Graphic Novel Review – The Seventh Shrine
Writer: Robert Silverberg
Pencilers: Anders Finer
Cover Artist: Anders Finer
Publisher: Dabel Brothers
Publication Date: 2007
Format: Trade Paperback
The Pontifex, Lord Valentine, arrives at the ruins of an age-old city to investigate the ghastly dismembering murder of an archaeological team member, which has proven just as horrific as it is alluding to those who knew the Metamorph called Dr. Huukaminaan. The mystery of the murder is clear and the details of the death strange, but Valentine is persistent to unearth the killer. He’ll take, it seems, any excuse to remain outside of his castle, the Labyrinth, which in his opinion is more like a prison than a kingly estate. There are a number of Metamorphs who are not speaking, leading Valentine to believe there is more to the murder, possibly something pertaining to the ancient rituals of the legendary Seventh Shrine.
Happening after the last of the Majipoor chronicles, The Seventh Shrine by Robert Silverberg insipidly opens with Valentine and company’s arrival at Velalisier. Upon being welcomed by the others of the archaeology team, a slew of much erroneous and bland historical details is pressed upon us, forcing what little action there was to come to a halt. Instead, we must now trudge through “just-so-you-know-Bob” dialogue, meaningless cultural facts, and the slow turn of discovery.
The artwork, done by Anders Finer (who also worked on George R.R. Martin’s The Hedge Knight), is colorful and stylistic, but after a few pages begins to feel monotonous. I’m not sure who’s at fault for this though; the story itself is fairly uneventful, the art having very little to work off of. Most of the shots are of Valentine and company, standing around, talking, looking out over the landscape, standing around, talking, looking around, standing, talking, maybe walking, talking. You get the point, I hope. The characters are clear and the watercolor-style of each painting has a soft touch to it; I was just hoping for more variety.
Production-wise, The Seventh Shrine is off by several marks. I noticed many formatting errors, which led to clunky paragraphs of text. The text itself is not very large and often fills only half the page; this is fine when an illustration accompanies it on the same page, but otherwise it makes the design seem rather bland. I have not read the story before so I do not know if it is broken down into small sections, but it seemed like it was as there were a couple of different scenes that didn’t line up correctly one after the other. Unfortunately, there is not way of discerning this as no symbols are provided in between the sections. Sometimes it appears to be a formatting error—an extra return mark, maybe—and other times it feels like the story is jumping from scene to scene with no transition of any kind.
This is issue one of two, and both parts will eventually be compiled into one volume. Amazon.com is telling me it’s 164 pages long, but I’m counting more around 30 pages total. Maybe I’m dumb when it comes to mathematics. I’d read issue two if it came to me, but I’m in no way needing to read it, which is a shame considering I’ve only experienced half the journey so far. Unfortunately, this mystery isn’t one I’m dying to see solved.
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