Evadrion, often shortened to Eva, is an Angel; one of many who have existed for countless years. When Angels sleep, or lose consciousness for any reason, their memories are completely wiped, and they start anew; as such, no one knows just how long the Angels have been in the world, alongside numerous other fantastical creatures, including Dragons.

When Eva awakes from a sudden loss of consciousness, she’s fed lies and half truths by her leader, but there’s much more to what happened prior to her sleep than she realises. Are the Angels the benevolent force that they claim to be? And are the terrifying Diabolics as evil as they seem, or at all? Eva will piece together her history, and set the future in motion, in this first volume of Angels Power.

One thing that’ll immediately strike you when seeing Angels Power is just how gorgeous the artwork is, with every page, every panel even, featuring absolutely incredible visuals, thanks to the very talented writer/artist, Axel Hutt.

Just take a look at some of these pages; everything is painted with such an amazing eye for detail and composition. It truly is a phenomenal work of art from beginning to end, with spectacular creature design and even plenty of neat, unusual stylistic touches such as the way that sound effects are presented visually.

The world that Hutt has created feels startlingly unique too, with each species having its own traits and motivations, and these don’t follow any of the expected tropes that litter the vast majority of fantasy fiction.

Though that originality is a huge selling point, it does make a significant chunk of this first volume feel somewhat impenetrable; there’s a sprawling cast, dense lore, with lots of time skipping in the narrative, along with lots of sequences that deliberately won’t make sense until you reach the final act.

That can make the initial reading of this book quite a challenge at first, especially with so many characters drifting in and out of the narrative, as well as there not being any explanation for certain terms and creatures until well into the story.

However, I will say that it’s worth persevering with; though the story may be difficult to digest at first, it does come together and make sense by the end, at which point the bewildering array of events that are thrown at the reader in the first chapters do get an explanation.

As for the story itself, it’s full of morally grey and outright evil characters, though there’s no moustache twirling supervillains here; as is often the case with fictional evildoers, they’re utterly convinced of their righteousness, even though to the reader, they’re obviously up to no good (to say the least!).

Angels Power is, on page count alone, a sprawling epic, and one that actually ends up being a more intimate story, focused mainly on a few major characters in the end; it’s unique, beautifully illustrated and, even though the narrative is difficult to follow at the beginning, does reward perseverance.

Many thanks to Axel Hutt for sending over a digital copy of Angels Power for review purposes. You can buy a physical copy of Angels Power Volume 1 direct from the official website, here. The crowdfunding campaign for Volume 2 will be going live soon; you can sign up to be notified of the launch here.