A premonition hovers over the entire dreamlike story, as if fate had decided in advance that this would be Corto Maltese's last adventure. The feeling is underscored by the return of most of the major characters seen throughout the long-running saga, like actors giving their final curtain call: Gold Mouth, Morgana, Tristan Bantam, Levi Colombia, Professor Steiner, the Monk, Cain Groovesnore, Soledad, and (of course) Rasputin...each with their own reason to find the mythical realm. Thus, the circle closes.

This EuroComics edition features new translations from Pratt's original Italian scripts by Dean Mullaney, the Eisner and Harvey Award-winning editor of the Library of American Comics, and Simone Castaldi, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Hofstra, and the author of Drawn and Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s and 1980s (University Press of Mississippi).