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A review by jnikolova
No Mercy, Volume 1 by Alex de Campi
4.0
Also available on the WondrousBooks blog.
While No Mercy by far does not possess the best or most original story out there, it's interesting and once I started, without meaning to, I kept flipping the pages until there were no more left. Therefore, I can definitely say that it was a pleasurable read.
No Mercy basically represents every survivor story ever written: a group of people, in this case student volunteers, go on a trip, they have an accident and are left to fend for themselves, again in this case in the dangerous and fictional Mataguey somewhere in Latin America.
To be honest, the first 4 issues are not even adequate in explaining the story, they provide no answers, just set the premise for the future developments. The entire idea is not all that obscure, but it's still fun to follow. And if not fun, by all means - it's funny in a gruesome way.
Which leads me to the thing I enjoyed the most about No Mercy: the means of the author to present the story. I really love it when instead of a straightforward narrative, writers use other means too. In the case of Love, Rosie it was all kinds of correspondence, including letters, emails and texts. Here, a lot of the story is shown through the tools of the social media platforms that most, if not all of us, use in our day to day life. And it is not hard to see our own dependence on our technology and especially on our phones as flawed as it can be if taken to extremes. Sure, I too support the idea that technology is helpful, but Tiffani as a character represents a type of person that we see every day - the people who don't really have fun, they just care about appearing to be having fun on social media. That's a flaw that deserves to be criticized and mocked, if only to make people give it a second thought.
Among all of the characters, I didn't find many likable ones, but in this case I think that's the point. This group of random, different from each other, spoiled kids will have to find a way to cooperate and find a out of the mess as a team, not as the annoying individuals that they are and I think that might be very interesting to follow.
*** 3.5 stars ***
While No Mercy by far does not possess the best or most original story out there, it's interesting and once I started, without meaning to, I kept flipping the pages until there were no more left. Therefore, I can definitely say that it was a pleasurable read.
No Mercy basically represents every survivor story ever written: a group of people, in this case student volunteers, go on a trip, they have an accident and are left to fend for themselves, again in this case in the dangerous and fictional Mataguey somewhere in Latin America.
To be honest, the first 4 issues are not even adequate in explaining the story, they provide no answers, just set the premise for the future developments. The entire idea is not all that obscure, but it's still fun to follow. And if not fun, by all means - it's funny in a gruesome way.
Which leads me to the thing I enjoyed the most about No Mercy: the means of the author to present the story. I really love it when instead of a straightforward narrative, writers use other means too. In the case of Love, Rosie it was all kinds of correspondence, including letters, emails and texts. Here, a lot of the story is shown through the tools of the social media platforms that most, if not all of us, use in our day to day life. And it is not hard to see our own dependence on our technology and especially on our phones as flawed as it can be if taken to extremes. Sure, I too support the idea that technology is helpful, but Tiffani as a character represents a type of person that we see every day - the people who don't really have fun, they just care about appearing to be having fun on social media. That's a flaw that deserves to be criticized and mocked, if only to make people give it a second thought.
Among all of the characters, I didn't find many likable ones, but in this case I think that's the point. This group of random, different from each other, spoiled kids will have to find a way to cooperate and find a out of the mess as a team, not as the annoying individuals that they are and I think that might be very interesting to follow.