The images within this book are evocative, gorgeous, and just downright perfect, with occasional double spread images that help to fill out the picture. But the words in themselves will reach right into your heart and pull on those strings. In truth, my feelings about this book actually grew overnight, between staying up late to finish the last few chapters and sitting down to write this review the following evening.

Upon closing this book, I felt there were too many things left unanswered, but after letting it sit for a day the full picture has become clearer, with the areas that felt less well fleshed out a day ago opening up to all the possibilities of interpretation.

This is a story about a time when everyone was on high-alert, and the battle on the front lines wasn’t the only one being fought. This is a story of kids who have experienced loss and will continue to do so, whose only personal items were donated by people across the pond in America. In this world, everyone is broken in one way or another.

Dr Turner is like Thomas: he isn’t whole. Only whole men can go to war to fight the Germans. But what Dr Turner is missing isn’t an arm or a leg or even a finger. It’s a part of his heart. It’s the daughter and wife he lost to the bombs. The missing part that makes him twitch when there is a thunderstorm – like that one time when lightning struck the roof and he crawled under the kitchen table like a dog and made a strange, frightened sound, until Sisters Constance and Mary Grace coaxed him out with weak tea.

 

The rest of this review can be found HERE!

The style of illustrations in this graphic novel, and the fact that this is being distributed by a children’s book publisher and is marketed as for 14+ might lead you to believe it’s suitable for younger readers.

IT REALLY ISN’T.

Early in the reading of this title, I came across the word “shit” and was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Most publishers will allow a couple of swear words in a  title for older teenage readers, but then came “asshole”, “bitch”, and “fuck”. And they weren’t one-offs.

Add to this the inclusion of drinking, smoking, “pleasure emporiums”, leather harnesses, assless chaps, gimp masks, and naked robot strippers complete with their own credit card swipe machines, and the realisation that this should not be accessible to fourteen year olds becomes a little clearer with every page.

The rest of this review can be found HERE!

There once was a man born low level
who felt he was weak and disheveled

ELPIS reached out its hand
then transfigured the man

who found out that the hand was the devil.

Really not sure what to make of this graphic novel... It seems to be drawn for an immature market, but a few words have shown up so far that wouldn't be suitable, like "fuck" and "shit" and "assholes".

Oh, and there's also pleasure bots, pleasure emporiums, whips, leather getups, gimp masks, whips, and assless chaps... 

Review to come closer to release (October, I believe).