Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1) by Leigh Bardugo

What I drank: winter is here, I had red wine duh

The gist is a Wonder Woman origin story but she’s a super hot teen and is helping another teen girl, Alia, who’s the descendant of Helena of Troy and whose existence may bring about a terrible war unless Diana helps her.

Here’s when I got really drunk. Spoilers, obvi.

When you write a book that’s not your source matetial, that’s super hard. You have hit certain criteria while hitting your own ideas and that may not…be achieved. I liked the idea of the DC icons series but after this I don’t know if I’m down. Have you watched gotham? Watching a teen (is he a teen? Is he a preteen? I DONT KNOW) Bruce Wayne battle angst and adult foes doesn’t do it for me, bc theres just some reality yoi cant ask me to suspend. Teen WW battling, well, ALL the foes doesn’t do it for me either.

Aside from that central frustration? (Which again, teen origin stories for established adult chatavters are not the authors’ fault, it’s just not always going to translate.) Alia (the Helen of troy descendant), her bro, and her bestie are POC, hell yeah. They have depth, they are written well, they are INTERESTING, and none of them died to further a non-POC characters story or motivation. (Oh and thank christ the bestie is a girl because if it was a boy and she falls in love with him I would lose my damn mind.)

**End Spoilers**

But what is with these female leads who have none of the friends? Even at my most outcasty, I had more than one friend. Diana was a princess on feminism island, but she has ONE friend? Alia is a big nerd and only has ONE friend? I know i know, that’s wandering into Maas territory, and YA tropes in general, and we’re not here for that today.

Again, this does NOT speak of Bardugo’s work, she has descriptively beautiful writing. If you read anything by Bardugo, Six of Crows is fantastic, and her Grisha trilogy is great (and you don’t NEED to read it before Six of Crows but it wouldnt hurt). But I was left feeling all the blah, and I just wish all the characters was aged SLIGHTLY older.

What I Gave it: Three Candy canes

What to pair: A Greek white. There’s a LOT of Greek and Greece and mythology in this book.