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A review by kovost
Midnight Radio by Iolanda Zanfardino
4.0
I love when books give me an existential crisis and make me question everything I have or haven’t done!
Midnight Radio is an illustrated story that follows the perspective and stories of four vastly different yet similar characters that while they intersect at times, they’re entirely separate. There’s a man that’s a game developer that works for a corrupt corporation with blood on their hands; a queer woman with big dreams, bigger fears, and a lot of doubts; a Japanese woman blackmailed by cops into cooperating with a sting to keep her visa; and a selectively mute Instagram star with a sick sister and an overabundance of emotions that has led to his isolation from even his best friend. All four of these characters live in an impasse in their lives, moving without really going anywhere as they struggle with social and personal issues. When there’s a sudden disruption on a radio station, the hasty and passionate message left by an anonymous voice resonates with the characters and haunts them until things start clicking.
The artwork was done in a loose line kind of style, semi-realistic polychrome with strict color tones for each character that kept them distinct and separated. Rather than done in a spectrum of colors, each character’s chapters are done in a specific shade (Mike = green, Joanne = red, Seika = blue, Stephen = yellow) and I want to say this was an underhanded psychological thing, too, since *gestures vaguely* there’s a proven science to certain colors eliciting certain emotions so it provided a strange kind of depth to each character’s story.
Though it did tend to favor a cliché approach to the misanthropic view of social media so there was nothing unique there, I did really like this more than I was expecting to. Which really isn’t saying much considering I actually had no idea what I was going into (what can I say, I have the attention span and memory of a toddler on a sugar high so it’s like I never even read the summary to begin with), but my point stands anyway.
So all in all, this was a good plot with beautiful artwork that I would definitely recommend for a quick read.
Midnight Radio is an illustrated story that follows the perspective and stories of four vastly different yet similar characters that while they intersect at times, they’re entirely separate. There’s a man that’s a game developer that works for a corrupt corporation with blood on their hands; a queer woman with big dreams, bigger fears, and a lot of doubts; a Japanese woman blackmailed by cops into cooperating with a sting to keep her visa; and a selectively mute Instagram star with a sick sister and an overabundance of emotions that has led to his isolation from even his best friend. All four of these characters live in an impasse in their lives, moving without really going anywhere as they struggle with social and personal issues. When there’s a sudden disruption on a radio station, the hasty and passionate message left by an anonymous voice resonates with the characters and haunts them until things start clicking.
The artwork was done in a loose line kind of style, semi-realistic polychrome with strict color tones for each character that kept them distinct and separated. Rather than done in a spectrum of colors, each character’s chapters are done in a specific shade (Mike = green, Joanne = red, Seika = blue, Stephen = yellow) and I want to say this was an underhanded psychological thing, too, since *gestures vaguely* there’s a proven science to certain colors eliciting certain emotions so it provided a strange kind of depth to each character’s story.
Though it did tend to favor a cliché approach to the misanthropic view of social media so there was nothing unique there, I did really like this more than I was expecting to. Which really isn’t saying much considering I actually had no idea what I was going into (what can I say, I have the attention span and memory of a toddler on a sugar high so it’s like I never even read the summary to begin with), but my point stands anyway.
So all in all, this was a good plot with beautiful artwork that I would definitely recommend for a quick read.
Warnings: nudity, homophobia/transphobia (mentions of parental abuse and homophobic remarks in general), gun violence, mention of a mass shooting (I think this is meant to be in reference to the Pulse shooting), use of racial slurs
Rep: POC main and secondary characters, queer MC, and a trans woman as a secondary character