Delver vol. 2

Temerity “Merit” Aster and her Delving partner Clem spent a year in the dungeon underneath the former’s hometown of Oddgoat.  They both survived the experience, but emerged to find that the town is now more of a city, complete with an infrastructure to process and facilitate everything related to exploring the dungeon.  It’s not really an equal system, however.  Clem is able to get a job aboveground helping to identify the artifacts retrieved by other Delvers thanks to his background as a spellcaster.  Merit is stuck with her dad moving stuff back and forth to help the people above and if they do a good enough job they get extra meat and bread for their troubles.  It’s what both of them have to look forward to for the rest of their lives, and it shouldn’t be too hard to guess which one is going to do something about it.

The first volume of “Delver” was more concerned with the sociopolitical ramifications of what happens when a dungeon opens up beneath your hometown and that helped set it apart from other fantasy stories I’ve read.  Vol. 2 takes that focus further, to the point where you really get the feeling that writer C. Spike Trotman is really writing about the class and workforce issues facing our world.  To the point where the fantasy trappings of this series almost feel like window dressing to the real story being told here.  This isn’t an issue in and of itself, it’s just that I can almost feel the writer saying, “Maybe if I put enough magic and elves into this story, those nerds will finally understand the real issues we face today!” while I’m reading this.

What we get here is something more concerned with hammering home a message to its audience than telling a proper story.  This is in the sense that there’s not any worldbuilding going on separate “Delver’s” brand of fantasy from everyone else’s.  Yet I was still involved in Merit’s story throughout, especially at the end when she pulls off an escape that’s even more impressive than what’s seen on the page.  It actually looks like she managed to free herself from the obvious conclusion to her tale and is now headed into parts unknown.  While this could be called an acceptable finish to the story (and it might just be given that this was a ComiXology Original), it leaves me really wanting to see where our protagonist has escaped to in a future volume.