Dry and dusty

There's something about fantasy books set in the desert that I like. They always seem a little fresher than otehrs. Don't have to try as hard to get me invested.

I think it's because fantasy writing in general doesn't make nearly enough use of them in the West. Everything is wrapped up in that typical fantasy setting - the temperate climate with four distinct seasons, forests and rolling hills. No grasslands, no deserts, rarely even long passages at sea. The typical fantasy setting is to history what the "good old days" are to America's culture. It existed in parts, in details and pieces, but not in any meaningful and complete way in the manner most people seem to see it.

And like the Good Old Days, people tend to forget the worst parts in favor of their own mental setup.

But stories written in the desert tend to be harsh. People know it's not all flowers and bard songs on the desert. So things are automatically different?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting jaded about it in my old age. :)

The book that set all this off, incidentally, was City in the Desert, which I reviewed over at Goodreads this week. I duplicated the review below the cut. I highly recommend the book if you like slightly off-beat comics with a good sense of humor.


The very best thing a comic book can do, in my opinion, is make you think when you get to the end "Please don't let it be too long before the next part comes out."

City in the Desert did this to me in spades. Despite my being fully aware of the nature of comics, despite this clearly being book 1, I was still surprised when I hit the end and was left very much wanting more.

Aside from our two leads, the characters are a bit one-dimensional, but the strength of the book is really in the relationship between these two leads and their world - a dangerous place full of monsters, set up in an opening that's reminiscent of Elahrairah's blessings in Watership Down - the monsters in this case hunting down man instead of rabbits, but the feel is similar.

There's a lot of familiar things in this actually. Sometimes the art style reminds me of something like Samurai Jack, sometimes of bits of Kino's Journey. But it never feels derivative, and I suspect the similarities are largely just circumstantial based on the simple art style.

The story itself is an examination of tradition and faith, of greater goods and greater evils. Despite these themes, however, it remains a very close and personal story to our main characters. It doesn't try to be something larger and sweeping in this volume and I think that's to the book's benefit. Glad I read it and, if you're looking for something a bit humorous and with some cool monsters, its definitely worth a pick-up.