Okhéania: The Tsunami (Okhéania #1)
by Éric Corbeyran
illustrated by Alice Picard
My Rating: 3 stars
Genre: Fantasy Comic
Age Category: Middle Grade
Blurb:
The planet Oceania is covered with an ocean of vegetation. Humans navigate the green seas with futuristic ships. Teenagers Jon and Jasper spend most of their days surfing the vast waves of foliage, until one day, without warning, they’re hit by a tsunami. Jon disappears beneath the leafy ocean surface and Jasper is picked up by a ship called the Poseidon. It is said that none return from the depths of this treacherous ocean. But the captain of the Poseidon tells a different story. Will Jon and Jasper ever find each other?
My Review
I received a free copy of this book through Netgalley and I voluntarily reviewed it.
I was going through my Netgalley shelf to see which older books I hadn’t reviewed yet and when I saw this one I decided to read it. Okheania caught my eye with the cover and the two boys surfing on a sea of grass. I don’t read a lot of graphic novels/ comics, so that might impact my opinion of this one. I got through this one quite quickly and while the concept is fun and the art pretty it didn’t hook me in as much as had hoped.
I liked the art style of this book, it looks pretty and I thought it fit the story. I especially liked the art of the nature scenes as well as the ships the people use to move throughout the world. The whole book is in full color and it just looked good.
I also really liked the unique world building concept, although I wish there were details about how it all worked. Basically the whole world is a sea, but instead of a sea of water it’s a sea of green vegetation. It just looked really cool and was such an interesting concept. Most of the world building is done through the art and some dialogue, but I still was left with a lot of questions about how things worked, like how they get food for example. Maybe those get answered in future books as it is clear there that is more to the world than they know.
While I liked the art style and unique world building, this book didn’t fully work for me. The plot didn’t feel as compelling and felt a bit confusing at times. I only was curious about what happened to Jon and the glimpse we get of where he is. I didn’t like how both main character don’t have a lot of agency in this book. Jon is basically absent for a big chunk and the other main character Jasper is held captive for big chunk of the plot as someone thinks he’s a spy. I didn’t like the antagonistic women who was convinced Jasper was a spy, she just felt annoying and her reasoning didn’t make sense. Like why would she think Jasper is a spy as they literally saved Jasper form the sea of vegetation so why would he be a spy? It just felt odd and was annoying how this influenced the plot. I also thought most characters felt kinda stereotypical like they had one or two defining characteristic and a certain role in the story and that’s it.
To summarize: This comic has some beautiful art work and some unique world building. I struggled a bit with the plot not being as compelling to me. I also didn’t get why the antagonistic women thought Jasper was a spy as it didn’t make sense to me. Some parts of the plot felt a bit confusing or didn’t quite make sense to me. I also was left with a bunch of questions regarding the plot and world.
You can also read my review on Goodreads.
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