I enjoyed this sixth volume of Richard Moore's 'Boneyard', collecting issues twenty-one to twenty-four, but it's easily the flimsiest thus far. The counter to that is that it may also be the most fun, a weird balance to find. After this, there's only one more volume to go and I have to wonder all the more about what that's going to contain, because this doesn't appear to do any setup for it at all. I have to wonder if it's going to follow the same sort of approach to this one and then wrap up the series with at least one detail that we expected to happen all along.

That's the consummation of the budding romance between Paris and Abbey, the human owner of the cemetery in Raven's Hollow, and Abbey, the vampire who lives there, or whatever word is the more appropriate choice for someone who's not technically alive. As budding romances go, it has never been as budding as here, not least because this volume begins with Paris mustering up the courage to ask her out on a date, only to find that she beats him to it. She is required to attend a formal affair and needs someone to go with. That she answers the door wrapped in a towel helps immensely.

It's at the Illuminary's palace, which is on a different plane of reality, and so the attendees are an impeccably varied collection of supernatural creatures. It seems that he's either the, at least one, overseer of such entities on the planet Earth, and, in addition to food, drink and dancing, his gala is an opportunity for him to talk to each and every one of them to look at whether they've done a good job at "blending, keeping a low profile". You see, none of them are supposed to be obvious. I could point him to everything that's happened thus far across five volumes but, to be fair, most of it wasn't their fault, Abbey's least of all.

If we were to go looking for someone whose fault it was, the first candidate on our list would have to be Lilith, who was behind everything that went down in the previous volume and some of what happened in earlier ones too. We don't see her conversation with the Illuminary, but she is there at the gala, along with Jack, and she takes advantage of Abbey getting upset at seeing Nessie to slip a little mickey into her drink. And everything goes downhill from there. Fortunately, Paris has a clear head and Nessie, Ralph and his actual date, Robin from the pet shop, lend hands, as, when they're summoned, do Hildy and Glump. Well, not so much Glump, but he's there.

There's fun in the setup, with Paris visiting Mr. Vincent the undertaker for a tux, which looks good on him, except for the missing back. His usual clients have different needs. Nessie is the one who's keen to keep a low profile, though she wears an outrageous dress and talks Ralph into taking her, because there's an open bar. Things go horribly wrong before he even gets to over-patronise that. It's good to see Robin again, though she seems remarkably okay with the company she finds herself in. Paris struggles and he's been hanging around with the occupants of his cemetery for a while.

There's even more fun in the progression, because that Mickey removes all of Abbey's inhibitions and Moore has a blast having her misbehave in public. The downside to so much fun is that there's precious little actually happening beyond Abbey misbehaving and Paris trying to keep a lid on it. I won't complain because I thoroughly enjoyed it, but my notes got shorter and shorter as I worked through these four issues, issue twenty-three boiling down to "not a lot of progression here but humour". What else happens explains why there were apparently unrelated scenes in the couple of issues before it because they were there to set up this.

And it all works out, of course, returning us to the budding romance angle, which is handled with a serious amount of panache. Moore knows where this is going, but he wisely doesn't take us there, because, once that happens, it's done as a story arc and he wants to keep it on the burner as long as he possibly can. He's done a good job with that all along but his management of it here is close to textbook. And so there's really not a lot happening here, but it's all fun and it does expand the series just a little. So to the final volume next month. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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