The brainchild of Prometheus and the video game Lost Planet, Siberia 56 has a lot of potential to make future readers find excuses to continue splurging on forthcoming issue releases.

I of course had a difficult time reading this, but not because of the content, it seems that the book doesn't appear properly on my kindle device. So, even though it took a while to figure out who was speaking with each character, I did enjoy the artwork and dialogue. Because of the issue I had with it I can't say whether I got each of the character voices right or I mixed them up which is a very probable possible. I would however purchase this because I would like to read it without issues and give a better review on it.

This is a fun and fast-paced sci-fi action adventure set in the far future on a planet 80 million light-years from Earth. It's an English language omnibus edition containing three episodes which were originally published as separate volumes in French between 2014 and 2016.

Sibera 56 is a desolate and freezing planet with not a lot going for it apart from a breathable atmosphere. Surveyors and scientists from Earth have been visiting it for nearly one hundred years in an effort to establish it's suitability for human settlement. If the climate isn't bad enough, Siberia is home to a number of predatory animal species which are the main features of the story, the cover art providing a clue.

The story is narrated by a member of the thirteenth mission to Siberia, and along the way there are flashbacks where the foundations to the story are laid. As the pages go by the overall plot builds continuously and the seed is sown for what looks like is going to be quite a saga. The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger and sets things up nicely for the story to continue.

In Volume 1: The 13th Mission things kick off with the crew coming out of cold sleep and their entry shuttle experiencing major engine problems. They make a crash landing some distance from their intended destination, forcing them to undertake a ten day trek across the rugged and treacherous landscape. Think Antarctica on a really shitty day, multiply that by a factor of ten, and you're close to imagining how grim the place is. Along the way things are fraught with peril, to say the least, and we see a bit of what Siberia has to offer, including some of the local wildlife such as the aforementioned predatory species. Add in some mysterious ancient ruins that are, at this point, unexplained and you get the sense of a much larger story. What is most apparent is that there is a mysterious and elusive menace on the loose which has been the bane of efforts on Siberia since day one. It will suffice to say that the journey is not without considerable cost.

Volume 2: Morbius opens with a flashback to the first explorers to land on Siberia and their efforts to build a base of operations. Again, the native animal life are a dominant factor in events and we learn more about the "mysterious and elusive menace". More is presented about the ancient artifacts on the planet and it's past history. Exploration missions are mounted to attempt to discover their secrets.

The action ramps up in Volume 3: The Pyramid and it is here that we are introduced to the Second Earth Council (SEC) which oversees the colonization missions. A new threat is approaching from outer space and plans are put into place by the SEC to deal to the problems on Siberia hopefully once and for all. But certain people down on the planet see a bigger picture and have different ideas. They attempt to stop these plans from being executed. The ending is quite sudden but, like I mentioned earlier, the story looks set to continue right from where it left off.

The clues given about events on Siberia prior to the human presence are tantalizing and hint at a big story that will hopefully follow.

The story has only one significant character of any depth and from whose viewpoint the story is told. The others play a variety of roles but they are not really explored at all and remain distant. That is really my only complaint of the whole book, it would be nice if the characters were explored more. But there's no denying that the action and adventure part is just fine, and I guess that is what this graphic novel is mostly about. Also, I would've liked to have learned something about just how it is possible to travel those incredible distances from Earth into intergalactic space (80 million light-years). Maybe we will in further episodes.

This is a good graphic novel and very easy to read with an intriguing story in which both the graphic and textual presentations flow nicely. A slight let-down was the graphics resolution of the digital review copy that I read, it was quite grainy and blurry which made it a little difficult to make out some details in the illustrations. With more definition I doubt this would be the case.

4/5 for concept
3.5/5 for delivery
4/5 for entertainment
= 3.8 out of 5

I really enjoyed this! The artwork is breathtaking and the story is so interesting and fastpaced, I'm really impressed that the story could stand on its own.

I had a lot of hopes for this volume and found myself largely disappointed.

The high point is that the art is wonderful. It's beautiful to look at and captures the world and tone of the story effectively.

Unfortunately, the writing does not match the art in quality. The pacing feels off throughout this volume, rushing through important moments while lingering on things that are less important. The characters never live up to their potential. Many are killed, but I felt no emotional response to any of these deaths. Also, every strong female character is either given a side role or eliminated just as she begins to become central to the narrative.

Additionally, the plot follows many of the expected beats of other sci-fi disaster and survival stories. I've seen many of these elements before and the problem here is that nothing is done to differentiate them or make them interesting in any new way. Simultaneously, the jumps from plot point to plot point are often illogical, with no real reason or explanation provided for some clearly foolish decisions.

Finally, the page-to-page writing is often either melodramatic or overwritten.

I feel like, with some revision, this could have been great. The art is strong and the story has real potential, but as it is, I was consistently disappointed. This is even more unfortunate because this comic has a cool premise with some exciting elements - that could have led to a great story if only they had been presented differently.

Reader's advisory:
Suitable for older teens and adults due to strong language and violence.

Really enjoyed the story. The setting kind of reminded me of the game Lost Planet. I would have liked a bit more dialogue but the art was good too

What pulled me to this graphic novel at first was the style of art on the cover. I love the colors and the way it looks painted. I'm not sure what medium the illustrator used but I found myself examining quite a few frames to see how I could do something similar with watercolor. This was especially true for the landscapes which featured a lot of ice, snow, and rock. I also enjoyed the scenes which depicted a lot of space - I thought those were done really well. Unlike the artwork devoted to the environment, I was kind of back and forth with the way the characters were portrayed. I appreciated that it wasn't cartoony and admired how well it was done. I liked certain frames but disliked others, especially those that got a lot darker.

Story wise, this was just okay for me. The alternating timeline confused me on a few occasions which made it difficult to get fully immersed in the story. Violence starts fairly early in this graphic novel and I think it would have had more impact for me personally if I'd gotten to know the characters a little more before some of them died. As for the ending, I'm still really confused by it. I expected more loose ends which would lead to future volumes in the series but there really aren't many. I am not sure if there will be more for the series or not but I'd be willing to read them if there are.

Overall I enjoyed this far more for the artwork than the story though I did enjoy both. If you are a fan of graphic novels with a space exploration theme and don't mind a little blood and guts this is a great graphic novel to try.

Siberia 56 - frozen inhospitable wasteland

First of all, the illustrations are gorgeous in this graphic novella (I guess that's the correct term - to me it's longer than a comic book but shorter than a novel, even though it includes three stories).

Back to the illustrations by Alexis Sentenac - I read this on my Kindle Fire HDX so the illustrations aren't huge. But even so they were incredibly detailed and beautiful.

Now to the storyline - I thought it was mediocre at best. I love this type of story usually i.e. planet exploration with all kinds of monsters making it dangerous to even think of colonizing the planet (and BTW one set of monsters reminded me of the worm monsters in TREMORS). Add on to that incredibly freezing temperatures and hurricane strength winds and this should have been a fun, exciting read. It wasn't.

The characters were generic and barely developed and the storyline skipped all around, making it hard to follow.

So, if you collect Sentenac's work, definitely get this. But if you're just looking for an exciting space adventure, I'd pass.

I received this graphic novella from Insight Comics through Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review.

On Goodreads.

Siberia 56's basic story is my weakness when it comes to science fiction. A team of scientist is dispatched to a new planet to explore and collect as much data as possible.

To start off, the illustrations and coloring set the tone of the story. They are dark and ominous, which creates an unsettling feeling while reading. The illustrations reminded me Dark Horse's Alien comics.

The story is intriguing; however the edition I received to review made it almost impossible to understand who was talking and what was going on.

The dialogue is overwritten and didn't sound as professional and scientific. Thereby making the story and characters loose their credibility.

Why is it that in all science fiction stories, whether they are comics or film, does the female character always end up in a white tank top and underwear? You mean to tell me that in the future there are only white tank tops available to wear underneath space suits? And that on an alien planet there's a valid and logical reason to parade around without a space suit? Ridiculous.

Overall, Siberia 56 is an entertaining story. It kept me entertained, but didn’t offer anything new or exciting to the genre. If you enjoy science fiction stories with a dash of horror then you'll most likely enjoy Siberia 56.

The concept was pretty awesome and the graphics were really impressive too, but after the first 20 pages, the story started to feel uninteresting, flat and even predictable. At times it also felt like a slog as I did not like the main character at all.
Overall, the concept was really, really good and I was genuinely looking forward to reading this book as it had some pretty good theme going on, but unfortunately the characterization and the pacing and tension of the story ruined it.
I had problems with some of the dialogues too, but that's okay given that the ebook is a translated edition.
I wish this book had a dynamic cast of characters and that at least the main character was likable, as it would have been a really strong read then. But alas, it was what it was.

The story of Siberia 56 owes much to 1950s cult classic movie Forbidden Planet (and indeed, is even referenced within the story). Taking modern thriller sensibilities from the likes of Alien and The Thing, Siberia 56 can feel like it travels very familiar territory in its very cinematic approach. Beautiful visuals smartly washed in watercolor complement an atmospheric take on sci fi horror that works in man places but oddly falls flat in characterization. As such, this is a good read but not a great one; it doesn't elevate beyond its inspirations despite a sophisticated nonlinear storyline.

Siberia 56 is a planet with icy extremes but suitable for remote colonization. When the colony's 8 yearly replacements arrive, an emergency forces a crash landing of their shuttle 150 miles off course [oddly enough, they still use Imperial measurements in the future]. In journeying to the colony, they will fight the planet's weather conditions as well as the few predatory creatures that survive in the harsh environment. But the predators are only one of the concerns as they also come across an alien civilization ruins that are millions of years old. It may not just be the the planet that doesn't want the humans there......

I greatly appreciated that the story unfolds in interesting ways - sometimes starting in the past and sometimes starting in the future. All threads are relevant, however, to the main plot and therefore readers won't feel lost or annoyed at the jumps. There is one protagonist and it is his story that we follow to the bitter end.

As much as I enjoyed the story, it did fall flat in some areas (pacing issues) and I had logic issues throughout. E.g., no information about an apex predator that is devastating the planet nor about the alien civilization that they knew existed was in the records given to the new colonists - only the smaller predators were discussed. That seemed odd considering there was no conspiracy to hide information and one would think that in the 50(?) odd years that the place had been colonized, no one had bothered to analyze the biggest threat or the mysterious alien civilization? What the heck were the other colonists doing there, then, other than building a large facility? And why wouldn't the invisible entity stalking them not be in the predator information?

Author Bec isn't afraid to kill off characters and the body count can get pretty deadening. There are great moments of pathos but it is kind of killed by the apathetic responses to the situations by our main colonist. He just seems to be moving in a fog and important moments are given a tell or a show that should resonate more than they do. It was hard to get into any of the characters or even differentiate them other than male or female and then dead body. Too much time/emphasis is given on some areas and then not enough time is spent in others.

I have to admit, most of the actions/situations of the characters felt very deus ex machina in order to create 'poignant moments'. As such, they never really felt authentic and fell very flat. I didn't have any reaction as I should have and nothing really made me ponder any of the book after I had completed it. I didn't agree with or understand any of the choices the characters made and so I kind of just waited for the repercussions knowing that they would be bad.

The illustration work suits the story well as does the washed out coloring. If anything, I found the coloring to be the best part of Siberia 56 with its tones of blues and whites - a story set in ice/snow could be very bland but the scapes do come alive with the color. I just wish the people were a bit more differentiated - they all began to look alike at some point and I couldn't tell the difference any more (even with the women, oddly enough).

In all, it wasn't a terrible book by any means but admittedly the Forbidden Planet references (e.g., the movie came out in 1956 and this novel is Siberia 56) were a bit too strong (not literally but in the idea of the main villain and psychological themes) and pulled me out of the story. I was oddly disaffected and disenfranchised throughout - I felt like I had already read this story before/someone had taken various sci fi movie storylines and pieced them together. I wish this added something new to the genre but it just didn't. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

I'm a sucker for space exploration stories, especially the kind that provide no way out for the explorers, as much and as long as they try to survive everything a new world throws at them. I think it's not necessarily the unknown dangers they face so far from home, but the reactions and the interaction between the characters as they face something so far outside of the imagination.

Siberia 56 hits nearly all of the necessary points for me, and it was very nearly 5 stars. Deadly invisible monsters, deadly visible monsters, crooked leadership, and an extremely hostile environment made this quite enjoyable, and quite tense. The artwork played well into this, too, as it captured the harsh bleakness of the planet.

I'll definitely be looking for the next volume!

A cool sci-fi interstellar graphic novel with some great plot twists and a defined art style.

This was a shame, the graphics were far better than the story.