First let me say that I haven't read the first volume of this, although I doubt it would make much of a difference. The summary makes it sound like the female gladiator is the main character but really it's the detective guy who is like ...the most bland and boring Sherlock Holmes rip-off that I've ever seen. I feel like it would have been better if the gladiator was the main character because she was the only person in this with a shred of personality, but the plot was still all over the place and somehow boring despite the confusion. Also the review copy I received didn't have the last issue [well, it had the partial issue, but with no text] so I just read it on a free comics site because I thought maybe the ending would make the story make sense, but it didn't. Not a huge fan of the art either.

I refuse to give reviews for partial arcs. There's no dialog in the final issue and the last 10 pages of the book are missing.

Its not easy jumping into a new series but this volume of Divinty makes it easy.. This is a nice jump on point and an action packed storyline, i really enjoyed the art in this volume as well

Beautiful artwork especially the coloring. Innovative story.

Young men are being killed in ancient Rome in the temples of the gods. The detectionist, Antonious, follows a twisty trail to the truth. A female slave, who has almost won her freeedom in the arena, may hold the key.

It is good to see a mystery in a graphic novel as those are my two favorite genres. Being set in Nero's Rome makes the artwork unusual too. The art and coloring in this book seem almost like series of classical oil paintings. You can see after looking at Nero's face why many at the time thought he was the antichrist. He has the look of pure evil.

The story was intriguing and the resolution fair. I loved the strong female presence.

I would highly recommend this book to those who wish to broaden their graphic novel horizon from superheroes and horror. It is reminiscent of the Classics Illustrated comics from my childhood.

I want to thank the publisher and netgalley for the advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review. To be published September 26, 2017.

In what seems like a small prelude but isn’t, a young slave girl is about to be raped, but like me notices the knife nearby and kills her attacker. In the meantime there’s a new cult in Rome that the rich kids are joining, only some of them are the ones being sacrificed, so the world’s first official detective has another case, and this time doesn’t have to go all the way to Britannia to solve it. Eventually it gets personal. . .
Good of them to have recaps before every issue; every comic should do that.
This story is not as strong as the first one, but then it’s more about the moments. With the Wonder Woman movie and especially the way women all over the world are responding to it, it’s amusing to see the same thing happening in Ancient Rome with a female gladiator. I don’t remember ever reading about any such archaeological evidence found, but it wouldn’t be surprising to find there were hucksters like the one here outside the Colosseum, selling souvenirs. My favorite line had to be “By Mithras!” Having studied that cult, it made me laugh.
The last part is “silent,” which makes it more intriguing. Too bad it took him long enough to realize who, or what, the bad guy was, which was a letdown.

This was ok. I like the art, and there's a passable mystery, but all of the characters are intolerable.

Five years ago a young slave girl refuses to allow her master to take liberties, and winds up in the Gladiator pits, now noble young men are dying horrifically, in apparent sacrifice to the gods. Can "detectioner" Antonius Axia find a connection using the skills the Vestal Virgins have given him before their leader Rubina faces the blame for the God's displeasure? Is he really hearing the voice of Apollo?
Turns out I don't know because the review copy I received was incomplete.
What I can say is that I think the story has potential to be good, and the character of Achillia, the female gladiator is pretty cool. The artwork is nicely detailed, and adds to the drama of the story. The fact that the review copy is incomplete is unfortunate as I am sure this had the potential to be a 3 or 4 star book for me.

Excellent art portraying Rome during Nero's time. The art may seem to jump around but that is just the story from many viewpoints. The mystery seems solved, but the book's end seems a bit abrupt. I will be looking for volume 2.

What a dispiriting mess. And I say that as, until the last couple of years anyway, a massive Peter Milligan fan. The first volume of this seemed to be founded in all sorts of weird and lazy assumptions about Roman society and thought, with our ‘detectioner’ hero the one (Ro)man seeking rational answers while everyone else just said ‘Eh, the gods’ and considered that explanation enough. As fucking if. No real change here, except that we’re not even in Britain anymore so the title no longer makes even that much sense. The theme this time is the male fear of female power, tangled with murders tied to a seeming renascence of the gods, and you could get a very good story out of that…but this isn’t it. Roman society was sexist, sure – but there was much more nuance to it than here, where it’s just Nero and a gaggle of interchangeable Roman dick men muttering about how the women are getting ideas above their station since this new gladiatrix started doing well in the arena, and plotting to bring down her, the Vestals and any other vestige of female independence as if Rome were merely Gilead or Da'esh in togas. Indeed, if you’d presented me with this clumsy Pat Mills-esque script and not told me who was responsible, I’d probably have lamented that the job hadn’t been given to Peter Milligan instead. After all, he did the vexed relationship of an empire and its deities in Egypt, he did such things with gender identity and anxiety &c in Enigma, Shade et al…he’d be ideal for the job, instead of whoever penned this farrago! "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.”

So disappointed was I already that, when the last issue of the Edelweiss ARC turned out to lack the lettering and then cut off before the end, I wasn’t even particularly bothered, because it’s not as if I’m likely to be missing much. Ryp and Bellaire’s art has its flaws – there’s no real distinction of look between the lead’s Briton sidekick and the Romans, our hero’s son appears to be having his first fighting lesson using metal rather than wooden swords – but the basic storytelling is clear enough, and it’s not as if anything said up to this point has been terribly enlightening, or as if there look to have been any unexpected turns I would have needed explaining. It’s not as if Milligan has entirely lost the plot - Counterfeit Girl was still recognisably him – but between this, The Discipline, New Romancer and the last Bad Company, there’s a real sense of his recent work failing to live up to the impressive standards he once set. And not even all that long ago – Hell, the man made a really good read out of a New 52 book devoted to the sodding Red Lanterns, for heavens’ sake!

Update: downloaded it from Netgalley too in case their file, having gone up later, was complete - but no, exactly the same. Evidently the same care and attention being applied as at every other stage of the project's completion.

I have been reading comic books since I was a child, and I am well past my half century. I have read everything from regular super hero books to what was known as Underground, to just about anything that had pictures and was in a comic book form.

This is all to say I am aware of bloody, fighting comics. Read them as super hero comics. Read them as underground or independent comics. Doesn't mean I have to like them. This book is set in the time of Nero, and involves a detective trying to find out what is killing all the noble children.

There are vestal virgins, and talking statures, and gladiators, and slaves, and you know what? I really didn't care about the any of them.

So, perhaps this book is for you. Perhaps you like fighting and blood, and mysteries of the gods, and emperors. But I never really got into any of this, and when, as another reviewer pointed out, our review copy's last chapter lacked words, it didn't really make a difference.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.