Appleseed, Volume 3: The Scales of Prometheus Book

The first two volumes were a bit tough to follow. This one was completely impenetrable. Shirow's dialogue bombards the reader with facts, and it's very difficult to sort out what's world-building background info, and what's directly relevant to the story. Whatever thread supposedly tied one chapter to the next was completely lost on me, and I'm not an unintelligent person. In the book's favor, Shirow's mecha designs and action sequences were top-notch as usual; it's a very cool looking book. But it would have been nice to be able to put some context to those action scenes, and to understand what was at stake in the larger story. Maybe it was just a translation issue, but I spent most of this book scratching my head, trying to figure out what was going on.