Title Le Sarcophage Author Christophe Bec Ilustrator Jaouen Salaün Publisher Casterman - 2015 First Printing Casterman - 2015
	Title Les Bâtisseurs Author Christophe Bec Ilustrator Jaouen Salaün Publisher Casterman - 2016 First Printing Casterman - 2016
	Title Eve Author Christophe Bec Ilustrator Jaouen Salaün Publisher Casterman - 2017 First Printing ECasterman - 2017
	Category Science Fiction Warnings Rape, Violence, Nudity, Explicit Sex Main Characters Eve, Adam, Siderow Main Elements Aliens Website ---

Le Sarcophage

Les Bâtisseurs

L'Imposteur

Alright, the artwork was gorgeous and the underlying plot was intriguing - an alien artifact is found on a distant moon, a sarcophagus, and opening it will change the way we view ourselves forever. Lots of interesting ideas there. But unfortunately it was overwhelmed with the rape and violence which were not necessary to the story, was just an excuse to shock the reader (or if they happen to be male, maybe make them go woohoo? As a female I just found it all distasteful and gratuitous), and I felt a bit uncomfortable with the idea that it wasn't the guy's fault, he was just overwhelmed by the pheromones produced by the artifact so he wasn't responsible for his attacks on the women around him. And fine, I could accept that on the moonbase where no one understood what was going on. But then it happened again on the ship that was transporting the artifact. And then it happened again on the Earth base where the artifact was stored. I mean come on people, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the men and women need to be segregated so the guys don't go all bananas on the girls. Even when they figure out the issue, the character Siderow is well aware he is being affected, and yet he goes back to his rooms where his girlfriend is waiting and he kills her (being a rich guy it's all cleaned up and no repercussions whatsoever occur...kind of like when someone knowingly drinks even though they plan to drive afterwards...as the ads on TV say, that's not an accident, that's murder).

So to me the author dragged out the rape scenes as long as possible just for the fun of it, and that unfortunately ruined what otherwise could have been a really thought provoking tale.

I also got confused a few times as to the science. So there are these beams coming at the Earth at faster than light speed (fine, maybe a little handwaving, maybe some advanced tech, it's an alien source either way). So we send a message to a ship that is in the vicinity of the source...however shouldn't that message, travelling at the speed of light, take longer to get to the ship than the beams to get to the Earth? It's a minor thing and maybe I missed something where we maybe came up with a kind of ansible technology (as per Ursula K. Le Guin or Orson Scott Card) that allows for instantaneous communication...but the characters were shocked at "how is it possible it's going faster than light" so seems to contradict us having such advanced tech. Minor issue but if you're going to drag science into the SF, you need to make it consistent across the board.

The other thing that jumped at me was a guy wearing a baseball cap. Seems weird but...this is 250 years in the future. Think back to the the early 1800's...what part of their fashion are we wearing now? Now jump back to 1550's...again, neither we nor the 1800's people are wearing the same kind of clothing. But I'll admit it's hard to imagine something 250 years in the future, easier to just assume we've invented the most convenient sort of clothing and we'll continue to wear the same things for the next few centuries. And this is not something I'm poking at this book in particular, this just happened to be the one where I realized this fact, but it's true across the board really. And any attempts at guessing future clothing will probably look silly to us (Fifth Element movie comes to mind), even if historically we've worn equally ridiculous stuff.