Alex Campbell is an electronic music artist with a tragic past; not so much haunted by it, but definitely suppressing it as much as she can. When she inherits an old house in London from a distant relative, she’s soon badgered by the representatives of a mysterious organisation who want to get their hands on the property. What secrets does it hold?

And what do the experiments into physical matter transfer, which seem to have occurred in an alternate 19th century, have to do with Alex, the house and the shadowy organisation who are on her case?

There’s an awful lot going on in Quantum Tangle, which compiles the first two chapters (of the first volume) of creator Henry Chebaane’s The Panharmonion Chronicles. It opens with a distressing, perhaps unnecessarily graphic, family tragedy. Subsequent to this, however, the development of Alex Campbell and the story unfolding around her is handled really well, with a great sense of time and place.

The same can be said of the jaunts back into the past, which have a great period feel and evocative details that place it firmly in an alternate historical period. Stephen Baskerville’s detailed and expressive art, with excellent choices of colour, do a great job of complementing Chebaane’s script in this regard.

Though I did find the narrative a little hard to follow at times, it’s clear that this is a dense, multi-layered story that requires quite a bit of exposition and general plot set-up; this first chapter of three that make up the first volume of the story is clearly laying a lot of groundwork for what’s to follow.

It’s an intriguing and somewhat unique story, with naturalistic elements comfortably sitting alongside sci-fi, alt-history and perhaps even a dash of the supernatural, with nothing feeling out of place.

Highly ambitious and brilliantly constructed, this opening salvo sets up an incredibly interesting story that draws the reader in and demands that they pay attention; it’s an excellent read and, on the strength of this first act alone, one that I can highly recommend.

If your local comic book store doesn’t stock The Panharmonion Chronicles: Times of London, you can purchase it from the publisher directly here.

Many thanks to Henry Chebaane for sending me a digital copy of the full first volume of The Panharmonion Chronicles: Times of London for review purposes. Look out for my reviews of the next two chapters soon.