'The Castoffs Vol. 3: Rise of the Machines' by MK Reed and Brian Smitty Smith with art by Wyeth Yates continues the graphic novel series about young mages with different powers.

The story picks right up with the mages in the midst of a destroyed village. While they help rebuild, Ursa tries to build a relationship with the father she's never met before. Meanwhile the vast robot army is closing in on the city and the mages will need to try to stop them.

This is an unusual take on a fantasy series in a world with discarded tech. I like the characters. This volume felt like a middle volume and feels like it's getting things set up for the next act. I do also like the art in this series.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Oni Press, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

I have my pile of "Must read" books and I have my second pile of "Read them later...hopefully"
I have mixed feelings about this title. There is a lot going for it. I think it is the delivery style of the story, and quite frankly, I find some of the art a little "clunky" looking, and the pace a little slow for my tastes.
I enjoy it...but it is not my first choice.

**I received this book thanks to Netgalley and the publisher in exchange of honest review**

The story begins exactly where we left it and not to make too many spoilers I will talk about it very broadly. Initially, our three Mages went on a mission on behalf of their village chief.  After having faced various tasks and performed various tasks, Charris, Ursa and Thrin are in a human village where they had a fight in the previous episode. The village is semi-destroyed but they do not give up and find different things to do. Meanwhile Amira and the Machines become more and more powerful and advance ready to destroy the Mage.
What will happen to our three protagonists? Who will meet in the village? Who will change their lives? What will happen when Wizards clash with the machines? Will the war finally start?
The cover, this time is really wonderful. This certainly beats the previous ones and I was pleasantly surprised. What you see on the cover is Amira, Ursa's mother, who from Mage as she is, has passed from the enemy side and is head of the Machines.
The title, The Castoffs: Rise of the Machine suggests a lot, especially in the subtitle, The rise of the machines already puts to attention and gives us a message. What I hoped, that is a turning point on the side of the story, in this volume will be there and I hope it will be maintained in the following to come.
This time we are in a human village, Plumstead, where our heroines had arrived during the second volume. we will not move from here, if not at the end or in the pieces where we will see at work the mother of Ursa, terrible sorceress who has acquired in itself the Machines, always bitter enemies of the wizards .
The characters we will find, at least the main ones are always the same being the three main protagonists. The only thing that changes between Thrin, Ursa and Charris is that finally the girls are able to work as a team.
A new character introduced is Omarion, father of Ursa whom we will know in this volume and who besides being, at least apparently a good person has a mysterious side having lost his memory many years ago and not remembering to have had Ursa as a daughter. Amira, Ursa's mother, is in charge of the Surrogates / Machines and, in this volume, I can assure you that things will be a little more complicated. I'm curious to know how the fourth volume will be, having entered the clash mode.
Another character that we will investigate is Rosalba or Ro, who has joined the team and being bigger than the girls takes care of the situation and their safety, despite the three are able to take care of themselves. Moreover, we will know better a character that we met at the end of the second volume and that is a fairly fading and questionable magician. I'm talking about Duncan, who will help the village, fall in love and discover several things about him. a certainly questionable but well done character.
The central pivot in this volume begins to take shape, compared to the previous ones. The Machines are approaching, the war seems to be at the door and the three will jeopardize their lives together with Rosalba, Duncan and three other Wizards who are with them to save the others. Will they succeed? We will know it in the next volumes.
The graphics used are the same as the previous book and I really like it. This is surely what drives me to read these volumes as well as the curiosity to know if the story will take an interesting turn.
Rest of the opinion of the last review. I do not understand why creating these separate volumes when the story, at least in the first two could certainly be compressed and move to the interesting part as what happens in this volume. This is not known to us, the fact is that the story in this third volume of this saga between Magicians and Machines, takes a decidedly interesting turn than the previous ones.
I'm curious to know that fold will take the fourth volume that is interesting, given the final of this volume. I only hope that the fights are not discounted or discounted otherwise instead of improving, we get worse.
The only thing that I did not particularly appreciate in this volume was the welcoming of Omarion towards Ursa. Too simple, too easy, too fast. Not as I would have expected it to react. That is, discover you have one more daughter and - yes, you have lost your memory and all the rest - but seriously invite her to your home and hug her as if nothing had happened. A bit 'difficult at least in my opinion.
I'm particularly happy for Thrin, but I do not want to tell you anything, otherwise there's no taste, no?
I hope that history always goes on improving and that finally both the characters and the story acquire a much wider sense of what they understood in the first two volumes. It's good to know the characters but to highlight that instead of the common thread and the fight between Mage and Machines makes you lose a lot. I hope that from now on it will only be improved.
My rating for this book is: 3 stars and a half .

Trinh, Charris, and Ursa have been up to their eyeballs in danger and adventure. Now that they've saved the town they're due for a little rest and relaxation. Unfortunately, a lot of the residents blame the team for the destruction of their homes and shops, even though they helped save it. But on the plus side, there are a few residents excited to meet the girls and Ursa gets to meet the father she didn't know she had.

There's a lot of excellent character development for Ursa and Charris in this volume, a lot of secrets are starting to come to light, and Trinh meets someone special. Overall, this is a solid story that I enjoyed. It was slow in parts with big bursts of excitement and action. I felt like the pacing was a little strange sometimes, but new information, character development, and action were well-balanced. I found a few things confusing, probably because it had been a couple of months since I read the other volumes.

The best part of the volume, though, was the end. The end was excellent and has me anxious to read more of the issues!

Overall, I enjoyed "Rise of the Machines" even though I did find a few pragmatic points.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. </i>

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

The machines march relentlessly onwards in vol 3, but I must confess up front that I have not read volumes one or two. I asked to review this one because I thought it sounded interesting, and though it was rather hard to get into because I'd missed two-thirds of this story so far, I have to say overall I liked it even though some of it made little sense to me.

'Rise of the Machines' sounds suspiciously like an entry in the Terminator movie series, doesn't it? Wait! It is and entry in the terminator series! Couldn't we have 'Onslaught of the Machines' or 'March of the Machines' here, since they're already quite risen it would seem?! A little more originality never goes amiss.

The story itself was a bit slow-moving and it was rather side-tracked from the main issue which was, believe it or not, the march of the machines. I found it hard to believe that if this were a real life adventure, the main characters would be so distracted by relatively petty village problems that they would forget that an army of robots led by an evil woman were bearing closer with each passing minute.

Instead of going out to harass and attack the machines, or prepare traps for them, they spent their time fixing village issues which would be rendered completely irrelevant if the village was razed by the oncoming machines! They evidently didn't take the threat seriously until it was almost upon them.

I'm sure we've all been there, but sometimes people become so desperate to tell a certain story in a certain way that that they forget the reality of the characters in the story they're telling. They forget that they are people with strengths and weaknesses, and with hopes, dreams, and desperation, and with problems and pains, and so end-up with a story in which characters exhibit unrealistic behaviors. I always let the characters tell the story once they've been fully-created, because it makes for a much more realistic story-telling for me, and it often takes me (and the characters) in interesting and quite unexpected directions.

That said, this story was interesting and the relationships quite engrossing. The art work was decent, but initially, it was hard for me to tell the gender of the characters from the illustrations. That's not necessarily a bad thing and normally I would approve of it, but having missed the first two parts of this story, I felt a bit lost, and a little more cluing-in would have been appreciated since the names were not a good guide! I spent most of this story thinking Rosaiba was a female! It wasn't until close to the end that I realized he was not!

So in conclusion, while I do not personally feel compelled to pursue this story any further after this volume, I did enjoy what was offered to a certain extent, and so I recommend it with the caveat that you start with volume one! These are not stand-alone volumes!

Insufferably difficult to review - the adobe file was bugged (but hey, never mind, netgalley think it's unique to my household, apparently, so they won't do anything about it) and the kindle file on edelweiss hadn't even been lettered. What I did mangle together from the two was impenetrable to anyone who'd not read it from the start.

I feel like this installment definitely had more of a young adult feel, while the earlier volumes felt more like middle grade to me, so I guess if you are reading this with children then warning that it is becoming a bit more grown up [although nothing to really 'worry' about yet in my opinion]. This was another interesting volume and it's nice to get some more background on a few of the characters, but overall I just feel like the plot in this series is moving at a snail's pace and I always think the big battle is like RIGHT around the corner but then we take another random detour instead of making progress on it. It's still an interesting series and I like the characters enough to keep reading it, I just wish there was a bit more action overall.