Author: Thomas Wheeler
Artist: Frank Miller
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Released: October 1st, 2019
Received: NetGalley
Rating: 

I received a copy of Cursed through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

So there’s been a lot of talk about Cursed as of late. And with some very good reasons. For one thing, it was written by Thomas Wheeler, and illustrated by Frank Miller (yes, you read that right!). For another thing, Cursed is in the process of being made into a Netflix Original, which is pretty cool.

Cursed is a retelling of some of the events that occurred during King Arthur’s tale. Or more accurately, it’s a twisted version of the tale. In this story, it isn’t a King the Sword desired, but a Queen. Enter Nimue. Her entire village was slaughtered, sending her off on a quest for survival and revenge. And she can only hope that she has it in her to change destiny and save her people.

Cursed was an interesting read, on the whole. It blended the longer form of novel writing with the imagery from the one and only Frank Miller. Together, Miller and Wheeler were clearly trying to do something groundbreaking.

In a world where there are hundreds upon hundreds of King Arthur retellings, Cursed went out of its way to try and be different. And that’s what caught my attention about this series. Or, more accurately, the artistic team caught my attention, but the unique perspective is what held it.

But if I’m being completely honest here – I was pretty let down by the events in Cursed. It was interesting, sure. But it wasn’t anything like the story I expected. Yes, it did follow Nimue and it was an epic quest. But it didn’t hold my attention nearly as much as I hoped.

I really wanted to like Cursed, truly I did. But I found myself struggling to actually get through it all. I kept picking it up and putting it down. Which is never a great sign with me, I’m sad to say. Part of my problem is that the artwork from Frank Miller wasn’t as…brilliant? As I was hoping it would be. The black and white imagery was an interesting choice, and it could have paid off. But I don’t think it was quite there. Not for me, at any rate.

So now I guess the question is: am I interested enough to give the Netflix series a try? Yeah, probably. I’m not sure I’m up for seeing another retelling, but I figure I want to see this through to the end. And I do still hold some higher expectations from the adaptation. I guess I’ll find out!