【Book Review】Rutabaga the Adventure Chef Book 2: Feasts of Fury

Rutabaga the Adventure Chef: Book 2: Feasts of Fury

    I received a free electronic copy of this book from the publisher to make an honest review. Great thanks to NetGallery.com and ABRAMS Kids.

Rutabaga is going on an adventure with his little pet, a pot called “pot” (interesting). As a chef, Rutabaga is determined to find the most exotic and mysterious ingredients from the top recipes. Through his journey, he encounters many people as well as obstacles. In this book, he meets an old man with strange taste, a troop of actors with a concern for robbers, a thief who tries to steal the jewels of the princess, and a group of Goblins who desires to overthrow the royalty then rule the kingdom. This is the second book in this graphic novel series Rutabaga the Adventure Chef.

    I always judge whether I like a graphic novel by looking at what I think the two fundamental elements of a graphic novel, which are the plot and the illustration. Therefore, I feel like it’s necessary to discuss this book on each of these two topics.

A page from http://rutabagacomic.com/

    As for the illustration, I absolutely love it! The picture is in full color, and the art is quite cartoonish and extremely vibrant. I have several types of arts that are my favorite, and this art style is apparently one of them. I think the word part and the art combines well to form the whole story. There are some pages where there are quite a lot of words while some pages have little words and lot of arts. This combination, I believe, it’s suitable for young readers to keep reading the book. The author can portray the food and the process of cooking them with great finesse. The vibrant color makes the food more appealing to the readers as well. I greatly enjoy the recipes which appear through the story and at the end of the book. I will give the art of this book five stars!

    As for the plot, I don’t like it as much as the art. The book is divided into different chapters while each chapter tells a different story. However, these stories are also related to each other, which is quite fascinating. For example, there is a depiction of the masks of the actors being robbed and sold by the thief. Then in the later chapter, the Goblins appears to use those masks as their disguise. This connection between chapters is intriguing and interesting. Besides, this book is not just a typical cook-and-fight-the-evils kind of book, it contains some deeper meanings as well. This can be seen when the actor tells Rutabaga that every person wears a mask to hide their truth. Even there are many elements that I like about the story, I still have some issues about it. The most evident one is how the story develop. I always feel like there should be more development to the characters, especially Rutabaga himself, but considering the fact that this book’s main target readers are children, this shouldn’t be a huge problem. Thus, I will give the plot of this book four stars, I still enjoy it very much.

    Overall, I will give this book 4.5 stars. The reason why I request this book is its relation to the food, and I admit that the art of the author fulfills my expectation. I am looking forward to more artworks from the author, and I will also try to get the copy of the first book in this series. Great reading experience!