Slightly Damned, Book 3, by Sarah “Chu” Wilson – book review by Fred Patten.
by Patch O'Furr
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Slightly Damned, Book 3, by Sarah “Chu” Wilson
Phoenix, AZ, Slightly Damned Comics/Orlando, FL, Ka-Blam Digital Printing, Aug. 2014, trade PB $39.95 (unpaged [282 pages]), digital download $4.99.
Slightly Damned, Book 3 is here, collecting pages #377 to #571 (March 15, 2010 to January 26, 2013) of Sarah “Chu” Wilson’s Ursa Major Award-winning internet comic strip. They are divided into Part 5, Forgive Me, and Part 6, The Flower Festival.
“The Story So Far” begins: “After Rhea, Buwaro, and Kieri rescued a pair of kidnapped Fairies in Riverside City, they joined the traveling Sinclair family on the road.”
Does this tell you anything, if you’re not reading the strip regularly? Like any long-running newspaper or Internet comic strip, new readers have to just jump in and pick up the background as you go along. Briefly: Rhea Snaketail, a yellow-furred (she sheds) Jakkai, is murdered, but because she wasn’t really bad, she is only assigned to the Ring of the Slightly Damned in Hell. She meets Buwaro, a horned, purple-furred Demon, but basically a nice guy. After several adventures (Book 1), Rhea escapes with Buwaro back to her homeworld, Medius, which has two moons and a lot of fantasy beings wandering around. They meet Kieri (Buwaro calls her “Snowy”), a blue-haired Angel who became stranded when she came to Medius (rather, to Rhea’s continent of Fragaria) with her brother Kazai, and he disappeared. Buwaro and Kieri fall in love (“A Demon and an Angel? It just isn’t …”), which infuriates (or as the earthy Rhea would say, pisses off) both the Demons and Angels who traditionally try to kill each other. The Odd Trio search Fragaria for Kazai; first in nearby Riverside City, then joining the Sinclair family of traveling merchants to continue their search in Weyville, and then larger St. Curtis.