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Des dessins extraordinaires qui nous plongent au cœur d'un monde précolombien coloré et sombre à la fois, un découpage rythmé qui nous accorde aussi de grandes vignettes contemplatives, une intrigue intelligente qui se construit sur deux lignes temporelles et des personnages complexes et attachants: il y a tout de quoi faire une BD mémorable ! Le contexte historique est tout à fait convaincant à l'instar des albums précédents, on retrouve Tlacaelel, grande figure de la triple alliance, ici sur son lit de mort au milieu de fantasmagories horrifiques, le sacrifice est dépeint comme normal et faisant partie de la vie sociale ce qui nous plonge encore plus dans une manière de voir le monde à l'opposé de nos conceptions occidentales et on est toujours aussi fasciné face à ces scènes de vie au cœur de la somptueuse Tenochtitlan. La reconstitution de la maison du savoir est particulièrement émouvante, quand l'on pense à tous ces codex qui furent détruits un siècle plus tard par les conquistadors... On en apprend plus sur les personnages, Œil-lance et son amour malheureux, Serpent qui peut montrer un côté plus humain malgré sa cruauté, et le double visage de Cozatl. Et la fin donne vraiment envie de lire la suite... J'ai hâte que le prochain album sorte, il va falloir s'armer de patience !!

On suit deux Canadiens, Ben Raddle et Summy Skim, qui héritent d'une concession dans le Klondike. L'un est enthousiaste d'aller prospecter tandis que l'autre se méfie de la ruée vers l'or et n'attend que de rentrer chez lui à Montréal. Ce livre plein de rebondissements et d'aventure nous permet de nous plonger au coeur de cet événement historique où la fièvre de l'or a bouleversé la région du Klondike. De Dawson City aux confins de l'Alaska, les héros principaux se laisseront happer par cette fièvre, de gré ou de force, ils devront affronter les autres prospecteurs dans scrupule, dont les Texans sans foi ni loi Hunter et Malone. Le volcan d'or, cette montagne de légende qui cracherait de l'or, est alors le rêve ultime du prospecteur, un rêve que Jules Verne regarde avec un œil très critique, puisque toutes les entreprises des deux frères semblent à chaque fois vouées à l'échec. Rien de bon ne peut résulter de cette folie de l'or. Je conseille de lire la version originale non remaniée par le fils de Jules Verne, Michel, éditée par Olivier Dumas édition folio.

Un libro de amor increíble y original. La narración es mezclada con recetas de cocina que permiten ilustrar el saber ancestral de la familia de la novela, y las emociones del personaje principal, Tita. Es una crítica amarga de una tradición que hace de la hija menor una sirvienta de por vida de su madre, aquí mamá Elena. La relación de control de la madre está maravillosamente bien representada. Esta novela corresponde también al realismo mágico, la comida de Tita parece tener algunas veces poderes extraordinarios que permiten transcender las emociones de la heroína. Es una escritura llena de sensualidad aunque el amor parece permanentemente prohibido en esa casa, el matrimonio de la hermana Rosaura no es un matrimonio de amor, la madre es manipuladora y el verdadero amor de Tita, Pedro, se casa con la hermana para quedar cerca de Tita, y es demasiado cobarde para vivir de verdad su amor con ella hasta la muerte de mamá Elena. El personaje de la otra hermana, Gertrudis es un contrapunto, no huye el amor y la sexualidad sino huye la casa para vivirlos completamente en un burdel, y con su amor Juan, hasta hacerse general revolucionaria. El amor puro del doctor Johon es también un contrapunto de la coerción de la madre, pero parece demasiado medido con respeto al amor pasional de Pedro. Entonces, un libro lleno de pasión, de magia, de emociones fuertes y de relaciones tóxicas con una narración bien construida con las recetas tradicionales mexicanas.

Let me be clear about this book: it is AMAZING! Very densely informed, everything is clearly explained and not oversimplified but accessible to those who don’t know the subject well. It’s beautifully illustrated and the diagrams help to understand complicated concepts better. The writers tried not to be Eurocentric and the chapters are dedicated to different parts of the world and to different cultures. It is also intelligently organised through chronology and themes at the same time.

BUT there are also very big gaps in the book… I know that it’s hard to write about this kind of broad subject, and that we can’t be exhaustive in this type of book format. However, I found this book so well done that I thought it was a pity that certain key subjects in LGBTQ+ history were not covered. I give you here four topics that are definitely missing for me in this book…
-My biggest surprise was to not read a word about YAOI! Some sections talk about modern history of China, India, Thailand… but not a world about modern Japan, about the iconic writer Yukio Mishima, and above all about these gay romance manga genres that flourished in the 1970s!! What about the shounen-ai, the yaoi and mangakas like Moto Hagio and Keiko Takemiya. What about shoujo-ai, esu and yuri? What about the bara and the famous Gengoroh Tagame? Nowadays it’s not anymore only a Japanese art, Boy’s love (BL) is internationally renowned, and you can find yaois in bookshops all around the world! It’s one of the most widely read genres in Korean webtoons! This gap was very surprising for me…
-I was disappointed to not read a word about the marquis de Sade! It would have been nice to mention it in the pornography chapter, or maybe even add a chapter about libertinism (libertinage) in the 17th and 18th centuries. Most of writers from this philosophical movement were queer (Gassendi, Cyrano de Bergerac, Théophile de Viau, John Wilmot….), they promoted freedom of thought and liberation from religious and moral dogmas, and they wrote libertine novels, plays and poetry with gay characters.
-An other surprise, the writers beautifully wrote about the lesbian identities (butch and femme), but nothing about what we call today “gay tribes”. I am thinking especially about the history of the bear community and the rejection of gay beauty standards, and how it started in the 1980s in magazines like Bear magazine, etc. These tribes became mainstream through meeting apps like Grindr, and these apps changed queer sociability.
-And last key subject, but I was not surprised to not find it in this book because we don’t talk a lot about it in general and it can be quite controversial: the history of scientific discoveries about sexual orientation in biology, like the discovery of homosexual relations in the animal world by ethologists and primatologists, the controversy of the “gay gene” in the 1990s, and the more complex and nuanced theories of modern endocrinology and genetics (importance of prenatal hormones and genetic predisposition).

These topics were, I think, the big gaps of the book. I thought of other topics, less important, and I can understand that the writers didn’t talk about it, they had to make choices for having a reasonable size book and keeping it accessible… But I put here my ideas, and I hope it could help for a possible expanded reprint.
-I think the first parts about Antiquity are definitely too Eurocentric, and even too centered on Greco-Latin culture. It would have been nice to have a big chapter about same-sex relations and gender fluidity in the world mythologies. Egyptian and Mesopotamian legends are briefly evoked. But what about gender variance of Hindu deities? We could also talk about: the figure of Tu Er Shen in Taoist legends, the gay couple of Shinu no Hafuri and Ama no Hafuri and the homoerotic desire of Amaterasu in Japanese mythology, the third-gender representation in American mythologies (the Maya god Chin, the Inuit creator deity Sedna…), the Aztec god of male prostitutes Xochipilli, the queer figure of Loki in Norse mythology. It would also have been nice to talk about the sexual freedom of Celts mentioned by Aristotle and Strabo, and the mythical couples of Gilfaethwy and Goewin (two men changed in animals, one male and the other female, and giving birth!), Brigid and Darlughdacha… There are a lot of things to say about non Greek mythologies, that’s why it would have deserved its own 4 pages chapter.
-It would have been nice to explain somewhere the etymology of the world “buggery” which is related to the Bulgarian heresy bogomilism.
-A chapter about cultures of Polynesia would have been great, for talking about the fa’afafine, the androgynous aboriginal rainbow serpent god Ungud, the queer gods of Hawaiian and Tahitian mythologies, etc. The Takatapui chapter is amazing, but I think the other cultures of the regions deserve to be at least mentioned as it was made for Africa because they all have a unique vision of gender and sexuality, and had to face as well colonial ideologies.
-Some chapters are lesbocentric for no reason: in the pornography chapter, why mostly only talk about lesbian sex and not mention male gay sex (especially Sade)? Why talk only about lesbians in the french Belle époque? The emerging gay neighborhoods were not only lesbian, there were also male gay cafés and hotels, not to mention the iconic gay couple of poets Rimbaud and Verlaine…
-Last point: The writers talked about literature, art and cinema, but almost nothing about video games (They only mentioned Caper in the Castro in the small paragraph dedicated to representation p177). A little page about the emergence of LGBTQ+ gameplay in video games would also have been great. The Sims added for the first time the possibility of same-sex love and marriage in video games in 2000, and it’s becoming a natural feature nowadays in RPGs (Fable, Skyrim, Stardew Valley…). The Nintendo game Animal Crossing even changed the character customization option “gender” to “style” in 2020.
It could even have been an entire chapter dedicated to representation in medias, especially series, comics and video games a bit absent in this book. It could also have been an opportunity to mention gay pulp fictions.

I know that this book doesn’t claim to be exhaustive, and rather is supposed to popularize the subject. That’s why I didn’t put a lot of famous historical gay figures in my suggestions, because we could list a hundred of them (heroes, kings and queens, artists, writers, scientists, philosophers, adventurers...). I preferred to focus on these important periods, changes and themes related to LGBTQ+ history: creation of yaoi, creation of bear community and meeting app culture, libertinism, science discovery, original myths, cultural diversity, changing representations in medias.

After this long suggestion review, we could think that I didn’t like the book: it’s quite the opposite! I loved it so much that I couldn’t accept these gaps! And as a perfectionist, I had to write what I would have added in this book for being perfect! But I definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about LGBTQ+ history! I learned a lot of things thanks to it, and it’s definitely a must in my bookshelf.

C'est un livre très intéressant, qui m'a permis de mieux comprendre toute l'évolution de tous ces différents peuples d'Amérique du nord. On pourrait cependant reprocher au livre quelques répétitions, et une argumentation peut-être trop eurocentrée (ce qui est d'une certaine manière compréhensible puisque une grande partie des sources est européenne). En effet, la majorité du livre retrace les expéditions européennes, tandis que plus de détails sur le rapport spirituel des Amérindiens avec leur environnement ou bien leur propre histoire légendaire auraient pu être plus détaillés. Hiawatha est par exemple rapidement évoqué alors qu'il s'agit d'une figure importante de la confédération iroquoise, et rien n'est dit du grand pacificateur qui était à ses côtés. De la même manière, rien sur le conseil des trois feux anichinabé, rien sur la société du midewiwin... Je pense que le livre souffre de la difficulté à rassembler plusieurs siècles d'histoire d'une si grande multitude de peuples en un seul livre.
Il va sans dire que mis à part ces quelques éléments, ce livre est très bien construit, très intéressant, et constitue un incontournable pour mieux comprendre l'histoire de l'Amérique du nord. Les nombreuses illustrations issues de représentations d'époque et les nombreuses cartes rendent le tout encore plus appréciable et didactique.