Review: M.T. Anderson's new graphic novel — with gorgeous art by Jo Rioux — adapts the old legend of the drowned city of Ys, giving it better, fuller female characters and a timely environmental message.
Rioux's style also reinforces the parallels Anderson seeks to draw between our world and the Ys legend. The original folk tale is primarily an exercise in woman-hating. Ys, a fabulous city built on land reclaimed from the sea, is ruled by King Gradlon, holder of the only key to the massive gates that keep the ocean at bay. His daughter Dahut — a half-fairy, sometime sorceress and nasty piece by all accounts — steals the key, opens the gates and dooms the city.
Anderson tweaks the story considerably. In his hands it becomes a fable about climate change and capitalism, with the city exemplifying humans' arrogance and short-sightedness about the dangers of technology. Anderson's Dahut isn't a nice girl by any means, but she has a nuanced character and understandable motives for her actions. Though she's somewhat responsible for the city's destruction, there's plenty of blame to go around.
Anderson tweaks the story considerably. In his hands it becomes a fable about climate change and capitalism, with the city ... exemplifying humans' arrogance and short-sightedness about the dangers of technology. Anderson also takes the opportunity to rebuke the original myth's misogyny, elevating Dahut's sister Rozenn to a major character so as to introduce a wider range of female experience. Rozenn may seem at first like a saintly anti-Dahut: She appreciates nature, bonds with a hermit and loves a humble fisherman, while Dahut parties into the night and sleeps with visiting princes.
That book's protagonist reflected that"all that seeks to rise burn[s] itself to nothing," while here King Gradlon intones,"one can do nothing against God and the sea." It remains to be seen whether Anderson's warning, added to so many others we've heard, can somehow move us to disprove Gradlon's words.
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