What an absolutely fascinating book. I don’t think this is any part of a larger universe, which is a shame, as all kinds of themes/characters in here could be expanded upon pretty easily. This is ostensibly the story of a famous man, his bodyguard and them hiding in their vehicle when the princess is getting ready to leave her hotel to avoid the swarm of paparazzi. Leading up to that we see a pack of wild dogs roaming, suggesting that civilization doesn’t stretch far in this world, and the bodyguard is wearing a square covering over his mouth… assuming that is his mouth. From there the bodyguard tries to tell the story of the princess to his client, but the client falls asleep on him before we get to see the ending. What we do see shows a pampered young lady who remained in her apartment, cut off from the world below, as society crumbled. As for the princess leaving her hotel, things are not as they seem, and a trick is pulled on the assembled paparazzi. And a secret is revealed about the nature of the bodyguards, as you may be able to guess from their picture on that cover. Antoine does a fantastic job of letting the images speak for themselves and having quiet images serve to build up the world and the status of certain objects in that world. The slow build to the apartment of the princess took many pages, but it was the perfect way to show exactly how cut off she was from any kind of reality outside of that apartment. I said earlier that this series could go on, but don’t get me wrong: this book works really well as a self-contained story. I’m left with more questions than answers, but there’s no law that says that that has to be a bad thing. $6
