Looking For a Good Book

A word that I probably haven’t used yet in any of my descriptions of a book, but one I will use here: This is a quaint little story.

Once I opened this book, I didn’t expect to enjoy it very much.  I think that the artwork is … lacking.  It is flat, more sketch-like than finished art, and proportions are often skewed.  It struck me as the work of an immature artist who hasn’t developed their talent yet (I know nothing about the artist, Sean von Gorman).  On the other hand, the panels weren’t distracting with too much background detail, and the characters were mostly easy to identify.

The story was pretty simple.  Four chapters to this book and each chapter follows a different person and not surprisingly, these four people, who lead four very different lives, not only cross paths, but they touch one-another’s lives in some way.  There really isn’t much more to it than that, except to say that each of these individuals seem to need to be touched by these strangers, which makes the story more poignant.

What I found while reading this was that I was really caught up in the story and in the lives of these characters, much to my surprise.  And despite my initial reactions to the art, once I was in the story, I never really thought about the art again.  It moved the story forward and helped to tell the story.  It did precisely what it was intended to do, and did not distract or over-shadow the story.

It might have been nice to get a little more background on these characters, but for what this was, a one-shot, 100 page graphic novel, it works really well and is, as I say … quaint.

Looking for a good book?  Pawn Shop is a surprisingly good book.  It sneaks up on you, and don’t judge it simply by flipping through the pages at your local store … buy it and read it, and you won’t be disappointed.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Pawn Shop

author: Joey Esposito

artist: Sean Von Gorman

publisher: Z2 Comics (Diamond Book Distributors)

ISBN: 1940878047

paperback, 100 pages