Roche Limit

Oof, it’s been a couple weeks since I did a book review. Let’s see if I can remember how to these things are supposed to go. *fiddles with the magic box inside of which I keep all my reviewing super-powers*

Uh… hrm… Who put a dead cricket inside my magic reviewing super-powers box? Oh, wait. Nope, wrong box. Forget you ever heard anything about the cricket.

Alright, here we go. It’s been a couple months since I read a good ol’ graphic novel and I admit that despite all the bad press the Hugos have been getting this year, the nominees for this particular category actually looked pretty good. If you’ve read my previous post you know how I feel about the Hugos and all the drama surrounding that particular sideshow, but there are two graphic novels (Saga Volume 4 and Sex Criminals Volume 1) that I’ve been interested in reading for quite sometime. The fact that they got nominated only reinforced my desire to go out and pick them up.

So I did. Or, atleast, I tried to. I went to my local comic bookshop which typically has a pretty good selection, but lo and behold, they had neither of these two books. What? How is such a thing possible?

I couldn’t bring myself to walk out empty handed so I snagged a copy of Roche Limit Volume 1. It had a snazzy cover from a publishing house I typically like, with a story that sounded right up my alley. I was geeked and had totally forgotten about my failed mission to procure either Sex Criminals or Saga by the time I sashayed out of there.

A’ight, so let’s give ya’ll a synopsis 8th grade book report style:

Roche Limit is a book about space. People fly far away to a different galaxy. A billionaire pays for this. He builds a death-star type colony next to a black hole.

Ugh, this is dreck. Quick aside, why do schools make writing book reports (or writing in general) a painfully horrific exercise in futility? Seriously, writing is fun, but thinking back on my middle and high school years and the writing exercises inflicted upon our poor innocent minds. I dunno, it’s almost as though we were prisoners of war being punished preemptively for atrocities yet to be committed. I mean, they weren’t entirely wrong. Text messaging pretty much ushered in an alphabet genocide.

But still, I’d rather take a forest’s worth of bamboo shoots up the fingernails than go back to 8th grade English.

Anyways, that’s my baggage. Back to Roche Limit. Here’s the skinny, (or the chubby, depending on your preference. I don’t discriminate. I’m like Burger King, have it your way.)

Shut up, Ronald. Yes, I can! This is my blog!

Anyhoo, we got ourselves an enigmatic billionaire who dreams of exploring the cosmos.

So what’s he do?

Oh, you know. He goes out into space, locates himself what the smart folks back home refer to as a “mysterious energy anomaly” (no shit, this is what the back-cover says), and sets up a colony. They call this colony Roche Limit which is the distance a moon must be from its planet so as not to get guzzled down said planet’s gravitational well. Honestly, the name really has nothing to do with anything occurring in the story.

This colony is built on the cusp of this “mysterious energy anomaly”, which is their way of saying “a black hole that doesn’t behave like a black hole”. Nobody knows what the hell this thing is, but that doesn’t stop them from setting up shop right next to it. And, also, let’s not forget that this is clear across the galaxy so getting there isn’t exactly a leisurely jaunt.

Now Roche Limit has issues right off the back, mostly on account of the fact that there are no police and the company who built the colony decided to hire exclusively ex-convicts to work the station. Okay, now this is some more of “my” baggage, but it really bothers me when writers use “ex-convicts” for an easy out. I readily acknowledge the fact that there is a high re-offending (Now I know how those Storm Troopers felt in Star Trek Gate ’cause I’m not entirely sure this is the word, or droids, I’m looking for) rate but that doesn’t mean they should be the automatic scapegoat for “oh shit, this society over here collapsed in on itself and itr’s all because those ex-convicts are falling back on their well-established patterns of behavior!”

Okay, come to think of it, maybe I don’t have much leg to stand on here, but it still bugs me. Not nearly as much as the fact that this company investing billions of dollars in interstellar travel and cross-galaxy colonization is manning these stations with convicts. Who’s dumb-ass idea is that anyhow?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t give the con’s a chance, but, I don’t know, maybe a couple people with technical skills would be useful?

Let’s forget about the convict slathered colony for a moment and focus on one of the main driving points of the story. A girl has gone missing so her sister has flown out from Earth to find her. We discover along the way that Roche Limit has devolved into a cesspool of crime. It’s being run by the slumlords and you’ll pretty much get shived with a toothbrush the moment you step off your shuttle.

Moral of the story? Don’t go to Roche Limit. If you do, maybe consider wearing some stab proof clothing.

We’ve got ourselves a real lawless state of affairs over here and nobody really cares, until we discover that more than one girl has gone missing and now, you know what, one of our crime lords simply finds that unacceptable. She’s got one eye and a heart of gold.

Oh, and also there is this other guy who was dating the sister who disappeared, so he’s helping to find her ’cause he’s not your stereotypical quick wit, hard to love, easy to hate rogueish good guy who pretends he’s badass but secretly deep down he’s got a soft nougat center. Nope, he’s not that at all. He’s a genuinely original character. Promise.

I literally could have put any male character written in the past decade here, but Nathan Fillion is beautiful and Firefly is Da Bomb. Also, I rarely use the phrase “Da Bomb”, so you know it must be true.

Ha! Just kidding, I totally lied! He’s a walking cliche.

Ya know, I’m getting carried away, and for that I apologize. There is more to the plot, but I don’t really feel like talking about it anymore ’cause the whole damned thing is so disjointed. It bops all over the place with no rhyme or reason, dropping you in and out of situations with characters you’ve never met and have hardly any sympathy for killing them off, or they go into some monologuish diatribe about their life and motivations.

And that might be the thing that bothered me the most about Roche Limit. The dialogue (which, excluding the artwork, is the most important part of a graphic novel) was just horrendous. Everybody spoke in these long drawn out speeches about life and death and space and exploration and dreams and chasing dreams and butterflies and what happens when you stop chasing dreams and misguided desires and what it means to be human and blah blah friggin’ blah.

Jesus, just hold up a skull and give us a breathy soliloquy while you’re at it!

In the end the story fell flat for me. The artwork was passable, but not nearly good enough to pull its weight and that lame-sauce storyline.

Save yourself the trouble. Stay away from Roche Limit.