What to Read This Weekend: Celestial Lights and If Destruction Be Our Lot
Need something new for your playlist? This week, we recommend Celestial Lights by Cécile Pin and the new Image Comics series, If Destruction Be Our Lot.
Heavenly Lights
Henry Holt and Co.
Another melancholy tale of love, loss and the consequences of human ambition, set against a backdrop of space? Oops, maybe I have a type. Celestial Lights by Cécile Pin is a short, contemplative novel about Oliver Ines, or Ollie, a man who has always been drawn to the stars and is one day chosen to lead a 10-year mission to one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. It jumps through time, following Ollie’s memories throughout his life and incorporating mission logs.
Although space exploration is part of it, this is not a book to pick up if you are looking for excitement and adventure. Celestial Lights is, as the blurb explains, “a portrait of a complicated man and a breathtaking story of the memories, personal choices, and relationships that define us.”
If Destruction Be Our Lot
Picture comics
The first issue of this series came out earlier this month, and oh, this looks like the start of something really, really great. The main character is, absurdly, an Abraham Lincoln robot whose goal seems to be to regurgitate quotes from the 16th President of the United States. He is one of the countless robots that are still functioning decades after humans disappeared. And, unlike most of the droids around him, he understands the meaning of his life quite well now that his original, human-assigned goal is moot.
One day, when things go wrong on a bus ride – the vehicle being Abe’s self-driving friend Bus – his world suddenly seems to expand, for better or worse. I loved the art style and tone, which is kind of dark and funny but also a little serious. Very promising first issue. If Destruction Be Our Lot is a work by writers Mark Elijah and Matthew Rosenberg and artist Andy MacDonald.
To explore these fascinating narratives further, visit the original article Here.
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