I really liked the idea behind this book: the descendants of Marie Laveau rule the underground Voodoo Court of New Orleans, maintaining an uneasy truce between the gods, humans, and supernatural races of the city. Dominique is a college student trying to help her beloved city recover from the effects of Katrina when the current Queen is assassinated. Half the court believes Dominique to be responsible, while the other half believe her to be the next true queen. Dom, meanwhile, just wants to live a normal life with her boyfriend...
As I said: the story sounded good, and I had high hopes for this book. The execution, however, was somewhat lacking. The storytelling is choppy and hard to follow, and while I loved the folklore woven into the story, a little more background would have been helpful (I, for one, cannot name all the myriad loa of the Voodoo religion, and I certainly don't know what their personalities or dominions are, so clarification would have gone a long way towards helping me get into the story). I felt like the story started to coalesce around issue five, and issue six was a nice one-shot that showed the potential for this series to play with mythology and storytelling in much the same way as Sandman and Lucifer before it. Vertigo cancelled this title, however, with issue seven, which perhaps accounts for the huge jump in time between issues six and seven. The final issue opens six years later, as Dominique lies dying from injuries sustained in an attempted coup, telling her heir how her downfall occurred. What follows is apparently an attempt to cram six years of story into a single issue, and, predictably, it falls flat. For the final issue, I would have much rather seen another one-shot, or maybe a more contemplative story that would have a more open ending, in case the series was ever revived.
An interesting read, but disappointing.
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