the story had time to explain why or how Seraphina is the moon maiden and why the monarch and not some random girl... Also, Darius's voice as the narrator became old after a while. There was no need for him to say how he was feeling on every page. I get that he is actually telling this as a story to Seraphina, but his actions being shown was enough to convey his emotions. Less is more, and silence is enough to convey pain.
Would love to see more gothic monster tales from this artist.
Would love to see more gothic monster tales from this artist.
December 30, 2024
Like a demonic version of bird-Howl and a moon spirit version of Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle. Gorgeous art style
3.75 stars
3.75 stars
September 3, 2025
A hauntingly beautiful lovestory, the artstyle is magnificent!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews