Let me start by saying that I don't read much of this type of fantasy and when the book started with a brief history of this strange world, I wasn't sure that I'd like it. Nevertheless, I plunged ahead, and will happily admit that it didn't take long for me to be completely caught up in this fast-paced, action-packed read. Once Azel and Aleron meet, the story's primary focus is on their romance, and what a romance it is. I found myself not liking Aleron at all in the beginning. He's overbearing and brutish, and I found myself smiling every time the strong-willed Azel bests him. As the story progresses and things unfold, Aleron slowly grew on me and ended up becoming one of my favorite characters. As Azel runs head first from one predicament to another, I was so engaged in the story that I read it in one sitting. As I said, the story is primarily a romance, but it's also a tale of war, family, betrayal, secrets, and learning to entrust your heart to another. 

Rush was a sand diver until his son died and he sank into a booze-soaked depression. When a stranger wanders into the bar where he works, Rush has a difficult choice to make...

Timothy Ward has been one of my Goodreads friends for a while now. When he mentioned needing a few more reviews of Scavenger before he put out another book, I said I'd give it a shot.

Scavenger takes place in the world of Hugh Howley's Sand but I was able to follow the story without reading it. America covered with Sand, there are sand divers looking for the lost city of Danvar, etc.

The plot is the classic "I have your wife so you have to do this for me" scenario. Ward puts a nice spin on it by putting it in Howley's setting. The character of Rush was by far the most interesting part of the tale. His insurmountable grief for his son and descent into alcoholism were completely believable.

Honestly, Ward didn't need the Sand setting for this. He could have easily tweaked it into a serviceable western or crime short story. However, the setting added some grittiness (get it?) to the tale. There were some claustrophobic moments near the end that reminded me of events in Howley's Wool.

About the only thing I had to complain about was that I wanted more. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

When you leave the book somewhere but you think you know where, and then you don't bother to go get it for a month because you're pretty much ok with not knowing what happens...it's time to let it go.

Tale of Sand is the graphic novel adaptation of a screenplay by Muppet-creator, Jim Henson. It's mostly billed as an homage to the late, great visionary and it shows the mark of Henson's dreamy and surrealist conceits.

The strongest thing about the graphic novel is the artistry brought by Ramón Pérez. His character designs are a perfect blend of almost Warner Brothers extension cartoony with some grounded realistic anatomy and sense of balance. The expressions and scenes carry this largely wordless journey and, although there are scenes you can tell were always meant for film, he adapts them in a way that feels organic to this adaptation. For example, the prospector-like person who never stops talking having his background chatter spill out of the word balloon, or the juxtaposition of some unrelated scenes to represent the chaotic pellmell of the chase scenes.

Henson, when at his best, would have delivered a rich and memorable world surrounding this story, but the script is not his strongest work. It delivers the visuals but lacks a certain heart in his characters' reasons (or even a concrete lack of reasons), and while you are interested in seeing how the journey progresses, you are not invested in discovering the hows and whys of what's going on. And when all the goings on end, you're not quite sure what happened. It's still engaging, but if the art wasn't a gorgeous as Ramón Pérez's, the readability would be severely hampered.

Definitely a read for Henson fans and those who enjoy trippy post-modern concepts. Definitely read for Ramón Pérez's beautiful artwork. But I think most readers who are looking for a dreamlike story with surrealist elements might be disappointed in Tale of Sand's unsustainable influence, which delights while you're in the middle of it, but seems to slip through your mind once you put it down.

I first decided to buy Tale of Sand out of instinct, having read a couple of news about it being published and taking a brief look at it at my usual comics store. Later I heard it won the Eisner Award, but still I kept postponing it until now. It became my first read of 2013, and an odd start at that.

Tale of Sand is existentialist an exploration of the human being through the external materialization of himself in an absurd and surreal story imposed to an unknown individual for unknown reasons. Having said that, it is a very confusing work of art. I don't know if that stems from it being an adaptation of a lost script for a film that never was or if the script itself already defined all that incomprehensible plot. Probably the latter, seeing that Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl were the creators of The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. For their fans, there's a bonus in this book, considering all the ideas that are both present here and used later on their work.

One follows a man traversing the desert (what's more metaphoric for a depressive introspection than that?) in an apparent race / escape of which he knows no rules or conditions apart from a map that he's told is not to be trusted. In the desert, the most unpredictable stuff happen to him, from a man carrying a giant ice cube that melts to the perfect size right when he puts it on a woman's drink (one who is sunbathing by a pool with a shark), to finding a day/night switch on a rock and being followed by a football team, all this while being persecuted by a mysterious enemy with an eye-patch.

Ramón Pérez's art, on the other hand, convinced me right away. This book has some of the best illustration I've seen in sequential art, specially considering it is the image that tells the story with little occasional help from text. The drawing, the design, the colour, everything here is near perfection and deserves all the nominations and award it got.

Did I understand that absurdist analysis of the human or the man's existence? Not at all, though the final revelation does show the purpose of the story more clearly. But I do mean to read it again, on a more appropriate moment, when I can dedicate more time and pay much more attention to it. Because it's definitely worthwhile.

 

This review was originally published in Portuguese and English on my blog