Like this one a whole lot more than the first one. Better story, better art.

This was fun. ( )

A tidy little spy thriller that is more opaque in art and story than it needs to be. The edition I read touts this as a prequel to the Atomic Blonde movie, which I saw, but at the end of the book I had no clue how any of the characters in this volume related to any of the characters in the film. A google search says the protagonist of this book is the character played by James McAvoy in the film, but I don't really see much connection between the two. I'm waiting for my library to get The Coldest City graphic novel to see how the original work compares to its big screen adaptation and dovetails with this prequel. ( )

Antony Johnston's The Coldest Winter is another cold war era spy thriller set in Berlin of the 1980s. Like The Coldest City it is a spy novel which happens to be told, quite effectively, as a graphic novel. As I like to mention in any graphic novel I review I am not well-versed in the nuances of the artwork so am coming at it almost exclusively as a reader of novels who believes graphic novels have earned equal footing and therefore read them as well.

I can't put my finger on it but the artwork here worked much better for me than in The Coldest City. Where the previous work seemed almost claustrophobic throughout this one was more varied depending on where each scene took place. I'm sure there is a good explanation for the difference but it is beyond my knowledge level. What I do know is that the artwork here was a definite addition to the story itself.

The novel aspect was, well, a spy novel. Certain things are expected in these books and this one delivers. There were sufficient plot twists to keep me guessing and the action moved along briskly, aided significantly by much of the artwork. You have the expected espionage taking place between East and West but you also have the internal politics and jockeying for career position within the intelligence community as well.

I would recommend this to readers of graphic novels and espionage thrillers. If you are on the fence about graphic novels I think this would be a wonderful one to read to see just how well image and text can work together to tell a complex story.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss. ( )