Publisher's Weekly Review

Verstraete leaves no stone unturned in his English-language debut, a violence-drenched, underground-comic-style flight into the unknown. The proceedings open with an anarcho-comic noir nod to Pulp Fiction, when a couple of mouse-masked henchmen named Jules and Vincent beat a seemingly random stranger to death, then steal his briefcase and fence it to a crime boss known as Mr. Pussy. From there, the volume (which has been bound to mimic a valise, with actual handles) splits into multiple strands, none of them adhering to laws of narrative logic. The Mr. Pussy plot involves his complicated relationship with the quasi-demonic and briefcase-obsessed Lilith. Elsewhere, the man seemingly killed in the first pages is resurrected as a spirit passing from one entity to the next before he realizes he can create his own form. Verstraete includes a "writer" character who occasionally addresses the reader or his characters in futile, Monty Python--esque attempts to bring order to chaos, and even resorts at one point to a literal deus ex machina. Bright and dynamic figures cavort in bold colors, in acrobatic and often grotesque styles that range from pop psychedelia to quasi--German expressionism and American precisionism. It's an expertly rendered if at times seemingly arbitrary journey into a realm of magic, brutality, and entropy. Verstraete finds a cockeyed humor in this apocalyptic vision. (Aug.)