Hopeless, Maine: Personal Demons
(Hopeless, Maine #1)
by Tom and Nimue Brown
Archaia, 2012
128 Pages
Young Adult
The chronicles of Hopeless, Maine started with a web comic and a weekly newsletter called The Hopeless Vendetta. Recently re-released in a paperback that includes all three of the original graphic novels, these books are a gem for fans of Courtney Crumrin and other gothic fantasy. While the stories contain only mild violence, they wallow in a world of bleak and overwhelming gloom. The graphic novels read like visual poetry… in fact, sometimes the chapter titles are the best part!
We find a little girl named Salamandra living alone in a mansion in Hopeless, another victim of the unexplained rash of adult disappearances from the town. We search for Durosimi (her Dad), Melisandra (her Mom), and Drustan (her brother, who was killed– when mom drank him.) Then, slowly, but surely we glean that this family isn’t quite like our own. The soup bowls in the house are filled with tentacled things, and Durosimi, whom we never do meet, can apparently summon demons. (“Must be one of Dad’s,” Salamandra says, nonchalantly).
Salamandra is is “helped” out of her predicament by a witch, Annamarie Nightshade, who quickly discovers that the little girl can do magic when she purposely sets a chair on fire. Just don’t call Salamandra a witch. Immediately delivered to Miss Calder’s orphanage, Salamandra is an outcast, and is chased up a tree. So, of course, she runs away… but she leaves the door open and Miss Calder, like the other adults, simply disappears.
While on the run, Salamandra meets a mysterious ghost-like girl who befriends the lonely ones, and tries to learn their secrets. The ghost girl gets mad when Salamandra won’t teach her magic and appears to other children instead. Unfazed, Salamandra finds a friend in a boy named Owen and a crow from the tree she was chased up. Miss Calder eventually reappears, but is only a ghost of her former self.
Owen and Salamandra go back to visit Miss Nightshade to ask for help with the ghostly girl, who they then must find a way to trap before she causes any further harm. But it isn’t easy to catch something supernatural.
Related Posts: |
| Interview with Tom & Nimue Brown |
| Hopeless, Maine: Inheritance |
