** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Copy received through Netgalley
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Inhuman, by Denis Bajram, Valerie Mangin, Rochebrune
★★★★☆
94 Pages
Content Warning: mentions of cannibalism, violence, mind control, cult behaviour
This was an interesting and original take on the “stranded on an island” concept. With a Sci-Fi twist that left a shuttle crash-landing on a planet they'd been sent for an exploration mission, a psychological horror story begins.
The characters were interesting, though some didn't last long enough to see much of them. It was clever to make the main character the robot, Ellis. She allows us to get an unbiased (by human concepts) opinion and view of the experiences on the crash site. She wasn't tainted by the events or human constraints, meaning we could explore without an emotional attachment.
The plot was nicely explored and paced, with a lot of world-building put into it. The gradual exploration of this new world, through its inhabitants, was clever and interesting.
However, while the story has a philosophical question at it's heart – can humans co-exist without introducing hierarchy, power-dynamics or violence to a peaceful world? – I had unanswered questions. Ellis implied the crew were acting weird before they crashed. Does that mean they were drawn to the planet, and made to crash? The ending was also a bit unsatisfying, because it felt like they'd just hit the reset button, despite the ritual cannibalism and cult behaviour being addressed.
The art was gritty and had a great Sci-fi feel, but the font was incredibly small. It was almost impossible to read, in the normal format. I had to enlarge each page and read some pages sideways (landscape, not portrait) which needed a lot of fiddling around with scrolling to the bottom and back up again, to read the page-long panels on some pages. It wasn't ideal.
Still, despite the problems, I generally enjoyed the story. It was the kind of ambiguous-morality, philosophical story that I wanted Cullen Bunn's Rogue Planet to be. Where that failed to fit a suitable plot to the storyline, this one managed well. The story was original, clever and well explored, despite the few niggling questions I was left with, and the artwork was not only suited to the story, but also clear and detailed.