Author: Kennedy Xu (no website found)
Publisher: Magnetic Press
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!
Ably illustrated by Ken Chou.
Based on the novel Dao Mu Bi Ji by Kennedy Xu, this graphic novel tells the story of Sean Wu, a young Chinese man who reunites with his long absentee father only to be shocked as the man is executed right in front of him in broad daylight in the café in which they've just met.
So far so good! The problem is that for me, this story went right downhill from this point onwards which is ironically amusing because the story literally went underground at that point, too! I freely confess right up front that I may have missed something here, but it seemed to me that Sean's dad's profession was essentially a grave robber, and with little to trigger his behavior, Sean embarks upon a similar career.
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Yes, he was shocked by, and bereft of an explanation for what happened to his dad, but given that he hated the guy anyway, it was hard to see why he so readily hooked-up with his uncle, and voluntarily descended deep underground to ancient graves where bizarre mutant creatures or incarnations of spirits from what appear to be China's worse cultural nightmares live and move and have their being!
Sean seems to have an aptitude for this work, but I could not figure out exactly what 'this work' actually was. It seemed to consist solely to raising the dead and then, well, er, razing the dead. While the illustrations were, in general, well-done and in some parts impressive, the text left a lot to be desired, which I found to be almost paradoxical given that this story originated as a novel.
Worse, the art was consistently dark, and relentlessly so, such that despite its quality, it actually became monotonous and uninteresting, and eventually just depressing. It also didn’t make full use of the page, each of which was pretty much thickly black-bordered - a pet peeve of mine given how wasteful it is of trees. Of course, this is irrelevant in an ebook, but it does bear upon print books. What with both the relentless tone of the art, and the text not really appealing to me as I read on, I found myself skipping bits and pieces, and then whole pages and then skimming sections. Pretty soon, I was asking myself why I was even skimming it at all?
This novel may appeal to you, but to me it was no better than a really bad horror movie, and I can’t recommend it. I saw no story to recommend. Perhaps eastern audiences will get a lot more from this than we westerners, or perhaps you have to have a certain mind set, but whatever it was, it was not for me.
