http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2023-07.html#coda ( )

A wonderful conclusion to a story that's kept getting better as it went, revealing an impressive amount of planning (so many minor things you never thought twice about comes back as important later, often several times) and good storytelling. Hilariously, considering it won the Eisner award for best penciller/inker, the only thing keeping this from five stars is that Bergara's artwork continues to confuse me about once every three or four pages, sometimes to the point where I'm only guessing at what happened. While not quite my thing, I otherwise have no problem with the artwork -- it's occasionally even quite beautiful -- but I do feel like frequently pulling the reader out of the story as I struggle to follow what's happening in the art (and on occasion not even managing to find out) is a pretty big problem. (And while this issue is probably somewhat subjective, I know my wife said she'd had the same problem when she read it.)

But honestly, this is so good I can almost forgive even that. Coda started with a simple premise: A stereotypical fantasy world has lost its magic, and a grumpy antihero ex-bard is roaming it trying to make ends meet until he can reunite with his wife. Somehow, it has retained that premise while adding layers of meaning and character growth to it as it went, and the result is a funny, touching, exciting and just plain cool story that I'd recommend to nearly any fan of the genre. And where else can you get protagonist riding a mutated unicorn who speaks exclusively in censored swear words? ( )

this is the last of the trilogy. fantastic artwork. high fantasy with great good humour in a post-apocalyptic landscape. i kind of loved the whole thing.