Lightfall: The Girl & the Galdurian by Tim Probert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A forgetful porcine sorcerer goes missing. A three-toed, goggle-eyed explorer combs through forestland, over mountain peaks, and through sundered valleys in search of an extinct people. A human girl with paralyzing anxiety packs a rucksack full of honey rolls and gazes at the ever-bright sky overhead. In one tiny corner of the land of Irpa, curiosity is afoot and adventure is around every corner.
LIGHTFALL: THE GIRL & THE GALDURIAN is a beautiful graphic novel. Extravagant and punctilious detail and vibrant color frame a simple but effective tale of loss, wonder, and fear, all from the perspective of an adolescent girl in a funky and fantastical realm. Beatrice's adoptive grandfather, a pig apothecary, leaves the village when he recalls an ancient promise that might have met an unsavory fate. The old porker is a tad forgetful, so it's hard to say whether this inciting incident is less valid than circumstances can warrant. Whatever the case, young Bea fears for her grandpa and sets off to find or help or save him. Problematically, Bea's not an adventurer. Which means she'll need the sword-swinging bravado of a kind-hearted stranger if she's going to survive.
Of the numerous graphic novels on the market about children embarking through the strange and frightful with naught but the clothes on their back, LIGHTFALL: THE GIRL & THE GALDURIAN is exquisite. The supporting cast is a quirky and perfect fit: reptilian bandits, a packrat thief, a dinosaur barkeep, black-feathered bird assassins bearing heavy blades and dark intention.
And in terms of the setting, Bea's journey through the land of Irpa is ripe: verdant, layered forests populated by mossy deer; underground waterfalls guarded by whispering, enchanted skulls; the interface of rocky mountainside and overgrown pasture, occupied by an immense, if lonely bone-carved statue of an ancient, nameless king.
While the adventure Bea sets upon is generally confined to the realm of the ordinary, the theater in which she must surmount this ordinariness is delightful. Bea's quest to locate her wandering grandfather, while crucial to nudging the book into motion, is the least interesting part of the whole narrative. Bea's companion, Cadwallader, is the last of his people, and it behooves the two to figure out what happened to the kind, bulbous warrior race before too long (it appears the Galdurians' ancient nemesis has resurfaced). Similarly, as Bea leaves her home for an extended period, for the first time, she confronts the awkward and unusual history of the land of Irpa, relearning how the sun was lost, how artificial light now populates the continent, and how all of the strange and different species of intelligent creatures now call Irpa their home.
LIGHTFALL: THE GIRL & THE GALDURIAN takes an enviable approach to storytelling: beginning with the lowest barrier of entry, then slowly and deliberately expanding the scope of adventure to include whatever pings the protagonist's curiosity. Sometimes this means diving into Bea's ardent struggle with her fragile mental health and sometimes this means partnering with Cad to field a new supply kit from a few roadside hucksters. All in all, the diversity of excitement and emotion is vast, and readers will enjoy the color, the noise, the newness, the unusualness, and the uncertainty native to navigating all of the dangerous spaces in-between.
