Graphic Novel Review – Time of the Faeries: Afterlight, the End of the World by J. Corsentino, Donny Ha Corsentino, Elizabeth Maxwell(3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Graphic Novel/Fantasy
Length: 98 pages
Publisher: Time of the Faeries; First edition
Release Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0578085487
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Gift
Rating: 3/5 stars

I asked for this book for Christmas a few years ago because I absolutely loved the cover and what I saw of the illustration throughout. I finally got a chance to sit down and read it and was a bit disappointed. All of it is okay but the pictures throughout don’t really do much to enhance the story which is a pity because a lot of the pictures are pretty neat.

This is the start of a story that talks about the downfall of humanity and its redemption by Angels. However when the humans fail to make a great comback, and the life force on earth dwindles, the Angels are forced to feed on human life force. As the angels drive humanity to extinction one of them, an Angel named Halyon, thinks that maybe the angels are wrong.

The illustration throughout is basically a bunch of photography of models souped up with photoshop to look really cool. It is very pretty and neat to look at. However absolutely everyone featured is a super hot looking model type with heaving cleavage (well not the couple guys in here but the rest). Which normally I wouldn’t mind except that these images contradict the story a lot.

So as mentioned there is a lot of contradiction both between the illustration and the story itself. In the prologue it talks about how none of the structure humans built are left standing anymore, then it goes on to deal with a tribe of angels who is squatting in the skyscrapers of LA. I mean…uh..okay…didn’t you just say that none of these buildings were left?

It goes on like this. For examples one of the female character is described as having “a face that looks like it’s been under one too many engine blocks. Guns are strapped across her frame.” and then the picture shown is of this super hot scantily clad chick with absolutely no weaponry (she barely has a top on at all). The whole book is plagued with weird inconsistencies like that.

After the Foreword by the author talking about the seven year effort it took to put this together I was left confused. The whole thing seems a bit slapped together and awkward.

Overall okay but flawed. I liked the pretty pictures, I liked the idea behind that story. However in the end there were a lot of inconsistencies and the writing was pretty poor. This is more of a lookbook than anything. I wouldn’t recommend picking this up…it just felt too unfinished and cobbled together.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Graphic Novel Reading Challenge
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge
– Mythology Reading Challenge