Les Saisons de Pippa
Magical. Truly enchanting.
An impressive feat of worldbuilding. A mysterious setting with lore, mythology, flora and fauna. You get to discover this world through the curious, innocent eyes and questions of Pippa, an adventurous 5-year-old girl.
Ask questions, listen to grown-up conversations, explore on your own. There are three main stories set in three different seasons. Each allows for a number of choices and side-explorations in this engaging, familiar-yet-mysterious world.
A truly well built world made even more real by the magnificent drawings.
- Les saisons de Pippa - Details (ifdb.org)
Expanded and heavily edited full review, in which I have attempted to convert my disappointed but unfair rant below into constructive criticism.
And then, just as with La Mort venue des Archives: “Oh, hey reader! Would you mind terribly if we set up our still-to-do notice board here? You don’t mind we entered a WIP in the Concours, do you? We still got loads to do, so we thought we’d throw you three small bones and then put up a list of all the things we didn’t do yet.”
Guess what? I do mind. Very disappointing. Just give me three well rounded and polished stories and never mention all the rest. Now you’re practically advertising that you’re throwing unfinished work at your readers.
EDIT: I may have overreacted a bit. “May have”? I did. I lashed out unfairly out of frustration. The three finished stories really are beautiful and enthralling. As an introduction to Pippa’s world, they made me dream and fired up my imagination.
The short notes about topics that aren’t incorporated into stories yet also show deep worldbuilding, and as such strengthen the immersion.
I have now convinced myself to regard this work as an incomplete collection of folklore, parts of which are lost to the ages, perhaps to be uncovered by the author in later installments.