Name: Echoes
ISBN: 9781607062158

Joshua Hale Fialkov

Rahsan Ekedal

Brian, a functioning schizophrenic with a new baby on the way, hears a disturbing deathbed confession from his also schizophrenic father, leading him to believe that his father was a serial killer.

Echoes

Jessica Nottingham

Eh, this could have been so much better. As it stands, this isn't a bad read. We meet Brian, a man trying to cope with a mental illness and the death of his abusive father at the same time. All Brian wants is for things to be normal. He has a pregnant wife, and has built a life for himself. What could go wrong? Apparently, quite a lot.
 
Kudos to Fialkov for writing an interesting twist into this serial killer story. I definitely didn't see that coming. What I think was missing here, to really pull me in, was the length. Brian's story was heartbreaking. His inability sometimes to distinguish his hallucinations from reality was terrifying, and I felt for him. It's just that there wasn't enough time for me to really fall into his story. Before I knew it, things were at a climax, and the story was over.
 
I do have to give a big high five to Rahsan Ekedal for the illustrations in this book though. Each panel is lovingly crafted in black ink on stark white, and it really emphasizes the bleakness of the whole story. I will say that I wasn't a huge fan of the two page spreads, laid out as they were though. It would have been easier to read them in a loosely bound book that would lay flat, but in this case they were hard to read.
 
Final verdict? Borrow this. It's good, and if you're interested in serial killers I think you'll enjoy it.