Bloodborne: The Veil, Torn Asunder

Bloodborne: The Veil, Torn Asunder is the fourth and (for now) final volume of the Bloodborne comic series. And it's a pretty damn good one, but just like the previous volume, A Song of Crows, it doesn't stand well on its own. The Veil, Torn Asunder actually goes a step further than Eileen the Crow's outing and requires the reader to be familiar with not just the Bloodborne universe but also every Bloodborne comic that precedes it. And even then, with all that, and even if you're well-versed in the available lore, you're still going to have to delve quite a bit in order to figure out what is actually going on here.

A man walks the streets of the city of Yharnam, haunted by a singular moment in his past, a moment where the veil of reality itself tore apart, and where it seemed as if something monstrous stared back through the breach. Convinced that what he saw was real, the man resolves to understand the truth of the shapeless form that once met his gaze, and while the Blood Moon rises he relinquishes his hold on reality in a desperate bid for the truth.

But in this nightmare world, too much truth can very well drive one insane. 

Under the guise of one man's search for the ultimate truth of his world, writer Ales Kot delivers a story that is ostensibly somewhat lacking in plot, but that nonetheless satisfies as it delivers some awesome gothic horror-artwork and an intriguing mystery hidden behind an experimental meta-narrative.

I really quite enjoyed this one, but it was an enjoyment borne rather from trying to figure out what the story was actually doing when the read was over than any kind of immediate gratification during the read itself. Awesome art is great to look at, but if the cohesion and natural progression of the story they depict between them is missing, when you don't know what the hell is actually happening, then the story can be as well thought out as can be, it'll be very hard to give it its due. And this is where that figuring-out comes in, because it is pretty hard to grasp The Veil, Torn Asunder unless one has a lot of knowledge of the things Ales Kot brings into this story.

Which is why I'm going to go into exquisite detail in the next post.