Name: Pemmican Wars
ISBN: 9781553796787

Katherena Vermette

A time-traveling adventure starring a young Métis girl.

Pemmican Wars

Maggie Gordon

One of the most frustrating trends with graphic novels lately is how many of them, particularly those aimed at youth, are so short that they can't deliver a satisfying story. Sure, the entire tale might be too long to tell in a single book, but each volume should have its own weight. Pemmican Wars gives us a brief introduction to Echo, a young Metis teen who seems to teleport to the past when she daydreams. It's an intriguing plot mechanism with plenty of room for educational possibilities, though the book really doesn't give you enough time with Echo and her world to get invested. Readers get a few mysteries, but no overall sense of what is to come. I do have a lot of hope for future volumes as Metis kids deserve their time in the comic spotlight, but I wish the publisher would reconsider the length of the books they are putting out.

mighty dragon 

now this is interesting... i'll look up more to it.

Fraser Simons

This is purely setup, so it’s hard to say? There is no arc… we follow Echo as she has similar days at school repeat: no friend interactions, in history class she learns about a war and is affected by it, imagining the past actively. And then she visits her mom at the end. 

It’s very short, very little letters or dialogue. It would be something like judging and rating a book by the first chapter… yet they have purposefully made it in this format so you can’t not evaluate it as it’s been produced. I did put a hold on the next volumes from the library, so we’ll see where it goes. I’m guessing by all 4 of these small volumes will make up one large, larger sized graphic novel trade. 250ish pages, rather than 65-70. (Typically a trade is 140ish).

This was a short, visually rich graphic novel. There's very little dialogue, instead the emotional weight of the story is conveyed solely through the illustrations and the pointed silence. Echo's isolation and loneliness is very clear. The lack of dialogue and explanations made Echo's slips through time seem more matter of fact, or perhaps more like just daydreams Echo has to pass the time. A part of me doesn't really know what to do with them, but that may be because this just the first volume so there's more to be shown or explained later. But they're certainly an interesting way for Echo and for us as readers to connect to Metis history. 

This definitely felt too short and I'm gonna get started on the next volume immediately.

Sabrina D. 

Minimal graphic novel which uses the art and emotion musically interwoven between the pages to carry the story.