Gunnerkrigg Court is a free, serialized, online graphic novel updated page by page on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It took me awhile to warm to Tom Siddell's heroine, Antimony, and her strange school. But once I did, I found myself really looking forward to spending time in Gunnerkrigg Court.
At first glance, Gunnerkrigg Court is a Harry Potter wanna-be: a young girl, practically an orphan, enrolls in the magical school where her parents and their friends (now teachers at the school) were once students, only to find she has special talents critical to the fate of her community. Despite sharing this basic premise with the Harry Potter series, Gunnerkrigg Court has its own well-developed speculative world, its own vast cast of charming characters, and an interesting theme quite different from that in J.K. Rowling's books. Gunnerkrigg Court is decidedly a fun story in its own right.
From the opening pages of the graphic novel, Siddell sets up the main conflict of the story: science and technology vs. magic and nature. Gunnerkrigg Court is a place where advanced scientists and magical creatures meet, mingle...and sometimes kill each other. Besides creating an interesting story, this theme is very relevant to a world in which people are going hiking, using the compass application on their iPhone, a world interested in combining and reconciling our "magical" sense of wonder and our connection to nature, with the fruit of scientific reason and technological advancement.
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