A tale of changing legacies and new heroes.
Two young warriors from Thebes resist a seemingly unstoppable foe in this graphic novel.
Centered on the Sacred Band of Thebes, an ancient Greek legion of soldiers, this graphic novel, created by Jacobson, written by Baker and Rabney, and illustrated by Continuado and Daf Afferni, shows a band of muscled ancient soldiers fighting against incredible odds in the very first panel. (The novel’s opening immediately calls to mind Frank Miller’s classic graphic novel 300.) The story opens with the Band leading fellow Greeks against a vastly larger Macedonian army commanded by King Philip II and his young son, Alexander (the future Alexander the Great). From there, the narrative moves back in time to explore the origins of the Band’s leaders, Androkles and Kallistos. As young boys raised by goat farmers in a small village, they were violently removed from their families and forced to join the Sacred Band. Ophion, the Band’s hulking and brutal leader, even murders Androkles’ mother in the process, while Kallistos fights back against the older men with a ferocity that immediately marks him as something special. Kallistos is taken under the wing of Sophos, a gentle warrior who believes love is the foundation of leadership, while Androkles is continually subjected to Ophion’s cruelty and trained with an iron fist under the constant threat of punishment: “Losing is not an option,” he tells the young Androkles. “You do and you will face my wrath!” As the boys grow into warriors, their bond only deepens. Kallistos develops into a natural leader, eventually finding love with Elpida, an unlikely but formidable female sparring partner. Meanwhile, Androkles, still held back by Ophion’s dominance, begins to lay the groundwork for a different future for the Band, one where families give up their sons to the fight willingly, as a matter of honor. With the Macedonian threat looming, both men are pushed toward charging into the future and determining the fate of the ancient world itself.
Baker and Rabney’s intriguing concept—tracking parallel mentorships—explores something genuinely compelling: a softer, love-based approach versus violence and intimidation. That contrast forms the story’s spine. Unfortunately, this idea is just one of many competing on the page. With romances, epic battles, brotherhood, and the passing of the torch to a new generation, the narrative moves so quickly that it often feels mechanical, checking off story beats rather than allowing events to evolve organically. (Generic narration like “With superior fighting skills, the Sacred Band cuts through the larger Spartan ranks” also feels at odds with the visceral imagery on the page.) Ironically, for such a violent and action-heavy story, the book has very little sense of sustained conflict outside of Androkles’ relationship with Ophion. The boys climb the ranks with surprising speed before heading into an ill-fated final battle that feels more anticlimactic than tragic. Visually, the artwork alternates between rough sketches and more lush, cinematic panels filled with blood, charging forces, and sweeping motion. Several images stand out—particularly a revenge sequence drenched entirely in red.
A tale of changing legacies and new heroes.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798998510403
Page Count: 152
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
