Serge Le Tendre

In this graphic novel, we follow a gruff heroic knight forced out of retirement and a beautiful warrior maiden with a temper as they search for the magical ingredients the maiden's sorceress-princess mother requires to stop the return of a despotic imprisoned god.

With an interesting tonal mix between the typical epic fantasy stakes, typical low fantasy character flaws and splashes of irreverent blue comedy, the story is rather engaging, even as it to some extent goes through the motions of show more the typical genre Quest. This is, however, greatly alleviated by the ending, which feels both surprising and inevitable at the same time.

What really sells one on this story, though, is of course the gorgeous artwork, which really gets a chance to shine in the huge page format this book has.

However, the English translation is unfortunately rather erratic, sometimes making it hard to know exactly what a character is referring to with a given statement, and I often had to pan back and forth between several panels to make proper sense of what was being said. If you can read it in the original French, I therefore suspect you'll get a much better experience.

But even with the translation's issues, I really enjoyed this, and would not hesitate to recommend it to any fans of epic fantasy who are looking for something pretty to read that is both tried and true, but also ever so slightly different. show less

The evil god Ramor is about to be released from his mystical prison. The sorceress Mara can stop it, but she needs time to work the enchantment, time which she doesn't have, so she sends her daughter Pelisse and the aged warrior Bragon (who may or may not be Pelisse's father) to search for the legendary Time Bird. Aided by a not-so-mysterious "stranger" they face mercenaries, hunters, angry birds and many other obstacles. A fun adventure with great art and infused with a bawdy sense of humor.

I found the art fascinating and borderline offensive but always compelling. The story was okay but hard to follow at times, maybe in part due to nuance being lost in translation?

Rich stock exchange broker makes a fatal mistake while driving a car under influence and ends up killing pedestrians. This event stops his life (literally) and he soon moves away from everyone while contemplating about his actions and innocent lives he so abruptly ended.

And then he becomes a center-piece of mysterious affair that includes his father (that left his family years ago) and unknown people bend on killing him. And lets not forget a even more mysterious man showing up in the nick show more of time just to save him from imminent danger ... or what exactly is his goal?

Very interesting story reminiscent of [a:Robert Ludlum|5293|Robert Ludlum|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1208465267p2/5293.jpg]'s books.

Recommended to all action fans. show less