It's probably a little unfair that I'm reviewing this book in isolation, because it's very much a first book in a series of three and it has no intention of wrapping anything up at the end of this one. It sets a lot of things in motion and asks a lot of questions, but doesn't answer any of them. We have to wait for the full story arc to run all the way to the finish at the end of book three. However, it is a first volume, so I'll just have to make allowances.

As you might imagine from the title, this is about Edgar Allan Poe, the Baltimore writer who made such an impression on both the detective and horror genres that they still remember him today. As the introduction, by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Cat Winters, author of a novel called 'The Raven's Tale', which also stars Edgar Allan Poe, points out, he abides today like few of his peers, if any. We all know who he is and he's become quite the pop culture icon in the twenty-first century.

Here, any future knowledge of his fame that reached him wouldn't give him much solace, because he's seriously suffering. It's 1848, so he's forty-nine years old and he's just lost his beloved wife and cousin, Virginia Clemm, to tuberculosis, and, while he doesn't know it, he only had a year left to live himself. In this story, he's haunted by her ghost and struggling with his sanity, apparently sleeping on his wife's grave and fearing his literary rival, Rufus Griswold, who would sabotage his name in a posthumous biography of him. Most crucially, he dreams.

And, as he would write in a famous poem in 1849, "is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?" That springs quickly to mind here, because the book begins with Poe falling asleep, only to literally tumble into a dream, or perhaps a nightmare. Which it is we presumably have to figure out and we're not going to get there in this book alone.

Certainly he has friends, even if they're rather unlikely ones. He's quickly rescued by Irving, a well-dressed rat in evening-wear who speeds him away from whatever is seeking him to his home town, the greatest city in all of Terra Somnium, Spindle Towne, as a first stop on a journey to the Maghi. He's given a gift here that comes in useful later on, but Irving, who consistently calls him Master Poo, proves himself to be a worthy gift himself, given how much he helps.

Poe is drawn along on a wild series of cliffhanger adventures, whisked from here to there and then rescued to who knows where next. Another companion joins them on the way, a fiddler crab (as in a crab who plays the fiddle) called Terence, who looks dapper in a large top hat. Other characters do what they can in their brief moments within the story, perhaps for reasons of their own. There are sides, it appears, in Terra Somnium, though we don't know enough yet to figure out why.

It does gradually becomes clear that the Nightmare King is behind all the various wild and weird minions who chase him. After escaping from the realm of Poseidon through a timely intervention from Thetis and her legions of water nymphs, he's learned that the Nightmare King wants to kill him personally. Why, we have little idea, but there are hints that it might tie to Poe's success as a writer of the macabre. Maybe there's some professional jealousy going on, the Nightmare King's monopoly having been threatened.

In keeping with the "dream within a dream" idea, Poe occasionally falls asleep inside what we are sure is dream, only to dream that he's somewhere else, likely Baltimore where he interacts with a variety of the real people in his life, who of course turn out to be anything but, because this is the dream within a dream. The ultimate question, of course, is who's actually dreaming. Is he the real dreamer or is somebody dreaming him? I like how these themes play into Poe's work and potential madness.

Of course, it's not difficult to assume that being chased in Terra Somnium constitutes a dream, as it features talking animals in suits and hats and a weird combination of characters from different mythologies. King Poseidon, of course, is from Greek mythology, but his throne room is guarded here by a multi-headed incarnation of Jörmungandr, the Midgard serpent from Norse myth. The two happily coexist here and there are characters from Egyptian mythology too.

Other details may come from myth but, if they do, I don't recognise them. Irving, for instance, has a Babylonian haversack, which is rather akin to Newt Scamander's suitcase in 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them', in that it's only tiny on the outside. Irving has an entire house inside his, but staying there doesn't help much when the haversack can be carried away by a raven. Fortunately, it seems that Irving knows King Nevermore, so they don't have to be given the death penalty for the crime of trespassing in Raven Forest. I presume they both have an antecedent in antiquity, maybe in the 'Thousand Nights and One Night'.

While I thoroughly appreciated these wild scenes of danger, I have to say that I find myself unable to comment much about the story by Dwight L. MacPherson, creator of this series, because it isn't remotely clear to me yet. I need to read the second and third books to see where we're going. I'm highly intrigued, that's for sure, and the story certainly seems to be building, but nothing finds a resolution in this volume and we're left eagerly wanting more. Fortunately I have both the others in my possession, thanks to a welcome Christmas gift from the better half, so I can dive straight in and find out how this wraps up.

Instead, I'll happily praise the artwork, courtesy of Luis Czerniawski, as the highlight of this initial volume. From a quick bit of online research, it looks like he's Argentinean and has vast experience working for a variety of independent comic book publishers. I recognise 'Grimm Fairy Tales', and a Moonstone series of 'Kolchak: The Night Stalker', but many of the others are new to me, including 'Gargantuan' for Amigo Comics, which looks like something I should check out.

Czerniawski's art here is highly atmospheric, intricately detailed and thoroughly immersive. I had a whole slew of favourite panels, from the initial view of Spindle Towne, to Jörmungandr's rise to steal away Poe to the arrival of a horribly bemuscled centaur wielding a sword many times Poe's size. I should mention that, while we always think of Poe being short (he was really 5' 8") he's tiny indeed here, so most of the enemies he faces are gargantuan in comparison.

I should also praise the colouring work by Andrea Messi, who I believe is Italian. That's due to this not only being sumptuously drawn, but also sumptuously coloured, most frames dark but with an impressive variety of colours. This isn't the comic book equivalent of a DC movie, where we strain to see what's going on and fiddle in vain with the brightness controls on our televisions. Through the entire book, we can see exactly what we're supposed to see, even if we're looking at ravens in the nighttime. It's all wonderfully done.

So, this is a glorious start to a three book series. I just hope that it remains glorious for a couple more books, because I do see that the artist changes during book two, to Pablo Fernandez, and in the third, to Steven Legge. The style inevitably changes with those artist changes and, taking just a cursory glance, I don't think for the better, but I'm open to seeing if they bring something new to the series. Let's find out next month. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by Dwight L. MacPherson click here
For more titles by Luis Czerniawski click here
For more titles by Andrea Messi click here
For more titles by Simon Robins click here