Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant (Delilah Dirk, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Feb 27, 2016 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: graphic-novels-and-comics

This was absolutely delightful!! I can't believe it took me so long to find out about it - I see so many articles about "graphic novels for teen girls" and "empowering books for teen girls" etc etc, but this book is not on most of them, AND IT SHOULD BE!! This was almost completely perfect.

Delilah and Mr Selim are both really great characters. When they first meet, Delilah has been imprisoned in Constantinople, and Mr Selim (the Turkish lieutenant) interviews her; she lists off her many accompli This was absolutely delightful!! I can't believe it took me so long to find out about it - I see so many articles about "graphic novels for teen girls" and "empowering books for teen girls" etc etc, but this book is not on most of them, AND IT SHOULD BE!! This was almost completely perfect.

Delilah and Mr Selim are both really great characters. When they first meet, Delilah has been imprisoned in Constantinople, and Mr Selim (the Turkish lieutenant) interviews her; she lists off her many accomplishments and abilities, she can, "pick any lock and escape any restraint, no matter how well-built or complex, she can dismember a man in seconds,*" and the Agha doesn't believe a word of it ... until she escapes! She's like a superhero, but still a regular human. Sort of a James (Jane?) Bond in the 1800s, able to escape any prison, defeat any soldier, and steal any treasure she wants. When Selim asks if she is a witch, she scoffs. There's no magic here, she has skills! The one fantastical element is that her sailboat can fly, but this appears to be more of an engineering marvel than anything magical.

(*A note about the dismembering; this has such a casual and jocular tone, I thought this would be one of those comedic adventure novels in which no one is ever really seriously injured ... but no, Delilah Dirk is definitely killing people. Various bad guys are shown impaled on her swords, but there is not a lot of explicit blood and guts.)

The Agha - incapable of admitting that he himself was wrong to doubt Selim's report - blames Selim for Delilah's escape, sentencing Selim to "a ceremonial death," and so Selim ends up somewhat involuntarily escaping with Delilah.

And the writing is really pitch perfect, exciting and witty and so entertaining. Here, as an example, is a crappy photo I took with my phone:

The artwork was really pretty amazing. Tony Cliff has that gift of being able to depict a specific face with a specific emotion in just a few strokes. Plus, no one is exceptionally gorgeous or buff or deformed, they are all just regular people. I do wish Mr Selim was a little more recognizable, in a few scenes I had trouble figuring out which one he was, and I had to peer and figure out which one had the red fez on to find him.

Which brings me to my only complaint: the book is too small. Mr Cliff favors a very busy page of panels, and in a standard comic size, this leads to panels that are sometimes less than an inch across. With a busy action scene, on a busy page, my old eyes had a hard time on a few pages. I wish this was bigger, like the Buffy season 8 "library edition" books. I really want to sit back and appreciate this, but I instead I was bent forward peering at the tiny pictures on some pages.

In sum: I can't believe this amazing book flew under my radar for so many years, and I can't' wait to read the second installment! ...more

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Dec 31, 2018 Tony rated it it was amazing

Shelves: graphic-storytelling, historical-fiction, novels, crime, setting-middle-east

Not sure how it took me so long to find this, but wow -- what a great book! Swashbuckling roguish dawn-of-the-19th-century adventure abounds in this first in a series featuring the titular thief and her titular new friend. It starts with her looking to steal from the Sultan's palace in Constantinople and then one adventure after another ensues as the duo break into the castle of a pirate lord and abscond with loot, only to be pursued across the Ottoman countryside for weeks. Did I mention that s ...more

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