The Blackburne Covenant » (Not Appropriate For Children)

Someone is following popular fantasy novelist Richard Kaine. Not a demented fan, not a jilted lover. Someone interested in finding out how Richard came up with his runaway best-selling first novel. Because unbeknownst to Richard, his fantasy novel was non-fiction. How could Richard have written about an event no one should have known about, after it had been meticulously eradicated from human history? Who are the Blackburne Covenant? And how could the secrets they've been concealing for hundreds of years completely change life on Earth? They're willing to kill Richard Kaine in order to keep him quiet ...

Publishers Weekly

No, it's not a Robert Ludlum adaptation. Nicieza and Raffaele's stand-alone graphic novel is essentially a fantasy story, or rather a meta-fantasy story. Protagonist Richard Kaine has written a best-selling fantasy novel, "Wintersong," about a tribe of witches and how they were destroyed by "bad guys who wanted iron to rule the world." As it turns out, his novel wasn't really fiction, although Kaine didn't realize it. He's actually the reincarnation of its martyred heroine, Talinada Wintersong, guardian of "The Greenway," and he's being tracked down by the bad guys: the Blackburne Covenant, who've hushed up their existence for centuries. Nicieza's best known for writing superhero comics like X-Men. His dialogue is blandly melodramatic, and his idea of novelistic prose, in the excerpts we see from Kaine's bestseller, is strained at best ("She felt the dichotomy, incongruous yet essential."). The book's got a handful of visual spectacles-Manhattan's skyline covered with plants, the spectacular wooden city of the Greenway, a couple of heated fight scenes, and plenty of gratuitously semi-nude women-but it feels oddly patched together, with awkward pacing and an abrupt, inconclusive ending. Italian artist Raffaele, who usually draws horror comics, is great with the conclusion's witches and grotesque transformations, less adept with its earlier, more earthbound scenes. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.