Seven to Eternity Volume 1: The God of Whispers

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The 100 Best Movies on The Criterion Channel (November 2023) By Paste Staff November 1, 2023 | 8:54am I'll stop dancing about it: this is a bleak ending to the series. It choreographed this direction pretty clearly long in advance, but it's still kind of breathtaking on how dire the story is at its end. It's a little too epic in execution to be considered grimdark proper, but Adam Osidis is absolutely a grimdark protagonist. The story, in that sense, is about masculinity and the banality--or maybe pettiness--of evil. The actions of others and Adam's father's pride clearly traumatized Adam, and this story is the slow unfolding of his desire to protect ultimately himself at the cost of all else. And "all else" is more literally everything than I'd usually mean it. Remender has created a very thorough fantasy world to essentially make a point about toxic masculinity; Adam shares a lot with Walter White. I enjoyed it, though I think it maybe didn't quite need to draw out the point so much. Is the art awesome and the story intriguing enough nonetheless to make me want to read the next volume? I think so. The entire SEVEN TO ETERNITY epic collected in one deluxe OVERSIZED hardcover edition! The God of Whispers has spread an omnipresent paranoia to every corner of the kingdom of Zhal; his spies hide in every hall spreading mistrust and fear. Adam Osidis, a dying knight from a disgraced house, must choose to either join a hopeless band of magic users in their desperate bid to rid their world of the evil god, or accept the god’s promise to give him everything his heart desires. I love the idea here: what does it mean to hold true to your beliefs in a society/world where no one else does? It's something I can relate to, having strong principles and often times being ridiculed or chastised for adhering to them in the modern world. Remender often takes an idea like this and examines it from a few angles, writing through his analysis as he (what seems like) figures it out for himself in his personal life.

SEVEN TO ETERNITY DELUXE EDITION HC | Image Comics

The Mud King’s driver is complicated and perverse. He wishes to to prove to a dead man that no one is beyond corruption. The dead man is a zealot, Zeb Osidis, someone who scorned the Mud King as flawed and beneath him. Zeb is able to determine who has succumbed to the whispered promise of Garils Sulm, and regards those who have as beneath contempt. To prove that point, the Mud King does worse than corrupt Zeb’s son. Instead, he remakes him as his successor, the one who would unleash ultimate destruction upon the world. While the literal material itself is outstanding, it is the publication schedule that has hugely affected my reception towards Seven to Eternity. Readers have waited for so long just to see the end of the series. I have almost lost my interest reading the series.Plus the art by Jerome Opeña is flat-out amazing. Not only is it pretty, but he tells the story clearly without trying to be fancy. Everything is communicated and it flows easily. Problem is Remender's pacing is choppy and the first two issues were somewhat hard to come by before I finally got the gist. His prose his rather boring and the dialogues are a bit sedative. That seems to be a recurring problem with Remender: good ideas, poorly expressed. we’re left to ponder whether Remender is crafting a direct stand-in for Donald Trump or merely a manifestation of the cauldron of anger and fear that led to his troubling ascent. Either way, the series can’t be read without the pall of the previous year and the four… years to come hanging over the high-fantasy narrative... EPIC art, with a storyline and dialogue that lets it down. A story of rebellion, battling inner demons sprinkled with mystery and magic.

Seven to Eternity Series by Rick Remender - Goodreads

While it was somewhat confusing at times plot wise, I see a HUGE potential in these series and I'm really hoping that it will shine through in later installments. I also just found out that so far only two parts are released so no binge reading for me, boo! It is a bit on the short side as well, which is a minus - because I wanted more of it for sure. I have a hard time giving this a actual score, cuz I enjoy parts of it but also feel there are many weak elements. But when I've been unable to enjoy or finish most of Remender's other indie work, the fact that I did finish this and found something to like about it says a lot. Under all the fantasy trappings are some core themes that help ground the book. The question of principles, and when to bend, is constantly on Adam’s mind, as his father’s unwillingness to compromise is largely responsible for his family’s current state. At what point do you stop fighting fights based solely on principle? It’s a struggle many people can relate to, especially when Adam is tempted by an easy solution. The God of Whispers’ abilities to subtly control people, to pull their strings and spread lies, leads to some interesting questions about power and the concept of truth. I can’t help but see some parallels to the currently political landscape.This observation has much merit. Both The Dark Tower and Seven to Eternity are fantastical, desperate quests with strongly Western frontier themes of vengeance, struggle, and redemption. The shadow of famine through failed crop raising on a desolate prairie haunts the characters at the beginning of the story. All men have surrendered their freedom for fear; now one last free man must choose between the fate of the world and his own heart's desire.

Seven to Eternity (review) - World Comic Book Review Seven to Eternity (review) - World Comic Book Review

The narrative is peppered with cliffhangers and plot twists that keep you riveted, making you question your own moral compass — who’s good and who’s bad? Remender is a master of letting everyone reach their own answer to that question. Wowzers! For some reason or other, I shit the bed on collecting these single issues as they came out. When I finally decided that I wanted them, they were like a bazillion dollars for first prints.The story draws heavy on one’s choice and beliefs while having a villain that you as the reader can somehow get behind and see how right he is while also caring for protagonist Adam Osidis who’s name has been written wrong in this world but for his own personal reasons looks to gain from it without making any sort of deal with the devil. Felt this could have at least six issues shorter. Overall a solid book, with ridiculously great art by Jerome Opeña (and James Harren too) though at times action scenes were difficult to decipher. I enjoyed the characterizations of the main two characters - Adam Osidis and the villain, the Mud King - but almost every other character felt cliché and irrelevant. I felt the fantasy elements were also generally unclear. The Seven in Seven to Eternity are chipped away as the tale unfolds. Garils Sulm, also known as the Mud King or the God of Whispers, is the terrible, admirable villain who, even in chains, leads the group. Mr Opeña has designed the Mud King to look like he has been actually carved from mud: a physically intimidating, looming bulk of a figure with clay globs of purple skin, glowing yellow eyes, sitting on a throne of pink skin stretched across bone. He is on a dire journey to prove a point, and get moral satisfaction, in an exercise which costs life after life. But the Seven are oblivious to this – they think they serve the interests of justice. The Seven have against ridiculous odds caught the Mud King, imprisoned him, drag him at great peril through the kingdom of Zhal to judgment… and it evolves that at any time he could have escaped with a flex of his wrists. The God of Whispers does eventually snap his own chains during a mêlée. This causes his captors to finally start to question what precisely is going on. For once all of Remender’s cynical beliefs work in a story that has a strong throughline, and he doesn’t drop the ball at the finale. This is *very* cynical indeed, just full-on nihilistic grimdark fantasy that never lets up. The pontificating is on point in service of the tale, and the conclusion is as dark as it gets. This'll serve as a review for the series as a whole. The starting premise is that we have a fantasy world where many members of it each have indivdualized powers. In particular, one person has ascended in recent years into a sort of fantasy Dark Lord: the God of Whispers, whose thing is that he can see through the eyes of anyone who makes a deal with him, and if he dies, all those who have made pacts with him die as well. Our main character Adam Osidis is from a family who was exiled because his father spoke out against the God of Whispers as he ascended, and is shunned by both the God's people, and those who later rebelled against the God, as the father then kept them out of the fight. Adam goes to the God of Whispers, obstentiably to save his family from the GoW's wrath, but in the middle of the discussion, a band of rebels capture the God and begin a long journey to take him to the magical McGuffin place where the god's connection to those bound to him can be severed, and he can be killed without killing them.

Seven to Eternity - Worth it? : r/ImageComics - Reddit Seven to Eternity - Worth it? : r/ImageComics - Reddit

I cannot really say anything more without spoiling this comic. It is everything it should be, even if I would have liked a few more explanations about the workings of this world that Remender and Opena built. Wow what a book an what and ending to this series. This volume completely threw me for a loop and I didn't see what was coming at all. Remender did such a good job of manipulating my point of view to completely catch me off guard. An interesting concept but we think this misses the mark and indulges in the politics of the day. The Mud King is charismatic, cunning, and even if he did not have his powers of corruption would have been a formidable player. The God of Whispers is no opportunist con man. If we had to draw a parallel to an American politician, it would be to Teddy Roosevelt: ambitious, mad, and focussed. But, really, it is a long bow to draw to find an analogy between an American politician and a fictional fantasy character who can leech into the souls of those he rules. Remender is my favorite comic book writer of all time. I’m used to his writing style. However, StE doesn’t fit quite into my expectations for him. The art is quite good and the plot is one that can be turned into something very intricate and fascinating, so once again - fingers crossed. Or it could just sizzle out into boring old nothing, so you know the odds are really 50/50.The 10 Best Movies on Apple TV+, Ranked (November 2023) By Jacob Oller and Paste Staff November 1, 2023 | 8:32am