Arca
Ratings1
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings1
Average rating3.5
The planet is dying, the rich are escaping, and absolutely nothing is what it seems in this thrilling new dystopian graphic novel. The world burned. But the rich and powerful...they had a plan. When society fell apart, a select group of billionaires had an escape hatch: a rocket aimed at the nearest habitable planet, a ship equipped with many of the luxuries of life on Earth--why survive if you can't survive in style? Their every need is tended to by teenagers who are willing to act as slaves in return for the promise of a new life. This is a good story. But, like so many stories, it is not true. Inside a great, sealed survival chamber, one slave--a teenage girl named Persephone--discovers that the promised future of comfort is a myth. And with that knowledge, she must fight for her survival against the billionaires, who would gladly kill her to protect the hidden truth.
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Contains spoilers
Hmm.... I think I wanted to like this book more than I did, so I think this warranted 3.5 stars more than 4 stars. I loved the kinda-retro-kinda-not art style, and the cover was especially striking. There's lots of playing with panel layouts, particularly later in the book, which I like to see.
Where it kind of fell a little flat for me was in the story. It's a fairly straightforward haves-exploiting-the-have-nots tale, with the narrative twist being that they're literal children being exploited to maintain the way of life for the adults who built the ship. They're forever dangling the 'when we get to Eden, everything will be paradise' carrot in front of the workers who maintain the ship, glossing over the fact that the graduates are never seen again and that they never seem to get to Eden. I thought the pacing of the story was a bit weak, things take a while to get going, and then towards the end some of the important plot points get glossed over or downplayed. One example of this specifically (story spoilers here) is when Effie and friends break their way into where the graduates are, and we're treated to the horror that they're being impregnated to bear the children to continue the cycle, and all we really get is a window scene looking in on them and some vague threatening dialogue and that's it. I feel like that moment could've been expounded on a bit more to make it hit home a bit harder. There are other smaller examples of reveals and such that I feel like would've had a bit more emotional impact if they were expanded out a bit more.
It's still a decent read, just one I expected to get more out of in the end.
