Page 45 Review by Stephen
I'm astounded this works - it certainly is a narrow tightrope - but it does!
I should have trusted the scribe of BETTY'S BOOB, of course, and Mazel's luminous soft-form art should ensure plenty of sales to Young Adults as well as the Euro sci-fi / fantasy crowd. Did I say luminous...? The cover glows in the dark - it lit up my landing!
Olive spends half her student days in a student daze, totally spaced out.
It can happen during class, in the college canteen, during an exam... anytime and anywhere. It's honestly like she's not there; or not all there. Which is it?
To humour her loving Mom, Olive sees a therapist, but her therapist is so determined in her own analysis that she won't listen to Olive. She won't entertain the slightest possibility that Olive might in actuality be splitting her time between here and another, nebulous environment, which she's only partly created for herself, building instead on what was already waiting for her. And that sometimes - she can't help it - Olive is summoned back there, often at the most inconvenient times imaginable.
Their therapy sessions quickly devolve into really quite dextrous verbal sabres.
Meanwhile Olive's fellow students are given to make mockery, but not Olive's new roommate, Charlie. Charlie's even prepared to put up with Olive's... brusquer side. Lucky Olive, I say.
She's sure going to need Charlie when a space capsule bursts her bubble. It tears through the outer atmosphere of her inner tranquillity and crashes into her instantly iced-up bathing lake. An astronaut clambers exhaustedly onto the frozen surface...
But if that realm really is only of Olive's imaging, how come the selfsame astronaut, and the crew's catastrophic re-entry into Earth's atmosphere are currently making headline news on the real world's television channels?!?!
And suddenly, unexpectedly, this becomes an action comic.
I would pay attention to the first three pages, yes. Do try not to forget about them, because halfway through they'll suddenly prove strikingly relevant in a way I never saw coming, so close to home.
