The subtly wry humor and wit of this collection will charm even the most hidebound traditionalist.

There are echoes of Dickens, Austen, even Chaucer here. Rachel Hartman's characters, lively on their own and only in text, vibrantly dance with solidly human expression across the panels of this graphic novel. Amy herself is a heroine cut from the same fabric as Anne Shirley, Hermione Granger, Dorothy Gale, Lessa and, as Linda Medley points out in her nostalgic introduction, Jo March; yet uniquely a 21st-century girl living in a mostly medieval fantasy.

This is absolutely the book for those who shun and dismiss the graphic novel as a legitimate literary form -- minds will change! Amy Unbounded is a must-have for any comic art or graphic novel collection; readers of Neil Gaiman, Terri Windling, Ellen Datlow, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Patricia Wrede and Anne McCaffrey, to mention only the merest few, will love this effort. We must have more from Hartman and soon.

by Stephen Richmond
Rambles.NET
25 February 2006