Review: Astrion
Power and death. One is impossible without the other.
2347: the planet Mahonia is in the grip of a desperate energy crisis. Two decades previously this led to a world war. Veteran Astrion Lin was recruited at the age of fifteen and augmented, turning him into a formidable warrior. Through much bloody conflict, he helped to bring the fighting to an end.
Now his wife Karina is the lead scientist trying to save the planet in another way. Her fusion reactors have made a huge difference to life on Mahonia, though they are difficult to maintain and disaster still threatens. Then, in 2340, a new discovery changed everything...
A gravity anomaly provided the means to create a portal to a strange new dimension - the 'Dark Sector' - which contains new sources of energy. This is the key to Mahonia's survival, but to exploit this resource the Dark Sector must be explored, and it is a treacherous environment: obscure, stormy and full of strange phenomena.
War hero Astrion has been selected as the best candidate to lead an expedition into the new territory. He is eager to save the day one more time, so why is he having disturbing dreams? A sinister figure haunts him, a hideous incarnation of death and decay, and as the date of the expedition grows nearer, his nightmares begin to break into his waking hours also.
Post traumatic stress? Madness? Or is there something waiting for him in the Dark Sector that should not be disturbed?
Astrion by writer/artist Roman Yermakov is a sci-fi/horror thriller, part one of his graphic novel series The Sphere. The genres are blurred here as our hero embarks on a quest into a hellish landscape where reality itself appears to have broken down into violent, screaming shadows. Beautifully constructed tech, vehicles and armour contrast nicely with softly-drawn, manga-esque characters. Astrion and his fellow adventurers are all rendered as youthful figures, almost kawaii in their child-like vulnerability, evoking pathos in the reader. The restrained colour pallete creates a subtly shifting mood. Mahonia seems to be a cold, dim planet; the Dark Sector a forbidding zone of mysterious threat.
As the time approaches to step into the unknown, so the tension builds up and Astrion's dread begins to overwhelm him. Can he save his world from a slow, pitiful death?
Or does he risk unleashing something infinitely worse...?
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