Customer Reviews

City Of Dreams (Eros Graphic Novel 23)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tarsis rocks! This is perhaps as good of a graphic novel as can be found in the adult/bondage/fantasy area. It seems truly inspired from the explicit Anne Rice "Beauty" novels written under her pen name of Anne Roquelaire. The artwork is wonderfully rendered. The average, simple beauty Christine has increasingly erotic and masochistic dreams, and one day a stranger appears who resembles the prince in her dreams who has taken her busty alter-ego as his young slave. From this point, the line between fantasy and reality blurs, as the two Christines suffer similar fates of sexual awakening and torment--even having to pass the tests of the prince's even more domineering and deviate queen mother. The bondage and sex that appears on almost every page is both explicit and deliciously inventive, and the story is both engaging and highly erotic, setting Brian Tarsis of the U.S. West Coast among the great sexual graphic novel artists of Europe.

City of Dreams is a mature, intelligent B&D fantasy adventure -- a gem as rare as its heroine Christine, and one that I have returned to often. The B&D scenes are powerfully and effectively presented, with passion and imagination, and they run a wide spectrum. Just as significant, however, is the author's philosophical bent. For example, the Prince of Morrigon begins to disillusion the would-be protagonist Phaeton with these statements: "Innocence is little more than ignorance! It is a fragile thing, and once shown the path to knowledge, it is already doomed! Its true beauty is only revealed in its destruction!" I still don't know if I fully agree, but such writing makes the work memorable for more than just great B&D scenes.

The book was exactly as I remember it. This is one of Tarsis' best works.

There are those who falsely think that Tarsis is quite the intellectual. It is sad that a man has artisticly talented as Tarsis has turned out a sick a tome as `City Of Dreams'. Few people if any in real life appreciate the brutally, Tarsis advocates men and women really want.
The artwork and story say that to return to innocence, we must be beaten into submission and be dominated. To many pyschological studies and real life captivativity stories prove this to be wrong. What City of Dreams is sugar coated sickness, that harms, not helps healthy relationships and should be relegated to the status of nightmares, never dreams.