Bourbon Island 1730

"Bourbon Island" is a graphic novel by French comic book artist Lewis Trondheim and writer Appollo that I read this morning. Like the graphic novel "Northwest Passage," which I also enjoyed but neglected to write an entry for, this is very heavily based on a historical place and time that isn't very well known.

The title gives both the time and the place: it takes place in 1730, on the French colony known then as Bourbon Island and now as Reunion. 1730 was towards the end of the great age of pirates, and the story revolves around the very last of the great pirate captains, a man named Buzzard, who has been captured and is scheduled to be executed. although Buzzard himself never appears, everything that happens revolves around him. Some of the characters want to free him, others want to hang him, and still others want Buzzard to tell them where he buried an enormous island. The island is populated with a fascinating cast of East India agents, reformed pirates, escaped slaves, the Maroon hunters sent to capture them, and two Parisian orthinologists trying to capture the elusive Bourbon Island dodo, also known as the solitaire. Bourbon Island is a richly textured and complex place, and if this book ever gets a sequel I'll look forward to reading it.

The book doesn't exactly have much in the way of a plot, merely having its characters meander about, discuss Buzzard and pirate lore, and try to figure out what to do. But that is alright: it works very well as a snapshot of a precise time and place.

All of the characters are interesting. I especially liked Raphael, the younger of the two ornithologists, who is obsessed with pirates, and Victoria, the daughter of a prosperous planter (and former pirate), who is herself obsessed with the Maroons, the escaped slaves who live in the hills. The two characters' disputes over which subject is more worthy of admiration is very interesting, especially in comparison to the decidely unromantic examples of both pirates and Maroons we are also introduced to. I also quite liked Rapier, a former black pirate who leads one of the bands of maroons in the hills, who comes across as a character who has lived quite a bit longer than he ever expected to, who is just as smart as the whites around him, but resents being treated as unequal.

All in all, a very interesting and rich work. I definitely want to read more of what both artists have to offer, expecially a sequel to this. It is awesome and fub, and tought me about part of the world I knew almost nothing about. NowI want to learn so much more...