Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black, by Marcus Sedgwick and Julian Sedgewick, illustrated by Alexis Deacon
Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black , by Marcus Sedgwick and Julian Sedgewick, illustrated by Alexis Deacon (Walker Books US, August 13, 2019), is a strange, melancholy, moving fever-dream of a story. It tells of young Henry Black, a conscientious objector battling the fires of the London blitz, who dreams of chronicling the war through his art and his journal writing (this journal constitutes the prose and pictures of the book). His decision not to fight has created a rift between him and his father and brother, Ellis. It's the loss of Ellis that hurts Henry most, and so he is glad that Ellis agrees to meet him at a London pub. The two brothers don't exactly reconcile, but it is clear that their love is still alive at its roots. And then, after Henry leaves the pub, it is bombed, as is the bus Henry was trying to take home. When he wakes with a severe head injury in the hospital, his journal turns into a feverish record of his desperate efforts to f...