The Great Game

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Scarlet Traces: The Great Game by Ian Edginton, illustrated by D’Israeli.

Edginton D'Israeli Scarlet Traces The Great Game

This sequel to Scarlet Traces is more conclusive and satisfying than the original. In this volume, the Earth-Mars war (or more accurately, the British-Martian war) reaches its climax. Two characters–a hero and a villain–from the first volume provide continuity of plot as well as setting. The protagonist in The Great Game is a woman photojournalist, who infiltrates an interplanetary military expedition in order to find out what’s really happening on the Martian front. The art is consistent with the first volume, although artist d’Israeli has gone all in for CGI modeling techniques in the interim, with rewarding results for architecture, spaceship design, and so forth. Particularly in the final sections of the story, it seemed like the facial expressions of shock and horror got really extreme.

Consider also:

  1. Crocodile on the Sandbank
  2. “Last summer, during odd days, I worked at this sixfold problem–at the attempt to eliminate these six great drawbacks. I was alone, in camp, and had to puzzle it all out with three dummies before me,–but I worked hard at it, and suddenly the great idea dawned upon me: Choose your own partner!”
  3. Venus Plus X
  4. The Tourmaline
  5. The Man Who Loved Mars