Sabatini's stories abound with drama and melodrama, action and excitement and brilliant colour, as well as minute period detail. No writer, not Scott, nor Dumas, nor Stevenson, has brought the past to life more vividly or accurately . . . He is to be learned from by any who seek instruction in the craft of writing or the matter of history. This century has seen no greater expert in the two combined.

One wonders if there is another storyteller so adroit at filling his pages with intrigue and counter-intrigue, with danger threaded with romance, with a background of lavish colour, of silks and velvets, of swords and jewels

A gadzooks romance with a generous measure of blood, revenge, sacrifice, villainy, adventure, and heart-interest

Every bit as deep, searching and multi-layered as Bechdel's previous efforts . . . The new book is fun, too . . . A sort of very sweaty A Portrait of an Artist.

Everything you'd expect in a work from Alison Bechdel: wry, insightful and multi-layered. It even almost made me want to do some exercise.

Alison Bechdel's literary, illustrated dive into a lifetime of fitness fads - from skiing to karate to yoga - is characteristically expansive and profound.

Funny and moving.

Astonishing... Through her precise drawings, we can feel the yearning for a sense of equilibrium, an attempt to abolish the dissonance of being fully alive while racing down a ski slope, at the same time knowing with certainty that one day she will die.

Gorgeous...The Secret to Superhuman Strength feels perfectly pitched to meet the nervy uncertainties of our almost-post-lockdown moment. It's a wise, wry, generous look at selfhood, ageing and mortality, a sort of hymn to transformation, to the importance of forging connections and the necessity of letting things go.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength practically glows with a beguiling mixture of intellect, warmth and humour, the suppleness of which is helped by a surprisingly lavish use of colour.

An astonishing graphic novel/memoir.

A multi-layered book that is both wildly witty and deeply wise.

A tender, witty and poignant look back at a lifelong obsession with fitness.

An astonishing graphic novel/memoir whose precise drawings capture Bechdel's life-long hunt for transcendence through physical exertion.

The biggest event of the year was the return of Alison Bechdel... Bechdel's previous books have made her one of the superstars of graphic fiction, and this funny, perceptive and merciless account shows that...her talent remains undimmed.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength... demands to be reread immediately... and does the reader far more good than a Peloton class and a cup of turmeric tea.

A joyful book, a feast of colour, wit and ideas about living in ever-changing times

The brilliant cartoonist traces her own history of (sometimes obsessive) exercise in this stunning graphic memoir.