Euro Reviews: The Magnificent Entertainment Continues In ‘Cutting Edge: The Siren’s Song Book 2’

Okay then, a little while ago I told you about Cutting Edge – The Siren’s Song book one from writer Francesco Dimitri and artist Mario Alberti. I described it as a wonderful, ridiculous piece of escapism that entertained me from start to finish, a pure page-turner that works despite (or perhaps because of) all the fabulously overblown stuff.

So… no surprises here, part two is every bit as fun and thrilling.

So, here we are with book two and part two of The Siren’s Song. The basic plot so far runs thus: someone has brought together the world’s brightest and best – the cutting edge – and wants to set them all off on a mysterious quest: the Dodecathlon.

Part one gave us all that and the first quest, finding a musician who didn’t want to be found, a musician working on the perfect melody, the perfect tune, all to get the Siren he once saw to come back to him.

So off they go, the social psychology expert, the powerful and beautiful heiress, the genius scientist, the prize-winning young photographer, and the mystery man whose skills appear to be all about people and manipulation, whether that’s getting them into bed or getting them to talk.

All of them head out to find the musician only to discover that there are powerful and very bad men who don’t want this to happen, powerful and very bad men who’ve already killed one of the group, photographer Jirakee.

Like I said, that first volume was the sort of fabulous nonsense we all like to read every so often. It was ridiculous, it was predictable, it used every possible cliche it could around the overblown concept – and yet it was still a fun and entertaining diversion of a read that I loved.

And also like I said, the second volume is just more of the same wonderful nonsense.

The musician tells his tale of his Siren, the group want to get to the bottom of it all, find the Siren, find who killed Jirakee, finish the task, get on with the next part of the quest.

Meanwhile, to complicate things, there’s a mystery hacker listening into everything they’re talking about plus one of the group is having a secret (and expensive) consultation with a local doctor with the feeling that something is happening, that someone is messing around in their heads.

So while part one of this was all about the set-up part of the caper – and make no mistake about it, this is definitely a tale firmly in the mold of the caper – this second part is the more reflective part of the caper tale. Here we get to know who we’re dealing with, what the stakes are, with a lot of talking everything through – fortunately Alberti makes it all look fabulous whatever the scenario.

Again, there’s no huge twists and turns here that you don’t see coming, nothing that isn’t pulled directly from the template of this sort of tale. But the way it’s all structured is just so well done that you can’t help but fall into in and just go along with everything and anything.

For example, the section when the rich heiress heads off to see the crime boss, seemingly just trading on her name and reputation to keep her safe, you know there’s going to be so much more to it, you know she’s going to get into trouble and you know she’s going to show us those hidden resources and strength to get out of it all.

But as I keep saying about Cutting Edge, it still doesn’t matter one bit that it’s this predictable, not when the moves in the plot and the execution of it all are done so very well.

We’re now two parts into this and I believe it’s a four-album series. So we’ve hit the halfway point and have done much of the build-up and met our cast. What they’ve got now is a Siren’s Song that might have links to the sort of covert mind-control experiments that the CIA dabbled in with the MK-Ultra program, we’ve got a serious bad guy on their case, and of course we have a twist or two at the end of this volume. And yes, you could see those coming as well.

And it matters not one whit. Like I say, this is such wonderfully entertaining nonsense done exceptionally well. I’m really looking forward to the final two volumes now.

Cutting Edge – The Siren’s Song – Book 2. Written by Francesco Dimitri, art by Mario Alberti, translation by Marc Bourbon-Crook, letters by Jessica Burton.
Published by Titan Comics. Originally published by Editions Delcourt in 2013/2015.