Seven Worlds Is Not Enough

A giant glowing fish skeleton. Wow. The Springfield Mystery Spot was better.

Like last week's The Secret Voice, The Ring of the Seven Worlds drops us in the middle of a world with a lot of history already past. But the writers, Giovanni Gualdoni and Gabriele Clima, put even more in here.

There's a multidimensional gate that connects 7 worlds, except for Nemo, which has been sealed off for centuries because it invaded the other worlds once before. The forces of Nemo emerge again, and are seemingly unstoppable.

Most of the story focuses on Timo, the son of the head of the Merchants' Guild, and Luce, an acrobat in a traveling circus, in one of those circumstances where each step takes them to someone who can either help, or help get them to someone who can help.

But there's also a thread involving the a group of people calling themselves the Primogens, who insist humanity is a result of de-evolution from them and think this is their chance to retake the world. One member of their race puts a plan in motion, while dragging along these three sentries who were the only survivors of Nemo's attack at the start of the book.

There's another race called the Entombed who live below ground, that seem to be having some kind of generational divide in how to best preserve themselves. Except all the power is concentrated in the hands of the old folks, so tough shit for the kids, I guess.

There's another thread about the ongoing control of the city of Borea by Nemo's forces, from the perspective of Timo's friend (who organizes a resistance among the other adolescents), and the Captain of Nemo's forces given the governorship over the city, who grows increasingly brutal in his reprisals.

There's another thread about the governor of Mose trying to get an organized resistance going. Their successes and failures, their response when they figure out Nemo's ultimate goal in this battle. There's something in there about how easily people will discard whatever morals and rules they claim to fight by once they can find some excuse to do so. Usually something the other side did first.

Timo and Luce end up on some pirate haven (seen above), right as the guy who ruled the brotherhood died and there's a brief, but violent struggle for the leadership spot. Honestly, that part felt out of place because it feels so unrelated to the larger battle with Nemo. Maybe that's a good point, people are not just going to drop all their old beefs because there's some new problem. But when there's so much going on already, it feels like wasted pages. Especially because the book then skips over this whole point where Timo somehow applies all his schooling about merchant principles to unite disparate factions into a unified resistance.

There's more even beyond that, some of which is only hinted at, backstory or aspects of the government and culture. For the most part, Clima and Gualdoni thread the needle of giving enough for things to feel like they happen for logical reasons, without letting the story get too bogged down in details. We learn enough about Timo to know he would have been receiving lessons on how to run an entire guild, so it isn't entirely impossible he'd be able to bring people together.

 On the other hand, one of the younger members of the Entombed, Lulene (seen above trying to give Luce the old short haircut), kind of loses her mind and I don't think they really establish what's going on in that society enough to explain her desperation or need to blame her troubles on Timo and Luce. Also, she drops out of the story entirely halfway through, so there's no resolution on that front.

Matteo Piana is the artist, with Davide Turoti handling colorist duties. Most of the human adult characters are vaguely pear-shaped. Spindly legs, with large torsos and steeply sloped shoulders. Everyone seems to wear big coats and clothes that generally obscure their bodies, no matter what the climate of their world is like. The Entombed are wiry with long limbs and extremely pale faces. Because they're underground all the time and they make their way through narrow passages a lot. Or maybe they're skinny because their society is dying.

Most transportation is via airships, dirigibles, stuff like that. Some of them look about like blimps we might have. Other, presumably more high-dollar models are colored and shaped in ways that resemble the prow of a sea vessel. Nemo's vessels don't look aerodynamic at all, a big metal box, but I guess their higher level of technology means they don't have to worry about that.

There aren't many fight scenes. That one between Luce and Lulene is one of the only ones in the book. There are a lot of chase sequences, though, and they follow a roughly similar pattern. Where each panel is another step in the characters' flight from whatever they're running from this time. Let's you see the work, so to speak, of how they get from A to B.