What do you think?
Rate this book
Steven Universe: Harmony #2
As Steven continues to hold onto the Harmony Core, it’s up to Amethyst to take over his responsibilities, including band practice. But when more Harmony Cores threaten to activate, the Gems must act quickly or else the entire Earth will be put in danger!
- GenresComics
29 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 5, 2018
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
S.M. Vidaurri
28 books17 followersMy apartment is filled with many animals. I like romance novels, superhero movies, rooms filled with plants and peach iced tea.
My first graphic novel Iron: Or The War After was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Graphic Album category in the Pépites 2013 Salon de Montreuil.
I read a lot, but for the purposes of my reviews on here, I'll only be writing about the books I absolutely loved, in the hope to support the authors I admire.
My first graphic novel Iron: Or The War After was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Graphic Album category in the Pépites 2013 Salon de Montreuil.
I read a lot, but for the purposes of my reviews on here, I'll only be writing about the books I absolutely loved, in the hope to support the authors I admire.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 5, 2018
Steven Universe: HARMONY is a five-issue miniseries focusing on Sadie Miller’s personal life and the Gems’ problems associated with a Gem artifact called the Harmony Core. It’s written by S.M. Vidaurri and illustrated by Mollie Rose, with colors by Meg Casey and letters by Mike Fiorentino. The paper issue I bought has the main cover by Marguerite Sauvage!
Plot:
When we last left our heroes, the Harmony Core had done something strange to Greg and Sour Cream. We now open on Sour Cream, who’s been sucked into some alternate dimension where he meets up with other humans who have have been affected by the Core. He runs into Greg, and also his mother Vidalia.
Meanwhile, Connie is helping Steven with the human side of things. She arrives with lunch and reports that her mom (who’s a doctor) believes the affected humans are physically okay, but they can’t find a way to wake them up. Steven is too worried about everyone to eat his lunch, so Amethyst eats it. She’s also been helping Steven play video games, and she’s trying to encourage him to just relax while he holds the Harmony Core. Steven has bubbled it, but he still feels like he hasn’t “bubbled the whole thing.” He’s frustrated that there seems to be nothing he can do but wait.
With Amethyst and Connie encouraging him to just chill, Steven takes a quick rest and finds himself dream-traveling into the Harmony Core. There, he sees the affected humans (now joined by Mr. Dewey), and he is able to communicate with them. Chilling out helped him find out something useful.
Meanwhile, Garnet, Peridot, and Pearl have gone back to the Temple where they originally found the Core. They’ve learned from inscriptions what the thing is called, and Steven already wants to go back inside it to try to learn more. Pearl is worried that if they accidentally do something that damages the stone, Steven could have his consciousness split into pieces. Garnet, Pearl, and Peridot want to go back to do more research, while Connie insists she’s good to help Steven with human matters, but that reminds Steven that he was supposed to meet with the band about Sour Cream. Amethyst volunteers to substitute since Peridot’s contribution last time did too much damage. (She broke a guitar.)
Sadie and the remaining members of the band are discussing recording their demo, worrying that they really can’t go forward if they’re missing band members. Amethyst shows up to play, so they decide to take a break and try a new song by Sadie. She gives some minimal direction for the kind of song she wants and starts experimenting with the others, reading from her lyric sheet about how she loves to get lost in scary stories to distract herself from missing Lars.
Sadie’s delighted with Amethyst’s performance, and though she offers to be part of the demo recording, she’s unable to answer whether Steven will be able to record. Amethyst reassures them and returns to Steven’s. Meanwhile, the other Gems are investigating the Harmony Core’s Temple again. Peridot thinks it might have been a prototype colonizing device. The electronic sentries are a mystery; there seem to be fewer than last time, and they activate with energy whenever there’s a pulse from the Core. Peridot narrowly misses getting creamed by a sentry, but Sardonyx briefly appears and saves her.
They decide to rush home because the sentries’ sparseness makes them worry Steven is in danger. But Amethyst has already arrived and found the place trashed, with wrecked sentries that apparently overwhelmed Connie and enthralled her as she watched over Steven’s sleeping body. A sentry is about to take the Harmony Core, and Amethyst interrupts it, snatching the object back with her whip. She doesn’t know what to do when it starts to hum, since Steven is passed out and no one’s there to help and she’s just not good at puzzles. Desperately, she touches the stone, apparently trying to get it to not go off and claim Steven.
Steven, meanwhile, is in his dream state exploring the Core’s alternate reality, and he’s frustrated at only finding a bunch of empty caves. He’s wishing he was strong and confident like Garnet or smart and graceful like Pearl or able to take on anything like Amethyst. And then she appears in front of him, golden and glowing and urging him to get back to reality now. When the other Gems return from the Core’s temple, they find Steven holding Connie’s inert body and Amethyst’s golden, humming Gemstone.
Notable:
1. The video game Amethyst is helping Steven with is referred to as a “Creature Collector” where if his character runs in a circle, it’ll make his eggs hatch. I guess a Pokémon reference is a fun thing to have!
2. When discussing recording a demo without Sour Cream, Jenny mentions “we were going to record with his stepdad’s cousin.” Seems like a really specific thing to mention if we’re not going to meet him, so maybe we’re going to?
3. This is a common complaint I have about bands in fiction, but it seems like the song Sadie performs with her temporary band gets laid down in a very strange way. Just jamming and seeing what comes out is usually fine, with a band jamming and a singer coming up with stuff, but since Sadie had written a song with lyrics and a specific structure, the band would need something more than “I need like–something crunchy but fun?” before they could support whatever her vision is.
4. I like that Sadie is singing about “replacing” the hurt of missing Lars with fake fear from scary stories on the Internet. The lyrics say exactly what she means, so there’s not a lot of need for interpretation, but hearing her express those things is very touching.
5. In the first issue of Harmony, we saw Opal, and now we’ve seen Sardonyx. I wonder how many other rarer Fusions we’ll see in this series?
6. Amethyst worrying about not having the skills to solve this puzzle was very accurate for her. I did wonder about her calling herself a “force-the-puzzle-pieces-together kinda gal.” They usually don’t refer to themselves using gendered words, though Amethyst would be the most likely to do so since she uses a lot of slang picked up from humans and has called Peridot “homegirl” in the show (though she’s also called her “dude” and “bro”). And one time Garnet yelled “get it, girl!” to Pearl in encouragement. Just wasn’t too sure about this usage, but I’m being picky.
7. Steven refers to Amethyst, saying, “Nothing can phase her.” Common error but the right word there would have been “faze.”
8. I guess the characters are just trying to make things seem more normal and trying to continue to have lives despite disruptions, but I’m a little confused at why band practice keeps being upheld as so important, even though I’m liking the scenes where we get to see it. If multiple members of your band are being absorbed into an unexplained magical coma, band practice and even recording a demo seems like it should be secondary, but it keeps being treated almost like the characters think it’s an emergency–someone’s got to fill in. Wish there was a way to see this really cool dynamic with various Gems playing with Sadie’s band without feeling like it shouldn’t be happening when the situation is so dire.
Still enjoying the story, though the feel of it was a little like “and then the characters went there and did that, and then went there and did that”–it feels a little pushed forward by an external narrative than by the characters’ actions, but it felt more cohesive the second time I read through it, so maybe it’s just me.
Plot:
When we last left our heroes, the Harmony Core had done something strange to Greg and Sour Cream. We now open on Sour Cream, who’s been sucked into some alternate dimension where he meets up with other humans who have have been affected by the Core. He runs into Greg, and also his mother Vidalia.
Meanwhile, Connie is helping Steven with the human side of things. She arrives with lunch and reports that her mom (who’s a doctor) believes the affected humans are physically okay, but they can’t find a way to wake them up. Steven is too worried about everyone to eat his lunch, so Amethyst eats it. She’s also been helping Steven play video games, and she’s trying to encourage him to just relax while he holds the Harmony Core. Steven has bubbled it, but he still feels like he hasn’t “bubbled the whole thing.” He’s frustrated that there seems to be nothing he can do but wait.
With Amethyst and Connie encouraging him to just chill, Steven takes a quick rest and finds himself dream-traveling into the Harmony Core. There, he sees the affected humans (now joined by Mr. Dewey), and he is able to communicate with them. Chilling out helped him find out something useful.
Meanwhile, Garnet, Peridot, and Pearl have gone back to the Temple where they originally found the Core. They’ve learned from inscriptions what the thing is called, and Steven already wants to go back inside it to try to learn more. Pearl is worried that if they accidentally do something that damages the stone, Steven could have his consciousness split into pieces. Garnet, Pearl, and Peridot want to go back to do more research, while Connie insists she’s good to help Steven with human matters, but that reminds Steven that he was supposed to meet with the band about Sour Cream. Amethyst volunteers to substitute since Peridot’s contribution last time did too much damage. (She broke a guitar.)
Sadie and the remaining members of the band are discussing recording their demo, worrying that they really can’t go forward if they’re missing band members. Amethyst shows up to play, so they decide to take a break and try a new song by Sadie. She gives some minimal direction for the kind of song she wants and starts experimenting with the others, reading from her lyric sheet about how she loves to get lost in scary stories to distract herself from missing Lars.
Sadie’s delighted with Amethyst’s performance, and though she offers to be part of the demo recording, she’s unable to answer whether Steven will be able to record. Amethyst reassures them and returns to Steven’s. Meanwhile, the other Gems are investigating the Harmony Core’s Temple again. Peridot thinks it might have been a prototype colonizing device. The electronic sentries are a mystery; there seem to be fewer than last time, and they activate with energy whenever there’s a pulse from the Core. Peridot narrowly misses getting creamed by a sentry, but Sardonyx briefly appears and saves her.
They decide to rush home because the sentries’ sparseness makes them worry Steven is in danger. But Amethyst has already arrived and found the place trashed, with wrecked sentries that apparently overwhelmed Connie and enthralled her as she watched over Steven’s sleeping body. A sentry is about to take the Harmony Core, and Amethyst interrupts it, snatching the object back with her whip. She doesn’t know what to do when it starts to hum, since Steven is passed out and no one’s there to help and she’s just not good at puzzles. Desperately, she touches the stone, apparently trying to get it to not go off and claim Steven.
Steven, meanwhile, is in his dream state exploring the Core’s alternate reality, and he’s frustrated at only finding a bunch of empty caves. He’s wishing he was strong and confident like Garnet or smart and graceful like Pearl or able to take on anything like Amethyst. And then she appears in front of him, golden and glowing and urging him to get back to reality now. When the other Gems return from the Core’s temple, they find Steven holding Connie’s inert body and Amethyst’s golden, humming Gemstone.
Notable:
1. The video game Amethyst is helping Steven with is referred to as a “Creature Collector” where if his character runs in a circle, it’ll make his eggs hatch. I guess a Pokémon reference is a fun thing to have!
2. When discussing recording a demo without Sour Cream, Jenny mentions “we were going to record with his stepdad’s cousin.” Seems like a really specific thing to mention if we’re not going to meet him, so maybe we’re going to?
3. This is a common complaint I have about bands in fiction, but it seems like the song Sadie performs with her temporary band gets laid down in a very strange way. Just jamming and seeing what comes out is usually fine, with a band jamming and a singer coming up with stuff, but since Sadie had written a song with lyrics and a specific structure, the band would need something more than “I need like–something crunchy but fun?” before they could support whatever her vision is.
4. I like that Sadie is singing about “replacing” the hurt of missing Lars with fake fear from scary stories on the Internet. The lyrics say exactly what she means, so there’s not a lot of need for interpretation, but hearing her express those things is very touching.
5. In the first issue of Harmony, we saw Opal, and now we’ve seen Sardonyx. I wonder how many other rarer Fusions we’ll see in this series?
6. Amethyst worrying about not having the skills to solve this puzzle was very accurate for her. I did wonder about her calling herself a “force-the-puzzle-pieces-together kinda gal.” They usually don’t refer to themselves using gendered words, though Amethyst would be the most likely to do so since she uses a lot of slang picked up from humans and has called Peridot “homegirl” in the show (though she’s also called her “dude” and “bro”). And one time Garnet yelled “get it, girl!” to Pearl in encouragement. Just wasn’t too sure about this usage, but I’m being picky.
7. Steven refers to Amethyst, saying, “Nothing can phase her.” Common error but the right word there would have been “faze.”
8. I guess the characters are just trying to make things seem more normal and trying to continue to have lives despite disruptions, but I’m a little confused at why band practice keeps being upheld as so important, even though I’m liking the scenes where we get to see it. If multiple members of your band are being absorbed into an unexplained magical coma, band practice and even recording a demo seems like it should be secondary, but it keeps being treated almost like the characters think it’s an emergency–someone’s got to fill in. Wish there was a way to see this really cool dynamic with various Gems playing with Sadie’s band without feeling like it shouldn’t be happening when the situation is so dire.
Still enjoying the story, though the feel of it was a little like “and then the characters went there and did that, and then went there and did that”–it feels a little pushed forward by an external narrative than by the characters’ actions, but it felt more cohesive the second time I read through it, so maybe it’s just me.
September 5, 2018
Issue 2 of the five-issue HARMONY miniseries is out. In the previous issue, a strange artifact appeared: a heart-shaped gemstone that is putting humans in magical comas, but can't affect Gems unless they touch it. Steven is stuck babysitting it, hoping to stop his nearest and dearest from getting hurt by it even though it's already got his dad and some of his friends. But life goes on sending substitutes to band practice (this time, it's Amethyst!), and the nature of this Harmony Core is still unknown. What is it and what does it want?
This story was still fun, though maybe a little messier than the first one in terms of scattered narrative. You have to follow three mini-stories--band practice, Steven investigating the Core by dreaming his way into it, and the other Gems at the Core's Temple--and it did feel a little distracted to me, with very little useful information gained (though they're properly frustrated by that) and so far no clear plan to deal with it. I'm sure by the next issue they'll start moving in some direction! In any case it was fun to see Sardonyx briefly and to watch Sadie write a song about how she copes with real negative emotions by seeking out fictional fear.
This story was still fun, though maybe a little messier than the first one in terms of scattered narrative. You have to follow three mini-stories--band practice, Steven investigating the Core by dreaming his way into it, and the other Gems at the Core's Temple--and it did feel a little distracted to me, with very little useful information gained (though they're properly frustrated by that) and so far no clear plan to deal with it. I'm sure by the next issue they'll start moving in some direction! In any case it was fun to see Sardonyx briefly and to watch Sadie write a song about how she copes with real negative emotions by seeking out fictional fear.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews