Looking For a Good Book

Darryl Openworld is a graphic novel based on a French YA book series by Rémi Guérin. Darryl is a journalist – probably the most popular journalist in all of Openworld because of his ability to travel between realities.

Darryl is passionate about being a journalist, and in this world journalists are generally well respected and as much detective/investigators as they are reporters.

At some point, when Darryl travelled into our world, he met and befriended Julianne. Also at some point, Darryl’s best friend, Dean, died and is now a ghost … who is in love with Julianne. Julianne thinks she might know a way to bring Dean back from the dead, but it could have significant consequences.

Meanwhile, Darryl is also investigating the disappearance of a giant and a stolen piece to a special clock.

The book has a strong steampunk sense to to it, though that comes more with the artwork than with anything specific in the story. The artwork definitely is nice to look at and does share in the storytelling function. But the story itself … it’s a bit convoluted.  There are at least three stories going on, plus we need to be introduced to the characters, and all under 140 pages. Something has to give and unfortunately it’s our introduction to the characters and this unique world(s).

This might be a series in Europe, but as far as I can tell, this is the only translated-to-English title available, and yet characters and storyline reference past events and we get the definite feeling that we’re supposed to already know a few things about Darryl and this world he lives in. But we don’t so the story feels incomplete.

Looking for a good book? Darryl Openworld, a graphic novel by Oliver Peru, Rémi Guérin, and Krystel comes to us from Europe, where it’s an existing, long running series, but this particular English issue presumes the reader is already with familiar with the characters. But if you aren’t familiar with this series, this particular story may be more frustrating than enjoyable.

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

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Darryl Openworld

authors: Oliver Peru, Rémi Guérin

artist: Krystel

publisher: Magnetic Press

ISBN: 1951719506

hardcover, 136 pages