Ok so. It’s called Geis/Curse of the Chosen by Alexis Deacon and consists of three books; a matter of life and death, a game without rules, and the will that shapes the world. It’s what got me into the whole ‘death game’ minigenre that lead to me reading the hunger games, maze runner, then eventually playing danganronpa and then your turn to die (yippee!!! yahoo!! yttd!!)
The whole thing is lovingly hand drawn in charcoal with a really charming and unique artstyle;
and it follows the story of Io (the girl in the blue dress) in a contest to become the next chief after their current one dies. It brings the contract element and crazy trials of yttd, the active murder and openness of the trial grounds that the hunger games has, and a bunch of medieval magic that’s really something unique.
I wish it were more well known bc it’d definitely have at least a small fandom, but it really only gets around by word of mouth from a very select few who know of the series. I don’t think you can get the series anywhere for free, but the first two books are probably only a 30-60 minute read each and I’ve photographed every page of them.. so if you wanted to say.. dm me on discord.. I can send it to you there :>
you guys should all read it you wanna read it so bad
Me in the Io dress/Crowgate Gown that my bratty ass kid turned down. WHATEVER now I don't have to work more to alter it! I might be two times too old to play Io but at least I can pass for her dad! XD;;;
I don't do tights/stockings whatever but thankfully I had a pair of pants that more than less matched the gown. Close enough. XD
Reluctant Reader Wednesday: Curse of the Chosen Vol 1 by Alexis Deacon
As the great chief Matarka was dying, instead of naming an heir, she created a contest where fifty souls would compete and fate would decide who would become the next ruler.
Io is one of the fifty, and she doesn’t even know why she was summoned to this place. But she is a stronger competitor than anyone expects. In challenge after challenge, Io demonstrates her bravery and resourcefulness. But some competitors don’t want to wait until the end of the contest to claim victory. And many competitors don’t realize what they’re risking if they lose the contest.
This graphic novel collects the first two books of an imaginative and immersive supernatural fantasy series filled with action, adventure, allies, enemies. and monsters. The artwork is painterly and dreamlike, and will help to captivate readers. Give this book to teens and adults who enjoy fantasy stories about magic, monsters, heroes, and villains.
117. Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black, by Marcus Sedgwick, Julian Sedgwick, and Alexis Deacon
Owned?: No, library
Page count: 319
My summary: A conscientious objector and firefighter in World War Two, Harry Black is caught between two worlds. He wants to be an artist, but the War put paid to that. All around him - his father, his brother - want him to be a fighter. But there is another story underneath, an older story. And it threatens to consume him.
My rating: 5/5
My commentary:
So anyone who knows me might know that I have something of a Thing for mythology, and Greek mythology falls under my interests. I am not particularly ashamed to say that when I saw the title of today’s book, I grabbed it instantly without putting much thought into that decision. I didn’t even read the back, I didn’t know it was about WWII until I began reading it for real, before bed one night. And, friend, I didn’t put it down until I was done.
How do I start? First, this book is a combination of prose fiction, in the style of Harry Black’s diary, illustation, also from Harry’s diary, and poetry, supposedly written by Orpheus as he follows and takes hold of Harry in his travels. The illustrations are moody and detailed and always add to the tone of the piece, even if they don’t literally depict what is happening in the narrative at that point. See, Harry took a blow to the head, and isn’t quite sure if all he’s experiencing is real. It all started with a fiddler on a bomb site, and now he’s calling himself Orpheus. He tries to rationalise it, but we the reader know better. We can see the poems along the text directly written by Orpheus. We can see how his journey is mimicking that mythical trip to the Underworld - a young man descending below the earth to save a dead soul, in this case his brother, who was in a pub that suffered a direct bomb hit. Nobody believes he’s alive but Harry, who is convinced that he’s buried beneath the rubble. Mostly because he dropped a glass eye in the rubble and saw his brother through it.
This all adds to the dreamlike quality of this book. Harry goes from place to place disjointedly, not quite sure how he got there. He talks to people who might not have been real, but if they weren’t then how did he get out of situations where they helped him? The poetry sections are philosophical and meandering, watching poor Harry with a voyeur‘s eye, almost mocking him with their inability to give him any real, active help.
The juxtaposition of war and myth is fascinating to me. True, there is war in many a myth, but it tends to be the ancient war of arrows and swords and egos, not this modern war of bombs and burning, things that people alive today experienced. And this book doesn’t subscribe to the usual mythology of war, either. Its main character is a conscientious objector, who sees war for what it truly is, chaos and mess and death without purpose. His blind struggle to save the people he can conceptualise - his brother, the little girl he befriends in the hospital - represents that grasping effort of humanity to preserve life even in this chaos. It brings the reality of war into this mythical framework.
And that leads me to the final thing I find so interesting about this story - its use of reality. Remember how I said that Harry took a blow to the head? He’s not sure how much of what he’s seen was real, and neither are we, the reader. There are gaps in his knowledge. Can he really see through glass eyes? How did he get out of the Underground shelter? Was there really someone rowing? Is the fiddler real? Is he really Orpheus? And all of these questions are brought smashing through into our worldview at the end. (Spoilers, obviously.) Yes, this book was written...by Harry’s brother, after his death, from his diary. You know from the Orpheus framework that only one of them will survive the ascent from the Underworld, and it is Harry who succumbs to his head wound and dies. His brother picks up the narrative. It’s he who wrote the poems. This reality, explaining none of the fantastical elements in Harry’s diary (did he really see a ghost?) reinterprets Harry’s story as well as the Orpheus myth. Ultimately, this is a story of a man who loves his brother, and imagined what it might have been like to be at his side as he struggled and fought and searched for him. A man who made his brother into a mythical hero.
I can’t honestly express how much I liked this book. Go read it, please.
