Praise for THE RIME OF THE MODERN MARINER:

'Fabulous, eerie, timely. Nick Hayes has created  a stunning visual language to match his modernising of Coleridge's poem; hints of Bewick's woodcuts and Hokusai's waves, but with contemporary anger and edge. Brilliant, quite brilliant.' Robert Macfarlane, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award; panel of judges for the Man Booker Prize, 2004

'A beautiful morality tale for our times.. Is it possible to update or recast such a masterpiece? Hmm. Until last week I would have said almost certainly not. But then I read Nick Hayes's The Rime of the Modern Mariner and my doubts fell away. This is a beautiful book... holding this exquisite book in your hands feels akin to a sacramental act.' Rachel Cooke, Observer. Observer Graphic Novel of the Month.

'The Rime of the Modern Mariner is a work of sustained labour, and often, a thing of soaring beauty'. The Times

'a beautifully illustrated graphic novel... While it's an enormous challenge, not to mention a brave move, to rework a classic, Hayes's entirely original verse and rich illustrations mean that it more than stands up as a work in its own right.' The Independent

'Nick Hayes boldly updates Coleridge’s vision.. The Rime of the Modern Marnier achieves a powerful cumulative effect’ Times Literary Supplement

'With a tone both eerie and humorous The Rime of the Modern Mariner is a terrific recasting of Coleridge's, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner... a glorious tome which manages to be both lush and stark. Ace.' Time Out

“A remarkable and exciting work. Nick Hayes has somehow or other managed to channel and combine the spirits of Coleridge, William Morris, the Romantic poets, most American 60s underground comix artists and doubtlessly the fiercest eco-warrior you can imagine.. and succeeded in producing something simultaneously poetical, polemical and frequently beautiful. An extraordinary achievement.”

Martin Rowson, Guardian cartoonist and author of Tristram Shandy, the graphic novel.

'This isn’t just a brilliant book. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful one. It’s lavishly put together and a pleasure to hold in your hand. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s not a graphic novel. I suppose it’s a graphic epic poem. The text ripples in and out of a series of beautiful woodcuts, that recall Alasdair Gray sometimes and sometimes Hokusai. These are done over blue washes and the persistence of the blueness becomes emotional in itself – you’re reading words written on water.' Frank Cottrell Boyce

‘There are lines that seem to channel the spirit Coleridge drew on when composing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, filtered through Hayes’s modern sensibility and knowledge…. With this pioneering work (he) has made a bold foray into hitherto uncharted seas.’ Irish Times

'Hayes’s startlingly fresh and innovative take on Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” could be studied as an example of how to modernize a classic without pretending to supplant the original. Hayes turns Coleridge’s 1797 apocalyptic epic into an ecological warning, wherein a careless litterbug of a businessman is accosted by a sailor with burning eyes and a tale of woe. His illustrations.. convey the beauty of the world and the pity of its destruction with a gorgeous brand of vehemence. His panels, awash in light blues, swoop and flow like aquatic woodcuts of an earlier era.' Publishers Weekly

'A powerful message wrapped in a stunningly drawn and wittily recounted tale.' Shortlist.