Oh man. I heard this author on the CBC talking about an exhibition that's about to open, and really liked him, so got his latest book, not knowing much context past that he described his style as "Haida Manga" and wanted to honour the ties between Haida Gwaii and Japan (who fish together a lot). He then admitted that it was kind of his own thing more than any specific style of manga, and made a joke about not learning a heck of a lot from the master brush painter who'd been trying to teach him. I would say he did, in fact, learn quite a bit from that guy.

Stylistically alone this graphic novel is breathtaking. And that's before you work out that each "page" is cropped from a huge piece of art that together makes a master picture of the story it's trying to tell. There's a copy of the art as a whole at the end, which made me immediately go back and reread the rest of the book and get a second meaning from it. I'd love to see the original, which is in an anthropology in Berlin, attempting to provide context for the Haida artifacts on display there.

The story itself is a sweeping history of the Haida's contact with Europeans, the biological warfare perpetrated by Helmcken (et al) causing a loss of a massive chunk of the population, German unification, and then narrowing to the stories of two men: a young Haida fisherman, and a Norwegian whaler, J.A.J., who is sent to the Pacific Northwest to bring artifacts back to Germany. Though their paths cross only for a few months, coming to a point, it feels like layers and layers of story are being distilled into their interactions. Honestly, you could probably do a PhD in story structure on this book alone.

*gestures incoherently*

Really, really impressed by this, immediately went to the library and got Yahgulanaas' previous book.