I accepted a review copy of the graphic novel Human Remains through Rockstar Book Tours. It’s by been featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight.,
Live. Laugh. Love. Scream.
DIE.
Dax and Bisa love each other. But in this new and terrifying world, love is dangerous. Feeling anything is dangerous. Love. Hate. Joy. Fear. Any of these in strong doses will bring a swift death. Earth has a new and terrible invader—monsters that smell the scent of emotion, salivate over the prey, and hunt the very feelings that make us human. A shocking tale of pent-up emotions and forced composure in the face of unspeakable horror…
It took me a little while to digest Human Remains. I finished with a feeling of, “Welp, that’s a thing I’ve read now.” I don’t know that I could have even said if it all came around to a salient point or not. However, as I sat on the experience a little while and thought on it, I decided that it did. (Of course, it did.)
It’s gory and touches on any number of heavy, trauma-inducing subjects. (I think a trigger warning wouldn’t be out of place for this one.) But watching as the characters slowly move from shocked and horrified to numb and blasé in the face of countless deaths is poignant. (Can I say a book with roughly 2 million panels of humans being violently dismembered was poignant?) But what does it mean to be human, how much will we give up to remain human, how much can we change and still be human are all important and thought-provoking questions this graphic novel seeks to answer.
I did think it took a long time to come around to those points and a few of the devices used to make them were a little ham-handed. But all in all I’ll call this one a success.
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