Druuna: Mandragore

/ Alex Good

Druuna: Mandragore

Mandragore is the fifth volume in the erotic adventures of Druuna, though I have a hard time following much of a sequence through them. As I said in my review of the previous book, Carnivora, this is “a story cycle that runs in place, never really going anywhere because time and place have no meaning in the Druunaverse.”

If you’ve managed to follow the plot thus far you know that Druuna, in various states of undress, is trying to find a cure for a techno-biological plague known as the Evil. She travels a futuristic wasteland full of mutants and robots that may be all in her head, or in somebody else’s head. The somebody else primarily being a computer AI that has merged with a spaceship captain named Lewis. This human-AI hybrid has also absorbed the consciousness of Druuna’s former lover, Shastar. Meanwhile, a different ship’s captain, Will, and his medical officer Doc, are trying to find a cure for the Evil. In Mandragore they do this by sending Druuna into the computer’s mind. So she thinks she’s dreaming, and what happens all seems like a dream, but it’s not her dream but Lewis’s. As Shastar, who retains some independence, gamefully tries to explain:

After all these centuries his mind is exhausted and has fallen into a state of inertia . . . into a kind of lethargy wherein his unconscious impulses amplify reality, creating his own autonomous universe! Yes, Druuna, we are products of that universe, of his dream . . . a complex unconscious psychic elaboration!

Did you follow that? Anyway, this conversation takes place within the dream so technically it checks out, even though outside the dream, on Will’s ship, Druuna has a separate existence.

Now since this is a Druuna comic the “serum” or antidote to the Evil takes the form of . . . male ejaculate. That would be the mandragore. Which is something Druuna has no difficulty coaxing forth. Unfortunately for the otherwise more-than-willing donors, the only time that such seed can be harvested is when a guy is strangled, so Druuna finds herself being the fluffer in a series of snuff films within the Lewis mind. Though I wasn’t sure why Lewis (or the AI) was so keen on getting a supply of mandragore. But then if you learn one thing from reading these books it’s that you can’t ask too many questions.

So there’s a lot of sex, and of course a lot of Druuna running around in a thong and tight t-shirt. Plus for some reason in this book she’s wearing stockings as well. That really made no sense, but I guess Serpieri had a thing for girls in stockings. In any event, this is the end of the series for me. The series did go on for another four volumes but I haven’t read any of them and I doubt I will now. They’re actually collector’s items and hard to track down. This one cost me $15 or so back in 1992. Today it’s only available from resellers, with the best price I found being $560 on Amazon. Obviously it’s not for everyone, as it pushes a lot of boundaries relating to sex and violence and consent, but in its own sub-sub-genre of philosophical SF erotica I think it’s something special.

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