Five Wounds - Jonathan Walker, Dan Hallett

Jonathan Walker’s ‘Five Wounds’ is a Magnificent Bastard

A few months ago when I reviewed Jonathan Walker’s Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel, I called the illustrated novel “a bit of a bastardised mongrel.”

Turns out Jonathan couldn’t agree more; over at John Scalzi’s Whatever he argues the strengths of such a format in an insightful piece on the thought process behind his and Dan Hallett’s illustrated tome:

Bastardry has its advantages too … In an illustrated novel, the pictures are not part of the narrative continuity in the way that successive frames in a comic book are. They do not have to carry the burden of explaining what is happening, since that information is provided in the text; and because they are freed from this obligation, it’s possible to use them to do other things.

In couldn’t recommend Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel more. An accomplished, multifaceted work that follows the twisted fates of five sympathetic freaks in what is essentially an alternate-history Venice, its synthesis of words and images is effective enough to change anyone’s preconceptions about them thar picture books.

Five Wounds - Jonathan Walker, Dan Hallett

Five Wounds – Jonathan Walker, Dan Hallett

A chapter from the novel can be downloaded here.

Carl Doherty has written about movies, video games, comic books and literature for almost a decade, forging ill-informed critiques for numerous websites, blogs and publications that no one has ever heard of. His debut novel, the epic fantasy comedy Welcome to The Fold, is available now on Kindle here (UK) and here (US).

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