 Nostalgia is a hell of a thing. Everybody welcome back to another exciting episode, another edition of A Week in Geek Demi here on YouTube, Gio here, and today we're talking about D.P. Philippi and Terry Dotson's muse from Humanoid's Books. This is the oversized deluxe edition hardcover thing, and I've been wanting to review this for a long time and never got around to it until now. I read the story and I will just say that three quarters of the way in, I was all on board and having a pleasant time reading this with some questionable things inside the book, and then the last quarter just completely threw me off and I was just gone. So what is muse about? We're following the character of Caroline as she's sort of this guardian or glorified nanny to this character of her near, and I am going to probably mispronounce names in this book, so whatever, but she is tasked with guarding this kid, although at the beginning of the story we don't know that he's a kid, spoilers, and there's something off right from the beginning. And I noticed from a reader's perspective I should say, I noticed that there was a sense of falsehood when you start reading it and kind of perverse, there's a perverse nature to the story, especially with the butlers and the way they behave. I got the wrong impression because when I first started reading the book I kept thinking, are these guys like scheming something? What's going on? As you start reading the story you find out that this eccentric young man called Vernier, he has this huge mansion thing and with steam powered machines, he's a prodigy, I assume this is an alternate reality of sorts and he's got like a secret garden and a secret workshop, he's got a huge library and it's, you know, he's very eccentric, he doesn't want the character of Caroline nor do the butlers want her to see what's going on behind the scenes I guess, you know, he's very private in his study all the time and they've assigned her to guard him but also, and not like entertain but like steer him away from that stuff, we don't really know why and that is one of the mysteries, we don't know why they're doing this, we don't know why the kid has all this technology, we don't know why the butlers behave the way that they do, somewhere in the first half of the book the story suddenly turns into this weird fetish Alice in Wonderland-esque tale where lots of inappropriate things start to happen when the character of Caroline goes to sleep and you start wondering just where is the story headed, the mystery is prolonged for three quarters of the book like I said at the beginning and then the final act all hell just breaks loose, you don't really understand what is happening but yet you kind of do, I mean on paper as you're reading it, yes you understand what's happening, I'm probably exaggerating but it's a confusing read and kind of contradicts what you've been experiencing so far and the end result comes out of left field where you just have to either accept that it happened and that's the resolution or actually question the sanity of what you've just read and start doing conspiracy theories as to what is really the purpose of the or the intent of these characters. Caroline, she's a beautifully drawn character, I'd love Terry Dodson's artwork, he's one of my all-time favorites and the page work here is exquisitely done in that there's a lot of background work, there's a lot of character studies with different elements like you're in the jungle, you're in the Arabian Nights, you're in a pirate ship, you're in England, you're in Japan, there's a lot of stuff that gets thrown at you and to have somebody like Terry Dodson working on this book he's able to create these lush vivid backdrops which I thought were really well done regardless of the whole perfect model look that a lot of people like to accuse comic artists like this for you know the way they draw their their female figures on all that stuff that I'm not gonna get into that specifically I'll just say that the story itself is very beautiful you know visually it's a very beautiful book I'd love the color work and I love the way Caroline looks in the book and you know even the butlers and the young protagonist everybody looks great however the story is where the book suffers you get this prolonged mystery and the Philippi is instead telling us to hold out wait and see what the story evolves into before passing judgment on the end result but I gotta say I even though I got what happened and I understood what he was trying to do it's a bit of a jumbled mess and I think more issues or a tighter adventure or script but at a hundred and something pages I think it's too short to resolve what you're trying to do unless you cut some corners and streamline the whole ending and give us a more precise answer to just what the hell was going on and I have a couple theories I'm not gonna spoil it my theories involve a conspiracy to replace people with doppelgangers I have another conspiracy that this is all a time loop situation or a groundhog thing there's a lot that I could go into which will fascinate you guys but for the most part I would say that Muse is a beautifully drawn book a really interesting premise basically combining elements from stuff we've seen before like dreamscape scenarios where the character has to adventure continue the adventure through dreams and how that later is reflected in real life and she has to figure out what's happened and put all the puzzles together there's this long standing mystery the characters do we see a progression in such a short time probably not the butler gave me the creeps in some occasions especially with his camera I didn't really understand what was happening also the young man at the start of the book he's very different from the ending but when you realize what you read at the end it does not make sense why he was so arrogant in the beginning I don't know I got confused I mean I'm sure they met well DP Philippi and Terry Dodson they did a really interesting work here and fun fact this is actually I think this was the first ever humanoid's book I got I have others in my collection but this was the first one I got and it was mostly because of Terry Dodson because I love his artwork and yeah the story art-wise I think it delivers there are a couple of questionable things here and there that I know a lot of people will be a little bit iffy about when it comes to dream scenarios and the stuff that happens because it goes into like male fantasies and fetishes and stuff like that which I know will turn some people off but again this is more of an art book for me because the story was a little bit of a jumbled mess towards the ending what do you guys think about news have you read it if not recommend me something about from humanoid's did you think I would like that involves fantasy I'm interested in finding out as always guys thank you so much for tuning in thank you for liking commenting subscribing and being a part of a week and get them here on YouTube you can always follow me on social media Facebook Twitter Instagram all that fun stuff here on YouTube though click the little bell icon so you know when you videos pop up and you don't miss a single one I've got to go I've got more stuff to read review and geek out over so I will catch all of you on our next episode