The City Enduring has a population of 20 billion people, all of whose emotions are suppressed by a biocybernetic virus called the Emotion Exploit, in order for the city’s three different alien races to live in peace and harmony. Except it turns out that more and more of its citizens are using an illegal drug called Switchoff that, you got it, switches off the Emotion Exploit which leads to conflict between the races and the city’s first murder in 500 years. Unsure of how to deal with it, the City Enduring’s Council reaches out to the Guardians who dispatch a Green Lantern to the furthest of their sectors to investigate.
I’m not a big fan of Green Lantern books in general because they’re usually pretty bad but Far Sector was especially terrible even by those already-low standards.
The premise is quite feeble to start with. Our main character, Sojourner “Jo” Mullein (get used to this - the book is chock-full of dumb names), is new to the job and has never investigated a murder before either. So why did the Guardians send her to investigate a murder - and alone, no less, without a partner? Why did the Council send for a Green Lantern anyway when the crooks in charge could get away with their crimes easier without their interference?
She also proves to be wholly ineffective as the initial murderer is caught without her involvement and the City seems to have police stations and interrogation rooms so it’s hard to believe they’ve never had a murder in centuries (unless those interrogation rooms were used for people with parking tickets?).
Jo also has a self-generating power ring, which isn’t a bad idea in itself, though it negates the whole Lantern label if you’ve just got the ring without the Lantern-shaped battery. Why call them “Lanterns” then?
I’ve never read NK Jemisin before (and after this I’m not rushing to pick up any more of her stuff), but she’s an award-winning sci-fi writer, though I can’t see any evidence of award-winning brilliance here - the sci-fi elements are very unimaginative. Like one of the characters happens to be a regular hot dude - but he’s got a tail! Despite this city being so far from Earth, it basically IS Earth - they’ve got cops, restaurants, currency, music, dancing, assistants, board games, war, councils, referendums, big business. It’s the laziest type of sci-fi writing - present our world with a slight twist and call it alien.
Speaking of unimaginative, Jemisin, like too many Green Lantern writers, fails to give her Lantern character anything creative to construct with her ring. When it’s not just generic energy blasts or shields, it’s all stuff that already exists: larger hands, capes, glasses, hats, sticks, wings, ninja stars, chairs, even the mech suit Ridley wore in Aliens!
Maybe the awards Jemisin won were for silliest sci-fi names, because those are about the only notable features of the otherwise dreary and indistinct cast. The three alien races are called the Nah, @At, and the keh-Topli, with individual names like “Syzyn of the Cliffs, By the Streaking Ice”, “@Blaze-of-Glory”, and “Marth of the Sea, By the Wavering Dark, Until the Sun Falls”. This is why I generally don’t bother with modern sci-fi - the writers are usually idiots.
Jamal Campbell’s art is skilful but it’s hard to enjoy given how dull the story it's portraying is. For a story about emotions, the only one I felt was pure boredom. Which way will the referendum go? Who killed that unmemorable stupidly-named character and why was it important? Oh look, another murder that didn’t really mean anything. I didn’t care about any of it. I don’t know how many times DC (or Marvel) have to learn this but writers successful in other mediums don’t automatically make for good comics writers - NK Jemisin is simply the latest example of this.
A tedious, convoluted plot burdened with too many uninteresting characters in an overlong and instantly forgettable story, Fart Sector is the worst Green Lantern book I’ve read in years. This book continues to show that anything with the Young Animal label on it is to be avoided.
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