Quick! There’s still time to buy Stjepan Šejić’s Fine Print – Volume 2 for someone as a Christmas present! Or maybe for yourself. Have you read this yet? Because you absolutely need to read this series if you love tales of love and sex wrapped up in mythology and glorious artwork.
Volume 1 concluded by introducing the core problem of the story. Lauren Thomas holds a Golden Contract: a promise of supernaturally good sex with a godlike being called a Cubi (that is, a succubus or an incubus). The energy created by Lauren’s desire will ensure the survival of the higher realms, and also give power, status, and independence to the top-ranking Cubi who fulfills it. Unfortunately there are two Cubi who are tied for the top rank, Leliah Ashen and Thadeus Brimstone. They both hate each other, and the suggestion that one of them could maybe step aside to resolve this for the benefit of the divine spheres? Yeah, not gonna happen.
Volume 2 begins where Volume 1 did, with Lauren dying, and an absolutely infuriated goddess named Bauphette Alaris making things worse, with the promise of an eternity to think back on how this whole mess got started.
…there I was a year ago, kneeling on the floor of my apartment, processing the fact that instead of one god of desire, I somehow got two. And I thought…”Dear Lord, my cup runneth over.”
The book moves the main conflict forward a little, but mostly it expands on what we know about all the characters. Most especially we learn more about their relationships. Leliah’s friends-with-benefits thing she has going on with the Cupid Heureca might be progressing into something more, not that Leliah would ever admit something shameful like falling in love. Thadeus and his lover Vain, the former Cupid and now Cubi, are all kinds of adorable together. Even the horrifying Alaris has a wife she obviously loves and a daughter who she, well, yes she actually cares about Meryl. Even while she’s eternally impatient and disappointed in her, she still tries to protect her.
The problem is that a Golden Contract is a big enough prize that it’s bringing out the worst in everyone.
We’ve got Leliah’s former flame Aluria, gaslighting her by insisting that of course she only wants her and not just her tasty Golden Contract, and of course she only broke up with Leliah “for her own good”, and she’s not planning on taking no for an answer. Thadeus and Leliah have very valid reasons for needing to be the one to fulfill the Contract; in their society only the top producers get to decide where they can live and who can raise a family. And the Contract system itself is also incredibly unfair, giving advantage to people born to the right family and making many Cubi drop out of the game completely when they realize they’ll never receive the kind of Contracts that would let them get ahead.
And then there’s Lauren. A couple of quick flashbacks give us a little more information about why her modeling career was so traumatizing, but mainly Lauren is running from her memories of being happy with Matt before she dumped him for fame and fortune. She now has two gods fighting for her attention, and an incensed former Fury who’s getting more and more annoyed that this situation hasn’t been resolved yet. It’s a dangerous situation, and Lauren is exactly damaged enough to try to twist the conflict to her advantage. If she’s never going to be happy again then she’s damn well going to keep stringing everyone along to provide enough mind-blowing divine sex to keep herself distracted.
“Bliss is not a cure. It is numbness, wrapped in sweet coating.”
Of course we need to talk about the artwork as well. Šejić’s gods have butterfly wings and horns, or angel wings and halos, and they materialize in showers of petals or glowing grapevines. Seductions take place in hotel rooms, or outside Leliah’s hollow-tree hideaway, or in the (decommissioned) realm of Elysium. Šejić uses tails and tentacles to frame the scene, arcing elegantly around the character who’s currently speaking, or twining along the border of the page. And lest we forget, there’s actual sex going on in every chapter. Beautiful half-clad gods, entirely naked Lauren, writhing tangles of arms and hands and tentacles. You guys, there’s mention of sexual fluids here. This book is tasty and not for the easily offended.
Šejić works a lot of tenderness and humor into the story as well. Some of it is in the expression, things like Lauren’s face when she tentatively suggests that Bauphette Alaris fulfill her Golden Contract herself? (Answer: no.) Or various characters giving a long-suffering glare. There’s a full-page illustration of Heureca appearing out of nowhere in all her divine fury, awkwardly having to admit that she was ready to do battle just at the very idea that Leliah’s feelings might have been hurt. Leliah Ashen and Thadeus Brimstone, turn on the charm at their first meeting with Lauren, trying to shove each other out of the way like feuding ten-year-olds. And that’s when they’re trying to not look very worried about how pissed off Alaris is at the whole situation.
Oh boy, those demonstrations of rage. All of the Cubi can shapeshift, so when someone gets angry it can show as fire, or tentacles instantly turning into a nest of black-and-white vipers ready to strike. And as the story progresses Alaris gets more and more enraged. And desperately afraid. The giant dragon-hound with blood-red snakes for hair is nothing compared compared to the scene towards the end of the book where she really gets angry.
Šejić is already working on Volume 3, and we’ve got a lot more ground to cover. We’ve only just started to fill in the year-long gap in between Lauren getting the Golden Contract and Lauren dying, and we still don’t know what exactly it is that makes Alaris so mad at Lauren specifically. Plus there’s the whole question of the Calm of Thanatos and how a Golden Contract is supposed to stop it . And, in an image at the end of the book, there’s a very good chance that the real solution is right in front of them.
P.S. You can read the story on Šejić’s Patreon, but the graphic novel is definitely worth the money. It includes some in-progress drawings, plus the first chapter of Stjepan Šejić’s The Queen and the Woodborn. Yes, Šejić has another in-progress comic. I’ve lost count of them at this point, and they’re all amazing.