Nymph

Thorne introduces Ghita in this book. He, speaking through the character Fordel, a traveling entertainer and scam artist, describes her as "a lass of fifteen summers," before becoming more explicit about her precociously womanly charms. She joins the tattered itinerants, earning a very grown-up part in their lewd little theater and quickly becoming a favorite of audiences everywhere. It's hard to call this a real novel, in the sense of one sustained direction, difficulty or resolution. Instead, Thorne writes a series of anecdotes, strung together like beads on the wandering thread of narrative. These vignettes include drama, loss, failures, and successes in good proportion, bound together by the kind of humor you hope your kids never see you reading - certainly not the kind for people shy about human reproduction and its entertainment potential. That loose connection between segments brings me to my disappointment in this book. Thorne built his reputation as a comic artist, for mainstream Red Sonja and later for the bawdier Ghita. "Nymph" comes across as a series of plot sketches for comics - brief, self-contained stories, over in a few pages, with the ongoing characters ready for their next encounter. Just as long-lived comics need to keep the welcome mat out for new readers at all times, this can generally be read with very little regard to what goes before or after any given story. For me, though, the big letdown came from the artwork, or rather from the lack of it. Most pages feature a beautifully done pencil drawing to highlight the text. That's hardly the comic I expected. Like the writing, which predominates, the artwork just sketches a sustained visual exercise that I hope Thorne actually creates some day. Set your expectations properly. It's silly and sexy, a fluffy bit of writing for grown-ups. If that's what you want, you'll love it. I had anticipated another graphic novel, rather than an illustrated text, so did not get what I thought I signed up for. -- wiredweird