A cover I can’t stop staring at with great drawings and color, Apocalyptic Girl stands out with its illustrations but lacks in story.

I’ve been very into comic books recently and search for them endlessly on Amazon or Goodreads. Apocalyptic Girl stood out immediately with a great cover and just the name in general. I’m a sucker for the post-apocalyptic genre.

Apocalyptic Girl follows Aria, a survivor of the end of times and her cat, Jellybean. When I read the first sentence in the description I was hooked:

Alone at the end of the world, Aria is woman with a mission! Traipsing through an overgrown city with her only companion, a cat named Jelly Beans.

Oh and there’s also the part where Aria is searching for an ancient relic of immense power that could save her and her companion, but mutated apes (I think that’s what they are) and local savages are in her way.

For starters I love the art. It’s colorful and expressive. Give it a 5/5 for that, but with the rest of the story, it seems to fall short. Aria is telling us about the end of the world, but gives it pretty quickly. The book should have been much longer or even a series. I wanted to get to know Aria more. Her relationship with Jellybeans is sweet and you know she really cares about her.

In the end I guess there’s supposed to be a twist…something comes into play you don’t expect to be there.

All in all, it’s fine. The story lacks in..well, story, but at least makes up with the great design and artwork. One would think the end of the world would not be so complicated to describe and understand. There seem to be mixed reviews on the book so I say go ahead and read it. Don’t settle for a kindle version though, even if you get it from the library, you need the physical copy for the illustrations.

*moving onto spoilers, of course*

As I said Aria lives in a post apocalyptic world. From what I can gather, man is pretty much responsible thanks to their endless violence (yeah we suck.) But the sun also plays a part in this, possibly sun beams. Aria uses the term, “tears of the sun.” And after all this two groups were formed: the blue stripes and the grey beards. I guess Aria is the exception because she’s off on her own looking for the magical relic she’s been searching for, for years.

The relic is a little confusing. In the end she does find it and it must send out a signal because guess who comes in: aliens. Yeah, Aria is working for aliens to find this magical object. How she ever met them….unless Aria is an alien, but she is responsible for the Earth’s fate being that the aliens task Aria with deciding whether to blow it up or not. So…she’s not an alien.

This is where the story gets confusing and needs to be longer. Okay the end of the world I get. The savages I get. Hell I even get this robot Aria is trying to fix to find the relic, but the aliens? Are they responsible for the end of the world? Or did they come back when the world ended to retrieve the magical object? Is it their object at all?

I like Aria and her relationship with Jellybeans, but other than that she’s a little hard to follow. She has to kill some dogs to defend herself and feels pretty guilty over it. She doesn’t want to kill. Later, well she murders almost all of them. When Jellybeans life is in danger a different side of Aria comes out. I get that. But where’s the remorse we got earlier with the dogs? She even debates whether to kill a young boy, but as for everyone else? Off with their heads!

Aria’s also a pretty experienced fighter. She lives in what was a subway (with running water) and rides a motorcycle. And she likes to sing. Other than that you don’t get much from her. Again, length is a big issue.

I enjoyed most of the story. It had all the post-apocalyptic tropes you see. Aria and Jellybeans relationship drives the story, but with everything else it just falls flat. I’d probably read it again though solely for the illustrations. It’s a pretty quick read too, fifteen minutes at tops.