Melody Murray's Books

Entirely hopeless, totally grim, and filled to bursting with characters one simply can't like or even find common ground with, this graphic novel still packs a huge, reverberating punch.The scope and clarity of the vision is immense, maybe even epic. The quality of the illustration is very high indeed. The text bits interspersed were a welcome relief from the intense graphics. The comic book story about the bleak ship of the damned, which was both part of and not part of the narrative, was intense and haunting. I'll probably never forget the imagery of that raft. *shudder*It's a tour-de-force with no one to like, no one to love, and certainly no one with which to identify. This combination gave a certain necessary distance which allowed me to finish the book without running screaming into the sunset. I kept thinking of the exchange between Boromir and Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring, where Boromir is afraid to venture into Lothlorien because he's heard that no one comes out unscathed, and Aragorn responds: "Say not unscathed, but if you say unchanged, then maybe you will speak the truth."I have not come away from this book unchanged.