Jonathan Baird

Jon Baird and Kevin Costner's The Explorers Guild: Volume One: A Passage to Shambhala is a pastiche of the adventure story genre from the early twentieth century. The narrative follows the travels of a group of British soldiers during World War I as they travel around the world seeking clues to the lost city of Shambhala. Along the way, they meet an interesting cast of characters, including nobility in decline, non-religious priests, madmen and madwomen, a floating giant, and more. They travel by sea ship and airship, go along rivers under the earth and climb through mountains. The story alternates between prose and Rick Ross' art, thereby resembling a serialized, illustrated story. While a pastiche of the genre, Baird and Costner's story greatly expands beyond the relatively simple narratives in the classic stories, clocking in at 765 pages. Beyond this, the overall coherence of the story allows for the authors to plant elements early on that pay off much later, unlike the work of authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose tales tended to be shorter and move from action beat to action beat, without much time for philosophical ponderings. The world Baird and Costner describe is not that far removed from our own, but rather a romanticized version of the early twentieth century when people could still discuss mystic and mythological ideas at the same time they described history and geography. The Explorers Guild: Volume One: A Passage to Shambhala will primarily entertain fans of those earlier novels, but will also appeal to fans of historical fiction.… (más)