While it seemed like The Metabaron series could do no wrong, this third book lacks some of the lustre of the previous volumes. It’s a classic syndrome, as the story picks up pieces from previous books, drops new things into place and lines us up for what, hopefully, will be a finalé fitting of the previous books. However, in this instance it falls a bit flat.
Essentially, the Metabaron spends this book picking himself off the floor and rallying resistance against the Techo-Technos. As usual for the ultimate warrior, his enemies have to get at him through the things he loves, while he hides his emotions behind his hard, military personality.
The art, as ever, is beautiful. Most of the action in this book is planet-bound, but the alien world that Valentin Sécher builds around Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jerry Frissen’s story and characters is wonderful, evoking the visual splendour of James Cameron’s Avatar, undoubtedly helped by this story’s inclusion of blue-skinned natives.
We’ll give this book the benefit of the doubt, then. Metabaron fans are unlikely to see it as the highlight of the series, but the anticipation of what it might be building up to is what this is really all about. Fingers crossed that it lives up to it.