*I was given a copy of Knee Deep in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Oni Press and Joe Flood*
Synopsis:
In the year 2223, a teenage girl must venture through underground tunnels and canals in search of her parents who disappeared while on a mining expedition.
Two hundred years in the future, refugees from an environmental cataclysm have fled underground. They survive, scrounging out a living in a twisted maze of tunnels and canals. Scavengers, mistitfs, bandits, renegades and mutants are among the citizens of this subterranean realm. They are sewerfolk, their home, the bowels of a utopian city that was never completed.
Life is hard enough, but an overzealous mining company, PERCH wants to get their claws on this new underground frontier and they don’t mind bulldozing any sewerfolk that get in their way.
Caught in the middle is a young girl, Cricket. She’s in a desperate search to find her family that fled underground. Join Cricket as she explores this savage new world, to find her parents and unlock the secrets of a past long forgotten, in the three-part graphic novel series for all ages, Knee Deep.
Review:
I have no idea what I was expecting from this graphic novel, but it wasn’t what I got. This whole thing felt like a wild fever dream but without the fun parts. It’s not often I find myself bored when reading a graphic novel but that definitely happened here. Near the end I found myself skimming the pages because I just didn’t really care for the story.
I’m sad because the cover and title made this look and sound really cool, but it fell completely flat.
The art was ok but it didn’t blow me away or anything. Actually a lot of the time I thought there was too much happening on the page and it made action sequences hard to follow. Too much chaos.
I’ve come to realise recently that I’m a fan of more minimalistic art styles and having too much background detail really detracts from the story for me. This isn’t always the case as there are plenty of detailed art styles that I love (The Tea Dragon Society).
The story was all over the place. I can’t actually tell you what the overall arching it is, something to do with the destruction of humanity I think? The world building wasn’t done very well and a lot of information was crammed into too few pages.
Which is funny to say because my next opinion is that this is entirely too long. Considering it seemed to move at much too quick a pace, it feels like nothing happened. An impressive feat really. There were way too many pages that were just illustrations that did nothing to move the story along. You don’t need six pages of a fight to add action to the story, it was a bit much if you ask me.
There is definitely potential here but I’m not interested enough to continue the series.
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