Dwarves Vol. II: Ordo of Retaliation By Nicolas Jarry

Dwarves Vol. II: Ordo of Retaliation

By Nicolas Jarry

“The power of a dwarf is measured by the number of secrets he keeps”

Urus, House Ettorn

So it's been 2 years since I reviewed a book from this series. Which is a lot longer than I meant to let it lie, so let's take it from the top. Dwarves is a French fantasy comic series by comic book writer and novelist Nicolas Jarry. He was born on the 19th of June in 1976, in Rosny-sous-Bois, which is a commune (which functions sorta like a township) in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. He studied biology at Bordeaux, became a supervisor at a school, and then worked as a sales specialist in the comics department at the Marbot bookstore (That’s an interesting pivot). None of his novels have been translated into English as far as I can find, but they are listed as the two-volume Chronicles of a Warrior Sînamm, and the Wolf of Deb trilogy. It's after meeting comic book writer Jean Luc Istin that he turned to writing comics. Dwarves is published by Delcourt, the 3rd largest publisher of Franco-Belgian comics, founded in 1986 by the merger of two magazines Charlie Mensuel and Pilote. Dwarves is part of a shared world with at least three other series, Elves, Orcs, and Goblins and Mages all set in the same world. Each graphic novel follows a different character who occupies a different part of their race's society and faces different challenges. So each graphic novel is more or less stand-alone, although some are more interrelated than others, for example, my second review in this series jumped to Vol VI since it covered the life of the son of the main character of Vol I.

Dwarves, as you might have guessed dear readers, is devoted to exploring the society and viewpoint of the Dwarfish race so let me give you some background. Unlike the Anglo tradition of placing Dwarves below ground, these Dwarves live above ground divided into fortress-states ruled mostly by Kings. The Fortress-states are united by orders that function as guilds or castes maintaining the interests and knowledge of their craft across borders. The orders not only function as guilds but as political power blocks seeking to control the Kings and governments of the Dwarves behind the scenes. There is a caste-like function to the orders in that it seems most members are born into them and membership in an order dictates your role and prestige in society however as we saw in Volume I, which I reviewed wayyyy back in 2017 there is some social mobility. Volume II focuses on the Order of Retaliation which functions as the merchants and bankers but also controls all the vice industries: prostitution, drugs, etc. They use this as a way of keeping the Kings and Nobility off their backs through a combination of bribery and blackmail; so not only are they constantly tempting the wealthy and powerful into corruption, they also blackmail you when you fall. It's as if the Chamber of Commerce was also run by the Mob (The Chamber of Commerce is just as corrupt. {Don't think the Chamber of Commerce is running its own secret society of assassins just to start with, so I'm gonna disagree}). More importantly for our story, there's a third-string to the Order's bow, that being the Black Lodge, a secret society of Dwarves raised from the age of six to be assassins, thieves, and spies. Including our main character Ordo.

Ordo is one of those guys who if he didn't have bad luck, would have no luck. He was born the sixth son on the sixth day on the sixth moon to a powerful family in the Order of Retaliation. On his sixth birthday, he was handed over to a master of the black lodge, who took a six-year-old boy to the worse hell hole neighborhood of the city and left him there alone overnight. As Ordo explains to us, this is done to every child taken by the Black Lodge. Only the ones who survive even get to start the training. The training has a lot in common with the worse ways to train child soldiers or induct men into terrorist organizations. By turning them against each other and forcing them to break social and moral taboos simply to survive, most will give up their own social bonds and identities believing themselves too morally soiled to go back home. Also by turning them against each other, you prevent them from working together against you or finding better ways around your training (If you ever want to see a good visual on how this works, do yourself a favor[?] and go watch Blood Diamond. Not a bad film, if a bit White Saviory, but it shows how the RUF in Sierra Leone indoctrinated its child soldiers. Also, you will never want to buy a diamond again. Which is a thing you should never want to do.). This tends to produce broken people capable of awful things simply because they can't believe themselves capable of anything better and it's a pretty vile thing to do. Ordo hasn't broken completely though, he still holds on to a piece of himself by holding on to his love of his sister. Even though he avoids interacting with her out of fear of what would mean for her. After years of working for the Black Lodge, Ordo is ready to do the one thing he's been thinking of doing since that forsaken night of his sixth birthday. Get his revenge on the Black Lodge and the Order of Retaliation. He's got the plan, he's got the intel he needs, he's got the talent but he needs a team. So Ordo recruits Heba, a fellow member of the Lodge who has been marked for death and another survivor of their training class, and Panham, a half-dwarf dragon rider. His plan is to break into the Black Lodge's greatest fortress of Fort Drae and steal or destroy their greatest treasures, crippling their ability to operate (You go Ordo! Seize the means!). However, his old master Abekash is on his trail and is looking to correct his mistakes with Ordo, by killing him because that's how a master assassin corrects mistakes.

While the last two volumes that we reviewed of the Dwarves series were about family, this is more about the individual. Ordo's struggle isn't to escape a father's shadow or find his way in the world. Ordo's struggle is to find a way to strike back at the people who tried to claim ownership of his very soul and avenge the massive wrongs they've done to him and others. To do that he'll use every skill and trick they taught him but he'll have to learn new skills and tricks to make it work and whether he can or not is a question in and of itself. Despite the level of intrigue he's operating at, Ordo is a fairly straight forward character to grasp and you find yourself horrified and sympathetic in turns. Horrified at what's been done to him and what he does to others to affect his revenge but sympathetic to his efforts to try and hold on to the barest scrap of himself and not be subsumed by this monstrous thing he's been sold to by his own family. This makes him interesting if nothing else, his struggle to hold on to that piece of his soul, to avoid completely surrendering to darkness, keeps him from becoming a boring stereotype. Which is good because he does balance on that knife's edge at times. Also, I have to admit the story simply isn't as compelling or powerful as Volume I and lacks the same punch. Additionally, the supporting characters are rather one-note although that may be for a lack of time. I would have liked to know more about Heba for example but I suppose there just wasn't space for it. Dwarves Volume II by Nicolas Jarry gets a B from me. Still worth a read if not as great as Volumes I and VI.

So as you may have noticed dear readers, our editor has rejoined us! Hope the capture teams were gentle to you Doc! (They were not!) So Dwarves II was voted for by our ever-wise patrons, if you to would like a vote on future reviews, themes and other ideas, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads a vote is just a dollar a month and lets us focus more on reviews. Next week, we bring September to a close-by looking at Breach of Faith by Gary T Stevens and Daniel Gibbs, the sequel to Breach of Peace from last month. Until then, stay safe and as always Keep Reading.

Red text is your editor Dr. Allen 
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