myqz 's review for:

The Nice House on the Lake Vol. 1 by James Tynion IV

4.0

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We're definitely in the middle of an apocalyptic lit trend, which isn't surprising as it's hard to check the damn weather without considering the world ending in my daughter's life time. In the last year alone, I've read a couple of new books that explore apocalypse through upperclass neoliberal perspectives (A Children's Bible, Leave the World Behind). I appreciate the shared themes of exploring the world we already live in (disparity, lack of fairness, need to downplay personal culpability, crumbling capitalism, climate doom, lack of control) through apocalyptic storytelling, I just don't understand why these stories seem to be so embarrassed of the fact that they're speculative fiction- relegating anything fantastic or mysterious to cleanly edited sentences there at the end of chapters to simply move the plot along (of course, that’s a lie- any genre fiction fan understands the bias against genre fiction, the relegation to “lowbrow”- this embarrassment by those considered “legitimate” artists is nothing new). Thank god for comics, an art form that’s rarely given the option to fall into pretense. Tynion surprised me here by making another one of these stories not just bearable, but impulsively readable. It's full on sci-fi- stuffed with mysteries, puzzles, and melting faces, but this playfulness creates so much room for thematic storytelling. The questioning of culpability, reliability of memory and narrative, and fishbowl look at survivors in the midst of the unspeakable all have deep resonance here, and are all the stronger because of the fantasy elements, told with incredible balance and pacing. Tyrion just keeps getting better; he's becoming one of my favorite active creators- having this and Dept of Truth hit shelves at the same time is really impressive.