In reviewing this volume of the Boys I've tried to take into account the fact that this is one book in a series and looking at how it adds to that series. The first thing I will say is that this book is a lot slower than the other books and is the least violent of all of them so far, but then this is a book devoted to Hughie who has always been a bit ill at ease with the violence meted out to the supes by Billy Butcher and the rest of the boys so really that should be no surprise. This is in effect an origin story for Hughie before his "origin story" as part of the narrative of the first book.
The story itself is a little strange and the characters in Hughie's hometown are made up of his slightly bizzare friends and then a cast of stereo-typical scottish characters reminiscent of Ennis's protrayal of other stereo-types in his other works (think the rednecks in the Preacher series). The introduction of Annie \ Starlight was, for me at least, slightly unexpected but it allows Hughie to continue with his narrative about his early years and of course there is the introduction of another significant character. My complaints with the storyline itself would be that there are a couple of points where it doesn't seem to go anywhere, building up set-pieces and then not really delivering but other than that I quite enjoyed the portrayal of the banter between Hughie and his mates and the feelings that their reunion stirs up him.
The artwork was a bit of disappointment and reminded me quite a lot of the work from vol 5 Herogasm so I can only assume that Darrick Robertson took a back seat on this one, it's a shame because Robertsons work seemed a bit grittier which suited the subject matter better than the sharper look it has here.
So in summary I'm still undecided about this volume, it doesn't have the punch of some of the other volumes but I still enjoyed reading it and was gutted it was so short (which is always a good sign). As I said at the start I'll have to wait and see how it fits into the overall story arc when the series is completed but one thing that is for sure is that I will definitely still be buying the next volume as The Boys is one of the finest series running today.