Night and the Enemy by Harlan Ellison
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
What this graphic novel is about:
The human species is in war with an alien humanoid species, the Kybans. The war is cruel and extends to include other planets, tribes and peoples in its catastrophy. We follow five short stories of different individuals from various perspectives of the war.
Night And The Enemy is illustrated in the old-school, sci-fi style and this is my first time reading something like that. Some parts of the short stories were quite interesting. The first two stories, in my opinion, were far better than the rest of the graphic novel. Moreover. there were some powerful messages about the cruelty of war and the monsters it makes of men, to refer to Mr Patrick Ness here.
But overall I can’t say that I liked it. For me it was just an okay read. I didn’t really like the art style which I found very strange and unfamiliar. Also, I felt overwhelmed by the amount of text on the book which I thought was a lot! There were some parts that I wanted to skim through but made myself read them. I don’t know.. I think that I was expecting more from a graphic novel about aliens and planets and war, having Saga, Volume 1 in my mind as an example.
But I do think that other people who are more experienced than me with sci-fi graphic novels and enjoy the old style of illustrations will appreciate the art and the book in general more than I did. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to people who have never read something similar to this before.
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