Sara

Before I really begin I just want to say that my original plan was to talk about all the series that involve Tim Hunter at once. This was before I saw everything that would encompass. Yes, I know about the original limited series, the proper Books of Magic series, the Books of Faerie as well as a vague knowledge that there were some other titles out there. Once I started going through the digital comics collection I found, I realized that there were entirely too many books to consider in one discussion. Moreover it became clear that some of the offshoots were completely different stories about different characters or even completely different facets of Tim. As such it only made sense to break things down a bit, and the logical point was to take Tim's introduction to magic and his halting, stuttering, tragedy filled first steps into magic on their own. I will admit that when I was reading these, I started with the LS, then read the Children's Crusade storyline (after a brief hiccup involving me going from the LS straight into the proper run wherein I discovered that all those weird allusions to other stuff they made were from CC so I backtracked) before launching into the main series anew.

This wasn't the first time I had ever read BoM although it was the first time that I was lucky enough to be able to get my hands on all the issues. I only vaguely remember when I got the TPB containing the LS. It would have had to have been sometime during high school. Thanks to my English teacher I was completely and utterly in love with both Sandman and Neil Gaiman. As such I was sort of on a quest to find and devour every Neil Gaiman related thing I could get my hands on, which I'm sure is how I found the BoM LS. I know that I got either the first or the second BoM TPB when my father dropped me off at college for orientation/classes. I know that because I took it to the dance mixer some of the girls on my floor dragged me to, and since I just sat there reading it instead of dancing like an idiot I was chided a little by the upper class men supervising the event. It should come as a surprise to no one that I went to a dance and read rather than be social when I didn't know anyone.

I had always wanted to get more of the TPBs and finish reading the series. It was just one of those books that didn't demand my attention, though. It was quiet and somber so it was sometimes easy for me to forget about. It also had the misfortune of not being entirely written by Neil Gaiman. Had it been I'm sure I would have found ways to get it all much sooner. As it was I eventually put the other TPBs on my Amazon wish list and then promptly forgot about them each and every time I made an order. Once they fell out of print I removed them from my list assuming that was that. This occurred during my mostly out of comics phase so it was a lot easier to accept. So you can imagine how excited I was when I got back into comics and discovered all the BoM comics in that beautiful digital comics cache I had. I won't lie. There were times when I was reading the series that I honestly considered stopping because I just didn't feel like the series was at all worthy to is LS predecessor. In the end, though, it pulled together, and I am really glad that I read it because it contains worlds inside of it.

( Books of Magic *possible spoilers* )