Pat McGreal (1953–2021)

The book uses photographs (as well as digital and painted artwork) of elaborate sets and costumed actors to carry the story, presenting a richly textured Victorian colonial style and exuding a lush, Middle Eastern mystique. It's a seamless blend of evocative, sensous photography that merges with digitally generated backgrounds to create a surprisingly real time and place of long ago or far away. In short, it evokes a mythic, Arabian Nights-like landscape of the mind's imaginings. The artwork show more alone is enough to make you read this graphic novel.

Vivian, a young English housewife, accompanies her insufferable husband on a diplomatic mission to an un-named Arabic country. There, they happen upon the local slave market, where Vivian becomes fascinated by a female slave.

Later, visiting the sultan along with her husband, Vivian is invited, quite improbably, to visit the royal harem. It really begins, though, when women of the East meet a woman of the West. There she hears the story of Rosalind, a white aristocrat kipnapped into the harem years before.

For years, woman are preceived in certain ways and must uphold their appearance and thoughts in a certain way to uphold their status. Well, Veils does the opposite. It allows the protagonist the daring decision to liberate her feminity and desires and in the process, sheds all her outer burdens. Truely literary and deep. Deals with the orient, feminism, and of course male domination on the female body.

The story is all about dualities: rank vs. power, public vs. closed societies, and real vs. fable, to name just a few. The dualities are so much sharper for being so close beside each other, as close and as far away as the harem behind the women's door.

Veils is a tale of eroticism and intrigue, and also something of a psychological mystery. It's up to you to peel away the veils -- one by one -- to learn the potentially deadly truth.

Book Details:

Title Veils
Author Pat McGreal
Reviewed By Purplycookie show less

Attracted to this by the lovely, painted art of Rebecca Guay (whose art in the books of White Wolf's Changeling won me too her), 'Veils' turned out to be quite a piece of work -- I don't think it's the future of comics by any shot, and I found the photo/computer rendered art awkward and often flat and lifeless in comparison to Guay's gorgeous styling...

But to say the least, the story was sound if somewhat predictable, and heavy with Empowered And Transformed woman, but it wasn't bad-- but it show more was definitely short a five star rating. (More like 3 1/2, but...) Still, give it a shot, it is quite pretty in places at the very least. show less

Mildly entertaining offering that sums up, at once, the admirable qualities of graphic novels and, also, their shortcomings. Very nicely put together, the illustrations are terrific but the actual text is mediocre, the writing pedestrian, subservient to the visuals. The resulting "story" is as two dimensional as the glossy paper it's printed on...

This was interesting. I didn't like the art at all (except the covers), but I thought the story was entertaining. I never really understood what da Vinci's intentions for Salai. I wasn't sure if he was meant to be a lover or a son - or both (ew...).

If you like period pieces and comics I would say definitely give it a try.