Arrow - A Generation of Vipers by Susan GriffithMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The conclusion of the two-part crossover begun in The Flash: The Haunting of Barry Allen, Arrow: A Generation of Vipers is jam-packed with story threads. Not only does it have an all-new storyline centered on Oliver Queen and his team - early Season 4 vintage, roughly, so we pretty much get all Ollie, Dig, Felicity, and, thankfully, Thea as well - trying to recover an important artifact from the castle of an evil count in a country mashing up Austria and Russia, but we still have to deal with Barry's little problem of blurring out of space and time whenever he combines his speedster powers with emotional responses.
And then, because this is an Arrow story, we get a fair few flashbacks to Ollie's past. Not only to his old playboy life - including Tommy Merlyn, and Ghasi Lazarov, a previously unseen old friend from the same country he and his friends are currently hoping to pull off a sort of heist in - but also to his days on the island of Lian Yu, of course.
Clay and Susan Griffiths have their work cut out for them, juggling the many story threads over the course of 400 pages again. It's a delicate balancing act, but they pull it off with the aplomb of Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland as Spider-Man - that is to say, they do it well. Maybe there's a few too many scenes that aren't really necessary - like Barry almost getting honeypotted by a Russian agent, because it happens once, Ollie calls him out on his carelessness, and then it's all but forgotten - or, also, just about every Malcolm Merlyn scene because I'm still so over his extra ass after the show (as well as Legends of Tomorrow) ran his welcome into the ground years ago. But hey, those Malcolm Merlyn scenes, like a lot of others in both of the Griffiths' books, played out just enough like one of my old fanfics that I was very much able to appreciate them.
What I really appreciated, of course, was how the cast of The Flash being part of the stoyr didn't feel like an afterthought. Sadly, it's not a perfect integration in most cases. Caitlin has just about nothing to do (except maybe a scene or two that plays out like a SnowBarry hurt/comfort fic, which the previous book had many more of), and neither does Joe - or Iris, which is a shame considering how much Haunting significantly improved her characterization compared to what we get on the show. (Virtually eliminating WestAllen romance was a massive help in that regard, of course.) But Cisco? Here, he gets an improved role compared to Haunting, because he gets to basically be the comic relief, as he should because it's his element. Though the source material tends to lapse into excessive grimdarkness at times, bringing in two of the brightest sparks from The Flash - even if one of them, his story is about him suffering serious psychosomatic torture and I just wanted to fraking hug the poor guy the whole bloodydamn time! - alleviates that most common Arrow flaw magnificently.
Though I'm disappointed that this is the end of the Griffiths' involvement with the Arrowverse, for now - I can always hope for a good Legends story where they put Wally West to good use 'cause The Flash never does, though that apparently owes somewhat to Keiynan Lonsdale's busy schedule too, or perhaps a Supergirl story that ignores the ridiculous ways in which the writers of that show bend over backwards to torture us poor Karamel fanpeople - I'm very happy that they again delivered some terrific material to cap off this duology - a duology which Marc Guggenheim has supposedly canonized, to my delight.
Ave atque vale, Flash and Arrow, till you guys return to my small screen in the new year.
And on another happy note - fellow Olicity fans, this book is for you too. No BS.
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