Kate’s Review: “Fence: Vol. 1”

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Book: “Fence: Vol. 1” by C.S. Pacat & Johanna the Mad (Ill.)

Publishing Info: BOOM! Box, July 2018

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Nicholas, the illegitimate son of a retired fencing champion, is a scrappy fencing wunderkind, and dreams of getting the chance and the training to actually compete. After getting accepted to the prodigious Kings Row private school, Nicholas is thrust into a cut-throat world, and finds himself facing not only his golden-boy half-brother, but the unbeatable, mysterious Seiji Katayama…

Through clashes, rivalries, and romance between teammates, Nicholas and the boys of Kings Row will discover there’s much more to fencing than just foils and lunges. From acclaimed writer C.S. Pacat (The Captive Prince) and fan-favorite artist Johanna the Mad.

Review: This is quite possibly going to come as a bit of a shock to you, dear readers, but when I was a sophomore in high school, I was on our school fencing team. Yes, I went to the kind of school that had a fencing team, but if I’m being honest with myself I was really only on the fencing team because a few of my friends were on it, I wasn’t actually cut out for it (and once I was consistently cast in plays and could just do theater to negate the sports requirement, that problem was solved). And given that at the time I was in multiple therapies for mental health and learning disability/neurodivergence related reasons, I was barely ever actually fencing. The team still gave me the E for Effort Award at the end of season, probably out of pity. But I retained enough knowledge that when I finally picked up “Fence: Vol. 1” by C.S. Pacat I was thrown into a bit of a nostalgia spin. I had read the first “Captive Prince” book by Pacat, and it wasn’t really my cup of soup. But “Fence” sounded promising, so I requested it, and what do you know? It was super entertaining.

Since this is the first volume in the series, it’s laying a lot of the groundwork and foundation for the ultimate theme and plot of the story as a whole, and I felt like Pacat did a good job of setting the stage. We are mainly following Nicholas, a passionate and determined fencer whose motivation is based on the fact his absent father is former fencing champion Robert Coste, whose snubbing left Nicholas and his mother growing up with little money and lots of struggles. He is now at King’s Row School, on a scholarship, and has a huge chip on his shoulder as an outsider whom the others are underestimating. It doesn’t help that Seiji Katayama, another fencing prodigy who humiliated Nicholas at a previous tournament, is there… and his roommate. Pacat does the due diligence of creating this rivalry between the two of them, all while putting them in a forced proximity situation that just builds their rivalry and the tension… I mean, I kind of know where this is ultimately going to go, but it’s early and there is more to do before we start getting into tropes. I liked meeting Nicholas and seeing his background slowly revealed, and I completely bought the ambition and resentment he was giving with the clues and context put in place. As he starts the process of trying out for the fencing team with an épée blade (that was MY blade), with his dreams and scholarship on the line, we end with the stakes being very high indeed.

In terms of the other characters, we’ve gotten a bit of a taste of the other team members and wannabe team members. Seiji is the obvious supporting character, as Nicholas’s nemesis, and as of now he’s still a little bit mysterious to Nicholas and the reader as well. I liked seeing the various characters and their types, whether it’s the sweetheart Bobby, the no nonsense Harvard, or the playboy Aiden, we have a dynamic group that is going to almost certainly play off of each other and create drama, and I enjoyed most of them as they have been presented to us now. There are hints about other people coming into play later, mostly Nicholas’s ‘legitimate’ half brother Jesse, captain of the rival school’s fencing team, but as of now we are still dealing with the King’s Row team and the discord in place there. Try outs are just getting started when this book ends, and I really have no idea what is going to happen with the team, as not everyone can make it. I’m already attached to a few of these characters and I need to know what happens next.

And finally, I like the art style that Johanna the Mad brings to the series. It feels a bit like an homage to sports manga, with a mix of cartoonish images as well as more realistic ones.

“Fence: Vol. 1” is a promising start to this sports series. I am VERY interested to see where things go for Nicholas, Seiji, and the fencers of King’s Row. Who’s going to get the pity driven E for Effort Award, what’s what I want to know!

Rating 8: A well laid foundation and an intriguing and original premise makes “Fence: Vol. 1” a solid start to a sporty and maybe romantic series.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Fence: Vol. 1” is included on the Goodreads lists “Fencing Fiction”, and “Graphic Novels: Featuring LGBTIQ+ Themes”.