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A collection of good, individual stories that tie in with Secret Invasion. They mostly include recasting of previous events, with the Skrull viewpoint or Skrull involvement explained. While good, they have week (or no, in the case of #44) ties to the New Avengers.

#43 fills us in on the Skrull plans that lead to the ship landing in Savage Land.
#44 is the Skrulls attempting to extract information from clone doubles of the Illuminati (with some really dodgy science about memory and intelligence)
#45 is the Skrull doubles during House of M
#46 is the Skrulls attempting to infiltrate the Hood's gant
#47 is Luke & Jessica's backstory ( )

There are two New Avengers tie-in trades for the crossover event Secret Invasion. And honestly, there is no good reason, other than greed, why they weren't collated into one book. Never-the-less, they are well worth reading.

The first half of book 2 picks up from the "New Avengers Vol. 8: Secret Invasion, Book 1" Savage Land story. Captain America and the escaped heroes that had been replaced by Skrulls crash there. I'll admit that Cap confused me while reading the main event and other tie-ins. He appeared to be the real Cap, who was ostensibly assassinated at the end of Civil War. Since heroes never really die, I thought maybe THAT Cap had been a Skrull. This story finally clarifies his status. Also included are events that take place from the Skrull POV as they plan the invasion - including how they learned to hide themselves from all methods of detection. This part was ingenious, though readers will have to suspend their disbelief (even more than usual).

The middle section shows Jessica Drew during House of M. I found it interesting that Wanda's power was hoodwinked by the Skrulls as well. The next story reveals how thorough the Skrulls tried to be in infiltrating any super-powered "group," including the Red Hood's. The book closed, as the first book opened, with a story of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Again, it's not essential but does loosely tie in.

Overall, both books are excellent companions to the main crossover event. Highly recommended. ( )

As with New Avengers Volume 8 Secret Invasion Book One (whew, what a mouthful), this volume of the New Avengers is really Brian Michael Bendis' depository for stories that look back on recent Marvel events and how they really played out as pertains to the Skrull invasion. Artwork is by Billy Tan, except for issue #45 (Jim Cheung) and #47 (Michael Gaydos). Issue by issue:
#43: The story of Skrulls who sacrifice themselves to become perfect replicas of Marvel heroes.
#44: How the Skrulls figured out how to make perfect replicas of Marvel heroes.
#45: How the hidden Skrulls handled Marvel's House of M cross-over event. Damn Bendis, but it makes a lot of sense. All these cross-overs, like House of M, Civil War, Annihilation, etc. if you know about the Skrull invasion, they fit together so well.
#46: How The Hood and his criminal syndicate find out about the Skrulls, and a big reveal about the Hood's origin.
#47: A non-action issue about Luke Cage and Jessica Jones' courtship.

So, another mixed bag of goodies. Kind of like being given a peek into Brian Michael Bendis' notebook to see how he planned everything out. Interesting, but not enthralling. ( )

Wow, this was what I would call an absolute trainwreck. I understand that this is a tie-in to the Secret Invasion event, but so was "Book 1" in this title, and it actually had a plot. This book has no overlying arc to it; instead, there are just piecemeal glimpses of what's going on in the greater Marvel Universe during the Skrull invasion. And since I really don't care about Secret Invasion and have no intention on becoming well-versed on it, I found this trade to be a complete waste of time.

The only reason that I'm giving it 2.5 stars is because the last issue collected here, featuring Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and their baby, was pretty cute. Otherwise, this one was a dud. ( )