External Book Reviews: February 2008 Archives
Those words should be on the frontispiece for each installment in the Guin Saga. Every page sports a striking image, every chapter break spawns a plot twist, and the end of every book is a cliffhanger. And really, would you have it any other way? After the delirious, face-tearing speed of The Guin Saga, most everything else that calls itself “fantasy” or “adventure” feels like it’s wading through the banks of the Nile with its ankles chained together.
The story, as set up in the first two volumes, overlays the two-fisted pulp adventure of Edgar Rice Burroughs with the color and immediacy of a seinen action manga. At front and center is our hero, Guin, sporting the body of an Adonis and the head of a leopard, unable to remember his past before being discovered face-down in a no-man’s-land swamp. Flanking him, the Royal Twins of Parros, Rinda and Remus, the ones who stumble across a half-dead Guin, revive him, and earn him as their protector and companion. Alongside them is the mercenary Istavan, as quick with his snide tongue as he is with his sword, although he tries to get far more mileage out of the former than the latter. And finally, behind them and gaining fast in hot pursuit, the female general Lady Amnelis, commanding the armies of the Mongaul nation.
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