Jasmine Walls

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Content warning for racism and racist violence.)

Set in Mississippi in the 1930s, the world depicted in BROOMS is both all too familiar, and yet also wildly different from our own. Magic is real - but so, too, are institutional racism, white nationalism, and government corruption. Black people are prohibited from using magic, while Indigenous Americans are only allowed to learn magic in government-sanctioned boarding schools. Against this backdrop, Billie Mae and her friends/found family try to eke out a living while pursuing the American Dream.

The captain of the Night Storms, Billie Mae hopes to earn enough money racing to travel to California, where Black folks like herself can wield their magic openly. Along with her second-in-command, Loretta, and Cheng-Kwan, a Chinese American trans woman, the trio compete in illicit broom races. Meanwhile, Luella - a Mexican-Choctaw woman who was stripped of her magic after she fought back at a boarding school - lives with her parents and grandmother. The extended family is trying to keep young Mattie and Emma safe, hiding their emerging powers from government agents lest they be dragged off to a boarding school too. Competing in the notorious Witches' Cackle might help - but can the Night Storms prepare the newbies in time?

I really wanted to love BROOMS: it's got amazing representation (the main cast is comprised entirely of people of color; Luella and Billie Mae are in love; Emma is deaf and communicates using sign language; and Loretta wears a leg brace because of a stroke), and the historical fiction/fantasy dimension allows Walls to explore the institutional racism of America's recent past (and, in many cases, present) in an alternative setting.

However, for a comic that's billed as "a queer, witchy Fast and the Furious," there's precious little action or suspense. I think this primarily boils down to the artwork - the races just weren't all that exciting, and I often had trouble telling what was going on. (To be fair, giving form to magic seems like a pretty tricky proposition.)

Likewise, I felt like there was some gaps in the story. For example, why would a bunch of spoiled rich white boys (The Pedigrees) want to compete in illegal races? Or maybe the better question is: how would they learn of the races, and why would they be allowed in? Not to mention, The Pedigrees is a plot line that never really seems to go anywhere. What is Mattie and Emma's relation to Luella? What happened to Billie Mae's family? Etc., etc.… (mere)

Lana, Drew, Shen, Walter, and Jay have all been friends since the time they first met at a high school GSA meeting. They started playing Dice & Deathtraps (obviously Dungeons & Dragons) around then. Four years later, they've decided to meet up and finally complete their first campaign, the only one they never finished. It's one last opportunity to get together in person before some big life changes for several of them. It's also an opportunity for them to all meet Cassandra, Jay's girlfriend, in person. Cassandra has heard about their campaigns from Jay and is excited to get to play with them for the first time.

Unfortunately, Cassandra's newbie mistakes rub everyone the wrong way. Her presence changes the group dynamics and makes what was supposed to be a fun final in-person game a frustrating experience. Lana reacts particularly negatively, to the point that Cassandra notices and starts to feel unwelcome. Will their final game end with hurt feelings and strained friendships?

I loved the artwork for this. It was appealing and fun, and I never had any trouble telling characters apart or figuring out what was going on.

The story was a bit heavy-handed, all about friendship jealousy and dealing with changes. At least one of the characters was going off to grad school - at their ages, it seemed a bit odd that they hadn't talked through this kind of stuff before. In fact, Lana had apparently had a similar reaction in high school, when Shen and Walter's queer-platonic relationship began.

Change is especially tough for some folks (like me, hello), so the setup wasn't too difficult for me to accept, and the little peeks readers got into the various characters' backstories and their relationships with each other helped. And I appreciated that the story stuck firmly to friendship jealousy - I realized after finishing the volume that it could very easily have turned into some kind of romantic jealousy thing, and there wasn't even a hint of that.

All in all, I enjoyed this and the way it wrapped the characters' issues into their D&D game, although I'm wondering about the "volume 1" aspect of it since it worked perfectly fine as a standalone read.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (mere)

A gentle, tidy friendship drama unfolds amongst a group of Dungeons & Dragons players who started adventuring together in high school and are on the verge of graduating college. Some worry one party member's girlfriend is the Yoko that will ruin the group, but as with Yoko, things are more complex than that.

The characters are diverse in race, gender, and sexuality, but don't feel particularly deep or complex yet. It's seems another volume is planned, so maybe they can be made more three-dimensional there. And yet at the same time, this volume feels like a complete story and I'm not sure what more needs to be said about them. I guess I'll find out.… (mere)