Bolero by Wyatt Kennedy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Release date: August 2, 2022

This speculative fiction graphic novel follows a struggling millennial, Devyn Dagny, as she leaps through parallel universes in search of a better life. This plot device, being presented with a key that allows one to escape one’s current world and try others on for size, is a brilliant way to show that one can’t fix one’s life by changing one’s scenery — one has to change one’s self. Otherwise, attempts to escape are just exercises in Einsteinian insanity (i.e. doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel this was the lesson conveyed. It seemed like the lesson in question was that it’s impossible to escape one’s history and that world-hopping in the hope that some external environment will align to make everything perfect is a valid approach. In the back-matter there’s a line written by the book’s artist (Luana Vecchio) that says, “Most of our traumas come from our parents.” That philosophy explains the story arc without character growth. Nothing is my fault, everything is my parents’ fault — ergo, I’ll forever be broken unless someone else can come along and make everything alright for me.

I will admit that I might have missed the intended point of the story because the book reads chaotically. It’s not so much the jumps between parallel worlds, but jumps around in time and in relationships.

The art was nicely drawn. There may have been palette changes to distinguish different times and / or worlds, but besides the red of the interdimensional space, I couldn’t keep them straight – i.e. there were either too many different palettes or they lacked distinction. Am I in a flashback, a flashforward, and alternate dimension? I couldn’t always tell.

I have mixed feelings about this one. Some will love it and others will find it frustrating. The premise and much of the execution was splendid, but the helter-skelter feel and missed opportunities for character development and growth resulted in a dissatisfaction.


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