'Petit: The Ogre Gods Book One' by Hubert Boulard with illustrations by Bertrand Gatignol is a story about grotesque giants who have court intrigue and feast on humans.

Petit is the son of the (current) Ogre King. He is quite small for his species, towering over humans and seemingly not fitting in to either world. He is protected by his aunt who is larger than other giants in his crumbling castle. To stay alive, he is told he must mate with a human to produce a royal offspring, even though this is certain death for the impregnated.

Threaded throughout the story are prose pieces which help flesh out the world and ancestors of Petit. This really helped make the story more interesting, and these pieces are pretty well writen.

The art, like the giants behavior, is grotesque in nature. Told with black and white drawings, I was more fascinated by this story than I initially thought I would be. Maybe i was in the mood for a weird story like this.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Lion Forge, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I enjoyed reading this. An interesting story with fun characters. Well written.

I could immediately tell this was a bonkers French comic translated to English. It was just too weird and offputting for most American comic audiences. It's about this royal family of inbred giants. The queen gives birth to a human sized son and the king immediately tries to murder him. The queen raises the kid in hiding with her aunt. The queen constantly tries to get Petit to eat humans and have sex with them in order to have giant babies. There's tons of violence towards women and awkward sex scenes. I think the author may have had a bad acid trip and then turned it into a comic. The whole thing felt like a nightmare. The book also had prose stories interspersed between each chapter. I wasn't enjoying the sequential art's story so there was no way I was wasting time on the prose.

3.5
SO CREEPY.
If you are not into blood, naked bodies and cannibalism, maybe this book is not for you. I am not into any of that things, but I still liked it!
So, we have Petit, the littlest giant in the royal clan. His father, the Ogre King, is THE GIANT and wants him killed as an embarrassment but his mother decides to keep him alive hoping he will bring amazing things. Since Petit is as little as a human, he could mate with a human and have babies. Buttt giants eat humans!!! You would think Petit loves eating humans, but no. Although her mother decided to keep him alive, she gave him to Aunt Desdée, the oldest of their clan, who is the only giant who care about humans.
The art in this book was surreal and gore, so explicit. Maybe too grotesque in some parts, but I still liked it and liked it even more the fact that it was black and white. Oh and I loveddddd Aunt Desdée <3.

I received an ARC of this from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting take on the history of giants. It combines actual short story type narratives focusing on particular famous giants as well as graphic novel style when resuming the regular story of Petit.
It's a history as well as a portrayal of the current problems facing the giant culture. Due to inbreeding, they are a dying breed. Giants are getting smaller, less intelligent and suffering birth defects. Petit is the smallest giant and many of his relatives assume that he is human and want to eat him. His mother however, realizes his true potential. Like the Founder, Petit could breed with human women since he is small enough, and they would in turn, produce giant babies, that would kill them in childbirth. Seems like a small price to save a dying race right? Petit doesn't see it that way and refuses to procreate with the ladies that his mother throws at him. This volume covers his struggles as well as the current monarchy.

I would have given this a 3.5 if I could have. It was an interesting twist on a fairytale, though which one, I'm not exactly sure. I'd be curious to read the 2nd and 3rd volume to see where it goes.

Gory and weird, but in a good way.
The topic of this book took a while to get into, and there are many relationships amongst the characters which didn't make things easier.
The concept is interesting though, I had never read anything with a similar topic. I think it is very original.
If you are fine with giants eating humans, even giants that look like humans, then this is a book for you.
The book won't give you everything all at once, it does build up the information, particularly the information that Petit himself has.

I did enjoy the artwork and the prose writings that provided some backstory.

Petit: The Ogre Gods Book One is a blend of graphic novel and novel written by Hubert Boulard, with design and artwork by Bertrand Gatignol. Parts of the story are fully in graphic novel format, while other sections are in text with the occasional image.

Petit is the son of the Ogre King, and the littlest giant in the royal clan. Scarcely larger than a mere human, he is the latest sign of the family's rapid degeneration, which makes each generation smaller than the one before.His father wants him killed as an embarrassment, but his mother sees in him the possible regeneration of the family lineage, since he could mate with a human, just as the Founder of their lineage once did. Confused, she confides in great Aunt Desdee, the oldest of their clan, who was once dishonored because of her love for the humans, whom the Ogres consider little more than labor and food. But contrary to her guidance, she decides to raise Petit in the family traditions, including the violent impulses that this entails. So Petit grows into manhood, torn by the hunger he inherited from his upbringing and the sympathetic education he received from Aunt Desdee. Can he find his place in this world divided between humans and giants, neither of which truly accept him? And will he survive the voracious appetite of his own monstrous family?

Petit: The Ogre Gods Book One is as dark as the description promised, and a read that mirrored some of the real world a little too closely for my tastes. Petit has seen the horror his family has become and the way they treat others, he also has an aunt that shows him the arts and gentler side of life. He is toward between the two worlds. I did get a solid sense of his characters through the book, and I liked that while readers can tell he really wants to be a good person he is not perfect, and makes his share of mistakes. However, he continues trying to do right, even when it is not easy. I liked the character of his aunt, Desdee is still caught by the trappings of the family but rises above the violence and cruelty. Petit's mother, the queen, is a mix between the two. There are moments when readers can almost think well of her, then she does something cruel or violent with no thought to how it affects others, and clearly puts power and her wants about just about anything. Even when she seems to be doing something good, it quickly twists into something much different. The art style is very interesting, and I found the giants to be suitably horrifying, and they actually reminded me a bit of the REd Queen in Alice in Wonderland- both in personality and appearance. The black and white art lent itself to the dark mood of the story, and the line work was very well done. I found the text backstories to be a good break in the story, both explaining the history and giving readers a break from the danger and horror of the main story. I found these brief interludes gave me a much better understanding of the culture, history, and power struggles between the giants. I did find one or two characters to be a little much, and the romantic hints to the story really did not add anything to the story for me, rather I found them distracting even though I know it did serve a purpose. So, that was just something that did not work for me, but might not be an issue for anyone else.

Petit: The Ogre Gods Book One is a gothic, horror graphic novel full of characters that are unnerving through their appearance and their actions. THe art and the story are engaging and I just might pick up the next volume. I am not certain yet and think it will decide on my mood when I see that it is available.

While I liked the concept, I would have liked a little better world-building and slightly better/more believable characters.

This book was bananas. Petit (out titular hero) is the smallest child born to an extended family of inbred giants (Ogres) who rule over a land of humans that they eat.

...Did all of that land? No? Good, it's only going to get weirder.

The art in this book (by Bertrand Gatignol) was the saving factor that helped me stay with any of this. It is largely a book about the crazy family dynamics of which giant is bigger than which and how do they feel about humans. Petit is human sized, but he's raised in conflict by his Aunt, who loves humans, and his mother who eats them. There is a lot of gory eating of human parts and more sex than was warranted from this bonkers story. There is a lot of violence towards women in here fwiw.

I read a description of this book that end with the line: "A dark fantasy breathtakingly illustrated like a grown-up Disney feature for the Game of Thrones audience." which is some supremely insipid marketing-speak for 'We have no idea how to sell this book or who it's for and French people are way out there.'

This is apparently Vol 1 and I am on the fence about if I'll read the next one. MOSTLY because when this ended, I'm not sure I cared. As an audience we're made to sympathize and care for Petit several times as he's picked on and threatened, only to have him make some big choices that aren't really justified or followed up on and only serve to make him less likable. I get that he's trying not to become a monster, but he leans into it several times without any real provocation.
- I really don't know man, I'm going to have to sit with this a while. It was so different than most graphic novels I've read I'm still trying to parse whether or not it was good and I'm just not used to it's style or if it really was just a weird, Brie-fueled hallucination.

So very....grotesque, but written well enough to continue reading. The artwork is amazing, the story is decent (told like a fairytale), but the ending was a bit meh.

First book in a series about the Ogre Gods. Petit is born from giant parents, yet he is almost human sized. His people with the exception of his mother and a grand aunt look down on him. Will he be able to survive and not get eaten? This is suitable for adults as there are sexual and violent acts depicted.

In a royal family of monstrous ogres, continuous inbreeding has been yielding smaller and smaller children. Petit is the smallest yet. So small his mother did not know she was pregnant with him until she birthed him. Instantly reviled for his human size, the court demands to eat him, so such blight can be erased from the royal family.
His mother, however, believes Petit will bring about great things, much as their distant ancestor: the Founder, who mated with humans and thus had bigger and bigger children.

I absolutely LOVED this! Petit reads as a grotesque fairy tale, certainly not for the faint hearted, but amazing just the same. The monstrous court, violent and stupid, feasting on humans and reveling in their reign of terror, the bizarre architecture of the gigantic palace, the story meandering through the present interspersed with short stories about the great ancestors of the royal family... it was all absolutely delicious!

I highly recommend this one, and I can't wait for the second volume!

A grotesque story of a litte giant, Petit, the son of Ogre King was hidden to his family by his mother to protect their clan from extinction and for her pure love to her son...or was it?

Hubert Boulard did an astounding job with the story of Petit. The vividness of the environment and the characters laid out extremely well. Their histories and backgrounds being told in a short story after a few chapter of the current story.

The story really pack a punch. Full of gory scenes and completely bonkers of a character, the illustrator [Bertrand Gatignol] really did an impressive job at laying out the idea of the plot.

Overall, this book was truly entertaining. It really shows the length of what a man can do to achieve their goals; even if it means they trample down another.

A rather gory fairytale with brillant graphics!

Petit was a child born to the Ogre King and Queen. Unfortunately he was born the size of a normal human baby. His father the ogre king would have eaten him but his mother hides him, bringing him up in the rooms of his ogre aunt.

Petit grows up learning to eat human beings, albeit reluctantly. He knows he is different and manages to keep out of the way of the other ogres. His mother believes he is the key to a new giant race. His aunt wants him to be a dancer and his father wants him dead.

Petit becomes a young man and finds that he is a big human being but a small giant. He doesn't fit in anywhere so he tries to make a place for himself, but it is only a matter of time before the enmity of the ogre king meets him head on and who knows if Petit will survive.

This is a good mix of graphics and supporting stories in prose. The artwork is excellent in black and white and enhances the story. This is book one of the series and I desperately want to read book two. Petit is both charming and dangerous but he manages to make a life for himself at the margins of both human and ogre society but what is he really? Human or ogre?

This is an interesting story with a fairytale feel to it, albeit a dark fairytale. Petit is resilient, courageous and cunning, but yet all he truly wants is to be loved. Will he find a place of his own in the violent worlds in which he lives? Hopefully these questions will be answered as the series develops.

Copy provided via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Petit: The Ogre Gods Book One by Hubert Boulard
Quite a grisly, dark fairytale. Petit and Sala are sympathetic characters. The giants are really awful. The artwork is amazing in this interesting graphic novel. Ended with a cliffhanger.
#netgalley #Petit:TheOgreGodsBookOne #HubertBoulard

A disturbing story of a child of giants who is almost human size, almost, but wholly.

The giants are considered gods, and have humans waiting on them hand and foot, and if you displease any of them, you are eaten. Sometimes you are just eaten anyway.

But there is a problem. Each giant has children that are smaller than the original giant. The current queen suspects it to be inbreeding, and so when her child, Petit, is born human size, she hides him, and gives him to one of the older Aunties, to raise, as she can't be seen with him.

The book is mixed in with short prose pieces that give background as well as forewarnings of what is to come. It is a good way to get the backstory, without loading too much into the graphic narrative, but I'm wondering if it is necessary to the current story-line, and doesn't give away to come of what is to come. Even though this first volume leaves us with Petit leaving his home, there are narratives, in the book, where he has gone out into the world, and married, and borne children.

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4681" src="https://g2comm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-10-30-at-9.41.06-PM.png" alt="" />
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4680" src="https://g2comm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-10-30-at-9.49.50-PM.png" alt="Petit, the giants child" />

And since this is french, there is a lot of female nudity. And a lot of people getting eaten, because that is what the giant ogres do. Nice details in the buildings, and clothing. There is a lot going on in the pages.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

This was really good. It is dark and very unique. Artworks are incredible. I really enjoyed reading some of the characters back stories. It is definitely worth to read.

Such an interesting graphic novel. The black and white aesthetic worked well with the stark and scary story.

A dark and beautiful masterpiece. This was deeply disturbing, and I’m not sure I could put into words why. Of course it’s dark to see humans being eaten nonchalantly, but that wasn’t it. It was the whole package. Lovely, dark, and terrifying beauty. There were, after all, three distinct sizes of human-like beings in this book (very large ogres, small ogres, and tiny humans). We’re supposed to relate to the smallest ones, the humans, but it’s still interesting to consider eating very small creatures that resemble us and think nothing about it. Just a normal meal.

I think the black and white art and the subject matter are only part of what makes this so disturbing, because sometimes the lack of color is quite lovely and not dark at all. It's more than that. The dialogue, or just words that are yelled out, along with the facial features of each person… that’s what really gets me. The faces are so emotional, no matter what emotion it is being depicted, even if that emotion is blankness. It’s unnerving. It’s at times so accurate and then such an exaggeration, sometimes mere panels apart. I love it. It makes me very uncomfortable, in the best way. The triplets are especially creepy. The giant ogres eat the little humans and have the humans as servants.

The main illustrated story is broken up by little section pages from The Book of Ancients. Absolutely beautiful ornamental pages that really set the dark fairy tale mood. Although it’s mostly illustrations, this book also has full page stories of character backgrounds and the like, similar to what you’d see in a book of fairy tales. These stories are so beautiful, I would read an entire book of stories like this. If the author sold The Book of Ancients as an actual book with the occasional illustration near the bottom, I would buy it. I loved these stories. So well written, so interesting, beautiful. I really enjoyed the Desdee Story, the God-King Story, and the Founder’s Story. I loved them all, but those are the ones that stick out.

Little things here and there just set this graphic novel apart. Even small things, like juxtaposing a serious situation and great, dark art with a word balloon that is just a black scribble to show his anger and frustration.

And what a crazy ending for a first volume. I am so excited to read the next one! I have a few ideas about where it could go from here, but I know I’ll be surprised no matter what. This is now one of my favorite graphic novels. I have no complaints, only praise.

An engaging graphic novel steeped in lore and true classic storytelling. The story was engaging and the illustrations were really well done. I hope the next book continues Petit's story. (I want to know more of the giant's history and what lead to their fall... though with the way the story went I doubt it will be delved deeper into.)