Princess Amelia of Marion has always struggled with anxiety, something that only increases under the strain of pirates bombarding their country’s trade ships. Struggling for resources, she agrees to be married off to the highest bidder, hoping to be useful to her country. That bidder turns out to be from Iliad, a mysterious country across the sea that little is known about, and it’s actually the Queen, Salira. Amelia must face this new situation, her own growing feelings for Salira, her anxiety, and a murky political plot if she wants to survive this new marriage.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a reader wanting representation for a minority orientation/gender/race shall hold that rep to high standards, and may well be disappointed.

When there isn’t a lot of something, we get excited about seeing it at all. Queer rep isn’t as rare as it used to be, and I’m very happy about that, but certain areas of queer rep are still underrepresented – cis gay and lesbian rep, while not mainstream, have a good number of options in books nowadays. In manga, BL is booming, and Yuri isn’t far behind, and we’re seeing more of it each week. But queer stories in other genres is still quite rare. Fantasy, for example.

That is to say, The Marble Queen, by Anna Kopp and Gabrielle Kari, had such potential. It sounded so promising on paper: a princess wracked with anxiety goes to another land, marries a queen and find her place in the world. Romance. Fantasy. The cover looks really pretty and enticing. So I ordered it, knowing very little more about it.

I don’t often ask for less plot, but here I am. This book tries to do too much in too few pages. It’s about two hundred pages long, which is plenty for some stories, but not for the one they tell here. A clearer focus on the unique, interesting story they had – a princess with anxiety learning to cope with it and getting to know her new partner and herself better – would have meant that we could relate to these characters more deeply, and thus cared more about them. But because the political intrigue plot is there, they don’t have the time or page count. Touching scenes where the two start break down their walls around each other and start to fall in love get squashed, and so feel a bit flat.

The magic is sort of explained… but for once, it didn’t actually need to be. The beauty, and strength, of visual storytelling media is that you can have visual metaphors, and they don’t need to make sense. They started with these, with Amelia’s anxieties emerging on the page as thorny vines and grasping hands, but then made it a real phenomena visible to the outer world. Yet this is only used once, when Salira has a nightmare.

Amelia could have shown her numeric talents and discerning eye by finding the embezzlement, but it not being part of a larger plot. Or having the larger plot solved from within Iliadi, rather than having a few pages of exile. Salira could have shown her skill with the sword in other ways. All in all, it was so rushed at times it was hard to tell what was even happening.

I would love this book over a short series, or at least a graphic novel twice the length, with enough room to breathe with the characters. I wanted to root for Amelia and Salira to win over the nation. But the political plot weakened a great premise. Especially having just read a duology involving a similar type of political plot, except there were nine hundred pages of writing to deal with all the machinations that this story was not afforded.

I did enjoy this book. The art, while not standing up to the standard of the cover, is decent at portraying the characters, and the emotions do come through. Amelia felt real enough to connect to, and Salira cool enough to admire. The background are often single colours in the small panels, which works to a degree, but does leave it feeling a bit empty at times. The sound effects, possibly influenced by manga, seem a bit odd – most of them just aren’t needed, as it’s clear in the panel what’s happening. Minor vague spoilers, but labeling a body with ‘dead’ makes it funny, rather than dramatic, as likely intended.

Overall, it was a fairly fun read, but it could have been great. It was a little like reading a children’s novel as an adult – it works, it’s serviceable, but you need more depth.

Ratings:

Story: 5
Art: 6
Yuri: 9
Service: 1 (Salira is very cool. But other than that, there’s no service at all.)

Overall: 5

I really hope these authors/artists both continue to make art and grow with it. Unfortunately, this just didn’t quite hit the mark.