Let me first say, I probably would have had an entirely different experience of this book had I actually been familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo going in, but as it was, this book left me entirely cold.

The Count of Monte Cristo is what, eleventy billion pages long? And this story is attempting to not only condense it to a single volume of graphic novel medium, but also add a unique science fiction environment?

I did not care about a single person in this story. Redxan Samud is framed for treason and separated from his love and whatever I just... like? That's a bummer, I guess? There is so little time to introduce anything about him, other than the facts that I guess the guy who frames him is kinda terrible, and you know, prisons are bad, and political prisons worse... I just had no time to feel invested enough to be outraged. His wife Meris is barely a character, so when absolutely anything at all happens to her, I again felt aggressively meh about it.

Had I already had relationship with these characters that I could map onto these new sci-fi versions, I probably would have experienced some actual feelings here? I wanted to have some feelings about the robot dude, but there I didn't know if it was just that there was so little time to tell the story or if the robot, being a robot, really had no preferences or thoughts or allegiances other than his last directive? It was difficult to grow feelings there, too.

AND THEN REDXAN HAS THIS WHOLE EMOTIONAL AND SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PIRATE CAPTAIN LADY DESPITE THE FACT THAT HE IS TRYING TO GET BACK TO HIS WIFE AND ALL?

The art was cool. Some neat things happened in the world building. I just did not care about any of the people or people-ish things here. ( )

On the surface Ibrahim Moustafa’s new graphic novel could be described as simply The Count of Monte Christo retold in an SF setting. But to do so would be doing it a disservice. While there is action and intrigue aplenty, it’s also a nuanced take on politics, technology, and the true cost of obsessive revenge. An interesting take on a classic tale. ( )