Customer Reviews

Beowulf: Doom of Glory

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The final book in Hinds' three-part series, Doom of Glory, fulfills the promise of his earlier two installments. Here, Hinds' demonstrates he is not afraid to take chances with the medium. In keeping with the poem's increasing focus on aging, mortality, and the price of fame, this part of the series provides a visual contrast to the other two books. Rather than being constructed with vivid colors and bold shading, this book is done in a monochromatic scheme filled with blacks and grays. This is particularly fitting for Beowulf's world, where things are neither quite so vivid as in the first half of the poem (with the battles between Beowulf and Grendel/Grendel's mother), nor are they the black-and-white, easy answers of one's youth. Instead, Beowulf's life, his rule, his decision to enter into the last battle with the dragon is less clear. Is Beowulf doing the right thing in fighting the dragon? What are the costs and outcomes of this decision? What makes a good king and what makes a good life? All these questions and their answers, like Hinds' illustrations, are shades of gray. It's a beautiful way to address the themes of the Beowulf poem and Hinds should receive credit for this decision, if for nothing else in the series.

However, that last statement should not suggest that there is nothing else to praise in Hinds' work. His illustrations of both Beowulf as an old man and the dragon, positioning them as foes more alike than different, is keeping well within the poem. As I've said in other reviews, Hinds' work is a near-translation into a new medium, sticking more closely to the essence of Beowulf than many prose versions I've read. Further, it reintroduces and reinterprets Beowulf in ways that show how relevant the Beowulf poem is comtemporarily. It speaks to its audience as much as the Beowulf poem did to its.

Hinds' work can be enjoyed as a viable version of Beowulf or on its own. It's that good.