You know, this is my third review in this series (out of three books), and I don’t think I’ve included this disclaimer yet: these reviews are being done by a cisgender guy with the best of intentions, so if I’ve made a mistake in using a gender pronoun, please send me an email and I’ll correct it. I feel like it’s relevant to mention this now, because the conclusion naturally left a lot of the gender identity questions up in the air. If you haven’t been reading the series (and shame on you if that’s the case), I’ll briefly sum things up. Alastair Sterling’s consciousness gets brought back to life after his physical body was deceased for several years, but the identity of who’s done this is a mystery. Alastair was in a relationship with Brendan when he died, so Brendan built a humanoid robot with the partial consciousness of Alastair in them. This robot, as they aged, decided that they weren’t a man at all, so they transitioned to female. Which, naturally, raised all sorts of questions in both Brendan and the returned full consciousness of Alastair. All caught up? That’s great and all, but you should really read the previous two graphic novels to have a hope to catch up on the hundreds of pages of nuance that I just glossed over. Anyway, this volume starts off with an extended sequence about the creation and early years of Sulla, and the natural but confusing (to her and Brendan) realization that they were really female. This also covers some of the advances in robotics, AI and human part replacement technology, which also answered a few questions I still had rattling around in my brain. From there we go back to modern day (which is the future of the people reading this, obviously), and things there are grim. The last volume ended with Sulla (who was passing as human) outing herself to her friends by flying and Alastair running away (as everything going on was just too much for him). This is right around the point in the volume where I run into a brick wall, because the answers start coming pretty quickly at this point, and I’d be a real jerk to reveal them all in a review. I’ll just say that I’m sitting here, trying to think of something that was left unanswered, and I can’t come up with anything. I’d call that a solid ending, wouldn’t you? We do get the answer of who brought Alastair back, and I have to say that it’s not somebody who was on my list of suspects. So, again, kudos on a genuinely surprising ending. Blue also includes a short story about Lucille, who really gets the chance to shine in this volume. So after all is said and done, am I recommending this series? Yes, absolutely, why do you think I’ve been praising the bejesus out of this for three volumes? The scientific and ethical questions alone are worth the price, but the gender questions layered on top of that (and placed in a world where sentient past consciousnesses can have any body they want) raise it up to a whole new level. This is damned near a masterpiece and everybody who values my opinion at all should give this a shot. $25
