Pathways: Chronicles of Tuvana Volume 1

by Elaine Tipping

A cast of heroes from all walks of life leads the charge to stop an ancient empire bent on world domination in this Queer YA graphic novel!

An archaeological dig backed by all four countries of Tuvana is meant to shed light on the past while uniting the countries under a similar goal, despite their differences. However, the project takes a sudden dark turn after an unexpected discovery. Communications are lost, family members are missing, there are strange changes in the land and unexpected climate irregularities—all threatening to unravel the tenuous ties that have kept Tuvana at peace for so long.

A clever princess, a set of royal twins with two very different personalities, a patient guard looking after an inquisitive scholar, a powerful and mysterious loving couple, and a fun-having street brawler are all pulled slowly from their very different paths through life as they each stumble across parts of a puzzle that, once assembled, could change—or destroy—the future of their world forever.

One volume collecting the first nine chapters of the webcomic series, Pathways: Chronicles of Tuvana, featuring updated artwork!

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, LGBT, Comics, Graphic Novels Comics, Graphic Novels

336 pages, Paperback

Published September 3, 2024

About the author

A comic creator and illustrator, Elaine lives in Japan doing art, Naginata, and raising a kid and two cats with their wife. On social media as TriaElf9. Has worked with Critical Role, Dark Horse Comics, Scout Comics, and Simon & Schuster via Adams Media.

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comforting and sweet magical story. The art is lovely, some characters are more expressive than others which makes their personalities more distinct. I was surprised and thrilled to see that the average age of these characters is around 30 years old, this is a nice piece of representation showing queer ADULTS in established jobs/relationships/friendships/hobbies, we definitely need more of that in literature!!

I see other reviews that say that the text focuses too much on things like pronouns and identities, and I actually don't really agree - I think most of the time the language used to introduce people makes sense and doesn't feel overly-shoehorned or anything, but maybe where I might slightly agree with this critique is that the dialogue uses peoples' names too often and once in a while feels clunky. It made me think of the CinemaSins youtube video making fun of the Titanic movie's script for how often Jack and Rose say "Jack" and "Rose," like, in real life people don't use names/nicknames quite this often, I think. So maybe the dialogue could be tweaked a bit but I didn't find it too distracting.

Overall, this maybe 'isn't terribly realistic' but that's fine! The world needs some fluffy, hopeful, sunshine-y characters going on fluffy, hopeful, queer adventures.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

A web comic that seems more concerned announcing each character's gender and sexual preferences than telling a good story. It's about a very conservative and secretive country that wants to keep other countries from exploring some shared ruins that may contain links to their gods. That whole part wasn't very clear. There's a whole lot of characters and I had a hard time keeping them and their sexual identities in mind, mostly because I didn't care.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful art with some intriguing world-, story-, character building. It is Vol 1 and is mostly an establishing shot of all the above. I’ll be interested to see where it goes.

Certainly reads like an actual play of a TTRPG campaign.

The Rep is fantastic, skin tones and LGBTQIA-wise. Multiple aces, trans, an agender mc, an nb mc…, not a heterosexual relationship or heteronormative in sight…😊

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sweet, gentle series opener. I'm still struggling with graphic novels. There are a lot of characters to keep track of in black and white, and the lettering isn't great (s and g looked a lot alike), but a cozy queernorm world is always welcome. Would recommend and will read the next one.

[Justo Santos · Rating 2 out of 5]

It gets lost in confusing gender identities more than in history. It masks itself in the fantasy genre, but only as a flimsy cover to worry more about sexual preferences and preferred pronouns than the plot.

[Olivia Ambrose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend!! The art is great, and the characters are all fun. I'm super sucked in and can't wait to read the next volume!!

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how queer this is.