Page 45 Review by Stephen
"They're the most powerful beings on Earth, and they're dying of boredom."
If that doesn't send a shiver up your spine, then it should.
I'm afraid it's the end of the road for COURTNEY CRUMRIN - and Courtney Crumrin herself. I had no idea this would be so severe.
Its origins stretch through the whole of the series, reprising elements and plot points I thought long left-behind, but no. Obviously the last volume's sheer, severe cliff-hanger must inevitably be played out, but what about the set-up in COURTNEY CRUMRIN VOL 2, eh? And I do mean set-up.
A faction within The Coven Of Mystics has grown weary with the restraints placed on them by Ravanna's Law, forbidding their witches and warlocks to interfere or mingle with regular folk. Its Council still holds with the law but a council is rarely at rest; there is always a struggle for power.
Meanwhile, time is running out for Great Uncle Aloysius: he's dying. Sustained only by an elixir withheld by the Council until he returns his niece for what it promises will be a fair trial, he must surely imagine that Courtney will come quietly. She won't.
Courtney is on the run with her former teacher Calpurnia Crisp, the Council's marshals mere metres behind. They're racing round mountain roads, the ocean waves breaking beneath them and they cannot afford to be caught. Calpurnia knows there will be no fair trial and the fate that awaits them is much worse than death: they will be banished, all knowledge of magic and their memories of wielding it erased. They will become hollow shells, ghosts of their former selves, destined only to wonder what on earth could be missing, dimly in the back of their minds. As to Aloysius, Calpurnia knows something few others do, and that changes everything.
Oh my god, girls! Oh my god, guys! When I first realised what [redacted, redacted] was actually showing, my jaw hit the floor. Suffice to say that there is not a second's preamble; it kicks straight into gear. Rarely have I read a series' conclusion that wraps everything up not just neatly but nastily with a final confrontation foreshadowed by the words of the hermit Cerridean Olds and the early actions of another who wields far more magic than anyone suspected. If you are as ancient as I am, the words 'Dark Phoenix' will mean something. Really mean something, and Naifeh has out-burned John Byrne: if that blistering image swirling in purple above Aloysius isn't a direct homage then I would be so, so surprised.
Ted's design work has always been delicious. It manifests itself not just in this new full-colour, hardcover incarnation with its silver inks, but in the enemies themselves: the Rawhead And Bloody-Bones of COURTNEY CRUMRIN VOL 2 with which I am always at pains to frighten young readers along with their parents during shop-floor show-and-tells, and here the various skeletal Golems animated by Cerridean.
I love that there are electricity pylons straddling the cliff tops of the introductory breakneck car chase.
But I wondered why the colours were so studiously muted in purples and blues, pale lemon-yellow and deep olive-green. Well, let's just say that the bright light of day would be a boon to some if deprived for so long of its beauty, yet to others it could be the worst thing in the world.
"Have you ever awoken out of a deep sleep and found yourself in a place you don't recognise, forgetting for a moment how you got there? Sometimes, when you remember at last, it's a relief.
"And sometimes it's not."
I am so, so sorry.
Still to come: COURTNEY CRUMRIN TALES.
