Lucas Blogs About Books

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to — AUGH! What's that on the back cover? So, what's this book's deal? Island Book  is a young adult graphic novel by Evan Dahm, who you may recall was the artist behind The Harrowing of Hell . I recall that that wasn't a blog post in the Hypothetical Reader format. Oh, right. Well, I really liked it. It's actually my favorite book I read last year. It made me curious about Dahm's other work so I picked up this book thinking that it might be a good gift-giving candidate for younger readers. And was it? Def-o! Unfortunately, I did my Christmas shopping at the last minute and this was already sold out most places, so I went with Superman Smashes the Klan instead. Anyway, this is sort of a high seas fantasy adventure story for kids. It begins on an island inhabited by green humanoids. The protagonist, Sola, is ostracized by everyone but her guardian because a monster attacked the island when she was a child, seemingly drawn b...

Abandon all hope, ye who read . . .   Don't read this blog post. Go read this book. Okay, I'm being a little disingenuous, I would like you to continue reading this blog post, I wanna talk about Evan Dahm's The Harrowing of Hell . That said, I kinda think that it's best experienced on its own terms. Also, I'mma SPOIL  the hell out of it (to the extent that any story based on millennia-old texts can be spoiled). So, if you don't want your first reading tainted by my opinions (I find that once, again, I am being disingenuous. Let's face it, it's hard to go into a story about Jesus free of preconceptions.), then just close the tab and go out and read the book first. Otherwise, let's talk about it. As the title suggests, The Harrowing of Hell  recounts the events between Jesus's death and resurrection, when he is said to have descended into Hell in order to save every righteous person who had predeceased him. This story is told in the apocryphal Gosp...