Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Ythaq: The Forsaken World [Amazon, Publisher, Local Library] by Christophe Arleston, Adrien Floch.

The Forsaken World collects the first three bandes dessinées of Christophe Arleston’s Ythaq in English translation. The story is quite an entertaining adventure, told in a style that reminds me of Jeff Smith’s Bone. Whereas the epic fantasy of Smith is written for all ages, Ythaq is decidedly adult, with its three castaways organized into an unrequited triangular affection.

The space opera frame story lands the protagonists in a Flash Gordon-style world with many non-human sentient races, but the overall tone is a little closer to the wonderful sword-and-planet work of Leigh Brackett. As in Bone, the setting has its own mysteries, and the working out of the plot involves coming to understand the history of the fantasy world. This first volume brings the story through many major plot developments, but provides very little in the way of resolution.

Adrien Floch’s art is really comics-stylized and somewhat lighthearted, but his characters and settings are all quite expressive, and they communicate the action very effectively.