The book certainly feels authentic, as the new writer has chosen as his topic a new tribe, ripe with silly customs to lampoon and silly names to play with. Yet unlike the Spanish, who Goscinny brilliantly wrote as a group of haughty, arrogant matadors, the Picts don't have much discernible personality at all. Instead, John-Yves Ferri dwells on tartan and body paint with endless jokes about different colours. It sort of works, but not very well, but what really doesn't is lead Pict Macaroon's tendency to speak every now and again in Scottish verse, written in a celtic font. I've no idea what this device adds to the story. It certainly isn't funny. Maybe it is in French.
The first half of the book I quite enjoyed, and it sets up the story rather well. There's some good jokes about 'pictograms', tossing the caber, freezing people in ice and the usual array of amusing names (my favourite being the Pictish druid Macrobiotix). There's the women of the Gaulish village fawning over the frozen Pict, the Roman census guy (Although why the village which isn't part of the Roman Empire would let him count them I don't know) and there's Nessie, but none of these elements really come together later to create a good second half.
The big fight at the end with the Picts and Romans falls rather flat, and is just not as good as the earlier fight with the pirates. The census guy doesn't really get a big finish and as for Nessie...she's just not utilised as well as she could be. There was a bad decision made along the way in Asterix and the Picts and that was to leave Dogmatix at home. Imagine Dogmatix and Nessie getting on each other's nerves or fancying each other. Massive comedic potential missed and for no reason at all! It's just another weird thing about this book.
There's also a bit where Asterix and Obelix shout at each other and then it's immediately forgotten. Why? Is it just a tip of the hat to those sequences in other books? The thing is, Goscinny used those moments to move the story along and deepen Obelix and Asterix's relationship. Even more baffling is this frame below where the drunken roman suddenly calls Maccabaeus the Pict chief by another name. Does he drunkenly mistake him for someone else? Is it a joke? Why does he say 'our priest'? Did they just want to slip in a joke that plays on the name McVicar? This frame is going to keep me awake at nights.
So, in summary, this book doesn't really add anything of significance to the Asterix canon. It's a good attempt and I'm looking forward to Ferri upping his game for the next one. Perhaps it's a question of momentum-the more your write the better you become at it. Of course the elephant in the room with Asterix will always be René Goscinny. The guy was a genius and I doubt anyone can do Asterix better than he. Uderzo certainly couldn't-but at least with his solo books he was pushing Asterix in new directions. This feels like familar territory that Goscinny had already mined for every juicy laugh he could.
