A review by inthebelljar
Test Vol. 1 by Christopher Sebela

2.0

This could have been so good.

It had so many elements I absolutely love: identity, transhumanism, cyberpunk and science fiction, time loops, AIs and humans together, survivor's guilt, bisexual (I think?) nonbinary main character..... These are some of my favorite tropes/themes. And this story let me down so bad. It's way too rushed with little to no explanation. Nothing was satisfying.

I love the ideas, I love the art, but I just felt so...baffled by this. I could understand basically what happened but so much else was left unexplained or just eluded to vaguely.

So much of the narrative is spent on the main character saying the same few things over and over again in varying angsty poetic ways, to the point that

Spoiler

an alternate version of the main character shows up at one point to tell them to shut up and complains about how annoying they are?? I still am confused as to why this version is referred to as she/her and also uhhh why the AI who loves them so dearly doesn't trust this version? What happened here?

Despite this, I still don't really understand any of the main character's motivations or wants in this. The references to them having no free will I guess apply here but it doesn't seem deep, it just seems like...a plot device.

I don't know. This just could have been so cool and enjoyable but instead I was left going "why?" over and over again.

Spoiler

I just can't believe something with two nonbinary characters, one human who doesn't feel connected to humanity, the other a nonbinary AI who doesn't quite get humanity but wants to make their loved human happy, could kiss and end up together and it's still not something I enjoyed. If you had told me that as a hook, I would be rushing to read this but instead I just feel so meh. That's just. Saying something.