SHAKA RISING – Reviews #1
Hey all!
So Shaka Rising is getting some great reviews from all over the world… check them out below, and remember you can order your own copy from the publisher’s website at http://storypressafrica.com/
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REVIEWS
“This unique graphic novel deserves high praise for direction and purpose. This book is the first in a series of southern Africa history and culture through an exciting storyline complemented with first rate illustrations.
Shaka Rising is a masterful combination of education and entertainment. In just 90 pages, a reader who may have known little of pre-European Africa will easily absorb a nova class burst of information. False myth and suspicion about Africa and its people are immediately replaced with the beginnings of better understanding.
Shaka Rising is a groundbreaking graphic novel. It belongs on school and home shelves. And the hope is that the series to follow will be equally professional, educational, and entertaining.”
— Robert Zupkus, NY Journal of Books
“Mr. Molver’s pictures will leave readers ages 10 and older in no doubt as to the nature of Shaka’s friends and foes amid this tumult. The hero’s half-brothers, Dingane and Sigujana, wear sneers of cold command that bespeak their ambition and treachery. Shaka’s tribal protectors and allies, meanwhile, have clear brows and wise expressions. These visual cues will help children unfamiliar with the setting to keep track of the characters, but in other respects the men and women in this story are shown with admirable nuance, as the principal actors in their own lives and era rather than as moving parts in a modern-day morality play.”
— Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal
“This graphic novel admirably allows its hero to retain flaws and scars that keep him squarely in the realm of the human. Molver’s clean panels also emphasize this, advancing the story in well-paced sequences that balance action with calm. In an era when the stories of colonial exploitation and European enslavement overdetermine how global audiences encounter African stories, Molver and O’Connor forthrightly center this tale on the struggles among the indigenous tribes and nations as they seek to maintain their lands and lifeways while still acknowledging that they, too, have a confluence with the ‘dark days.’
A worthy introduction that offers a young Anglophone audience entry into a legend of Africa without the annoyance of overtranslation and with refreshingly three-dimensional characters.”
“Deftly written and superbly illustrated by Luke Molver, ‘Shaka Rising: A Legend of the Warrior Prince’ is a truly extraordinary and entertaining graphic novel that will decidedly prove to be an enduringly popular addition to community library graphic novel collections for readers ages 16 to 86.”
— Midwest Book Review/Wisconsin Bookwatch
“Sharing stories are an important part of what makes us human. It shows our humanity and helps us build empathy for one another. What Molver has done in sharing the incredible story Shaka Rising is add to the well of empathy from which we all must drink in order to build a better society.”
— Joel Christian Gill cartoonist, historian, activist. Author Strange Fruit Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History
“Shaka Rising is an innovative effort to use the comics medium to bridge the gap between academic history and folklore. In the hands of South African creator Luke Molver, this graphic novel converges the work of historians with oral tradition to propose an interpretation of Shaka’s story that is both intellectual and accessible, at once an epic legend and a work of historical fiction.”
— Trevor R. Getz, author of Abina and the Important Men
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I am currently working on the sequel to Shaka Rising, so watch this space to keep updated! And don’t forget to order your own copies at Storypress Africa!
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