I reviewed Sailor Twain, Mark Siegel’s amazing graphic novel about the mermaid of the Hudson River, back when it came out in 2012. The paperback has just been announced, slated for publication on March 4. Tor.com has a 14-page excerpt from the book up today. Here’s my original review:
Sailor Twain tells the story of Captain Twain of the Lorelei, which plies its trade up and down the Hudson valley, while the ship’s owner, a dissolute Frenchman, seduces the wives of the gentry in the owner’s cabin. Captain Twain’s own beloved wife is wasting with some unspecified disease on land, and he works to raise money to send her to specialists. He’s a good man, beset with tragedy, and he has forgotten how to write the poetry he once loved.And then comes the day when he spies a mermaid clinging to the deck of the Lorelei, gravely wounded. He pulls her from the sea and into his cabin, and everything changes for Sailor Twain. The poetry comes back, and at his request, she never sings for him, never puts him under her siren spell. But still, he is hers.
Out spills a mystery, a story about seduction and duty, mythology and gender, dreams lost and dreams forgotten, and the lure of magic and wonder. Siegel’s illustrations are charcoal drawings that fearlessly mix highly detailed, realistic depictions with cartoons, impressionistic smears, and caricature, and they are moody and grey and dreamlike, the perfect match for the story.
This is a stupendous work, a beautiful and sad and lovely thing.
Sailor Twain [Pre-order paperback on Amazon]
14-page excerpt [Tor.com]