Readers who enjoy mismatched romances, on-the-road visions of troubled futures, and multilayered revenge thrillers will find something that resonates here, especially the tense, thrilling ending. Ginger and Alby slowly make the long haul from New Jersey, surviving sabotage to their truck, a massive superstorm and an ambush by white supremacists. The heroes eventually make a home in Sedona and deal with locals both friendly and hostile, but Jagger's obsessive quest, Alby's past, and sinister forces all collide in an explosive ending that comes complete with a hook for the third volume.
Weird, sometimes extreme tonal shifts are part of the narrative's charm, but the first eighty pages lack momentum, as even a character as sharply defined as Jagger is in a holding pattern at story’s start. Things pick up once Ginger and Alby reach their destination, as O’Neill introduces a host of eccentric and knowing characters. Jagger's revenge tour is a gripping look inside of the mind of a dying, psychotic killer who can read microexpressions, and O'Neill pulls the strings together neatly by the end. This second entry continues the story from the first but will be relatively easy to understand for new readers.
Takeaway: A romantic road trip across a deadly near-future America, with a killer in pursuit.
Great for fans of: Billy Dering’s Utopia Project: Everyone Must Die, Sara Faring’s The Tenth Girl.
Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: B
Marketing copy: A
