estranged

When I first read Ethan M. Aldridge's middle grade fantasy graphic novel Estranged, I jotted down a few disjointed notes and thought I’d post a review almost immediately. Several years later… I had to reread the book in order to interpret those scribblings. Ha! Ah well, it was time well-spent, because this middle grade fantasy is an engaging, inventive adventure with entwined main characters, has interesting things to say about society and family, and features an epic race to save the world.

Edmund and the Childe were swapped at birth. Now Edmund lives in secret as a changeling in the World Above, his fae powers hidden from his unsuspecting parents and his older sister, Alexis. The Childe lives among the fae in the World Below, where being a human makes him a curiosity at the royal palace.

But when the cruel sorceress Hawthorne seizes the throne, the Childe and Edmund must unite on a dangerous quest to save both worlds—even if they’re not sure which world they belong to.

Edmund is a fairy (or Fay, in this book) changeling. That means that his own parents, the rulers of the Fay court, switched him with a human child at birth, and that he has grown up with a human family he must constantly keep secrets from. The Human Childe, as he is called in the Fay court, doesn’t have a name – and has grown up stifled and dissatisfied by his life as a curiosity and a pet to his Fay “parents.” When the usurper Hawthorne leads a magical coup of the Fay court, The Human Childe knows he must escape – but to where? He decides to go find his counterpart in the human world, and thus kicks off an epic journey through both worlds, and a quest to defeat Hawthorne.

Hands down, my favorite thing about his book is the character design. Edmund and The Human Childe are mirrors of each other, but they differ in important ways too – Edmund feels constantly constrained, hiding his secret heritage, and The Human Childe feels like an afterthought without a family. When they meet, the Childe wants Edmund’s life, and Edmund refuses to give it up because his family is great. That family includes older sister Alexis, a brave and somewhat reckless older sibling, who is integral to the story later on. Other really cool characters: Whick, a golem in the shape of a lit candle, the witch and her apprentice Isaac, and Hawthorne’s henchmen, who have creepy hands covering each eye. Elements of traditional myth and legend are strewn throughout the narrative, but Aldridge plays with them in fascinating ways – this is both a beautiful book, and an exciting one.

Aldridge’s art is a mix of watercolors, ink, and Photoshop, and is most successful in its character design and fairy tale elements. The world below is drawn in meticulous detail – the reader’s eye will be drawn to the setting first (the Below is just plain cool!), and Aldridge’s style encourages this with lots of full-body shots and sequences, as well as landscapes. As a result, facial expressions and human faces are a secondary focus – there are not many closeups, and perspective angles do not change much over the course of the book. Illustrations are in full color, with lots of greens, blues, and an overall more menacing – and magical – feeling in the Below. Another interesting stylistic choice is using black gutters (the space in between panels) for the Below, and white for for the Above. This results in a very clear demarcation between settings when flipping through the book (and of course when reading it).

Estranged is a middle grade fantasy quest with themes of feeling like an outsider, even in your own family, the power of found families, and what it means to cultivate “human” traits. It’s an adventure and a half!

Recommended for: fans of changeling stories and portal or fairy fantasies, graphic novel readers ages 8+, and those who appreciate beautiful and detailed fantasy art.