The Hunger And The Dusk, Vol 1 by G Willow Wilson, Chris Wildgoose & MsassyK

Oh hurray, a new high fantasy property in comics! It does feel a little Dungeons & Dragons meets World Of Warcraft but that is honestly a-okay given that that’s basically what most fantasy is nowadays.

Orcs and humans have been at war for years, as they struggle over land. The orcs require fields on which to graze their livestock, whereas the humans want those same fields to raise crops. But now, with another danger looming over them, the two factions are forced to form an alliance in order to survive.

This danger comes in the form of the fast-moving, ever-hungry humanoids known as the Vangol, who come from over the sea to kill every orc and human in their path. In order to solidify the alliance, the high-born Orc healer Lady Tara Icemane will join the small but fierce mercenary company Last Men Standing. Led by Callum Battlechild, LMS were chosen after Callum earned the respect of Tara’s cousin, Overlord Troth, on the battlefield. Callum is less than confident of his company’s ability to ensure Tara’s safety, especially given how much larger and better equipped the other mercenary bands that protect humankind are, but Troth believes in his valor and honor more than in numbers or wealth.

As Tara travels with her new companions, Troth must return home to face the politically-arranged marriage that has sundered any hopes he and Tara had for their own union. Granted, her own lowly political status in the success-oriented culture of the orcs put paid to their marriage prospects after her parents’ death. There’s really very little for her back in heir homelands… tho that doesn’t make the prospect of travelling with humans seem all that much better. Worse, the danger posed by the Vangols is very real, as she and the LMS learn more about their enemies, at great risk to themselves.

This is a very promising start to a series filled with interesting, original ideas that take a bunch of fantasy tropes and rework them for a story that’s intriguing and accessible, if not exactly groundbreaking. I suppose that, as a modern person of science, it’s easy for me to say “passage treaties and crop rotation” when people have historically fought over the same for centuries. I did really enjoy what we learned about the Vangols and the other races that died out on this continent, and look forward to reading more, especially if there’s more romance in the mix. I did admit to an exhausted eye roll when I saw another G Willow Wilson love triangle — I am still scarred by Alif The Unseen — but it was far less annoying in this book, especially since Tara and Troth struck me more as cousins than lovers.

The art is good, tho characters can get hard to distinguish when there are quite a lot of them. That all said, I’m honestly a little surprised that this was nominated for a Hugo. The Hunger And The Dusk is good but not as interesting as, say Tri Vuong’s The Strange Tales Of Oscar Zahn or Ryan Jampole’s Taka. I’m just betting that my fellow Hugo voters have read neither of those (and I don’t care enough to get into the details and number crunching around nominees, so maybe they have and just didn’t like them as much!) Anyway, this book ranked third of the four selections I managed to read before voting deadline. An entertaining story, with loads of promise for actual innovation incoming, just not my favorite this year.

The Hunger And The Dusk, Vol 1 by G Willow Wilson, Chris Wildgoose & MsassyK was published June 11 2024 by IDW Publishing and is available from all good booksellers, including