Bats of the Republic: An Illuminated Novel by Zachary Thomas DodsonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
A 2 star review on my scale is a book that I do not recommend. I did not finish this book.
The pitch for this book made it sound interesting. It was supposed to combine a number of graphic presentations to tell a larger story.
It does indeed use a number of different presentation formats. Some are hand lettered notes/letters between characters. One is book written in the 19th century; so a fictional book within a fictional book. Another format that is supposed to imply a transcription of events.
There are also a number of sketches scattered throughout.
The problem is that I made it halfway through the book and cannot see the major crisis/conflict issue. There are any number of small crisis issues, but they do not all point in the same direction.
The other problem is that at the halfway point I have yet to find a character that is worth following.
There are several suggestions of fantasy and sci-fi themes scattered about. But none of them appear to be going anywhere. We aren't exploring them. They aren't getting better. They aren't getting worse.
The writing and editing of the story have been fine thus far. But halfway in and I'm still waiting for the book to seize my attention and demand not to be turned loose until I've finished reading.
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