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Books: Unwritten, vol. 1
Apr. 15th, 2010 09:51 pmI have lost the paper piece of napkin on which I fiendishly scribbled down the quote while reading Unwritten, vol. 1 in a coffee shop, but it went something like this:
"I learn how stories work for the same reason soldiers learn how to strip a gun. You should too."
Of course I'm going to like any story that can give me a quote like that.
This is a graphic novel for people who like stories, who think stories are powerful, and who find something luminous and mysterious in the written word. It's also a good book for people who want to just show up and be entertained by some magic, some flirtation, some death and a little mystery. There's a strange, creepy man walking around whose hand is made out of words and seems to have the power to unwrite people, dissolving them into piles of glowing text. There's a boy who is either the inspiration for a popular novel character or that character come to life. Characters from classic novels appear to be wandering, Jasper Fforde's Eyre Affair style, around the landscape getting themselves and others into trouble. Also, some bonus explosions. And what's not to love about a book that not only has a narrative-within-a-narrative device, but goes whole hog with it and gives us the fanfic that characters within the story write about the narrative-within-the-narrative? (And it's creepy, horrible, disturbing, and very funny fanfic.)
It's the last issue in the volume, which steps back from the main characters of the arc to show us scenes from the lives of Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain, secret history style, that clinched my mad crush on this comic. I know that I'm going to be buying all the volumes and reading them twice.
"I learn how stories work for the same reason soldiers learn how to strip a gun. You should too."
Of course I'm going to like any story that can give me a quote like that.
This is a graphic novel for people who like stories, who think stories are powerful, and who find something luminous and mysterious in the written word. It's also a good book for people who want to just show up and be entertained by some magic, some flirtation, some death and a little mystery. There's a strange, creepy man walking around whose hand is made out of words and seems to have the power to unwrite people, dissolving them into piles of glowing text. There's a boy who is either the inspiration for a popular novel character or that character come to life. Characters from classic novels appear to be wandering, Jasper Fforde's Eyre Affair style, around the landscape getting themselves and others into trouble. Also, some bonus explosions. And what's not to love about a book that not only has a narrative-within-a-narrative device, but goes whole hog with it and gives us the fanfic that characters within the story write about the narrative-within-the-narrative? (And it's creepy, horrible, disturbing, and very funny fanfic.)
It's the last issue in the volume, which steps back from the main characters of the arc to show us scenes from the lives of Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain, secret history style, that clinched my mad crush on this comic. I know that I'm going to be buying all the volumes and reading them twice.
