Matt Hollingsworth

An atmospheric story of people who have made the world violent for violence sake. We never get the lore of how our characters reached dystopia, but we know from the outset the kind of world we're in. Bertram's people are misshapen, their asymmetrical faces constantly twisted into rage, pain or despair. Physics and logic need not apply in a world where the supreme leader is allowed to risk life and limb in a battle against an unlikable supersoldier. Unnamed extras die by the core, but since show more both hero and villain commit violence out of love, at least we have a few characters we can identify with. show less

A bunch of unlikeable people take turns killing each in this very, very Euro sci-fi gorefest. I like gorefests, but I really, really hate Euro sci-fi with its purposely obtuse storytelling and fever dream imagery. Yeah, yeah, I know this particular book is by Canadians, but they acknowledge the Moebius influence that is soaked into every page.

And, yeah, I don't like Moebius. Get over it.

The art was more interesting to me than the story on this one. The story just didn’t make much sense and was kind of all over the place. I never really got attached to any part of it or really fully understood what was going on besides just fighting. It kind of becomes like what the MC says at the beginning and the end, more about the fighting than what the fighting is even for. I read a lot of books with fighting and war and even some of favorites include those aspects, but it’s never show more for the sake of the war and the violence itself, it’s for the characters, the overall story, the world, etc. And so in this case, just reading about fighting for the fighting, it wasn’t that interesting to me. Maybe I’m missing something, so if anyone has any deeper ideas on what’s going on, please drop a comment.

The art was pretty good, but not so mind blowing that I’d bump this review up to 3 stars for that alone without a story that did much for me. I know this book won awards, but this is just my opinion and I’d be more than open to hearing that of others. show less

Started off excellently. Quickly got tired.