Three idealistic youths, forever transformed by the real-world protests in Hong Kong in 2019, develop diverging beliefs about how to best fight against techno-authoritarian China. As conflict escalates and a nuclear disaster looms, is working with an increasingly fascist and non-democratic United States the answer?
MY REVIEW
First off! This is a debut graphic novel for both co-writer and (other co-writer) illustrator and man did they take a heavy but super admirable concept and run with it. I would literally suggest this to anyone this year who reads graphic novels for the subject and content alone. This was another pick for the local graphic/comic club I’m in. Not my pick, you all know me, I’m not that smart but man do I love getting to read so many different things that people suggest. We were all pretty jazzed for this, I’d like to think. Chan is an Emmy nominated journalist (just one of many impressive things and nominations), she’s no stranger to global or political affairs and she and Badiucao were very clear about this book’s intent.
Using real political affairs and policies as well as the real world’s state, they put us just enough int he future that we can find it a plausible one.
Hong Kong is protesting and its amongst these protests that the three characters meet and are united together through their beliefs in these protests. I don’t want to give a lot of way but eventually their paths are divided, they all take life in different directions and it’s here that we start to bring in Taiwan and fascist U.S.A. The president in this book is a pretty good comparison of the current President and that one more helped the reader believe the plausibility of this all.
Taiwan seeks the U.S.A as an ally, having to pick what they perhaps believe is a lesser evil, or the ally that had the manpower to help them. The focus mostly rests on the male protagonist. He’s U.S. born but his parents were Chinese who were part of Tiananmen Square then had to flee China. It’s through him that we sort of see most things in this book with jumping to the other two, women, to round out the POVs. His reasonings and beliefs are actually though a little more murky compared to the other two and I would have loved to have more character depth overall from all three characters.
The authors helpfully put footnotes for those who might not know the background of this story, such as Tiananmen Square, and I think that’s a really great thing to do especially with younger readers or those that again would not have known some of these facts.
Aside from me wanting more from the characters, we all agreed that we wished the technology had been handled a bit differently or maybe focused on more as well in the store. It felt as if it’d be important and it was but just not in the manner that maybe you’d think. It’s really a nitpick detail when the message of the book isn’t going to hinge on it but it did feel like it could have provided more for the story. Another thing was the art. There were some very powerful panels in there but sometimes the art wasn’t expressing as much as it could have been and that’s not usually something I noticed so I will state; some perfect panels with use of color and such and some panels fell short or felt rushed.
It might have been a case of trying to do too much in one book but I will definitely be looking for their next work should they collaborate, or do their own things.
It was really more 4.75 Stars for me for the subject matter they tackled in such a tumultuous time as this. So, just know, it’s 4.75 in my Storygraph review.
The Caffeinated Reader 
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