This book was unsettling.

Let’s start with how I found myself with this graphic novel. Per usual, on days when I wander downtown with the sole purpose of reading, I made a pit stop at the local comic book shop, to just poke around and see what’s new before heading to coffee shop above the indie bookstore to read the book I brought with me.

So, really just browsing (with no intention to buy) I pulled Beautiful Darkness from the shelf mostly because it was pretty. The watercolor illustrations immediately caught my attention. And then I flipped it open…and oh. That wasn’t what I was expecting.

It’s drawn as if it were a children’s book, told within standard fairy tale tropes, and highly reminiscent of the adventurers of the Borrowers. So that is what I was expecting. And it did come through. These things are very much part of this book.

But it’s also Lord of the Flies.

Because it is genuinely dark. Reading through the first few pages, I found myself gasping in shock at each new (horrific) plot twist, illustrated in bright colors, soft lines, and perhaps worse, words of kindness.

But really, when all is said and done, and the story ends in literal darkness (two pages of solid black), it’s the story that’s not told that holds the most sway. I will omit spoilers, but it is worthwhile to go back, to study the panels of this secondary, subtextual (subillustrated?) story.

There is a horror hinted at that rockets Aurora’s into another stratosphere of disturbing.

So, for emphasis, I will sayit again: Beautiful Darkness is one of the most unsettling stories I have read in a while. I finihsed it in under an hour, but I have a feeling it will stay with me much longer. There is a morality I am being shown that I can’t quite pin down. Or lack thereof. I’m not sure which would be preferable.