Undergrowth

Gr 9 Up–Some time after humanity has been reduced to fearful pockets of civilization by the arrival of invulnerable extraterrestrial machines that are devouring the planet’s resources, four friends sneak out at night and are killed by one of the harvesting monsters. Three are resurrected as pilots of massive organic mecha that are grown by Earth’s spirit guardian for one last ditch attempt to fight back. Bursting with ideas and jagged adolescent aggression, this is a neighbor to Paper Girls or The Cull, but with artwork that evokes Craig Thompson or Kevin Cannon. There are frequent flashes of emotional depth as the characters wrestle with their various losses, and a third-act revelation about the origin of the monsters is effectively troubling. But there are an equal number of moments where the bald narration explains what the characters are feeling without any resonance, and where the action is difficult to decipher, which lessens readers’ connections to the characters. While the characters are pitched as dealing with the extremes of trauma response, they unfortunately read as alienating because of their raw anger.