Page 45 Review by Jonathan
"Your designs for Galina are exceptional. It is a joy to see them made real. Galina, even incomplete, is a spectacular sight."
"It's so far... so far from being finished. There is a symmetry I'm trying to attain... a symmetry."
"I wanted to discuss the overrun on the project timetable. The board has some concerns..."
"Well... well, the delays are in part due for my need for..."
"Symmetry?"
"I thought you'd understand. There's a perfection... a perfection, and it is elusive. All the simulations had the most supreme symmetry, but as I walk around now... as it arises around me in solid form, the symmetry is off."
Or is it? Depends upon precisely what is being built... and by whom...
And for whom...
Yes, we're finally back to the Brink and still hovering right on the edge of it as former cop Bridget Kurtis returns only to once again find herself right in the middle of some very strange goings-on involving mysterious sects...
Kurtis was politely asked to leave the service despite her heroic actions which thwarted a deadly cult's plot to drive everyone slowly mad on Odette habitat. It's like the authorities want to sweep any crazy talk, and any reminders of it, right out of the airlock...
BRINK VOL 1 also culminated in the mysterious 'Mercury Incident' which left us with an epic cliff-hanger!! What could have made Mercury seemingly disappear completely? Surely the cults' talk of elder space-gods lurking, waiting for their moment to enter our space, couldn't possibly have any grain of truth to it...?
Anyway, both the sects and Kurtis are back. The latter's now working as a private security consultant for Junot Corp, freshly assigned to Galina Habitat, currently a construction site running well behind schedule amidst rumours of spooky apparitions...
I have to say, I was utterly gripped by this second volume!! It's near note-perfect science fiction with its own unique mind-warping edge of creeping horror. Which was just disturbing enough to ensure the obsessed architect in the pull-quote above decided to jump off into total nothingness, in his encroaching despair at the seemingly inexplicable asymmetrical elements being introduced into his design...
Speaking of design, once again, Ian's art is crisp and vibrantly coloured and oh so precise. Whereas in the first volume, it was all about capturing the claustrophobia of close confines living in a floating tin can, here's it's all about the space. The sheer vertigo-inducing expanses of emptiness of the unfinished Galina Habitat, showing off the vast potential of its unfinished lines and curves... waiting impatiently to be filled...
Kurtis, meanwhile, is still apparently convinced all the space oddity can be explained entirely rationally. As she details for her new colleague whilst searching the sites of reported hauntings deep in the bowels of the half-constructed habitat...
"In my experience, it's generated by the shit living conditions here on the Brink. Overcrowding, isolation, too much high-dose nudge... but those things, they somehow tap into some sort of shared psychosis. Some kind of lizard brain response."
"What do you mean, shared?"
"There's a kind of language that recurs. Bullshit words and phrases. Like the cults have a vocabulary of their own."
"How could they...?"
"I don't know. But "Low Theta" is one of the phrases."
Guess what they've just seen sprayed on the wall...
Once again, it appears all is not what it seems... and I mean that in myriad ways... Next thing you know, I'll be believing in ancient alien entities living inside the sun... But that would just be completely crazy, right? Right?
