Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The way we damage other people is not always meant, it is not always with a design or purpose, we leave that to politicians and those with the agenda of keeping secrets intact. However, occasionally the damage executed is created by the tsunami of events that wash over us, the knives that are out and the inability to make sense of the world around us; the fear of what we might believe is the absurd, the futile and the meaningless.
What is required is a book of rules, a map of the past and the idea of the present all rolled into one. Life also needs the conduit, the required soul who can make sense of the world and piece together the reasons for its seemingly illogical nature.
It is in this that the third in Rob Davis’ series of graphic novels detailing the relationship between the personification of the utensil and humanity that the pieces are put together, the history of the world that has seen young children raised by gadgets such as hairdressers, can openers and clocks and evading a law set down throughout time by an unknown hand, opens up to full and frank acceptance.
Rob Davis’ carefully considered trilogy reaches a wonderful sense of exploration with the series’ third book, The Book Of Forks, a reminder of how pacing is important in such a story, one that is neither rushed or tediously slow, but has the energy to place itself in the reader’s mind as being at the pace they wish to set it. The Book Of Forks leads the reader only to the edge of the idea, it is the reader themselves who understands that they must be the conduit to belief and it is a belief that makes the entire journey planned out one of intrigue and dynamic comprehension, that the absurd is just another name for a truth that others cannot see or refuse to witness.
With the story centring upon the most damaged of the three young heroes who have made the series one of complete enjoyment, Cal rivals Vera Pike with his intensity and thirst for knowledge but it is in the room with an unknown Asian girl and the lack of cohesion in their conversation that the reader sees the vulnerability of the boy, the stance of the hero disguised in the clothes and demeanour of tragedy and the effect it has on the dynamic of the story.
A graphic novel series that raises the spirit of the compelling read, The Book Of Forks is a graphic novel that frames the work of genius, passionate and one that withholds nothing in its pursuit to make the reader understand that our top priority in the mind is that of free flowing imagination.
Rob Davis’ The Book Of Forks is out now and available from SelfMadeHero.
Ian D. Hall