Decelerate Blue

Decelerate Blue by Adam Rapp and Mike Cavallaro is a beautiful book with blue edges and black and white art. It's about a future where nothing matters but speed and brevity. All food is preprocessed, all books and films are condensed. Even language is as brief as possible. Lives are run by a corporation and, as you can guess, not everyone is thrilled about this. Angela is only in high school but she already knows that this life isn't for her. She wants something different and she finds it by accident when she stumbles into the lair of the resistance.

The beginning of this book seriously had me stressed! The frantic conversations, each sentence of which ends with the word "Go", made me feel rushed and irritated. Angela's frustrations came show more through clearly, as did her immediate relief once she found the resistance. The ending was heartbreaking but the ultimate message of appreciating each moment balanced that out somewhat. As some of us participate in small rebellions and resistances of our own these days, this book seems particularly relevant.

http://webereading.com/2017/05/spill-zone-and-decelerate-blue-or-ya.html show less

As a near future dystopia set in a surveillance and control state, there is nothing particularly unique about the story being told here. However, it does it in an interesting manner, and the way that the visuals add depth -- particularly for the dream/nightmare sequences --works really well.

There are a couple of scenes that are uncomfortable at the 'teenager doing stupid things without thinking first'. And the general plot has little of happiness in it. But it is certainly a very slick modernisation of the story

A rather sweet story about teenage rebellion against a hyper-accelerated dystopia, with an unexpectedly tragic ending. Maybe it's just that right now I really want my stories of resistance to have an ending that implies some structural success to be had, but I was very disappointed with the ending.

Quick read, loved the artwork, much more than the story, actually. Great premise, characters needed a bit more development. This premise could be reworked, decelerated, and extended into a wonderful graphic novel series. It really did go too quickly, and felt as if it were not absolutely sure what it wanted to be. I did not really get a chance to get to know the characters, as well as I wanted.

Great potential, just needs to be given more love and time. WONDERFUL artwork. Well worth reading.

**eARC Netgalley**

I dislike heavy-handed science fiction tales that take modern trends to exaggerated and unlikely extremes to make a point. I especially dislike tales that are dull, clumsy and stupid.