A dazzling, reality-bending mix of cyber-future paranoia and occult demonology.
In a world where humanity is confined to a vintage shopping mall staffed by robots, a disconsolate gamer pines for his missing pregnant girlfriend.
In this SF/fantasy graphic novel from the team of Vaho (script) and Flores (art), Xero is a videogame and music enthusiast languishing in the doldrums since the disappearance of his pregnant girlfriend, Donna. Her vanishing is hardly the strangest element of the story: Xero—and the rest of society—dwell in a state of perpetual consumerist amnesia, lodged in a vast, 1980s-style mall maintained by robots. Nobody seems to remember how they got there, and even Donna is a fuzzy recollection (“Life’s a movie and I’m a reel of film,” the confused Xero reflects). Xero crosses paths with a fearsome, sexy warrior who reveals to him the wasteland of Earth’s surface. It seems that a clan of techno-tycoons called the Rorks (think Ayn Rand) once dominated the planet, opposed by a rebellion led by rock-music idol Francis Faust, a guy with strong fixations on the pop-culture ephemera of the 1970s and ’80s. Though outgunned, Francis found some diabolical allies in the supernatural world, and the resulting stalemate has resulted in the present dystopia. The Rorks, taking post-human android-superhero forms, have evacuated to space as what’s left of mankind persists in blind ignorance in the kitschy mall-world concocted according to the magical Francis’ aesthetics. Where does Xero fit into all this? He seems to be a mostly ordinary, unimpressive, and bewildered guy, not a messiah figure. (But that’s where Donna fits in...) The narrative rapidly downloads a lot of head-spinning exposition, but the story manages to remain relatable. Fans of weird fiction and followers of alt-world Japanese anime/manga will find much to appreciate here. Flores, whose work exhibits a strong Winsor McCay influence, has designed tarot card decks, and that symbolism is on display here, as are a number of pop-culture visual quotes, familiar song lyrics, and examples of girly art. The yesteryear mall-rat culture takeoffs are not as overdone and heavy-handed as they could have been, and you don’t need a tarot reading to predict that sequels lie beyond the open ending.
A dazzling, reality-bending mix of cyber-future paranoia and occult demonology.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781545812662
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A return to form for this popular author.
Spectral danger and human evil stalk Sager’s latest stalwart heroine.
When Maggie Holt’s father, Ewan, dies, she’s shocked to discover that she has inherited Baneberry Hall. Ewan made his name as a writer—and ruined her life—by writing a supposedly nonfiction account of the terrors their family endured while living in this grand Victorian mansion with a dark history. Determined to find out the truth behind her father’s sensational bestseller, Maggie returns to Baneberry Hall. Horror aficionados will feel quite cozy as they settle into this narrative, and Sager’s fans will recognize a familiar formula. As he has in his previous three novels, the author makes contemporary fiction out of time-honored tropes. Final Girls (2017) remains his most fresh and inventive novel, but his latest is significantly more satisfying than the two novels that followed. Interspersing Maggie’s story with chapters from her father’s book, Sager delivers something like a cross between The Haunting of Hill House and The Amityville Horror with a tough female protagonist. Ewan and Maggie both behave with the dogged idiocy common among people who buy haunted houses, but doubt about the veracity of Ewan’s book and Maggie’s desperate need to understand her own past make them both compelling characters. The ghosts and poltergeist activity Sager conjures are truly chilling, and he does a masterful job of keeping readers guessing until the very end. As was the case with past novels, though—especially The Last Time I Lied (2018)—Sager sets his story in the present while he seems to be writing about the past. For example, when the Holt family moved into Baneberry Hall in 1995 or thereabouts, Ewan—a professional journalist—worked on a typewriter. When Maggie wants to learn more about the history of Baneberry Hall, she drives to the town library instead of going online. Sager is already asking readers to suspend disbelief, and he makes that more difficult because it’s such a jolt when a character pulls out an iPhone or mentions eBay. This is, however, a minor complaint about what is a generally entertaining work of psychological suspense.
A return to form for this popular author.Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4517-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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