Narcopolis Redux
Review
So I have a stack of fiction in my inbox to review for Alterati – reviewing fiction is a struggle for me, in part because I want to balance my appreciation for the work with an honest assessment of quality in execution of the work for the readers of this blog, all while trying to get the review in somewhere close to the release date. And on top of that, I do want to read these books and savour them, enjoy them on their terms, in a leisurely way. This is a long-winded way of saying that this here review of
Narcopolis is way over-due. I’ve been faithfully picking them up each month from the comic shop, but other than a cursory glance through the first issue I hadn’t actually opened them up to read until I had all four in front of me, precisely because I wanted to read the entire series in one sitting and get the full impact of Jamie Delano’s prose.
Years ago, my favorite comic series was World Without End, and I likely re-read that 6 part mini-series close to a hundred times. Many authors have developed a style of dialogue in their texts that fleshes out the internal culture of the world they’ve constructed – A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess comes to mind – but few have taken that level of sophisticated word-smithery to the comic book panel. Jamie Delano is one of the gifted few who has consistently delivered ground-breaking writing, and this 4 part series is no exception.
Don’t let the splashy colors fool you, this is an instant dystopian lit classic. Ray Carney interviewed Jamie Delano prior to the release of the series, so I’ll let you read what the author himself says the book is about – I just wanted to add this personal recommendation.
