I think I am a quite good critic, I’ve gathered a substantial amount of knowledge and I am trying to be objective always, but when the creator is, quite non accidental, my wife, an objective criticism becomes a very hard task.

Lets try it nontheless:

This is a quite good romance graphical novel, even better than a lot of manga ones – when it comes to the content.

I could end here, and leave the task of finding out the rest for the readers themselves how this graphical novel (yes, a graphical novel – not a comic book , marrying several different techniques and graphical styles – for good and bad). That kind of review would be devoid of any bias. But it wouldn’t be my style.

This romance is completely devoid of those unrealistic, dramatic elations, plethora of which one can find in a traditional mainstream romantic manga. Instead, it is “romantically ordinary”, and because of that, more believable. It has a lot of cliche elements too though. Protagonists are, indeed, young, silly and beautiful. Indeed, they meet my chance. Indeed, out young agents try to raise up to the challenge of an overwhelming work tasks and realities to which they both are strangers to – and I am speaking about the reality of the work at the Agency and sociopolitical climate of the city. This is cliche all right. But is some weird way, served in a very refreshing style. With my head filled with Twin Peaks and David Lynch recently I can see some parallels – this need how an ordinary world, ordinary interactions can be the “main” story. “What is it all about?” could be the question asked by some readers. You see, Lynch was asked the same question in the “Twin Peaks” context. The same question is sometimes a part of the high literature, ambitious fantasy and science fiction, e.g. the Marcel Prousts’ cycle about time, Dick’s “Ubik” or Lem’s “Solaris”

“It” is about good magic between ordinary people.

Seriously. It is mainly a romance, as perceived by the protagonists, who try to be competent workers and try to face the difficult subject of transgenderism, to understand the transsexual person with the predictable result. Because a heteronormative person could never fully, truly understand this subject- there’s an information bias between all people, we all need a common context to understand each other, and this is one of the hardest interaction cases – as proven by the current social climate and ages of disscussions about equality (which should be a simple matter one would assume). But it’s primary a romance. The clash of differences generates conflicts and as expected from the cliche, absurd conflicts. But in this novel, these seem to be more anchored in reality, again. It’s not objective of me – I can see several situation in the novel, for which I can swear they happened for real and I was the origin of some Rax’ reactions. And this can be seen everywhere – in the way characters act, how they understand the events, how they park a car or how they behave in the library. Interpersonal interactions are full of absurd, and love, in its own characteristic way, is also absurd. And this shows in the “Literary Detectives”

From the first pages it is clear, the author has a great, epic, multivolume, multithread tale in her mind. And that can be the main obstacle for a reader who wants to know everything, who would like to have every detail explained. But not for a detective mind – someone who read the whole “Dune”, “Silmarillion” or “Discworld” several times. It less of a selfpromotion, more the point of reference for other readers – albeit it’s impossible to compare the mentioned works to the “LD”, howver it needs a similarly callibrated brain if you will, otherwise it may not “click”). About PRatchett – I can kinda sense a little of the Pratchett vibe here too. For example in Pratchett’s L-space concept, being a lightmotiv – treating the literary reality as a world of its own riles, in which everything stays forever (as long as the book exists), even if it’s a small booklet with only 100 copies in existence. As a roleplaying game master, I am sure that “LD” could fit into the “Changeling: the Dreaming”, if someone decided to copy the novel’s characters into their game. That’s because of the constantly existent eroticism of the faerie world, with a major difference. In such media, women are often oversexualized, and here we witness shifting the male point of view into the female perspective. Men in the “LD” are completely unrealistic. You can believe me on that. But this also makes those males nontoxic. “Fantasy men”, equally viable as Drow priestesses from the Underdark, with their bikini chainmails. Both are “eye candies”. Additionally charactes have depth, but left for the reader to explore and derive upon, not given upon a plate. For example, the main protagonist constantly searchers for aceeptance and validation of her own personality and character, and faces psychologocal solitude in a manner equal to the Red Riding Hood.

TL;DR. The conclusion – the journey is more important than the goal and quoting David Lynch “solving a crime kills the show” – as it was with Twin Peaks. I really suggest finding delight in tropes and romance, not chasing for solution and closure, even if the lore can lure more than the protagonists.
How to summarize all this… It’s a romantic graphical novel of the Age of Internet.