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Thursday, September 2, 2010
Artesia Afield
Review by Michael May
Written by Mark Smylie
Illustrated by Mark Smylie
Published by Archaia Studios
$24.95
The middle parts of trilogies are usually my least favorite. The romance of getting to know the characters and settings is gone and you don't yet get the emotional climax of seeing the story to its conclusion. They're just sorta "there," helping you get from the beginning to the end. Even Tolkien, Lord of the Trilogy himself, managed to bore me with The Two Towers. So, I wasn't too sure about how I was going to like Artesia Afield, the second part of Mark Smylie's Book of Dooms series about the warrior-witch Artesia. I enjoyed the first part Artesia a lot, but when I went back to read my review of it, I realized that a lot of what I liked had to do with getting to know Artesia and her setting and Smylie's realistic approach to mythical storytelling. Frankly, I was afraid the new car smell might be gone by the second volume. At the end of Artesia our heroine has assassinated her king and is preparing to lead his army into battle against the ancient empire invading from the south, but she hasn't gone so far as to claim his crown. Artesia's a lot of things, but "usurper" isn't a title she wants to add to her list. Her hesitation is based on reasoning that's as complicated as it is real, but one of her main concerns is the knowledge that if she sets herself up as queen, she becomes a target for the next wannabe ruler. So, as Artesia Afield opens, she's still without a crown, leading her troops southward to where the other feudal kingdoms are battling the invading empire. The book chronicles her journey to the front and the battle that takes place once she arrives, but that's not the focus of the story. If it were, we'd have another sad case of Middle Book Syndrome, but Smylie keeps it personal to his main character by maintaining our attention on Artesia and how all of this affects her. I damn near fell in love with her in the first book, which is exactly what Smylie needed to accomplish to hold my interest in this one. She's beautiful, smart, sexy as hell, independent, tough; all of this was established in Artesia. I'm invested in her. So when she arrives at the battlefront and the other military leaders start whispering about her, wondering about her motives for killing her king, calling her names and generally showing her no amount of respect, I can't wait for them to get what's coming to them. I don't know what that will be, you understand, I just hope that it happens. We learn quickly that Artesia hasn't completely made up her mind on this whole queen thing either, so there's also that conflict hanging over everything she does and says. The battle, as convincingly depicted as any combat scene from Braveheart or Gladiator, serves a greater purpose in the story than simply giving Artesia and her company something to do; it contributes to her ultimate decision regarding her position as ruler. And that's how Artesia Afield avoids Middle Book Syndrome. It's uniquely its own story. It's the middle book, not just chronologically, but possibly metaphorically as well. Knowing that the first book sets up the need for the decision being made here and assuming that the next book deals with the consequences of that decision, Artesia Afield becomes the center, the heart, of the trilogy. The risk then is that Artesia Afire, the final book, fails to live up to the second, but having been this impressed with the story thus far, I'm not too worried about that.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
