Scan barcode
trike's review against another edition
4.0
You've seen the quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
That's this story in a nutshell. We've seen this tale before, but sometimes the pieces fit together perfectly and it feels right. Sometimes the formula just works.
John Dusk is a superpowered cop who has an "aura" he can manipulate mentally. It rather looks like an opaque blue version of The Invisible Woman's force fields (or Green Lantern's power ring if he's more your style), so we're familiar with it from the jump. Gage isn't reinventing the wheel here.
This story could work quite well without the superpower aspect. Giving the cops superpowers is simply the sugar to help the medicine go down. This is a nicely lean and tidy story that gets its message across efficiently and well.
The dialogue is really good, the art is solid and the structure flows easily, all of it sweeping you along. Yes, it is a power fantasy, and with the current state of police killing unarmed black men in America, it can be troubling once you step back from it. But this is a story told in absolutes, where the morality is black and white, but as one of the TV talking head characters says in the book, "In the abstract I agree cops shouldn't take the law into their own hands, but in this specific instance I say 'Bravo!'"
In the real world, this would be troubling, but I get the impulse to punish the kind of sickos we hear about every day. This week we've seen Subway spokesman Jared Fogel arrested for child pornography and having sex with minors. Josh Duggar, who molested four little girls, was outed in the Ashley Madison scandal. And this morning I saw the video of two Virginia reporters being gunned down on live television, the 24-year-old girl screaming in terror as she was shot and killed, her murderer live-Tweeting the murders.
So today I want to see these sick bastards punished, which is certainly why this is striking a chord. The odd things was, I just picked this out of my to-read pile at random, knowing nothing about it.
Once I regain my equilibrium I'll prefer a story that has shades of gray to it. Where John Dusk kills a guy who maybe didn't deserve it. But not today.
That's this story in a nutshell. We've seen this tale before, but sometimes the pieces fit together perfectly and it feels right. Sometimes the formula just works.
John Dusk is a superpowered cop who has an "aura" he can manipulate mentally. It rather looks like an opaque blue version of The Invisible Woman's force fields (or Green Lantern's power ring if he's more your style), so we're familiar with it from the jump. Gage isn't reinventing the wheel here.
This story could work quite well without the superpower aspect. Giving the cops superpowers is simply the sugar to help the medicine go down. This is a nicely lean and tidy story that gets its message across efficiently and well.
The dialogue is really good, the art is solid and the structure flows easily, all of it sweeping you along. Yes, it is a power fantasy, and with the current state of police killing unarmed black men in America, it can be troubling once you step back from it. But this is a story told in absolutes, where the morality is black and white, but as one of the TV talking head characters says in the book, "In the abstract I agree cops shouldn't take the law into their own hands, but in this specific instance I say 'Bravo!'"
In the real world, this would be troubling, but I get the impulse to punish the kind of sickos we hear about every day. This week we've seen Subway spokesman Jared Fogel arrested for child pornography and having sex with minors. Josh Duggar, who molested four little girls, was outed in the Ashley Madison scandal. And this morning I saw the video of two Virginia reporters being gunned down on live television, the 24-year-old girl screaming in terror as she was shot and killed, her murderer live-Tweeting the murders.
So today I want to see these sick bastards punished, which is certainly why this is striking a chord. The odd things was, I just picked this out of my to-read pile at random, knowing nothing about it.
Once I regain my equilibrium I'll prefer a story that has shades of gray to it. Where John Dusk kills a guy who maybe didn't deserve it. But not today.
sherpawhale's review against another edition
5.0
Great book. 4.5 stars, the half knocked off for what felt a bit cliche, in the scene with John after he gets the kids back.
Still a fantastic read. Chills at "Run John, Run."
Still a fantastic read. Chills at "Run John, Run."
More...