Review by Karl Verhoven

Princess Aisling is a week away from her eighteenth birthday and keen for the greater freedom that will bring. However, it’s a birthday she’s destined never to have at home. An intruder cuts her slightly with an iron sword, which is enough to transform her into a demonic form unrecognised by anyone else in the palace. She’s later told “You’re not the princess any more and you never were”, which is harsh, but true.

What follows is a rapid learning curve for Aisling, overwriting her past with the truth and discovering what the world of fae is really like. It’s a gradual release of specific detail, but Mari Costa’s spent time constructing her world and those in it, most drawn from traditional myths, but incorporated into an extremely attractively designed fairy tale version established at the start by a gloriously drawn palace ball.

Costa’s career to date has been in animation and illustration, yet there’s a confidence in applying her artistic skill to comics, along with a considerable work ethic. It would be possible to tell Forgive Me Not differently, using larger panels and fewer word balloons, but with a fair amount of ground to cover Costa’s choice is for ten panel pages and long conversations. She moves the viewpoint and has the characters navigate through the small panels accompanied by impressively designed variations on mythical creatures.

It takes some time before it’s apparent Forgive Me Not is destined to become an unlikely romance. Aisling’s abductor is known as Forget-Me-Not or Folkslayer in the fae world, and has experienced an upbringing as harsh as Aisling’s was pampered. The original intention is to drag Aisling to the Seelie Court and so thwart the plans of an ambitious fae called Gristlebone, but over a long journey plans change.

Costa ensures the journey is constantly entertaining, every stopover introducing either someone charming or dangerous, while the world is well explored and there’s time for quieter moments of joy besides. All in all, Forgive Me Not is extremely accomplished in generating sighs and shocks, while a love of fairytales shines through aspects subverted to be less condescending toward women.

It’s a joy.