Thursday, April 18, 2013

The War at Ellsmere

The War at Ellsmere by Faith Erin Hicks

Zombies Calling creator Faith Erin Hicks brings her manga-fueled art style and pop-culture sensibilities to girl's boarding schools in her latest book The War at Ellsmere. Jun is the newest scholarship student at the prestigious Ellsmere girls' boarding school - but to a lot of the privileged rich girls, "scholarship student" is just a code for "charity case." Fortunately, Jun has an ally in the quirky Cassie, who swears the stories about the mysterious white deer that lives in the forest outside of the school are true. Between queen bees and mythical beasts, Jun has quite the school year ahead of her. -Plot summary borrowed from Goodreads

I've raved about Faith Erin Hicks here before, and will very likely continue to do so as I track down more of her graphic novels. I love her characters- unique, intelligent, layered- and I love the plots she comes up with- characters dealing with real world issues against an (often) supernatural backdrop. Come to think of it, I love her work and Paranorman for kind of the same reasons. If non-genre media were always so skilled at portraying such human characters I think we'd all be better off. 

The best summary I could give comes from Jun herself: "It's like Upstairs/Downstairs meets Lord of the Flies. In plaid skirts. And sweater vests. It's so weird." But you'll love it.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Sounds like my type of thing. Only just started looking into graphic novels. I've started with Scott Pilgrim but I'm now looking for something different.

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