A review by finesilkflower
Persia Blues, Volume 1: Leaving Home by Dara Naraghi
2.0
This was obviously a labor of love. The art is uneven, sometimes lovely, sometimes rough and sketchy. It has the unpolished quality of someone self-taught trying really hard. I'm not trying to say that as a burn--the art isn't bad, sometimes it's quite good! It just doesn't look effortless the way a professional artist's work does. You just know that some of these pages are the artist's best work ever. Some of the pages he probably had to redraw eighteen times because the stupid HANDS WOULD NOT COME OUT RIGHT while other pages came out so alarmingly well the first time that he didn't dare redraw them because he's still not quite sure how it happened. (I may be projecting.)
I love the vibrant inks for the fantasy parts and the crisp black and white for the modernday parts. It divided the two "worlds" very effectively. The fantasyland art was, appropriately, more adventurous, and the dream sequence was especially well-done.
I only read the first book, which is a bit like only reading the first chapter of a novel, so I guess I can't complain that the story seemed unfinished, but I would have liked the first book to have more of its own arc. The fantasy parts launched the hero on her quest well enough, but the modernday parts zipped around in flashbacks that built backstory but didn't form an actual story of their own. It felt like the character pre-writing, not the first book of the series. I also would have liked the fantasy and modern parts to touch on more of the same themes, too, although all the issues that were raised were interesting, and I could see them all coming together in a commentary on the clash between the longing for/ideals of Persian mythos vs. the realities of the modern day.
Not their fault, exactly, but I was a bit disappointed to learn that this was written by two men. Dealing as it does with the experience of being a woman in Iran, it loses some authenticity in my mind by not being written by a woman. It does explain why her boobs were so big.
I love the vibrant inks for the fantasy parts and the crisp black and white for the modernday parts. It divided the two "worlds" very effectively. The fantasyland art was, appropriately, more adventurous, and the dream sequence was especially well-done.
I only read the first book, which is a bit like only reading the first chapter of a novel, so I guess I can't complain that the story seemed unfinished, but I would have liked the first book to have more of its own arc. The fantasy parts launched the hero on her quest well enough, but the modernday parts zipped around in flashbacks that built backstory but didn't form an actual story of their own. It felt like the character pre-writing, not the first book of the series. I also would have liked the fantasy and modern parts to touch on more of the same themes, too, although all the issues that were raised were interesting, and I could see them all coming together in a commentary on the clash between the longing for/ideals of Persian mythos vs. the realities of the modern day.
Not their fault, exactly, but I was a bit disappointed to learn that this was written by two men. Dealing as it does with the experience of being a woman in Iran, it loses some authenticity in my mind by not being written by a woman. It does explain why her boobs were so big.