Noir-infused fantasy with high stakes, gorgeous art, and social justice themes.
In Hamilton’s graphic novel, a young scavenger searches a future dystopia for her missing best friend.
Bingo Finder and her best friend Fenn Roper spend their days scavenging the wastelands surrounding their home of Ellay, which is governed by Mayor, his wife, and their 12 children. The city has a pact with the local coyotes, who agree not to attack residents of Ellay so long as they may eat the remains of townspeople who have died by other means. One night, after Fenn kisses Bingo and leaves for a secret rendezvous, Bingo watches as Fenn throws herself from a roof and then disappears. Aided by a book she has scavenged, Bingo scours the city for clues to find her missing friend. Some of the exposition is detailed in a nightly “newsreal” that spreads propaganda about how wonderful Ellay is. Other aspects of the worldbuilding are more subtle; the naming conventions, for example, are clearly bastardizations of real-world places and things. These are not clearly spelled out, which makes for an enjoyable challenge as readers try to figure out what they mean. Tectiv is one of the more obvious examples, itself being a shortening of the word detective—the book teaching Bingo to solve mysteries has some of the letters worn from its cover. The cast’s backstories are delineated with similar subtlety by the creative team, who seed hints about the characters’ childhoods throughout (which may be expanded upon in later volumes). Matrone’s art suits the story perfectly, with its large panels and color scheme adding to the fantasy-noir vibes. The world depicted here is a true dystopia, and the graphic novel does not shy away from making statements about social justice. According to Mayor, Ellay is a “post-racial, post-feminist…post-wealth—hell, post-everything—society,” and has been for 2,000 years. The flaws in this description become immediately evident when Bingo explores different districts of Ellay; Drowntown, for example, is largely inhabited by mutants who seem to be much less well-off than the humans, especially Mayor’s family, who live on a vast plantation. The strong themes, striking art, and vivid worldbuilding make this an excellent addition to the YA graphic novel canon.
Noir-infused fantasy with high stakes, gorgeous art, and social justice themes.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781545812440
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Maverick
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions.
A teenage girl refuses a medical procedure to remove her heart and her emotions.
June lives in a future in which a reclusive Scientist has pioneered a procedure to remove hearts, thus eliminating all “sadness, anxiety, and anger.” The downside is that it numbs pleasurable feelings, too. Most people around June have had the procedure done; for young people, in part because doing so helps them become more focused and successful. Before long, June is the only one among her peers who still has her heart. When her parents decide it’s time for her to have the procedure so she can become more focused in school, June hatches a plan to pretend to go through with it. She also investigates a way to restore her beloved sister’s heart, joining forces with Max, a classmate who’s also researching the Scientist because he has started to feel again despite having had his heart removed. The pair’s journey is somewhat rushed and improbable, as is the resolution they achieve. However, the story’s message feels relevant and relatable to teens, and the artwork effectively sets the scene, with bursts of color popping throughout an otherwise black-and-white landscape, reflecting the monochromatic, heartless reality of June’s world. There are no ethnic or cultural markers in the text; June has paper-white skin and dark hair, and Max has dark skin and curly black hair.
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions. (Graphic speculative fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780063116214
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
