Robota

This book is a lot like Dinotopia-one of my beloved childhood classics-but with a lot of the charm scooped out and replaced with weirdness. Two authors with checkered credentials: Chiang worked on the Star Wars prequels as a lead designer and artist (though to be fair the movies did look quite good, if lacking the iconic force of the Original Trilogy) and Orson Scott Card, who has gone from beloved scifi author to religious weirdo and homophobic hate-group leader.

The illustrations are full of stark ruins: overgrown cities, immense machines rusting on a beach, tall ships and flying saucers. The animal and robotic inhabitants of the world are elegant, colorful, appropriately horrifying. The human characters lack this richness, and most of the drawings are static: concept art rather than comix art.

The less said about the story, the better. An amnesiac hero awakes, meets enemies and gathers allies, and overcomes obstacles while journeying towards the secret knowledge that he can use to end a great war. But while this book promises something unique, what we get is the usual archetypes shuffled through a particularly poorly done hero’s journey. Maybe I’m being nitpicky because it’s OSC, but the style reminded me of Mark Twain’s thoughts on the clunky Bible-fanfic nature of the Book of Mormon. And is it so hard to have fewer than 100% of the female characters betray the protagonist because of their fickle and sin-cursed femininity? This attitude isn’t in the whole book, but it shows up hard at the end. I picked this up for $6, which seems more than fair for just a few of the better paintings and the overall quality of the book as an object, but if I paid full price I’d be pissed.