In many ways this is very well done— it sure is beautifully drawn, there's a ton of visually evoked atmosphere, and the writing is interesting at least in theory because Schultheiss pushes it so far into nihilism and offers just about none of the expected rewards of a noir techno-thriller (even the explosions are more depressing than cathartic). But the characters are so thin, and the story consists of so much build-up and frantic activity toward a resolution that's been pretty obvious for quite a while— with the fantasy element having been barely explored— that it didn't really leave me with much other than a bad taste in my mouth, an admiration of the artist's watercolor technique, and a feeling of vicarious exhaustion because he spent so much time drawing the same few locations over and over while the character crept through them toward his miserable fate. ( )