The Marble Queen

by Anna Kopp, Gabrielle Kari

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Romance
Pages: 336
Rating:

Synopsis:

The Marble Queen is a YA fantasy graphic novel that’s the political drama of Nimona meets the heartfelt romance of The Princess and the Dressmaker, but this time in a sapphic romance surrounded by a mist of magic.

Princess Amelia’s kingdom, Marion, is in shambles after months of their trade routes being ravaged by pirates, and now the only seemingly option left is for her to save it through a marriage alliance. When she gets an exorbitant offer from the royalty of Iliad—a country shrouded in mystery—Amelia accepts without question and leaves her home to begin a new life. But she lands on Iliad’s shores to find that her betrothed isn't the country’s prince, but the recently coronated Queen Salira.

Shocked, Amelia tries to make sense of her situation and her confused heart: Salira has awakened strange new feelings inside her, but something dark hides behind the Queen's sorrowful eyes. Amelia must fight the demons of her own anxiety disorder before she can tackle her wife's, all while war looms on the horizon.

Anna Kopp and Gabrielle Kari’s The Marble Queen has some lovely art and character design (though it didn’t always look consistently great — there are some panels that really lack polish).

Story-wise, the pace is a bit meh, since we’re meant to believe that Amelia and Salira are in love really quickly, enough to overrule Salira’s love for the woman she meant to marry instead. (This is kind of “handled” in that Salira says that she no longer loves that woman because of the circumstances, but it comes across as pretty thin.)

It’s a fun concept: Amelia is the princess of a kingdom practically besieged by pirates, married off in order to cement an alliance. To her surprise, she’s married to Queen Salira… and unable to ever leave the country again because of magical reasons. She accepts all this remarkably quickly, manages to notice plots that Salira was completely oblivious to, etc, etc, saves the day, etc, etc, happy ending.

It all just goes too fast, probably not helped by the format (it’s harder to do lots of quiet pining scenes in a graphic novel). Even when something goes wrong and Amelia is imprisoned, it’s literally just for a night and suddenly everything is fine again in the morning.

There are upsides — Salira and Amelia are adorable. There’s also some discussion of Amelia’s anxiety, which is represented throughout the story by briars grabbing hold of her, and a little bit of Salira’s. Ultimately, though, the book just doesn’t linger with any of its themes, and the more I think about it, the more it crumbles.

Rating: 2/5