Monstress

“Monstress is not only a graphic novel, it’s also a graphic narrative, in that if you don’t like blood and guts, I don’t recommend this one for you. It’s inspired by early 20th-century Asia. Very early in the process, Marjorie Liu was trying to work in alternate history. And I don’t know exactly what happened, I just know that she abandoned that to create this fully secondary world. I think one of the reasons might have just been that she introduced this whole race of magical creatures called Arcanics; and there’s a little fox girl, there’s people who have animal-like features… I don’t know her process, but Sana Takeda, the artist, draws in this very strongly manga style, so it’s got a lot of anthropomorphic animals or humanoids with animal features, which makes it utterly fantasy.” Read more...

The Best Steampunk Books

Mike Perschon, Literary Scholar