Queen Olwyn of Maar has been cursed into the form of a tiger, and Rook, the loyal captain of the Queen's Guard, is desperate to find a cure. So the two head off across the dangerous wilderness in search of the mythical island Isola, the land of the dead, half a world away, where there might be a solution. But the journey is fraught with peril, and the forces that cursed Olwyn are still out there, with their ultimate goal unknown.
Tropes:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Olwyn's cursed form is black with turquoise stripes, and yet some of the people encountered on the journey believe her to be a normal animal.
- Blatant Lies: Rook tries to claim that she is delivering her tiger to the king of Palagrine Rock as a peace offering. This is unsuccessful, not least because Maar is preparing for war against Palagrine Rock.
- Bodyguard Crush: It's hinted that Rook is in love with Olwyn, who may very well reciprocate.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Many things, such as the Circle, why Kasing is broken, and various past events are left unexplained... for now, anyways.
- Dead Person Conversation: While seriously injured, Olwyn has a dream-conversation in what she believes to be Isola with her dead brother Asher.
- Fantastic Foxes: A mysterious fox leads Rook to a place where she sees an illusion of Olwyn shot dead with arrows. It reappears more than once, and it turns out this fox has a connection to Olwyn's transformation, possibly having corrupted Prince Asher, and seems to be an avatar or representative of a mysterious supernatural power.
- Fictional Earth: The maps reveal that the land across which Rook and Olwyn are travelling has the same basic outline as eastern Canada, with Maar centred on the counterpart to Lake Manicouagan in Quebec, but there's fantastical wildlife, ruins, and some differences in geography (mountains, some new islands, PEI now connected to the mainland by an isthmus).
- Forced Transformation: Olwyn has been forced into the form of a tiger.
- Giant Flyer: The hallum, enormous creatures said to never attack anything twice, and which seem to be somehow sacred, as evidenced by Rook's reaction when she and Olwyn come across one downed by a hunter clan.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Rook killed Prince Asher by impaling him on her thrown spear when she saw him transforming Olwyn.
- In Medias Res: The comic begins with Rook and the transformed Olwyn already on the move two days post-transformation. Not for some time is it revealed how the transformation came about, via a vision-induced flashback.
- One-Word Title: The Place where the protagonists want to reach.
- The Place: Isola is where Rook hopes Olwyn can be cured: the mythical land of the dead half a world away.
- The Quest: Rook and Olwyn hope to find a cure for Olwyn's curse by travelling to the mythical land of the dead.
