RaveAIPT... a book that is uninterested in telling you anything about itself, preferring instead to sink you into atmosphere and context clues ... with no hand-holding, the world seems more honest and true to itself ... What sings in Celestia is Manuele Fior’s incredible artwork, which feels as if it was cobbled together from Impressionist canvases ... This feeling of reading something steeped in art history and aesthetics further blends a sense of a fully realized world with a sense of weighty importance, as if the story has been loaned a museum-quiet gravity ... That there are full-page spreads that feel as if they would look at home on canvas, hanging in a wing of some European art museum means that this book feels more visually striking than its peers in graphic novel sections of bookstores. There isn’t anything that feels this way, that exudes this sort of confidence ... Furthermore, because there is a sense of timelessness to the book, we take the narrative as being told to us by someone of authority, of historic import. We believe in the narrative as something powerful, the characters as beloved. Though the book doesn’t spoon-feed the reader anything — indeed, it avoids answering any resolute question — we understand the world and its relationships as concretely considered and understandable. It’s a feat of aesthetic that makes the book stay with the reader long after it’s over, trying to work out connective tissues between its fantastic, quiet, and modern concepts ... The result is not only a truly unique dystopian world, but a truly unique and sophisticated comics experience.
Aminder Dhaliwal
RaveAIPTAll these heavy concerns might seem overwhelming, but in reality, Dhaliwal presents a book of heartwarming vignettes that are gag strips in their execution: setup, example, punchline. This structure helps to soften some blows, but more importantly, it cements these moments of minor, humorous transgression as commonplace, everyday, both external and internal ... Dhaliwal’s style, artistic and emotional, exhibits a deep and caring understanding of human nature, a sort of joy at life’s complications. There’s an honesty to the work that transcends the fantastic premise and begins to feel real, intimate peeks into a culture so easily understood that it’s hard not to feel at home. At other times, the magical nature of the fictional world expresses itself just enough to remind us not to take the book–or ourselves–too seriously ... a great time, a book that feels not just prescient but almost relieving, a pleasant reminder that frustrations, while frequent, are not the final word.
