Cover Design: Craig Nash
On the SFBookReviews website, Allen Stroud has written a thoughtful and interesting review of An Android Awakes by Mike French and Karl Brown. It would be difficult to do justice to his review without quoting at great length – which wouldn’t be fair to SFBook, so I suggest you follow the link at the end of this post to read it for yourself.
But, in summary, he describes the book as an “innovative throwback”, presenting a picture story as in days gone-by to a modern graphic novel audience, noting that the illustrations do not have narrative content as in a graphic novel or comic book. He found the premise of the story in the text “fascinating”, and suggests that the links between the submissions reflecting the Android’s experience as a struggling writer, result in a world in the reader’s imagination where these discreet tales all “fit together consistently” which, he says, “tells us something about ourselves as readers” and how our consumption of stories can create “instinctive habits”.
He writes that the “illustrations have a crisp and busy quality to them, providing images and faces to the scenes described”. He describes the Android’s tales as a “fascinating collection of intertextuality and remediation”. He concludes that An Android Awakens is “a thoughtful creation which will inspire thought in its readership”.
You should read the whole of Allen’s review here.