Review by Karl Verhoven

Acedia has Casanova Quinn on another world believing he’s Quentin Cassidy, taken in by one Amiel Boutique as he has a bad case of amnesia. As seen in Volume One, though, it’s not enough to blot out his natural talents, and he’s been employing those on Boutique’s behalf, dealing with enemies. The second half of Acedia opens with Casanova being handed a dossier containing Boutique’s past, which he’s been investigating.

There’s beginning to be a problem with Casanova, and it’s possibly the reason the series ended here rather than seeing out the originally planned seven volumes. It’s that there’s only so many times even a superior writer can construct a story about the same people in other dimensions and assorted counterparts of friends and enemies without it becoming a little stale. Matt Fraction’s a better writer than most, and Fábio Moon is a superlative artist, but there’s a selection of standbys common to all volumes of Casanova, and it’s beginning to show, despite the series being several levels of conceptual density above the pack. Acedia is a more contemplative variation, but if everything presumed to be true is constantly revealed as false where does that leave the reader?

Michael Chabon’s Metanauts back-up stories, drawn by the equally superlative Gabriel Bá, are showing more clever touches, such as the first of them ending just before the main story in this volume starts with Casanova’s arrival.

As far as we can tell, Casanova is served up the truth about Boutique, and along the way begins to break through his own amnesia, which supplies a revelation readers who’ve followed the entire series for once might have come to themselves. That then leads to a wild swerve and a chapter that would be a great standalone information dump were it not for it being the final chapter and not providing any definitive conclusion. Mind you “I love you” is a good last line for a series.

This has more imagination and sheer audacity than most action strips, yet still manages to disappoint for not providing a definitive finish to the story, never mind the series. In some ways that’s an achievement.