Suitor Armor

Purpah’s lighthearted webtoon-to-print debut dips readers into a cozy romantasy world of knights, fairies, pixies, and wizards. Lucia, a capable young woman with a mass of chestnut locks, serves as lady-in-waiting to Lady Kirsi, a hard-drinking noblewoman engaged to the local king. Lucia is a fairy, but the kingdom is at war with the fairy world, so she hides her butterfly wings under a corset. Intrigues accumulate when Lucia falls for Modeus, a living suit of armor conjured by the court mage, and begins to study magic. As her curiosity grows, she uncovers the secrets of other palace denizens, including a fairy intruder with a mysterious agenda and a knight concealing his romantic relationship with his squire. Purpah’s bright, simple, anime-influenced art improves from its initial stiffness over the course of the first volume; the characters develop visual personality, and the backgrounds, while remaining sparse, grow more evocative of the high fantasy setting. This sunny, inclusive romance sometimes shows the awkwardness of a first book, and there’s not much depth to the art or the story. Still, it’s easy to fall under Purpah’s sweet spell. Agent: Britt Siess, Britt Siess Creative Management. (Nov.)