Take a photo of a barcode or cover
scrooge3 's review for:
The Secret of the Unicorn
by Hergé
Tintin books are fun, especially for young readers, and hold up remarkably well decades after being published. This book is the first of (at least) two parts, wherein Tintin is caught up in an adventure to find a pirate's treasure. This part is how Tintin finds the secret directions to the treasure. It's filled with action set pieces, salted with plenty of humor, mainly in the form of slapstick comedy, as everyone gets bonked on the head or falls down at some point. The resolution wraps up fairly quickly at the end with a long info dump by one of the crooks, and then there's a cliffhanger as Tintin and Captain Haddock begin to make plans to recover the treasure. The artwork is clean and simple. Some of the drawings of the ships are quite detailed.
I'm not sure why this book is nominated for a Retro Hugo Award. First, there is no fantastical element (unless you count the word balloons for Snowy the dog, which I interpret as poetic license). Second, this book was originally published in French, with an English translation coming years later; so Hugo voters in 1944 would have been very unlikely to even be aware of its existence, let alone have read it.
I'm not sure why this book is nominated for a Retro Hugo Award. First, there is no fantastical element (unless you count the word balloons for Snowy the dog, which I interpret as poetic license). Second, this book was originally published in French, with an English translation coming years later; so Hugo voters in 1944 would have been very unlikely to even be aware of its existence, let alone have read it.