Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Helluva Good Story!


My son En-Uk isn't yet interested in reading books, whether English or Korean, but he does read a lot of Korean comics on his smartphone, and I finally glommed onto the rather obvious fact that he might be more easily persuaded to read graphic novels, so I've been purchasing them on Kindle and lending him my iPad.

Just two days ago, I bought the graphic story Heck, by Zander Cannon, expecting from the blurbs for it to be some sort of adventure story about a descent into Hell, and it is that, but it's also so much more!


The story is -- one might say -- a postmodern retelling of Dante's Inferno, and it's actually an ethically profound story, something that I hadn't anticipated!


The story affirms the virtues of loyalty to friends and courage to protect them, as well as the importance of rejecting various vices that Dante once warned about, but it also shows the difficulty of refraining from succumbing to temptation, due to the power of desire and the weakness of the will.

At the same time, Heck is a helluva good story!

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2 Comments:

At 2:28 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Thank you, Horace! What a nice recommendation. My son's name is Jin-Seo and he was born in Korea; I'm glad to see my comics are making it over there.

 
At 5:52 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Thanks for noticing my brief review. I actually go by "Jeffery" (note the "-ery"), though sharing the name of a Roman poet is, I suppose, a good thing.

Your book deserves a longer review and more analysis than I gave it, but I hope my words motivate some people to read it.

Your book is precisely the sort that appeals to me (my own novella having a descent into Hell, too).

I'll be looking into your other works soon.

Jeffery Hodges

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