Anda

The story was excellent, well thought through and very gripping.

My one gripe with this book was the character of Jeppe, who I really disliked. His constant judgment of his colleague Anette sprinkled with fatphobia and envy of her successful marriage gets old quickly. The Anna storyline was also gross. I wish there was more of Anette's life in this, and less of this pathetic Jeppe character.

The artwork and choice of a mono colour palette makes this look stunning.

However, the story and characters leave a lot to be desired. Most of them are 2 dimensional (no pun intended), including the main characters. The ending was particularly bad and the last few pages felt rushed.

It's a shame as it looks really great but lacks depth on the story side.

I really enjoyed the first half (or so) of this book that introduces the different characters and connects all of them.

However, once the story is being told from Gaspery's point of view, I found the pacing accelerated a bit too much. There's a lot of action packed at the end and it feels rushed. All of the characters we invested time in learning about at the start are even hardly mentioned.

I didn't really get the point of the ending either, it felt abrupt.

A wonderful and at times hard to read graphic novel. The narration style reminds me of Maus. The visuals are quite striking, Thi Bui using just a couple of colours in a great way.

I didn't know much about the Vietnam war but thanks to this book I learned how horrible this period was. Definitely worth a read!