Review by Frank Plowright

Alpi writer and artist Rona has already established Alpi doesn’t work as a Soul Sender in isolation, but as part of a network crossing the land, and to support their toils there are isolated temples supplying refuge. It’s in one of these that Alpi learns of a problem so large it’s spread over mountains and requires the attention of several Soul Senders. The local villagers attribute it to the recent death of a dragon known as the Great Serpent.

Alpi’s meetings with others of her ilk haven’t run smoothly in the past, as per Vol. 4, but writer and artist Rona’s purpose isn’t to sow conflict this time, but to have them deal with a threat and show Alpi isn’t even the youngest among Soul Senders. Here we meet triplets even younger, and another of them seems to care little for the formality and code of behaviour applied to the Soul Senders.

This ought to be the fantasy equivalent of the X-Men teaming with the Fantastic Four,but to begin with it’s actually slightly disappointing. Several pages allocated to introducing participants and their personalities is fine, but they’re followed by an ever longer section laying out ritual and planning, which to an extent just goes over the same ground of earlier volumes when it applied to Alpi alone. It means new readers can pick up Vol. 5 and have everything explained to them in detail, but at the cost of regular followers coasting. However, it’s a small price to pay for what follows.

What that section has going for regular readers is the delicacy of Rona’s art, which becomes more imaginative and accomplished by the volume. It’s best seen on the internal pages in black and white, as the colour covers don’t always present Alpi at it’s best. They maintain a muted autumnal tone, but can lack depth, whereas there’s considerable beauty to the landscape illustrations inside.

A monumental task is accompanied by Alpi’s very reasonable doubts, and the surprising revelation of other forces at work. It’s slipped in with impressive subtlety, and it immediately broadens Alpi’s world while hanging extra tension over an already immense problem. What’s built up rolls out extremely effectively, and is too large to complete here, so we have a cliffhanger ending leading into Vol. 6.

There’s often a quiet and introspective quality to Alpi, but not for most of this volume. Instead it’s tense and eventually bursts into action. It’s another fine read.