Xavier Dorison

Free copy received in exchange for an honest review.

In Animal Farm we follow the animal state as it slowly goes from “all animals are equal” to “some are more equal than others”. Here we are already at that stage. We have animals ruled by bull and his dog guards and worked down to the bones like slaves.

This story instead focuses on revolution and finding the best way to fight back. I don't think I should reveal more than that about the story.

I was a bit lukewarm about it at the start. I felt like it wasn’t bringing anything new. But slowly it got more and more interesting and I started to get more emotionally involved, too. And then the end was just perfect.

We get some interesting characters with different personalities and ideas. With their own personal stories. We also get quite strong POVs from the leadership position. I especially enjoyed the character of one of the guard dogs.

I really liked the art. It can be a bit difficult to show detailed emotions on animal faces, but the drawing of the whole scene helped to convey the right atmosphere and feelings.

This was marked as volume 1, so I suppose more is to come, but it also works as a standalone, so I can only recommend it to everyone.… (mehr)

Older readers will remember the movie Abyss from the 80's. Same as in Abyss here we have a huge submarine (military in this case) finding something fascinating at the bottom of Mediterranean Sea.

Entire comic has a feel of accompanying comic version of a movie (which of course is not the case). From the beginning entire atmosphere is pretty oppressive and claustrophobic and crew although OK'd by medical checkups before the start of the voyage has its own issues that slowly start coming to the surface. When horror from the sea starts influencing everyone onboard we are shown how people's priorities change and selfishness, trauma's and deep fears (and insanity) start to surface.

So in short story is like a cross between Abyss, Event Horizon and Sphere. It is consistent and (aside from some graphical issues like the sudden submarine width getting to the carrier size) pretty good.

Art is good, it aims to have photo realistic presentation of persons (I can see that some of reviewers identified the faces because they are likes of famous movie and TV stars). Panoramas are very detailed and when you look at the submarine and environment you can be only astonished by the sheer size and vastness of this mysterious complex. Some parts are weird like aforementioned submarine size change - though story happens in the future so, OK, giant subs.... why not I guess.
Atmosphere is almost palpable, eeriness of strange constructions and especially the enormous graveyard. Even ancient evil lurking in the shadows is shown in parts, as an outline, ever present but not visible in full, like something out of nightmare.

Recommended to all fans of thriller and horror stories.… (mehr)

Interesting story set in a Europe during the religious wars period. Story follows one Hans Stalhoffer, sword master and tutor to the King of France. After losing a duel and his position to Malestranza, representative of the new approaches to warfare, Hans moves to the remote mountains of France [on a border with today's Switzerland] and starts working as an enforcer for local landlords.

Suddenly everything changes as Hans' old friend, doctor from the court, and his young protege suddenly arrive and ask him to help them cross over to Geneva. They are being chased by King of France's men because they carry the first translation of Holy Bible to French language. At first reluctant to risk his life (and life of his friend) for something he considers just bunch of paper Hans will find himself thrown into a fight not only with KIng's men (led by Malestranza) but also with people living in these remote regions that are slowly getting involved in the bloody religious war. It is a story with the bitter sweet ending and it worked for me.

Through all of this we see conflict of ideas - reformation moving on with the goal of bringing God to ordinary people (and thus removing the need for any intermediary like official churches and clergy) that will pave the way for great progress (social and scientific) in Europe on one hand and on another change in warfare. I will not go into long talks about how old times always look better than current times but truth be told Renaissance shook the world and then Reformation shook that greatest of all pillars - faith and started the war over it. What emerged were forces that had greater autonomy and with that proliferated conflict to much grander scale. There were no more armies of knights and nobles with their retinues fighting it off [almost one on one], now Europe saw (after a long time, Rome's being the last grand-scale armies) thousands of professional soldiers marching over it and fighting for whomever paid the most.

And this is what I think authors wanted to describe when talking about broadsword (Hans) and rapier (Metalstaza) - change of generations in which old warhorses that trained for war since they were kids are now getting replaced by citizen armies raised within short period of time, hastily trained and sent to wage war wherever their masters send them. War is no longer something that is learned and trained and lived (thus it took time and could not be started on the whim). It becomes common activity that anybody can engage in as long as they have money.

Is the story groundbreaking - of course not, but again if you ask me if we went by groundbreaking there would be 10 or 12 books on the shelves in the library. I enjoy stories of old professionals forced back from their retirement and this book fit the bill perfectly.

Art is pretty good, in some places outright gorgeous. You can feel the wetness and cold of the mountains in the winter. Action scenes are drawn very good and you can follow the sword fighting without losing orientation or asking yourself "now, how did he.....".

Pretty good book, highly recommended to action/adventure story fans.… (mehr)