A review by karenchase
The Golden Age, Book 1 by Cyril Pedrosa, Roxanne Moreil

4.0

I grabbed this graphic novel off of my cataloguing cart. I was drawn to the dynamic art--each page contains a set of panels with part of the story being told with a colour scheme: pinks and purples, or blues and blacks, or reds and blacks, but the changes are so subtle and gradual from page to page, that I had to flip back and forth to discover where they were happening, as I was pulled into the narrative. Tilda is a princess in a medieval land blighted by corruption. Her father dies and she is set to claim the throne, when she is overthrown by her younger brother (propped up by her bitter mother) and flees into exile with two loyal courtiers. Injured and isolated, she begins to have visions, of a future (perhaps) that she doesn't recognize or understand. She encounters characters along the road, including a sect of "utopia-ists" who believe in the once and future existence of a society (the titular Golden Age) where lords and serfs do not exist, and all are equal. Eventually she finds her way, through war and calamity, to a secret treasure, which her father had found years before, and had apparently meant for her to discover. She finds it, and it is revealed to her ... and that's where this part of the story ends. I will confess, the very illustration style that drew me in, also made me flounder through the narrative at times, as in many cases the drawings are bleak and merely suggestive, and filled with phenomenon rather than reality. But, the cliffhanger still left me looking around to find out where I can read the second half of the story.