Gwen de Bonneval

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3749388.html

I read the first volume in this series a couple of months ago, and enjoyed it; the second keeps up the pace, with a well-realised set of characters stealing a giant nuclear-powered battle robot from its resting place in Bombay and bringing it towards its destiny in the Algerian desert; meanwhile the baby born at the end of the previous volume has a very mysterious mark on its forehead which seems linked with the mysterious intrusion into our reality from another world. This volume is a little middle book-y as we travel from start to conclusion of the trilogy (in a giant killer robot floating westward over the Indian Ocean), but the pace is kept up very well. The third and final volume comes out next month, and I'm looking forward to it.… (mais)

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3673857.html

I'm always trying to broaden my reading of bande dessinées, and this won the Prix René Goscinny 2020 so I thought I would give it a go. The setting is a really interesting alternate history (uchronie as the French put it), in which France won the Algerian war by developing giant nuclear powered robots to stomp out the resistance; but in the end, Algeria gained independence after all after the 1976 Batna disaster (which everyone mutters about but has not yet been described) and the robots were all dismantled apart from one which is quietly rusting away in India. Our protagonist, a hoodlum from Nantes in roughly the present day (2020 ish, in the alternate timeline), is given the task of retrieving it for his crime boss. Meanwhile in the Algerian desert, something very strange is happening.

This is really good, and you don't need to be an expert in the history of France and Algeria to appreciate it. The characters are all well drawn and well depicted, and the scenes of France, Algeria and India are convincing, with the legacy of colonialism a major subtheme. Giant nuclear-powered robots are a silly idea, of course, but the point is that they and their crew became cult figures for kids in the 1970s like our protagonist, who still has his sticker book. Gloriously, the robot he is sent to India to retrieve is named after George Sand, the embodiment of French culture stomping out the natives.… (mais)