Review by Ian Keogh

In Katie O’Neill’s cheery fantasy world, tea dragons are small creatures with flowering antlers, and the leaves grown on those antlers can be brewed for different types of tea. This third outing brings back Greta and her friend Minette, first seen in The Tea Dragon Society, with The Tea Dragon Festival having looked at different characters, Rinn and Aedhan. Readers who became attached to them shouldn’t worry as they appear halfway through.

Greta was the focus of the first story, with Minette along for the ride, but in what takes place a few years later, the roles are reversed. Minette is sent a tapestry featuring a stag that she worked on at home without ever completing. Now she’s an apprentice, her family have sent it on. Greta, meanwhile, is determined to hone her swordsmithing skills to become apprentice to a very choosy master metalsmith.

Although O’Neill’s pretty art may convince you otherwise, this is a more melancholy story than the previous two, with the arrival of the tapestry not a cause of happiness for Minette, but prompting feelings that she’s lost her way. It seems to mirror Greta’s tea dragon. Furthermore, because the featured quests aren’t for something physical, The Tea Dragon Tapestry requires far more conversation and there’s a feeling of very little actually going on, while the always present spirituality is increased. All of that combines to pull this away from the previous Tea Dragon books, where the emotional level was set at all ages.

It’s an interesting creative choice, as young readers of the original book are now a few years older and will understand. However newer young readers beginning with the first volume and continuing to here will realise people are sad, but without knowledge of the complexity accompanying the feelings.

To an extent balancing that, this features O’Neill’s best art to date, with the composition and use of colour unlike anything else seen in comics. Every page is a treat, but the highlights come when Minette receives some comfort from a long lost source.

In late 2024 all three Tea Dragon books are due to be combined in a slipcase edition, and anyone who’s not previously sampled what was after all an Eisner Award winning series, could start there.