Decelerate Blue

by Adam Rapp

[wcs53]

I borrowed this one from the library as I thought it looked fairly interesting and to read towards my Graphic Novel Challenge for this year. Set in a dystopian future (as it seems many of these books are today), where hyper is the key word to everything, it showed quite a bit of promise. Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to its expectations, mainly due to the way that it just seemed to end so abruptly.

The characters live in a world where if you can't keep up with the hyper space of society then you get exiled out of the mainstream. Nobody is able, or even allowed, to slow down and really enjoy or appreciate anything in life, and many people sleep in a standing position. The main character, Angela, seems out of place and out of sync with those around her. She hears rumours of an underground and yearns for a different way of living. I won't give away anything else, but it started to build up and move well, showing lots of promise until near the end where it just seemed to hurry too much to its conclusion. The way it ended leads me to believe that there will be no sequel or follow-up, which is too bad because there just seemed to be so much more that could have been explored or expanded upon.