Rating: WARTY!
I wasn't impressed by this rather gory graphic novel which really brought nothing new to the table. It was a mishmash of other sci-fi stories including a dash of Avatar wherein the brash rebel soldier falls in love with one of the enemy. Here it made no sense whatsoever. This young man, Sergeant Marcus Fall, was so filled with blind hatred of the Krovinites that his transition to pacifism made absolutely no sense whatsoever, much less his falling for one of them.
I read this advance review copy in electronic form on a decent desktop monitor, and the text was too small to read comfortably. I can't speak for the print version, but I wouldn't recommend reading this on an iPad, unless the text is improved considerably in the published edition. It was complete gibberish on that first page. Some of the text was humorously compressed. When I read, "What is he doing?" it looked like it read, "What is he dong." Another section read like it was "No talking, only dong" which is unfortunate at best! I skipped the introductory page because it was far too small to read the labeling on the solar system map, and the white on black text was just annoying. Maybe the final version is better.
The story is your standard fighting over a resource. This takes place outside of our solar system but is still fought largely between white guys. There is only a token few people of color despite people of color being in the huge majority on Earth. The soldiers on Fall's squad are clad in bulky suits of space-age armor and the carry swords and battle axes for no apparent reason other than gore. They look like a space-age A team. Fall's CO, Lieutenant Cole, looks Like a clown version of Mr T. He and a soldier named Lockwood are coincidentally about the only people of color on their side. Sgt Fall looks like he's ten years old, and he's a good Aryan soldier with yellow blonde hair and blue eyes. No wonder he wants to wipe out the other side and is constantly at odds with his darker shaded CO.
There are no robots here, for reasons unexplained. Yeah - the explanation is that writers can't get any emotional resonance out of an army of robots, although in this case the characters may as well have been robots being programmed and reprogrammed and on one note only. It was therefore amusing to me that the military was religious! Evidently the writers are fans of the Doctor Who episode Time of the Angels and its sequel, which, if true, is commendable, but this story didn't bring anything new. It never felt like any of these characters really believed what they were saying, not even the most dedicated religious devotees. Overall, the story made no sense, was constantly interrupted by boring flashbacks, and failed to really engage me at all. I only finished it because it was quite short. I can't recommend it.
