RaveBooklistBetrayal and violence sizzle and broil in this graphic novel, right down to its extraordinary lettering, its size fluctuating, its style shifting, and words sitting rough and uneasy in their confining balloons. Award-winning cartoonist Powell imbues his characters with distinctive visual personalities and humanizes them with a subtle softening and rounding of lines even as he evokes the moral dread with shadows that push into figures and landscapes and bleed blackly across the page. An intense, gritty, thrilling crime story and a painful rumination on race, rage, and inescapable ghosts, this could be an early contender for the next awards season.
G. Neri
PositiveBooklistNeri streamlines personal events of Ruffu’s life, highlighting the central social-justice drama to full, agonizing effect. Wilkin abets by balancing realism with gently rounded and slightly exaggerated features that foreground the emotional stakes. The graphic-novel world isn’t full of true stories about nearly 60-year-old women of color who refuse to back down from wealthy white men exploiting (and further corrupting) a corrupt system. Grand Theft Horse feels all the more timely and urgent because of it.
