Author: Jim McCann
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
Gorgeously illustrated by Rodin Esquejo and Sonia Oback.
Mind the Gap - volume one of what is now a several volume series - didn't leave much of an impression on me! When I came to write a review a few days after I'd read it, I could remember almost nothing about it except for how gorgeous the artwork - by Rodin Esquejo and Sonia Oback - was. It was that kind of a story - or that kind of a lack of a story to be absolutely precise.
One thing which did stick with me was how intransigent this volume was on the iPad in Bluefire Reader. It was really hard to read because it was sometimes all but impossible to to actually turn a page! Sometimes you could swipe and it would slide across, other times it wouldn't move. Sometimes you could tap to the right and it would slide across, but again, other times it would not move.
If you go to the very beginning of the book - which was not, believe it or not, the front cover, and then try to have the menu bar slide down from the top, it will not appear. You have to swipe two pages to the front cover (assuming that works) to get to a point where you can tap the top of the pad to get the menu bar to appear so you can then return to the library! This was not pleasant reading experience at all. It was in fact so frustrating trying to get the pages to turn that it really detracted from the story.
The basic premise is that main character Elle is evidently dead - or perhaps dreaming, or in a coma. Who or what killed her? Elle finds that she can inhabit other people's living bodies but not her own. Why? She doesn't know.
Other than that, there's some random dude wandering around with a cell phone, and random people doing random things. I looked for a story but there wasn't one to be found, and whatever passed for it was forgotten pretty much as soon as I finished reading.
If you want a great picture book, then this is it, but if you want a story, you're wasting your time here. I don't read novels, graphic or otherwise, for the artwork! I like a real story, too, and it's especially important to keep this in mind in the graphic formats.
