Review: Nordguard ~Book One~ Across Thin Ice

I'll be honest, this review is very specifically tailored for , as he lent me this book specifically so he can hear my opinion on it.
Now that I've fully read it, I've decided to put my opinion in a full documented review so there would be actual structure to my criticisms.

This is a comic book written AND illustrated by Tess Garman and Teagan Gavet, a duo known by the name of Blotch.
And I would just like to say that for all the criticisms I give, I'm not going to personally attack them, saying stuff like "They're stupid for writing things like this" and all that, because in the end I'll always have some respect for duos who've come together for a common cause, and in the end, two people doing both the writing AND the art is still a feat on it's own.
On the other hand, a professional artist should also be able to take the criticism and learn from it, especially when the criticism comes from a nobody like me

So without further ado, the story.



The story starts with a prologue. It shows several people getting murdered by a Tiger and his gang. (Oh yeah, the characters are anthropomorphic characters).
A rabbit was able to send a message before he got shot, which gets intercepted by a bear named Mac, who apparently has a bunch of sled dogs working for him.

The leader of the sled dogs is named Pi, the only female of the group. She has a second-in-command called London, some comic-relief guy called Nickel and two twin dogs called Geri and Freki. They got the mission to bring a bossy warthog called Major Oleg and a medic called McKay to the site of the prologue.

And thus the adventure begins. They eventually come across a frozen lake which apparently has very thin ice, which they decide to cross rather than circle around it.

As they tried to cross it, they hear a gunshot, which shocks a bunch of them and makes them run to the ground, the medic breaking the ice and almost falling into the frozen lake.

They then find out the gunshot came from some stray dogs called the "Maguruq", who are threatening a reindeer. A quick scuffle occurs and they save the reindeer.

They decide to rest in a cabin somewhere before coming across another lake, this time with a lot of broken ice floating in it. They come up with this plan to put the sled on a big piece of ice and pulling that ice to the other side.

They get some trouble by some crows, who later get revealed to have been sent by an ice bear.

Eventually they were still able to get across and that's where this book ends.



Now, the biggest problem seems to have with the story is one of the earlier events, which is when Pi orders the group to go through the frozen lake with thin ice. I personally thought I'd be able to find a counter-argument once I've read the whole thing, but I would have to agree that it's pretty stupid, especially in combination with Pi giving a speech about how much she cares about her group and all that. The second-in-command London even outright says it's better to be safe than sorry and to simply go around it. But without any reason whatsoever, Pi just says "We'll cross". There's no argument, she just says "We'll cross". My best guess would be that this is supposed to support Pi's character flaw, that she lives for danger and all that, but she's not called out on it. A flaw doesn't feel like a deliberate character flaw unless said character is called out on it, but that never happens.

In fact, the only characters who get called out on their character flaws are Major Oleg's, simply because he's the designated character to "not trust".

I'm sorry, but that really doesn't work, it makes the main characters feel like they're the writer's little favourites rather than actual characters.

But the thing is though, in the end, I actually don't find this moment as insulting as seems to find it.
I can understand how this moment can paint the whole thing in a negative light for him, because I know he experiences stories in an event-to-event basis.
And that's okay, different people have different tastes. But I myself am kind of a dialogue person.

Someone like would from this moment on read over the dialogue, coloured by this one event that ruined the character's characterization. I myself as a dialogue-person am generally able to read the bonds of the characters as they talk to each other. Even if Pi doesn't show it in her actions, I can at least appreciate the IMPLIED bond whe has with the other characters.

But here in lies MY big problem with the story. And that's the lack of character establishments.

Or rather, the lack of MEMORABLE character establishments.

It really says something that I actually had to open the book again to find out what the names of the characters were, because the book really didn't invest me enough to remember them off the top of my head.

At the VERY least give me some spectacle, like:

I know this book is more serious and "realistic" than that, but you've got Anthopomorphic animals! USE IT!

Say what you want about Sonic the Hedgehog, I can tell who Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Shadow are the moment I see a group picture of them.

I can wipe my memory and pop in the disc of Sonic Adventure and I'd still be able to tell which character is which.
Sonic? Oh he's the blue hedgehog that introduced himself by running on the walls of the city.
Tails? Oh he's the two-tailed fox that introduced himself by crashlanding with his airplane.
Knuckles? Oh he's the red echidna (okay, I wouldn't guess he's an echidna, but whatever) that suddenly attacked Sonic for the Emeralds he has.

Instead, all these characters are introduced in a bar, talking to one another.
Well, I take that back, Geri and Freki are introduced by being behind the other characters as they introduced McKay and Major Olegg to the group.
But there's nothing memorable about them.

There are only a few characters that I could actually remember off the top of my head, Pi because she's the main character, London because he talks with Pi a lot, Nickel because he's the obvious comic relief and Major Olegg because he's the only Warthog in the group.

But even then, the only character out of those that got any impression out of me was Pi and Nickel.

Pi is obvious, she's the main character and the leader *coughmarysuecough*, but Nickel as a comic relief only got an impression out of me... because he annoyed the hell out of me.

I GET what they were going for, this comic relief who also has a use in the group, and even though he screws up he's also proud of he screw-ups, making him "mature" about it.

But what I experienced instead was just a character being self deprecating while showing no signs of doing ANYTHING about them.

Of course it also doesn't help that everybody goes by this attitude towards him with "Oh, that rascally Nickel..." instead of actually calling him out on it. He's a comic relief, without the actual relief part.



Lastly, what also annoyed me was the art.

No, it's not terrible, in fact, taken on it's own, it's very pretty. I mean, these artists have done a great job drawing the detailed fur on each of the characters and the snowy landscape.
But in terms of character design, as pretty as they are, they're bland.

They have anthropomorphic characters, but they don't do much to differentiate the characters. (In fact, I wrote an article about character design recently, telling exactly how to do it: minhsgamephilosophy.wordpress.… )

It took me quite a while to figure out who is who, and I was only able to tell who Pi was because she's the only female of the group (though to be fair, giving her a mane to make her female is actually kinda smart).

They're different types of dogs, I get that, yes, but in terms of colour schemes and body types, they're all very much the same.

When I see a group shot, I don't see Pi, London, Nickel and others, I see a blur of characters blending into each other.

To be fair, it's their art style, and the colours do give the atmosphere of the icy area they're in, but I'm just saying that it doesn't help me in identifying the different characters.

I actually confused Nickel with Freki a lot more times than I should.

That's another thing, the icy environment.

As beautiful as they are, I got thrown out of the experience several times because I didn't realize we're in a different area.
I suddenly saw Major Olegg talking and I was like "Wait, wasn't he below the hill?" and then I was "Oh, we ARE below the hill!".
In movies the Director of Photography has to find the best spots to film a scene and frame it in a way that makes it look distinct.
As an artist, you don't have that limitation, you can frame everything any way you want, and instead you failed at that basic thing.

Be creative, put several landmarks on the different areas that make me quickly register which area is which.
The fact that everything is an icy environment is no excuse, ice doesn't destroy hill formations or completely cover specifically shaped lakes or hide very high and distinct trees.

Something that also criticized is the villain showing up in the prologue and nowhere else in this book.
Personally I can understand that they want to save his appearance for a later book, but the thing is that a book, whether it's part of a trilogy or not, should still have a beginning, middle and an end.

Each book should have had it's own little story that's part of a bigger whole, and I didn't get that with this book. I felt like it was a bunch of random events that just come and go.

Having the villain show up at the end of the book would have at LEAST contained and bookended it, but we don't have that. With a prologue like that you should at least make the reader feel the presence of the villain despite his absence, but that not the case either.

So with that in mind, I do have to agree with here.

In conclusion, I like the art, I think it's very pretty and nicely detailed. I also like the dialogue for how it's written. I'm just not invested in the characters and their personalities and actions don't help me become interested in the next book as much as it should. The character design is pretty, but also bland, not helping me differentiate the different characters besides the main character, who in itself is very Mary Sue, even if she DOES have character flaws. (You don't need to be a flawless character to be a Mary Sue)