It's a little hard to get into because the main plot doesn't become apparent until about 60% of the way through. On the whole I loved it. Sadly this is the last Vehlmann graphic novel I have library access to. ( )

Very interesting graphic novel about cultural dfferences amongst different alien species as well as future-day immortal humans. It reminded me of Solaris. Moreover, there is also a reflection on immortality and cloning. In this case, cloning is not necessarily a bad thing, since clones can be merged at will with the original body in order to share memories, and they are created at an older age with the same personality and memories than the original self . So, rather than several individuals, it's like one person who can be in several places at once. Nevertheless, this cloning and merging process (creating echoes, as they call it) requires sacrificing one's oldest memories in order to make place or new memories coming from the echoes with each merging process, thus posing a dilema on the protagonist - how much is he willing to forget? ( )

Last Days of an Immortal is a transhumanist futuristic science fiction that followed Elijah's journey to solve the millenia old mystery to prevent a war and his search with the meaning of life in his immortality.
The artwork is interesting, it does reminded me of the strokes from Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, the intensity from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa and charicatures from Tin Tin. For a science fiction, the content of the book is extremely heavy with philosophy, violence, depression and occasional sex scene. It does carry an ethereal quality within which may interest genre specific readers.

Elijah reminded me of the character September from Fringe who is from the future and does travel into the past to change and observe for the future. The transhumanist philosophy which I identified from the novel does intrigue me but the characterization and character interactions is quite minimal to maintain the genre aloofness in the story.

The setting does reminded me of Dr Who's futuristic scenes and Aeon Flux pervasive foreignism within its identity. Unfortunately I didn't find myself attuned to the story as I should be since some parts can be quite predictable for me. The dialogues which I noticed seemed to carry some sort of distance that I can't seem to capture within myself.

Another problem that I face while reading this book was the fact that my ARC copy is disjointed in my Kindle. Probably because maybe the artwork is made bilingual since the words are weirdly extracted from the images. I will be downloading it in Digital Editions to see if the problem is fixed but for now my rating stands until my second rereading attempt to see if I received better experience how it was intended as a graphic novel.

The ARC is supplied by Archaia via Netgalley and the book will be published on 27th November 2012.

( )

Last Days of an Immortal is a transhumanist futuristic science fiction that followed Elijah's journey to solve the millenia old mystery to prevent a war and his search with the meaning of life in his immortality.
The artwork is interesting, it does reminded me of the strokes from Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, the intensity from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa and charicatures from Tin Tin. For a science fiction, the content of the book is extremely heavy with philosophy, violence, depression and occasional sex scene. It does carry an ethereal quality within which may interest genre specific readers.

Elijah reminded me of the character September from Fringe who is from the future and does travel into the past to change and observe for the future. The transhumanist philosophy which I identified from the novel does intrigue me but the characterization and character interactions is quite minimal to maintain the genre aloofness in the story.

The setting does reminded me of Dr Who's futuristic scenes and Aeon Flux pervasive foreignism within its identity. Unfortunately I didn't find myself attuned to the story as I should be since some parts can be quite predictable for me. The dialogues which I noticed seemed to carry some sort of distance that I can't seem to capture within myself.

Another problem that I face while reading this book was the fact that my ARC copy is disjointed in my Kindle. Probably because maybe the artwork is made bilingual since the words are weirdly extracted from the images. I will be downloading it in Digital Editions to see if the problem is fixed but for now my rating stands until my second rereading attempt to see if I received better experience how it was intended as a graphic novel.

The ARC is supplied by Archaia via Netgalley and the book will be published on 27th November 2012.

( )

My review at Sequential Tart ( )