cbr14bingo Gaslight Level 2
Forever Maps could fit several of the categories, but I am picking Gaslight as this is a book started in the late 1770’s and ends “now” (or at the very least sometime after the late 1940’s), There are horses and carriages are sent to fetch people, with cars only show up at the end. There are traveling salesmen who go to trading post after western store, and a character who is a cruel, perhaps even evil, but truly sad, liar.
Michael Lagace created a disturbing look at how far we will go to live forever. Their work is a morbid look at the unreachable dream. And it is about the truly horrific things we will do to gain power. And it is all wrapped up in some of the most darkly, beautiful, and hopeless images.
Todor Hristov’s black and white and sepia and grays jump illustrations off the page, yet the blend into the shadows, are dark, sometime even hard to figure out. The lines are both sharp and smooth. They are cruel, inhuman, gorgeous. They made me downright ill to view at times. Especially towards the end when one of the lies of the main character finally catches up to him. Only he is not the one who pays for it.
The story round up: a young man, selfish and spoiled, with a cruel father and a mother he sees as weak, is forced to leave his home/runs away from home, only to find a man who is possessed. He refuses to give the map he carries to John, (the young man) thinking him a thief, yet he will allow him to assist him to the spot on the map. But when they are there, what awaits is another map. The old mans madness forces him to scream out and run off hinting at something dark, leaving John with no clue what is going on. But quickly John learns. Lies to his parents, lies from his family, lies to his roommate in school (which he only wanted to attend so he could follow the map), lies to himself, draw him down a path of one map after another. A path this leads to nothing, but the hope of maybe next time there will be something. Along the way our narrator realizes the secret of the maps: keep moving and you will live forever. But at what cost?
The narrator lies to everyone he meets: the woman who loves him, his own son, those around him, and most importantly to himself. The darkness is always there. The mystery always haunting. It is a graphic novel on the average side but packs a large punch. And while teens can read, it is not for a sensitive reader. Part thriller, horror, mystery, and life-events, this is a book that will make you leave the lights on.
