Snuggly Oranges

I think most people are familiar with the story of V for Vendetta. I, like many others, have watched the movie, and I really really liked it. So when Gaby insisted on buying this for me as a late birthday gift, I was super excited. It's one of those books that I've been meaning to read for a while -- and I really wanted to start reading more graphic novels.

Sadly, it didn't go that well. The story is split up into three "books". I really liked Book 1. It established the society that I was familiar with through the movie, and the art was gritty and really enthralling. Book 2 was all right but... odd. It took a weird storytelling method, telling it as if it were a cabaret or something... I was a bit puzzled, but I still liked how society was beginning to crumble and seeing more of V's plotting and Evie's transition.

But Book 3 was an absolute struggle to get through. I am not a dialect person, and Ally's dialect almost made me throw the book across the room and give up. Because sentences like...

A wull, sleng the lettle goabshite en the waag'n wi' the rest. Can y'no see am on ma lunchbreak?

A, et's a doddle, all a thus money fur damagin' some puir bastud an tachin ap thur messusez en the strep-serrch.

Yuz coapers 'iz clever bastuds, keepen thess number tae yourseln.

Nah, et's juss thess berrd. Lessen, a foond some mair o'they letters, y'better have 'em tae luke at.

They really get in the way of the overall experience of the book. Look, I get it, some people have dialects. But can't you simplify it so that we know they're speaking a dialect, but it doesn't take full minutes to understand one sentence? It was absolute painful torture.

For the rest... I don't know. The art was okay, but a bit too dark at points to know what was going on. The dialogue bubbles were sometimes very oddly placed that made it difficult to see who was talking. There were a lot of dense monologues on V's part that were tough to get through and understand, which made the overall message difficult to grasp. Book 3 in particular suddenly placed a bunch of characters in the foreground, but I hadn't been paying attention to them before so I had NO clue who they were or where they worked or anything - which apparently I should have. I dunno. It was all pretty anti-climactic, and toward the end I just wasn't that into it anymore.

Summing Up:

The overall reading experience just consisted of a lot of confusion. I was expecting more, to be honest. The story was confusing, the art was almost too dark, the dialogue had issues... But to be honest, I was reading this in the wrong mood. So I might reread it another time when I'm more open to this kind of style and story. I do think it's definitely worth a reread, and it's one of those books that if you read it every couple of years, you'll take away different things from it. For now, though, I'll stick with the movie.

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