This may be the best 'Lady Mechanika' volume yet, but it's a little unusual for a few reasons.

For one, series creator Joe Benítez doesn't provide most of the art this time and neither does his regular colleague Martin Montiel. They're both here but Brian Ching is responsible for easily the majority of the artwork. For another, what art they did contribute is confined to the prologues at the beginning of each of the five chapters. These are spent half a millennium ago in Anahuac City, providing the back story for a pivotal character, and only those pages feature the typically ornate borderwork that Benítez is known for.

What's more, I think I'm suddenly out of order, at least kinda-sorta. This is volume six in the series and it does follow book five, 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', with Archie Lewis not present because he continues to pout after Lady Mechanika saved him in that book from a premature death courtesy of his fae muse. However, there's an extra volume, not numbered, called 'La Dama de la Muerte', and I've long wondered whereabouts in the series it fits. Goodreads states it's a 'Day of the Dead Special' that sits in between books three and four and maybe that's when it was published but my not reading it hasn't made a single difference to my runthrough of the rest.

At least until now, because ‘La Dama de la Muerte’ features here as a character and, while I doubt that not having read that standalone adversely affected my reading of this book, I'd bet money it would have enhanced it. So, I guess that's where I'm going next month instead of 'The Monster of the Ministry of Hell', the seventh numbered volume. Let's see if 'La Dama de la Muerte' ought to be situated in between books five and six. I'd like to read more of her Aztec back story.

While we start in Anahuac City, presumably somewhere in modern day Mexico and, prologue over for chapter one, we skip to the present in Mechanika City so Lady Mechanika can ask Dr. Littleton to look in on Lewis once in a while, she promptly leaves for Spain and that's where we spend most of this book. The location is Pazo de Calvitero, which I believe is fictional, though it may have been inspired by the Calvitero mountain in Salamanca, as Alejandro de Calvitero, the MacGuffin of the story, attends the University of Salamanca. Lady Mechanika is there through the invitation of his mother, Leonora, who's an old friend. She's English but married to a Spanish nobleman, the Barón de Calvitero, and she wants help with Alejandro who appears to be possessed.

I've praised Benítez and Montiel in every book for their artwork, which is exquisitely detailed and quintessentially steampunk, but their Lady Mechanika is rigid and severe and always posed in an elegant but not quite natural fashion. Of course, that may be entirely appropriate, since she's not a regular human being but one seriously enhanced through mechanical genius. Ching's Mechanika is just as dedicated and powerful but a little softer and more natural. She's still overtly different, as the Barón realises when her red eyes catch the light, but she can pass much better. Oddly, the prologues that were the work of Benítez and Montiel look more like a Disney movie, merely with the usual borders intact.

For the most part, I actually prefer this new look, and feel that it echoes her search for her origin, to explain why she is how she is. That's a very human search, so it seems appropriate for her to be portrayed with a little more humanity. The only reason that I hinted at a caveat there is that she has a cute retroussé nose. That's not inherently a bad thing, as it looks great on her, but that has less of an impact when we realise that it looks great on Leonora too and, in fact, all but one of the female characters in the book. Clearly Ching has a type and it's noses that turn up just a little. It's enough to make us unfairly doubt Senora Delfina, the curandera in the village, because she's the one exception. Oh, and none of the men have retroussé noses because that's clearly not manly.

Anyway, back to the story, Padre Dominguez is dealing with young Alejandro's problem but there are red flags. There's a galvanic machine that plays no part in exorcisms and a hint that the ultra-masculine Barón may be just as upset at the thought that his son prefers boys, you know, like that, as his being possessed by a demon. Maybe it's the same thing, because it's clearly inhuman and no son of his, yadda yadda. Given the strict religious interpretation in play, it's good that Lady M is there, because this takes a very different direction and she's the only one truly open to it.

I won't spoil it because it deserves to be built in the way that Benítez and regular co-writer, M. M. Chen, build it. I'll just say that it plays firmly in the realms of the supernatural and mythological, a heady mix that gifts Ching with some intricate character designs. While the community based in a Salamanca club doesn't hide what it truly is from the public particularly well, its elders don't hide what they are at all. La Reina Sangre in the Aztec scenes strides through the world with arrogant pride—then again, she also eats children—and La Reina Rojo in the Spanish scenes says outright, "I do not change my form to appease the sensibilities of lesser life forms." However, she doesn't venture onto the street to scare people.

There's a message in this book and it's about tolerance and prejudice. To one point of view, there are a lot of monsters here. La Reina Sangre is the most overt, but history presumably took care of her five-hundred years ago. La Reina Rojo looks like another and her many followers fit the bill as well, but to a lesser degree there's also Lady Mechanika. There's also a dark angel of vengeance who goes by La Madrina, the Godmother, who's slicing her way through the ranks of the monsters above. That doesn't mean that she isn't a monster herself. Given his obvious prejudices, it isn't at all unfair to list the Barón among the monsters, even if he, unlike the others, is entirely human.

The morality of the book is personified in Lady Mechanika, of course, who's a little more open to people being different from others, given that she's precisely that herself. While I may not quite entirely buy into the ending, it's a strong one that highlights how some monsters only appear to be such and others are monsters of their own making, which is a choice that can be changed. The question surrounding the later pages revolves around which will do that. Again, I won't spoil that but I will say that some do and some don't and that's fair, both inherently and with regards to the continuation of this series.

I've mentioned before in 'Lady Mechanika' reviews that I prefer the more substantial volumes in the series and this is one of them, because, like 'The Tablet of Destinies', my favourite of the prior books, it takes its time unfolding over five chapters. What's more, this one feels more consistent in flow, not relying on episodic location shifts. It's focused on what it's doing from the moment we reach Spain and the bookend scenes back home work with that, as do the prologue chapters in the Aztec empire. I may be hinting at one of those spoilers here but the subject matter lends itself to the gothic and there are some utterly glorious gothic panels. I covet that coach.

With a more human (but not too human) Lady Mechanika, a more substantial and focused story and a deeper exploration of theme, along with the space all those components needed to unfold with an appropriate level of urgency but still enough time to breathe, I think it's safe to say that this has toppled 'The Tablet of Destinies' as my favourite volume thus far. The bonus is the way in which the gradual series arc quest for Lady Mechanika to learn more about her origins may have been moved on substantially and without being an aside. I look forward to finding out if that's the case in book seven but not next month. That's the standalone, 'La Dama de la Muerte'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by Joe Benítez click here
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