Customer Reviews

Temperance

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Temperance is an award-winning, black-and-white graphic novel portraying one man's awakening within a dystopian society. Lester suffers from trauma-induced amnesia; his wife has struggled to keep him from remembering the truth about Blessedbowl, the society that considers him to be a hero. Blessedbowl keeps its citizens in a state of fear and falsehood, threatening them with the specter of war just outside its walls. But the ground beneath the illusions gradually gives way as Lester remembers more and more. Temperance is a story of awakening and transformation - physical, emotional, and spiritual. A profoundly empathetic reflection upon the systemic societal problems of culturally ingrained violence and brainwashing, Temperance is profound, meaningful, and deserves to be read and reread at length.

All I can really say about this one is weird. I didn't really get it. The back cover suggests the story tackles lofty themes like how war and enemies interact with culture. It even wonders if conflict helps hold culture together. If these themes are in this story then they were unrecognizable to me. Yes, there was a bad guy. Yes, there was a secondary plot about lying to keep control but in the end neither plot added up to anything.

The story started out with strong narrative promise. A grumpy, violent man, known as Pa, is nearly done building a fortified castle. He believes it is his job to protect his people from the enemies abroad. Two of his people, two young girls, watch him from a distance. It quickly becomes apparent that Peggy, one of these girls, has an ethereal quality. When Pa tries to force himself on Peggy she floats away. Then a few pages later Pa just walks off. That's the last we hear from those characters for a long time.

Instead, the plot focuses on Minerva, the other girl, and how she tries to save her people by taking Pa's place. There was a lot of really good story to have mined here, but Malkasian meandered down stranger and stranger twists to the point that I didn't have a clue what anything really meant. It became hard to differentiate between the real world set up for us and a dream world. Which isn't always a bad thing when done well, but it was hard to get a clear picture of who the main character really were, what they were, and what motivated them. And then the ending had transcendentalist qualities to it, images of nature being so much more than nature and the reality transforming into something so much more. Blah, blah, blah, I'm even boring myself as I write about it. Weird mumbo-jumbo.

The art was impressive. Clear, clean, detailed. It has nice pencil-sketched tones of gray and brown. But no matter how well illustrated a story is it still has to have a story. I'll give this one a 2/5 stars and that feels a little generous.