Review: Danger and Other Unknown Risks

Danger and Other Unknown Risks by Ryan North
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a post-apocalyptic alternate history where the flipover from December 31, 1999 to January 1 2000, instead of melting down all computers then in existence, reintroduced magic to the world. This caused the collapse of civilization and the breakdown of the planet to many different realms where the laws of physics are different and magic works.

Twenty years later, our protagonist Marguerite de Pruitt is stealing magical totems from the different realms and bringing them back to her uncle Bernard. Her uncle claims these items will be able to reverse the magical breakdown. She is accompanied by her talking dog, a chow named Daisy, and this thick graphic novel recounts their adventures and the discovery Marguerite makes about her uncle's true motivations.

This was okay, but I didn't think it was outstanding. In particular, Bernard didn't make much of a villain--he wasn't a villain so much as a selfish jackass (and a racist selfish jackass at that, with all his prattling about the loss of Western civilization) who wanted to return the world to what it was instead of accepting that it had changed. His efforts put Marguerite, Daisy and their friend Jacin into an endless time travel loop that they managed to break out of at the end. The book ends with Bernard defeated and the three friends now free to travel their new world (and in Marguerite's case, one day returning to the cute farmer boy she met earlier). The art is bright and a bit old-fashioned with clearly defined panels of varying sizes according to the flow of the story. It was pleasant enough, but I've read better.

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