The Price of Safety: Serving Adela of Blois by Malve Von Hassell
This review is a summary. The entire review is on LitPick
The Price of Loyalty: Serving Adela of Blois is a sublime look at the early Medieval Era during the time of the Norman Conquest and the First Crusades. It is rich in character particularly in its two protagonists Princess Adela of Normandy and Countess of Blois and Cerdic of Wessex, a knight sworn to serve her.
The book sees her through her brothers’ rebellion, the Crusades, her marriage to Count Stephen-Henry of Blois, motherhood, and her family's legacy. It is also told from the perspective of Cedric of Wessex, a knight and childhood friend of Adela’s but has complicated feelings for her despite their marriages to other people.
The two become friends by sharing outsider status. Cerdic is removed from his home in Wessex and Adela subverts her family's expectations. Adela and Cerdic develop a bond of friendship that lasts through constant changes particularly when Adela's brother rebels against her father and Cerdic is trained to fight him.
Adulthood transforms their friendship into a platonic romance. Their relationship never becomes physical but it's clear that they are among the most important people in one another's lives. Even though they marry two decent characters the kind Stephen-Henry and the strong willed Gisella, they still retain their closeness.
The book goes out of its way to not only make Adela and Cerdic decent characters, but also their spouses as well. Because Von Hassell portrays Adela, Cerdic, and their spouses in decent lights, the marriages and Adela and Cerdic’s bond does not resort to love triangle tropes. Adela and Cerdic stay faithful to their spouses and don't give into their passions.
In the struggle between the political and the personal, Adela and Cerdic choose the political. That doesn't mean that they don't love each other. It just means that their bond includes their spouses, children, homes, lands, positions, values, and self-respect.
Orphans of Absolution by Remi A. Rodriguez Brignoni deftly combines Westerns and Paranormal Horror to create a chilling graphic novel of the creatures that can be found in the Old West.
Twins Francis and Randall O’Dowell are the sole survivors when Father Mercer, a violent minister, murdered their entire family. Now they wander the Southwest, particularly the Arizona Territory hunting demons and other supernatural creatures for a bounty. However, they are on the lookout for their real target, Father Mercer.
The book is a veritable tour into Southwestern myths, legends, and ghost stories. The twins encounter a town in which children have been captured by La Llorona, the notorious ghost that lures children to drowning deaths. The results of a town filled with missing children in a time where early death was all too frequent is heart wrenching and motivates Francis and Randall on their search.
They also encounter shapeshifters that sometimes fool the twins by looking or sounding like people that they knew. There are various moments when the twins are out in the isolated desert where suddenly they might hear their deceased mother’s voice or catch the form of a former lover out of the corner of their eye. It is terrifying to imagine a creature that not only knows their entire history but is willing to use it as a weapon against them.
Even when characters are potentially benevolent, there is a dark sinister aura that hints that they might not be trustworthy. A mysterious man known only as Crow appears and disappears to give them solid hints and advice about their missions but also maliciously puts them in dangerous situations.
What also makes this book more ominous is the setting. This is set primarily in the desert regions where the landscape is the same for miles. Where the nearest help could be in the next town or county for all anyone knows. Where the mind often plays tricks on the unwary who are lulled into a false sense of sameness and security.Where a mysterious moving shadow could be an animal, a violent person, or something else entirely. Brignoni takes full advantage of the haunted Old West.
The creatures and settings aren’t the only things that are haunted. Randall and Francis are too. They only live for the hunt and have foregone any hopes of romance, family, or settling down while there are dark supernatural spirits out there. They both have histories of relationships that ended prematurely, something that their antagonists take full advantage of. They are also haunted by their family’s graphic death and wake up with memories of blood, bodies, and the minister's sinister presence.
Because of their status as nomadic orphans, all Randall and Francis have in the world are each other. If anything challenges that union, whether it's human or supernatural, that challenge is outright rejected. They have no lives beyond the hunt and each other. It’s an unhealthy codependent relationship that is at times possessive and controlling (though the jury is out over who is controlling whom). But Randall and Francis have a shared understanding, language, and destiny that only they can understand. They have seen death as children and now have to face it every day as adults.
Orphans of Absolution is a graphic chilling Horror Western that combines the barren landscape and the lone gunslingers of one genre with the nightmares and twists of another. This combination presents strange but effective absolute results.
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