Alone v5: “Eye of the Maelstrom”

It’s not quite a roller coaster ride, but there is something of a whitewater rafting ride in this book…

Establishing Normalcy

With the additional kids added into the camp, structures are starting to be built.  Not literal structures.  I just mean the routines of every day life that need to happen so life can go on.

This book starts by showing a few of the kids in school, using a sort of Montessori School technique of letting the kids teach each other, thus solving the problem of the lack of adults to teach.

There’s talk of leadership.  It’s time for elections.  Society must organize itself.

We see the youngest children playing out on the streets with their plastic guns and their awesome makeshift sled from the second floor.

And then things take a turn when the kids find Dodzi’s body

It was nice while it lasted…

D-D-Danger Lurks Behind You

A contingent of the kids ride into the Red Zone, and things predictably go badly for them. The car they drove in suddenly seizes up and refuses to work. A bad smell fills the air. Floods make their passage tricky. Some of the local animals have red eyes like the monkeys. There’s danger and mystery as far as the eye can see.

That’s the feeling I had in reading this book. Most of all, I had that tense feeling of dread throughout. I knew that with any turn of the page, something serious might happen.  We knew the kids weren’t safe from people that were following them, but we also knew that they were in new terrain with surprises around every corner.  Anything was possible, particularly after the way Dodzi fell in the last volume.  I enjoyed the book in large part due to that feeling.

And as tense as it gets, there are some nice moments that send you flying through pages.  There’s one sequence where a group of kids on a blow-up raft get caught up in the flooded waters’ current and wind up careening through houses and flying out of front doors.  Gazzotti is a great storyteller in moments like those, holding the camera in just the right spots to create a smooth flow of action. It really is like reading a movie, with each panel being a cut to another camera.

The pacing in the series has generally been strong, but I thought this book was a highlight in its structure and the ability to grab you and pull you to the next page every time.

An Answer?

Maybe. There’s a possible explanation offered up at the end of this book for what’s going on with all the missing adults. I tend to believe it’s true to some extent.

But it’s a shock to the kids and likely will be for many readers. It’s a daring gambit Vehlman is setting off on here. It’s the mystery that lured in the fans. Can the answers possibly satisfy them? It’s only been five albums so far, so things are still fresh enough that changing direction for some answers is a good shift.

I’m a little curious as to how modern audiences handle a series like “Alone” in the wake of, for example, “Lost.”  Are they still looking for long form narratives centered on one mystery?  And when that mystery is revealed, is there any chance the majority will (a) accept it and (b) not be expecting the first answer to be the temporary solution leading towards a secondary revelation of truth.

Literal Coloring

I love the job that Usagi does with the coloring in this book. It’s mostly very literal. The grass is green and the sky is blue. The color palette is bright and easy to read. Nothing obscures any of the art. There are some gradients and some simple cut-in shadows, plus the trademark red cheeks.

Every once in a while, though, things change drastically. It will capture your attention immediately, even if you don’t realize why at first. Early in the book, there’s a scene of Selena and Alexander training with their arrows by shooting at a mannequin. It’s a nighttime shoot. They’re out on the street with only the street lights to light anything up. The pair retain their bright yellow hair and lighter blue jeans, but everything else on the page is oppressively blue . A deep, dark “blue hour” shade of blue, as photographers call that hour after the sun has set, but the night sky hasn’t gone pitch black yet.

Recommended?

Yes!  Yes, but start at volume 1.  If you’ve been with the series that long, you’ll enjoy this one. Vehlmann isn’t content to let the overall story arc stand still. It looks like he does have an answer for what’s going on in this series, and discovering it will be half the fun.  The other half of the fun will be watching these scared kids trying to survive it and find out what it is.  Crazy world, eh?

— 2018.041 —

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