Review added September 17, 2017

Korgi (Book 4): The Problem with Potions

Review by Jouni Pohjola

After a five-year wait, Christian Slade brings us the next chapter in the Korgi series. The original plan to publish one book per year has of course long since been abandoned and the the pace of production appears to be slipping into a glacial (or George-R-R-Martinesque, if you prefer) rate that makes one wonder if the initially projected ten books will ever be made.

Anyway, as far as the book itself goes, it is once again the longest in the series, clocking in at 120 pages. There is a lot of plot to move along as the evil magician Derog-Glaw makes further nefarious plans to get his three mishappen claws on Sprout, the rare fire-breathing Korgi. There is dark sorcery, weird transformations, an undead Unicorn (even the live ones aren't nice in this universe), more (and less) Creephogs and to top it all off, a pratfall involving a giant dog turd. Be warned that there is once again some fairly shocking violence too, mainly by the bad guys thankfully. On the sunnier side, we are told how Sprout and Ivy were united (basically at birth), see Sprout exhibiting very realistic Corgi-like behavior and finally finish the book off with a properly mysterious epilogue that would even serve as a fitting finale if the series never continued for whatever reason.

As far as the art goes, Slade is still in good form and shows his customary flair for creating dynamic movement in pen and ink. Although some of the drawings do appear a little too close to sketches for my preference, on the flip side there are some really great full-page and two-page pieces there as well, particularly those showing the confusion and fear of the transformed Sprout (see pg. 49 and 74-75 in particular).

While this book was long time in coming, it was fairly well worth the wait since overall I would say that it is on par with Book 3 as the best part of the series. Let's hope that we don't have to wait for another five years (or eight, or forever) for the sequel.

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Review added September 17, 2017