French-Vietnamese Bérénice Motais de Narbonne looks set to make one of the biggest graphic novel splashes in years. 

Future-dystopian fiction has been with us long enough by now to have accrued its own honoured traditions. Indeed, it might be time to stop thinking of it as a subgenre: an argument could be made that it’s now the mainstream, the present having caught up with many of our worst fears for the future. Metadoggoz, stunningly assured for a writer just two books into their career, demonstrates future dystopias’ centrality to modern fiction by the seamlessness with which the author is able accommodate multiple genres and disciplines within its remit. More than one review has mentioned Blade Runner, and the affinity is undeniable. There are also elements of punk, cyberpunk, hardboiled crime, YA adventure stories, and good old-fashioned science fiction.

The novel’s title refers to a group of teens living a near-feral existence in the Metastation, a megalopolis where post-apocalypse survivors have gathered. Among their number is Gael Kaldera, an orphan looking to redeem himself for having lost his best friend’s heirloom guitar. The Metastation, dank and damp, seemingly endless, is a place where the sun is little more than a rumour. Its rendering in dramatically contrasting black and white – mostly black – convinces us that the reason the kids here are seeking escape, whether literally or via hallucinogenic drugs, is because any other place is surely better than where they are. Touchingly, they are learning to rely on each other because everyone else has let them down.

Meanwhile, the search for a lost talismanic electric guitar can’t help but invoke the spirit of those avatars of adolescence, Rush. Is this future tale taking place in a 2112 of the mind, by any chance?mRb