Book Review – World Reader, volume 1

Book: World Reader (Volume 1) by Jeff Loveness. Art by Juan Doe
Release Date: 23rd November 2017
Tags: Comic / Adult / Science Fiction / Dystopia / Ghosts / Paranormal / Space Ships / Aliens
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

⌘

⌘

Goodreads

⌘

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this review copy in exchange for an honest review.

⌘

Synopsis

Meet Sarah, an astronaut traveling from dead planet to dead planet, talking to the ghosts of the dead worlds…as she fights to discover the secret that’s killing the universe. But Death doesn’t give up its secrets so easily, and as Death hunts her from planet to planet, Sarah struggles to maintain the trust of her crew and her own sanity in the endless ocean of lives. Every world has a story, and if she can find the secret tying them all together, she can save Earth from being the next world to die.

⌘

Review

This comic drew my attention because of two things. The cover and the title. The cover shows us a very interesting color palette. You don’t very often see such bold orange/red on the cover for a science-fiction story. And the title is of course very interesting because of the word reader. I knew this wasn’t going to be about a bookish reader, but regardless it still caught my attention.

The idea that there is life on other planets is of course mighty interesting and still something that keeps us busy in real life at times. Will we ever find it? In this comic however many of these alien civilizations are already dead. Our main character can read the planet’s past through connecting with the ghosts of the aliens, something not everyone believes she can do. Sounds like a great solid start, right?

In the end I think the execution of this comic let itself down. I got the vibe this is a dystopian type of setting. While this is set in space, our planet apparently isn’t very well off. It is set into our future but however and what exactly our planet’s state is or what caused it, no idea. I missed that to be able to believe some of the side character’s reasons of decisions.

As this is a first volume I was honestly expecting this to be an overarching arc. However this was wrapped up in this volume. It felt rushed to me. I think there was room to go into details, to deepen a lot of things out. Like the supposed romance in this book that felt like it came out of nowhere. But also more on the aliens. More on everything, really.

The art throughout the comic was solid. Like the cover there was some very interesting use of color that was grabbing. Some of the full page illustrations were gorgeous. And I think they were clearly the strong point of this whole comic.