Zac Thompson

Inventive, emotional, complex, confusing, and full of great Cronenberg vibes.

Set in the future, this is the character study of a woman named Catrin and her struggles with relationship, loneliness, co-dependency, love, lust, and so on. Unable to connect relationally to anyone human, Catrin is married to an Artificial Intelligence partner. After a decade of marriage her partner, who's meant to bond for life, disconnects and sends Catrin spiraling into an increasingly depressing and deranged hunt for meaning at the cost of her own sanity.

Lonely Receiver is a wild ride that raises a lot of interesting questions while delving into topics of toxic/abusive relationships and our relationship with technology - all through a weird and surrealistic sci-fi lens. There is some horror here (more in the second half), but also a lot of despair and cruelly fulfilled yearning. There's also a lot of nudity/sex, strange AI dreamscapes, unsettling future tech and body modification, and hallucinatory sequences of intimacy and violence.

The downside I suppose is that because there is so much going on, some of it is confusing and frustratingly dense. I feel like there is a lot of emotion and personal experience/musings in the story, which I love, but not all of it translated onto the page in a way I could firmly grasp. Then there are moments which aren't meant to be firmly grasped, and thus I struggled to fully understand. Like a lot of great surreal mind trips in entertainment, this one is going to take several read throughs to wrap my head around.

By the way, the art is fantastic here! The illustrations by Jen Hickman perfectly embody the story, and the color palette is gorgeous. I also really enjoyed the lettering by Simon Bowland. Great work all around by the creative team here.

(3.5 stars rounded up for Goodreads)… (meer)

Human beings are wired for relationship. Technology allows us to be closer than ever in many ways, but it also makes it easy for people to hide their true selves from us (and vice versa). But what if there was a way to be even closer? What if two separate beings could be hardwired together, syncing memory, emotion, and experience? These questions form the premise for the graphic novel Come Into Me, and the answers are more harrowing then you could imagine.

The story opens on a failed demonstration of InBeing, the process by which ropy entrails connect two different people by ports in the back of their heads and allows their minds to form a "synaptic connection". Sebastian, the creator and scientist behind the technology, is quickly running out of money and desperate to find an investor so he can make his dream a reality. Enter Becky, a mysterious and seemingly desperate young lady who convinces Sebastian to bond their minds with InBeing, using his body as host. It's strange for Becky, seeing the world through someone else's body and forming a telepathic-like connection with another. If only she had been upfront with Sebastian about her past. As their their minds are conjoined and their memories/experiences blend together, the host realizes he failed to anticipate just exactly what could go wrong...and that, like in our online lives, shared data is open to manipulation and exploitation.

I really enjoyed reading this intriguing blend of philosophy and body horror, even if I had a hard time fully wrapping my head around all of the ideas presented. It's like a crazy mingling of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Thing, Black Mirror, and Annihilation - and I am here for it!

I had lots more thoughts, so please check those out on my blog readingvicariously.net (link in bio)! Thank you so much to @lonnienadler for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!… (meer)