Review by Frank Plowright

Kings Row is an exclusive private school where great prestige is placed on the fencing team. Otherwise unable to attend such an establishment, Nicholas Cox earned his sponsorship by defeating the school’s best. Meanwhile, arrogance could be Seiji Katayama’s downfall as he’d rather be the star of a lesser team than settle for second best at his previous school. However, Volume Three ended with a shock when the person he couldn’t beat, Jesse Coste, turned up at Kings Row.

As has been the case all the way through, C. S. Pacat and artist Johanna the Mad deliver a school saga where the novelty is that all the rivalry centres on the sport of fencing. This may seem elite, but as with other young adult stories, a topic is needed on which to hang the drama, and no-one could accuse the idea of fencing being commonplace. Pacat continues to supply the intricacies, this time concentrating on the idea of it being a team sport, and deciding the order of the line-up requires as much strategic knowledge as a baseball coach applies to the batting order because the individual bouts follow a pattern. The complex scoring method is also explained. As with previous volumes, young adult readers are likely to become caught up in the possibilities.

The art is very heavily based on the people, who are drawn with an emphasis on emotional responses. However, the digital backgrounds shopped in now look very primitive. Thankfully there aren’t many of them.

Until now the excitement has been generated by Nicholas attempting make the team, but now competition with another school is introduced, albeit only a pre-season friendly, which broadens the possibilities. During the bout the tactical knowledge explained earlier informs how things play out, which is tense.

Pacat has been using Japanese sports comics as a template, and like them the timescale of events plans for a lengthy run, but this is the final Fence graphic novel. Don’t let that put you off. There’s passion, drama and suspense with a fair amount of thrills generated from an unlikely topic, and there are also a couple of Fence novels you can pick up.