Edwyn and Virginia are in love. But, after stopping at a backwater town run by a ruthless businessman, disaster strikes when Virginia is captured and held hostage so that Edwyn is forced to do terrible things to get her back safe. Except, what no-one in this town realises until it’s too late, is that Edwyn is a former government spook-gone-rogue with mad skills - who is also completely mad. And he’ll stop at nothing to get back the love of his life. Also, Virginia is a plastic sex doll…
I quite liked Doug Wagner and Daniel Hillyard’s very dark and weird revenge story with a twist, Plastic. Broadly this is your average revenge story where the guy picks off the bad guys one by one, but it’s done well so I was never bored by it. It’s extremely graphic and violent so if blood and gore’s not your thing, be warned.
Edwyn is an interesting dude. He’s got a thing for plastic, he’s got a mysterious past, he talks to his invisible mom, and he drives around with a corpse in the passenger seat. At times he’s quite sweet and vulnerable, like he is with the teenage hitchhiker, and other times he’s a straight up animalistic serial killer!
What I was hoping for, and we didn’t get, was an explanation/flashback scene showing us why Edwyn was the way he was. He’s a former spook - but what happened? How did he go mad, why hasn't the agency stopped him, why is he obsessed with plastic and stale donuts? If there was more detail on his past, this would’ve been a much better book.
Edwyn is the only compelling character though. The boss character is your generic evil businessman character while the deputy character was cartoonishly evil. Wagner writes Edwyn in the same way that most main characters in revenge stories are written: unstoppable. So the story develops and ends predictably. It’s a fun journey though and Daniel Hillyard’s art is very pretty.
While it’s a fairly formulaic and straightforward revenge story that’s underwritten in places (ie. Edwyn’s past), Plastic is still an entertaining read executed effectively with great art and with enough different aspects to it to stand out from other stories from this genre. If you want to read Taken starring Norman Bates, give Plastic a shot!
No comments:
Post a Comment