Shepherdess Warriors Vol. 1 | Review

Shepherdess Warriors Vol. 1
Writer: Jonathan Garnier
Artist: Amélie Fléchais
Ablaze; $14.99
Ages 8 and Up

The epic adventure comic Shepherdess Warriors arrives in the United States with some pretty strong recommendations, having won the 2022 Angouleme Prize for best title for ages 8-12 for its original French incarnation as Bergères Guerrières and being adapted into an animated series (artist Amélie Fléchais has previously worked in animation, serving as the concept artist for 2014 film Song of the Sea and also working on Onward and the Trolls movies).

Upon reading it, neither accomplishment really seems all that surprising. It’s a broadly appealing story of young heroes with careful but ambitious world-building and an interesting hook. It’s also a graphic novel that moves with assured pacing, fluid art and a cinematic sweep.

Shepherdess Warriors is set in an isolated medieval village populated solely by women, children and the elderly. As for the men, every one of them that was young and sturdy enough to fight had left for a mysterious war at the border of the known world, called The Deadlands. None of them ever returned, nor has there ever been any news of what became of them.

That was ten years ago. In the meantime, the women of the village formed The Order of the Shepherdess Warriors, a ram-riding, weapon-wielding fighting force devoted to protecting the village, just as its members protect their flocks of sheep.

Ten is something of a magic number for the Order, as that is also the age at which new recruits need to be before they are allowed to start training for it, new recruits like Molly, the protagonist of our story, and her friends (and one frenemy).

It’s through them that we learn of the Order, the history of the village’s woes, and some of the lore of their world, like their uneasy alliance with their weird neighbors the witches, who take part in healing their sick.

Shepherdess Warriors Vol. 1, which seems to collect the first two installments of the original Bergères Guerrières, follows Molly and her fellow apprentices—including her friend Liam, who idolizes the Warriors and wants to join them, despite being a boy—as they go through their training and start to go on missions with the fully fledged Warriors. Before too long, a new threat rears its head: A terrible monster that takes the shape of a giant wolf…and seems to be composed of a giant mass of swarming rats.

The beast proves too much for the Shepherdess Warriors, forcing some of their leaders to take Molly and Liam with them to the witches’ home island and beseech them for their magical help. While they’re gone, however, the monster returns.

Publisher Ablaze doesn’t necessarily do the work any favors with the smaller, digest-like, 6″ x 9″ format they reproduce the work in (the original was published at 9.45″ x 12.6″), giving the art somewhat more cramped quarters and less room to breathe, and rendering the re-lettered dialogue a little harder on older eyes (not that that should impact the target audience as much as it does a middle-aged comics critic, of course).

Still, the strength of Fléchais’s art still shines through, and it should be more than strong enough to win an appreciative audience, regardless of page size.

A second volume, which will address this one’s dramatic cliffhanger and should conclude the series, has already been announced for October.

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