Locke & Key Vol. 3: Crown of Shadows

The final trade of my recent week's holiday (though, I say recent but in reality it's been something like six weeks) was volume three of Locke and Key; Crown of Shadows.

This was because Locke and Key series had so far been nothing short of phenomenal in my eyes and, therefore, it made sense to read another instalment in order to round off a pretty great reading week.

This arc saw the Locke kids continue to get used to their new lives and the secrets of their home as the mysterious Dodge made moves to acquire all the keys of the house. However, when his in the shadows efforts to find the black key don't give him the success he hopes for, Dodge makes moves to acquire the titular Crown of Shadows. With this he creates himself a shadowy army in order to capture Tyler, Kinsey and Bode and find what he is looking for, a plan which takes some unforeseen turns, leading to an all out punch up with a larger than life Tyler.

With this volume, Lock and a key once again knocked it out of the park for me, being yet another part of this truly fantastic story. I am absolutely flawed with this book which feels like something which contains so many different genres, from young adult to horror to mystery, but all perfectly merged into one. What I love about this series has to be a couple of things, the first being how incredibly interesting all the characters are, especially each of the Locke kids, but also the vile, love to hate 'Dodge' who comes across as the perfect villain.

The other thing I love is just how well the story is written in general, while the whole idea is completely bizarre and unusual, it just feels completely grounded and relatable, so it doesn't feel too detached from real life. I'm not sure I can put fully into words just why this series is so great, but Joe Hill has something so compelling and special here that I now see how so many people have praised, either directly or indirectly, to me.

The same can be said for the art as Gabriel Rodriguez's style is just sublime. Again, I thought this looked very grounded but a little different, with it looking more predominantly like a young adult type style and being very easy on the eye. But also, Rodriguez showed me a real awesome imagination which he obviously employs as well as some real nice homage's, in this volume being the shadow creatures and, specifically, Bode's Peter Pan-esque shadow, which I had to do a double take on when I saw it.

In truth, I could probably ramble on about this book and this series on and on, not really making much sense to anyone but me. However, this wouldn't change the fact that this has been a fantastic read since the first page of the first volume and, again, a fantastic read for this volume specifically. As with the comics I've read this week, I'll happily get the remaining volumes for each series, but this might just be the one which takes precedence when spare funds are available.

And, with that, my holiday reading is over and so back I go to finding scraps of time to read the odd comic in. However, this was a lot of fun and makes me a little more amenable towards holidays in the future.

I'll just have to get more reading material ready before then.