Agatha H and the Airship City ...and the Clockwork Princess by Phil and Kaja Foglio

[lightreads]

Agatha H and the Airship City by Phil Foglio

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Honestly, I haven’t’ had this much fun in months.

Novelizations of the webcomic, and adorable, absurd, alarming hilarity from start to finish. It’s “gaslamp fantasy” about historical not!Europe. Not about science but instead about mad science, which is a completely different thing. A classic/cliche story about a young orphans adventures on-the-run from the powers chasing her, with all the expected familial entanglements, and also about being dangerously gifted. Except told so freshly and charmingly, it all feels new again.

Sight unseen, I would bet the novels follow the comic frame-by-frame, which I know sounds horrible, but really isn't. There's definitely a . . . visual sensibility here, and a particular timing optimized for moments of frozen physical humor, but they really make it work in another medium.

The two prose novels barely cover the first third of the published comic so far. I await the next book with a lot of stomping and sulking -- no spoilers, please.



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