Book Cover

Assassin. Government.

# Review

I’ll admit it; I read this book because I liked the cover. The book is split into two portions: Smoke and Ashes. Both portions take place in a dystopian world filled with corruption from the ruling class, where hidden cabals manipulate commodity prices and a superintelligence has taken over the internet. The story follows the assassin Rupert Cain and his journalist compatriot Katie Shah; the duo become targets of powerful enemies while they try to uncover the hidden conspiracies of the elite.

I personally liked Smoke more than Ashes; Smoke had a better story and more interesting characters. I also found the different art styles in Ashes to be a bit distracting and detract from the main plot arcs. While Smoke has an abrupt ending, it still had an engaging plot with just enough craziness to be exciting but not distasteful; Ashes felt less thought out and had to resort to tacky methods such as shock value to capture attention.

I did find some of the commentary interesting, such as the critique of online surveillance, but I did not feel that the commentary was fully flushed out.

# Conclusion

Decent comic with some interesting ideas.

# Overall rating: 6.7

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