This was a completely blind lend based on someone knowing I liked Monstress and Ms. Marvel (as well as him lending me more of both – he hasn’t even met me! People are great). I was immediately taken by the cover art, which has the nice balance of whimsy with potential seriousness, and the colour-scheming which just… I don’t know, the slightly out there pastels are just really quite attractive. And then the blurb is definitely selling it – it’s a crime mystery in an interesting fantasy setting… and I’m not totally averse to some mystery.
It’s also got that nice heft that a lot of first trades do, to hook you into buying more of them, which often makes it a more satisfying read because there’s enough substance to actually take you through more than a single sitting. Because sure, I can sit and appreciate the art and take my time (and occasionally I do)… but I want to know what happens next. In a way, that is a good thing – it means I care about the story. But it does often make comics not quite in there with the cost/enjoyment ratio. Aaand the heft fixes that (and, indeed, sucks you in… because marketers know what they’re on about).
That said… I still read it in one sitting.
But! But! It’s because it’s really good. I genuinely couldn’t put it down because I was totally sucked in. Because it has a really excellent, properly good mystery at the centre of it, which is… actually kinda surprising? I think I’ve got into the habit of assuming fantasy mysteries will use the fantasy stuff as a prop for a less than perfect mystery core. “Oh, sure, it was super obvious who dun the murder (that guy was shifty as from the beginning) but there were dragons to distract me so I’m cool with it” – that kind of thing. I’m not… totally sure where I got this assumption from, because I have definitely read some good fantasy mystery (isn’t there a mystery in Anno Dracula, for instance?). And yet. So once it became clear that’s what we were doing, I think I set my expectations to low. And I was wrong. The mystery is absolutely solid, with perfect pacing in the reveals and twists – and no twists just for the fun of it. It’s one of the ones where you look back at all the stuff that led you to the finale and see all the clues you missed, but in hindsight are so obvious. All the hints you might have picked up on and didn’t. It definitely manages some foreshadowing, and you do get a sense that x person is a shifty bugger… but it still pulls off some proper reveals and keeps you thinking up to the last minute.
And it doesn’t fall into the reverse problem either. The fantasy isn’t a thin facade over a definitely-murder-mystery-really plot. It’s integral to it, and really well done. Post-apocalyptic radioactive desert with single habitable city and nomads (some religious and nasty) isn’t a totally original setting, but the details are there, and brought out at the right moments, to make it feel unique. The political unrest and the way the non-human characters are prejudiced against are well done and realistic, not falling into the tropey stuff, while still being strongly present and central to the plot. You have a mixture of bigot and non-bigot views (and everything in the middle), and you get these from page 1… basically, it’s grounded fantasy. The people feel real, even while the setting is fantastical – you have real personalities that behave in plausible ways, which is the most important thing.
The main character is definitely a prominent force (the secondary ones suffer a bit at her expense) but she is very very good, and so I’m not totally upset by this. She’s the captain of the police, while also being a Sculpted (non-human, specifics left unclear), with a mysterious backstory (I know, I was shocked too). She’s definitely more towards the “maverick who gets results” end of the spectrum than I usually like, but she pulls it off, and definitely gets the reader on her side, especially with her humour. The royal family are also a good secondary cast, as are some of the subordinate police, many of whom do also undercut the serious parts of the plot by just being… funny. Not laughing at them, but bringing a sense of day-to-day-ness to the plot, puncturing a dramatic moment with mundanity, that sort of thing. It’s… the sort of humour that Pratchett does, for instance. Aggressively injecting the humdrum of realism into a fantasy setting that forces it not to take itself seriously, and I really like it.
That said, I have a couple of issues. The major one is that the messengers are tiny… homunculi I guess? They go around swearing, muttering, farting and emitting green gas from their arses. And it just struck me as childish. The joke wears off after… a page? I’m not generally a fan of the grosser end of humour, especially visual (Ren and Stimpy – the stuff of nightmares), and this definitely was a bit too far for me… but that’s more a personal preference than a proper failing on the book’s part. It fits into the general style of what they’re going for, but strikes me as a little clunkier than the rest.
There are also parts where the layout of the page made me read panels in the wrong order. Obviously I don’t think it should always be squares of panels reading left to right, top to bottom, all the way through, but you need to cue the direction of reading for the viewer. It drops you out of the flow of the story to have to go back and re-read a conversation in the right order having muddled it the first time, and this happened more than once to me (though the massive two page spread in the middle of the book was the worst, and I don’t think I actually got the conversation in the right order the second time either). It wasn’t an overwhelming issue – I did mostly manage to get it the second time – but I do feel this shouldn’t be a puzzle for the reader to solve.
But both are minor niggles, and I was entirely happy giving the book 4 stars on Goodreads. I will definitely continue the series and am really pleased I read it.
Advertisements Share this:
