Lush watercolors move with fluid lines throughout this reimagining. Gods mingle with the mortals, and not heeding their warnings could lead to quick danger being mere men, Odysseus and his crew often make hasty errors in judgment and must face challenging consequences. Following Odysseus’s journey to return home to his beloved wife, Penelope, readers are transported into a world that easily combines the realistic and the fantastic. Hinds adds another magnificent adaptation to his oeuvre ( King Lear, 2009, etc.) with this stunning graphic retelling of Homer’s epic. Decadent and deadly, the urban fantasy setting is not for the faint of heart the cruelties of even the so-called good faeries are breathtaking. Kaye’s story is standard teen magical-romance fare, but it’s Corny’s compelling sideplot that really carries the narrative, providing emotional depth, character development and a poignant conclusion. Heartbroken, Kaye and her friend Corny travel to New York City, where they are entangled in the Seelie Queen’s machinations to destroy Roiben and take his land for herself. Until she finds a faery who can lie, Kaye is forbidden from seeing Roiben. At the coronation of her boyfriend, Roiben, to the throne of the unsavory Unseelie Court, Kaye is goaded by a malicious faery into declaring her love-and Roiben sends her off on an impossible quest. Punky changeling Kaye has just been dumped most brutally. This dark sequel to Tithe (2002) reveals the corruption in even the beautiful parts of faerie.

Ironside by holly black