A group of teenagers, selected for a terraforming mission to deep space, suddenly awakens from cryostasis ten years too early to find themselves orbiting a strange planet that doesn’t appear on any of their charts. Faced with insufficient resources, half the team goes down to the planet’s surface to scavenge while the other half stays behind to diagnose and fix the ship. Strange things start to happen to both teams as they find more and more unexplainable clues about their situation.
I found this story to be a little confusing. It felt like the middle of a story that was missing a beginning and an end. There was almost no space to give the cast distinct rounded personalities. Each one might have been shown with one major defining emotion or action in the face of an emergency, but none had backstory or much in the way of interpersonal connections. This is a horror story, and the pacing contributes to the tone as do the overly dark illustrations (which I personally thought were too dark to accurately portray background information important to the story). With the horror tone and some body horror, I would recommend this be placed in older teen or adult collections if added at all.
Bountiful Garden
By Ivy Noelle Weir
Art by Kelly Williams, Giorgio Spalletta, Justin Birch
Mad Cave Studios, 2022
ISBN: 9781952303173
Publisher Age Rating: All
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
