The Explorer's Guild: Volume One: A Passage to Shambhala
I really wanted to like this book. I wanted to fall head over heels in love with it from the moment I saw it. The book itself is gorgeous. My mother-in-law got me the hardcover version for Christmas, and I can't imagine reading it any other way. The formatting is so integral to the story-telling that I even wonder how this will work as a paperback or e-book. It's part prose, part graphic novel, with a smattering of illustrations, both colored and not, throughout. Even the pages are colored in a sepia-toned gradient to look old-timey. The switches between prose and graphic novel are handled very well, especially in the beginning. It leads to great pacing and lends a sense of loving craftsmanship to the entire book. So it was disappointing to discover that the story itself was subpar. The book jacket describes The Explorer's Guild as an action-packed adventure story in the style of Rudyard Kipling, a return to the "golden age" of adventure stories. Unfortunately ...