3 out of 5

It had me, then it lost me, then it had me again… then… hm.  I started reading the last issue of this 4-issue mini (4 plus a zero issue collection shorts from DHP) and I had re-read the previous issues fairly recently, so I was ready to jump right in to the story.  But it felt clumsy.  It felt like I had lost some beats.  Oh, maybe there’s some issue-to-issue flow I need to regain, so let me start from the beginning again.  Thankfully, Amala is a joy to look at, and thus the re-read was a breeze.  Michael Dialynas’ heavily-inked style is highly energized, and the blending of bright colors with dark highlights and thick shadows is perfect to balance out his cartoonish figures with the more violent, action-oriented backdrop of the story.  As the scope of the story got larger some of this energy would funnel away as he seemed to struggle with panel composition to properly depict what’s needed, but this can also be due to the script making too many leaps and bounds as the tale progressed.

Meaning that, yeah, it lost me.  Starting in issue three there are hints that story elements are going to be shed and added at a whim, and sure enough, issue four is a big letdown of cliches and reversals and sort of grossly happy endings.  The book has a lightly comical tone to it, but Horton kept a nice rumbling of doom just off panel – embellished by the steam-punky future world vibe that always puts us in the mindset of controlling governments and loss of individuality and whatnot – and issue two won me back after a slightly clumsy ‘let’s get to the story’ first issue because it suggested deeper going-ons outside of our basic premise.  ..Which just grows too damn big for its britches.  Amala is an assassin on an island split in two – one side belonging to the modifiers, tech-enhanced people – and one side belonging to the purifiers, who use external ‘steam-powered’ devices to better themselves.  Amala is tasked by ‘The Vizier’ who lives in ‘The Neutral Zone.’  Amala also sees ghosts.

But y’know what?  Fuck all those details, because they only exist to serve specific purposes in the story, even when our ghost tangent appears to be ramping up to something fascinating.  Instead, let’s focus on some conspiracy to re-ignite war between the two sides, who never seem all that different to me.  …Which could’ve been expanded upon, but instead feels like we’re just supposed to make some steampunk-world assumptions about the divide (tech vs. no tech).

I can accept that Horton didn’t want to leave things dangling as an obnoxious bid for another series, and thus wanted to provide a big bang for the exit of these four issues, but he then did the reader a disservice by populating the setup with too many potentially interesting bits and making Amala into a cool juxtaposition of cold cynicism and light-hearted care for the friends she hangs with for supplies and shelter.  A focused tale using a smaller palette would’ve been just fine.  …And I can find no fucking reason for it to be called ‘Amala’s BLADE,’ unless there’s some reference I’m not getting.  Methinks it just sounded cool.  If the character DOES make it to another series, these first books could become required reading for comparison’s sake.  The 0 issue is pretty great, and there are certainly fun and exciting elements scattered in the first three books, but if these issues must stand alone, they’re a promise unfulfilled.  Horton’s a writer to watch, though Dialynas really kept it glued together and fun – if ultimately sorta pointless – to read.