I don’t know if Puvilland also lettered the story, but the lettering played a huge part in humanizing the story. Alex Puvilland brings Scott Westerfeld’s story to life. The art does a lot of the heavy lifting for this story. That’s one thing that was nice about this YA sci-fi story, believable dialogue, and honest reactions. There are a few other minor characters introduced, and they’re handled quite well, and all have believable dialogue. Lexa’s character isn’t quite fleshed out yet, we get a bit of her throughout, but not enough to appreciate what’s going on with her in the story. That doesn’t change here, but at least Addison as a character wasn’t always going on about her rules to the point that it broke her character’s logic when forced to abandon them. Especially in sci-fi as that means that they’re about to be broken.

Usually, I don’t care for stories that lay out the rules for any particular thing.

The endings not bad, hell, it will even make you want to read more, but there’s still a bit too much teased and not enough concluded.Īs for the story though, the narration is very strong and controls the pace throughout. Granted it’s a book series as it says “to be continued” at the end, but every volume should stand on its own and have a rewarding conclusion.

The only real problem I have with this story is that it doesn’t have a solid conclusion. Eventually, though, one of Addison’s buyers comes to find her and gives her a job in the zone… for another government. As the story goes on, we learn that her sister Lexa has a big secret from that day as well. Her sister who hadn't spoken since they day of the accident and was in town when it happened. It’s the only way she knows how to make money to support herself and her sister. Which of course introduces us to our main character Addison who makes a living by taking pictures of the spill zone and selling them on the black market. It’s a dangerous place and illegal to go inside. Cats that talk, rats that stack cheese and control territory. In a way, it’s as if a toxic event happened, but that even has left things like meat puppets, seemingly dead people that float. There was an event that changed a town leaving it uninhabitable. The story around Spill Zone is quite interesting. I don't have anything else to follow that, but yeah. It’s why I’ll always be a print guy, I love the smell of ink and paper and let me tell you, Spill Zone smells great. Call me strange, but this book smells great.

The spill zone