Review: Two Kinds!
10th April 2009
Two Kinds by Tom Fischbach
Two Kinds is one of those stories that can draw you in and paint a vivid image of a world so unlike our own. We have magic, anthropomorphs (or furries if you prefer the term), racial tension and so much more.
The feeling of conflict and conspiracy at times can make for great drama, but the writer still makes time for random humour that not only lightens the mood but adds more dimensions to the characters. In some ways we can spot old cliches in the plot- such as the enemies who fall for one another. The powerful mage with amnesia. Even the two-legs/four-legs tension has become cliched in recent years.
Despite all of these obstacles placed in the writers way, he manages to pull it off. The characters are engaging enough to make the story work, and the cultures of the three primary types of sentient beings add that depth to the world that makes those things that would appear cliche at first forgivable.
Honestly, I’m not going to say that these cliched plot devices are a bad thing, they in no way harm the story, characters or that suspension of disbelief that all fiction requires from its audience. The fact that the story manages to stand up on its own despite these things is proof of how elegantly crafted both it, and its world are.
Cliche can be something of a disability in writing, but it’s a cliche because they are story archetypes that work. If I want to go off on a tangent about Proppian topology and the likes- most stories follow a pattern, and nearly all have been told before. The point is that the mark of a good writer is to show us something we’ve seen before but make it new, exciting and some thing we want to come back to every week and read again.
Tom manages this- personally I put it down to his characters, each unique and being remarkably “human” for want of a better term. But at the same time I feel that its impossible to not include his world, societies etc. in that statement as well.
If you want to read a good “furry” comic, with romance, intrigue and a both beautifully crafted and drawn world, then you can’t do much better than taking a look at Two Kinds.