The Explorers Guild Volume One - A Book Review

Whilst checking out the local branch of Travelling Man a couple of weeks ago, I found book that interested me. The tale is about an organisation, The Explorers Guild and the search for the mythical city of Shambhala. Its approach is a tad different from most novels, mixing prose and comic book presentation, but it does work, mostly.

Written by John Baird, Kevin Costner (yes, that Kevin Costner), Stephen Meyer and illustrated by Rick Ross, the novel covers the years 1912 to 1918 and is written in the style of factual tomes of the 1920's and 30's, with a hint of Victoriana thrown in for good measure. By the way, don't think that because volume one is mentioned in the title, there is no volume two. At least, there is no sign of it yet.

So, beginning in 1912 and running several story strands concurrently, TEG weaves a complex tale with quite a few characters introduced at the beginning and more added later on. The language is quite flowery, even for the period it is supposed to ape and I did have difficulty in the switching from text to art. To be fair, most of that was down to me, but I would say that, whilst I did get used to the switches, they still jarred even towards the end. Oh, and when I say flowery, I mean downright purple. I get it that real books written around that period could, and often did have such style, but I think they overdo it here just a tad.

Mixing in a forgotten city, a loose cannon of a British Army Major and a gallivanting actress, plus a religious order and the aforementioned Guild, TEG reads like it should be adapted for the small screen. Maybe, given the background of the creators, their was an eye to that end. Who knows. It certainly ticks the boxes for serial production; foreign locations, duplicitous characters and a scope of story that takes all of its 763 pages to get through. The pace does sag in the middle third but the final two hundred pages pass by in a flash.

The artwork for the illustrated sections is clean, well drawn and easily readable. There are colour illustrations at the beginning of each "book" of the story and the format mimics the style of tomes for the period it covers.

This did take some time to get through, partly due to the high pages count, partly due to the nature of the text. However, I did enjoy it and if there were ever to be a volume two, I would pick it up.