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Graylight
By Tao Mori
December 31, 2010 - 23:36

nbm publishing
Writer(s): Naomi Nowak
Penciller(s): Naomi Nowak
ISBN: 978-1-56163-567-2
$12.95



    Naomi Nowak’s series of books are written and drawn by herself. She is from Sweden where she started out as a painter and illustrator. Graphic novels allowed her to blend her writing and artistic talents into one piece of work. Graylight is the second of three graphic novels that’s she written (I’ve only read two). Her drawings are usually quite detailed and well drawn. Graylight is about a troubled girl trying to find her place in life. Her thieving eventually brings her into a whole new kind of trouble involving magic.

 
graylight.jpg
   Graylight is similar to Nowak’s first work Unholy Kinship in that it can be confusing when trying to follow the storyline. The story starts simply enough with a mother leaving her husband with her child. Then later we meet Sasha who is the main protagonist of the story, who is not directly related to the women in the first part of the book, but the connection is revealed later on. Sasha is this troubled girl who steals and travels from town to town, we don’t know much about her history. I found it hard to empathize with Sasha, I don’t know if that was Nowak’s intention for this character. When she goes with Erik the reporter to meet Aurora the recluse author (who is the woman in the beginning of the book), Sasha steals a book from Aurora, which I believe is about witch like stuff. Sasha says that she remembers her mother reading a book like this to her, which suggests a bit of foreshadowing about her own magical abilities. Sasha’s attitude towards stealing this book, which she refuses to give back is part of the reason where I lost any empathy I had for her. Though there’s a personal connection that’s made to this book, she doesn’t say how the book is important to her because her mother died or something along these lines. I realize that it’s a little late to provide suggestions to Nowak, but losing empathy for the character felt key to losing interest in this book, because the characters are the central focus to this story.

    The magical abilities could have used more foreshadowing as well, as we get the impression that Aurora is a recluse writer, not a witch. Then we learn about these old books, but that doesn’t quite give the impression that Aurora is a witch. Three quarters into the book Aurora starts to use her magical abilities, and then suddenly the content of the story changes. Then we learn that much like Aurora, Sasha also has magical powers, but she has not learned how to use them. Honestly I’m not entirely sure what happens to Sasha by the end of the book, if she dies or just disappears. Aurora seems intent on killing her, but somehow her son intervenes, but it wasn’t explicit as to what he does. As my favourite creative writing teacher also said that a writer should be obscure clearly, but I found this book to contravene that notion. Much like Unholy Kinship I found the end to be depressing and unsure of whether or not Sasha found her place in life.

    Nowak’s artwork is to be commended once again in this piece. Perhaps the saving grace of this work is the amount of detail that she puts into her artwork. Her characters are drawn different this time than from Unholy Kinship as the characters were drawn to look shiny and stand out, here the characters are drawn with more faded colours. The girls are drawn especially well with blushed cheeks, but with that faded tone so that they don’t stand out too much. I found that Nowak draws female characters so beautifully, but men always look sort of stupid and unappealing. A technical issue that made the artwork a bit difficult at times as that characters weren’t always clearly named, especially in the first few pages we meet three different girls, clearly the attention is on Sasha, but who are the other two? They look similar as well making it hard to distinguish one from the other. The drawings of nature were my favourite, I especially enjoyed her drawings of animals, which always look so charming. The drawings of nature give a good impression of the environment of where the story is set, you can’t help but feel chilled with some parts of the story as the characters are tromping around outside.

    Graylight had great artwork, which I have come to expect from Nowak, but her story writing still needs some work. The question I ask myself, is what do we want the reader to come away with from reading this story? For this story my mind drew a blank.
Rating: 5/10