Before the Shutdown
by Mack J. Lou
My rating: 
Tags: Graphic Science Fiction
Posted in Book Reviews on November 8, 2023
Kindly note: The author generously offered a free copy of this graphic novel in exchange for an honest review.
By the mid-22nd century, the earth is in the midst of drastic climate change and also suffering from random gravitational anomalies. Most cities and even whole countries have died. In their place are new sophisticated cities, which are mostly underground and protected by advanced technology. The main responsibility for keeping everything running rests on a small team of highly trained technicians who use immersive technologies to network with the environmental controls as well as each other. The team's performance is so critical that they undergo periodic evaluations. Their current evaluation doesn't seem normal. Too many things are going wrong, and the situation could be quite dangerous for the city the team protects.
As the saying goes, there's a first time for everything. With graphic novels gaining wider acceptance, I've been curious about giving them a try, so when the author of this book offered a review copy, it seemed like a good opportunity. It's definitely a different experience. I opted to read the book on the big screen of my desktop to get the full effect of the graphics.
The graphics are quite good. The colors are super-saturated, which you sort of expect in graphic novels. Backgrounds and scene panels often resemble blown-up circuit boards and chips, which fits in with the picture painted of a high-tech future city. The characters are cartoonish but not exaggerated.
Unfortunately, the writing was a bit of a let-down. There are the bones of a good story here that's very relevant – a rogue AI doing things that could endanger a lot of people. Unfortunately, the writing is practically the very definition of the cliché about bad science fiction: stilted, stiff dialog filled with lots of jargon. The characters are wooden and less multi-dimensional than the graphics. The disappointment here is not that the story is awful but that it could be so much better with a little more polish.
“Before the Shutdown” is available from Amazon (commissionable link).
