To The Last Page

Threatened by the three ominous figures that appear at their idyllic forest home, a father takes his son on a long journey to escape the dark fate that seems to be in store for the young child. Pedrosa’s drawing ability, as seen previously in his Ring Circus books with David Chauvel, is impressive. Less refined here, the black-and-white pencil, ink and charcoal work here lends a fluid, sketchy and expressive quality to the storytelling, each frame beautifully composed and drawn. The cartoony Disney Lilo and Stitch/Hunchback of Notre Dame style (Pedrosa previously worked as an artist for Disney) of the opening sections gives way to a darker and more surreal Mattotti style as the tone of the story darkens. Pedrosa also finds some imaginative ways of his own to express the fear and the flight of his characters, but the design appears a little over-worked, not always chiming with the emotional content.

Over 30 years in the making, the care and detail lavished in Selden Edwards's debut novel is evident the love for which he depicts the splendour of turn-of-the-century Vienna, where the 'Jung Wien', the Secessionists, Mahler, Freud and the numerous important figures are about to modernise music art and philosophy and make an indelible mark on the twentieth century. That it sets about depicting this world through a time-travel adventure is intriguing and relevant to showing the tremendous impact this period would have on the world today, but it's also problematic.  In this Vienna of Freud, Wittgenstein and the Secessionists Edwards finds the essence of modern day thought, enlightenment, emancipation and the greatness that humanity can aspire to, the cultural apex that sets the foundation for the modern world to create all-American heroes, athletes and musicians, men of honour, discipline and learning. That much is entertainingly achieved, even if the heroic qualities of ...

When an alien spaceship crashes in the south of Spain after an intergalactic battle, a young English boy living in the valley’s English community discovers one of the robot suits the aliens used for planetary exploration. Donning the suit he becomes Mr Roberts and finds that the fearsome figure can be used for good or bad. Well, to be honest, it’s only really useful for greedy and nasty purposes, particularly when his neglectful mother gets her hands on it. Having a great deal of mild fun at the expense of Spanish customs, English ex-pats, theatre and television types, religion and even Scientology, Sayle’s entertaining short novel makes for an enjoyable light read. Surreal and satirical, this is everything you would expect from Alexei Sayle and even better if you read it with his sarcastic rapid delivery Scouse accent in mind.

It goes without saying that Chris Ware's latest instalment of his on-going, continually evolving work is as beautifully designed and packaged as ever, as much as it is evident that the tone is the familiar one of almost overwhelming regret and sadness for past mistakes, creating a sense of self-pity that prevents his characters from moving forward or even being able to fully appreciate their present lives. That sense of past, present and future combined is ambitiously tackled here in ANL book 18 by Ware in a way that can perhaps only really be accomplished graphically, not just relying on the standard of flashbacks, but having all time periods operating almost simultaneously, and often viewed from the perspective of an apartment building - shown in typical Ware cutaway - where the protagonist, a young woman with one leg amputated below the knee lives. Her life is similarly dissected with surgical graphic precision and laid out in cut-away on the page. The sense of narrative flow in...

The title, premise and cover of The Kissing Gates gives the promise of a classic wartime romantic melodrama and Mackenzie Ford’s debut certainly does that, but it also has much more to offer the reader. The particular love-triangle set-up, during the First World War, could hardly be more dramatic and involved. While entrenched on the front on that famous Christmas in 1914 when the British and German trips ceased hostilities for a brief period to exchange gifts and seasonal goodwill, Lieutenant Harry Montgomery, known as Hal, meets his German counterpart and is charged to carry to carry out an unusual request – to bring back a photo to an English girl he was engaged to in Stratford-upon-Avon before the war broke out. Invalided from the war soon afterwards however Hal looks Sam up, but falls in love with her himself and doesn’t reveal to her that he met her fiancé Wilhelm on the front. As the war drags on however, Hal realises that Sam just cannot forget Wilhelm. The romantic complicatio...

Turgenev’s third novel isn’t his most satisfying, the author casting around his cast of characters to find a committed idealist and romantic hero to bring about social reform in his country, but ‘on the eve of reform’ he fails to find them in the Russian gentry of the time. Initially he examines the characters of Shubin, a talented sculptor, and Bersyenev, a scholar and academic, and, in a Turgenev way, he examines their character and commitment to a cause through their courting of Elena Stahov. In this both men are lacking, failing to show anything but surface attraction and devotion, but backing down when a rival for her affections gets in their way. In On The Eve then, it’s in the form of a Bulgarian revolutionary called Insarov that Turgenev finds the characteristics that he is seeking, but the romantic melodrama that follows isn’t the strongest section of the novel, and it wouldn’t be until the creation of in Bazarov in his subsequent masterpiece Fathers and Sons  (or Fathers...

Brodrick’s latest novel finds another investigation worthy of the ability and insight of Brother Anselm, a monk previously trained as a lawyer. It’s an understanding of not only the law but the deeper motivations of the human spirit that is required in A Whispered Name , and what greater mystery could there be than the personal events and upheavals endured by young men and boys under the command of unfathomable laws in the trenches of WWI? A mysterious visitor to the Larkwood monastery reveals and unknown aspect to the life of one of its oldest inhabitants, the founder of the monastery itself, Fr. Herbert Moore and his part in the sentencing of a young Irishman, Private Joseph Flanagan, charged with desertion during the battle for Passchendaele in 1917. Fr Moore however is now dead, leaving the events and incomplete accounts of the incident shrouded in secrecy. What drove a young Irishman to fight alongside the English? Why did he risk an unknown, perhaps personal mission that could se...