ARC Review: Hotel Limbo by Ben Harel

youngcreativepress

24 hours ago

Synopsis:

Welcome to the afterlife…may we take your bags? Hijinks and heartbreak await as this fan-favorite online comic becomes a gorgeous graphic novel!

After awakening in the middle of nowhere, a young man is forcefully inducted into the Hotel Limbo as its new bellboy (“BB” for short). Faced with magical masks, giant cats, a mysterious staff, and a hotel that just won’t sit still, BB will soon learn that helping with “baggage” means something very different when all the guests are dead.

In this series debut, writer Ben Harel teams up with 28 artists (!) from around the world to breathe life into a story about death. As comedy dances with drama and mystery, every tonal shift and blurred line is accentuated by an ever-changing visual style, creating a genre-bending medley of deadly (and death-ly) adventures.

Review:

Hotel Limbo was my most anticipated graphic novel of 2026 so far and it didn’t disappoint. I loved every minute of it, even if it was a little confusing and all over the place to begin with. The cast of characters very quickly steal your heart and I can’t wait to see what BB gets up to in later volumes (if they are planning to do more – I really hope they are!).

There are some really interesting players in Hotel Limbo. You get to meet the staff of the hotel and a few guests that BB tries to help with his new found powers. I particularly liked the growing friendship between BB and DM and the little stories of him helping the guests with their issues or past traumas were really sweet. The one with Dove in particular made me smile.

This graphic novel features art from a lot of different artists, which I thought might be a little over the top, but it worked well. Also, the fact that the changing art style is something that is acknowledged within the story is both hilarious and genius. I also loved how when they didn’t have an answer for something they said it was for “plot reasons”. If you‘re going to include something you can’t explain you should at least lean into it in a funny way like this.

Surprisingly, I loved every single art style in Hotel Limbo. I thought the change from a horror-esqe style to something more cutesy would be jarring but it actually works. Plus using the cutesy styles for the more lighthearted moments in Hotel Limbo set the tone really well. My only issue with the look of this graphic novel is that the ARC file was fairly low quality – I can only imagine just how incredible the art would look if this was a higher resolution.

I also loved the dark turn Hotel Limbo took near the end. It felt like the story was a little all over the place but the final few chapters have started showing a clear narrative that definitely has me intrigued. I would 100% check out volume two in this series.