I chose to request this title on the cover alone and I’m glad I did. It’s a beautifully illustrated and hauntingly narrated series of vignettes that takes the reader on a journey that tests the boundaries of imagination. If you were a fan of Here by Richard McGuire, you’ll love this!

“Night is the natural state of the universe; it is in daytime that anomalies occur.” -Jean-Paul Sartre

While I loved the art style, I got a little lost in understanding the story. I am not sure if it would translate better for me in a physical copy.

Thank you to Fantagraphics Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

A contemplative journey through a series of vignette (semi-interconnected) that explores the nighttime and our dreaming. Wonderfully illustrated with a sparse amount text, letting the pictures set the mood and tell the story(ies).

Towards the end there was some text that particularly resonated with me and my feelings about the night: “The night does not belong to us. She harbors her own mysteries. Inhabited by convergences and divergences, fears and longings, readings and prayers one night bides its time to be the last, but meanwhile, they will be fleeting, endless, nightmarish, overwhelming...”

This was a brief, quick read that lingers, and could be re-read multiple times, providing different and/or deeper meaning and perspective.

My thanks to NetGalley and Fantagraphics Books for an advance copy of this graphic novel that takes place when the moon is high, the human spirit is sometimes at its lowest, physica spirits walk among the the living, and stories are created, shared and put away.

Sleep and I are not friends, not acquaintances, nor even that co-worker you just nod to at work. I have always had a hard time going to sleep, staying asleep, or even taking any comfort in sleep. My dreams are vivid, my thoughts are of moments of how I embarrassed my self in the past, what embarrassments happened in the present, and what embarrassments wait in the future. Which has made me a fan of the night. I am usually at my most creative, I suddenly have energy to do things that in the light of day seem hard to do. I loved overnights at work, constantly driving my comrades in the night shift crazy with my energy. The night has an energy, a smell, a feeling. Noises don't seem the same. Things become bigger, darker, scarier, more interesting. I think more about those lost at night, than during the day, as I feel they are closer, just behind my shoulder, or trying to help me with my dreams. All these moments are captured in this graphic novel, Nocturnos written and illustrated by Laura Pérez and translate by Andrea Rosenberg from Spanish, and tells of a group of travellers in the night, what they see, hear, think and share, in the light of the silvery moon.

The sun has gone down, the moon is starting to rise and the world changes from one of light and normalcy, to the night where strange things can happen. The night world is the main character in this story, about the effect on people, the spirits that still haunt the world, and the dark thoughts that we think. And yet there is hope. An older couple discuss life after death, with one saying I will look for you when I die. A relator shows a house to a couple who talk about changing things, while the spirit of the old owner keeps repeating this is my house. Stories that are told to put children to sleep take on weird identities of their own. Night rides lead to death, and from the woods things watch, not out of malice, but because they have always been watching from the dark. And always will.

A story that is a folktale, mixed with urban legends, and maybe a cautionary tale about what we are as a species. For a night tale, this is a very hopeful story, full of moments that surprise, and ideas that make one wonder about what is real and what is not. The story moves well, interlacing into other stories, merging characters and ideas, but not in a confusing way. The art and the story go very well together. The art fills in the blanks, keeping the reader flipping, wondering what will be next. Pérez has a feeling they want to convey and really does a good job, one that might make a reader stare at the pages for awhile just to take things in. One can see this was a labor of love.

A well illustrated story that shows the potential of the graphic medium quite well. This is the first that I have read by Laura Pérez, something I am going to have to amend, probably around 3:30 in the morning, waiting for sleep to come.

Nocturnos is a beautiful and unnerving graphic novel exploring the liminal space of the nighttime. The narrative follows various people through short scenes of their nighttime interactions and explores themes of loneliness, man vs nature, and dreams and reality. It's a very mysterious and fantastical exploration of the night and people's relationship to that time. The illustrations were absolutely gorgeous and the use of color to portray light and dark really helped capture the mood of the novel. If you're looking for a story, you won't find one here, however. I would recommend this one to people who enjoy philosophical musings and lovers of illustrations.

This story was ethereally sublime. The art and its depictions of the depth of night is beautiful. The night gives and it takes, but it was never ours to begin with. It felt like a fever dream in the best way possible, and I can't wait to hear what everyone else thinks about this amazing book.

Thank you to Fantagraphics and NetGalley for the chance to read a story that makes me feel like I've ascended, and thank you to Laura Pérez for creating it.

Nocturnos is a thought-provoking, hauntingly, alluring graphic novel told in a series of vignettes, capturing the realm of night.

As my first Laura Pérez read, I was wholly intrigued by the idea of what lurks in the night; how it can become a space of exploring a world outside of our own conscience. In this plane that Pérez crafts, time is stilled and one can inwardly see how it loops back to oneself, aging forward or backwards depending on what the person is internally navigating. Through the vignettes Pérez also explores how the night has differing meanings dependent again on who we are seeing the world through, capturing the immense multitude of collective feelings for this time of day.

There is a light narrative throughout the work that adds weight to our visual understanding of panels, sinking us further into this space and helping us connect with the idea of the in-between regarding dreams and memories. It's hauntingly beautiful and at times brings forth existentialism as we question reality.

Overall, with it's simple narrative and art that is rich in dark tones to emphasize the night, Nocturnos urges readers to think beyond our reality and sink into a dreamscape, hinging on eeriness and mysticism.

I requested this arc based on the cover image and title; and it did not disappoint. Nocturnos is about dreams and the cyclical nature of life. It was about night time, and how people exist during the hours that most slumber. It's existential; asking more questions than are answered to provoke the reader's mind.

The color palette was perfect to create the atmosphere of a dream. In combination with the illustration style, reading it feels like stepping into a hallucination (in the best way). It is a quick read that will leave you thinking and going back to look through the story over and over.

Weaving stories of dreaming and waking, this novel is a commentary and reflection on how one influences the other. There is an unsettling eeriness hovering in this book that seems to underline the mysteriousness and strangeness of dream worlds.

This was beautiful, start to finish. One should not approach this as a story but as a work of art. It's all about things that happen in the night - it is pensive and quiet, observing the world in the dark. The artwork is stellar!

This book takes place in the space between dreaming and awake. It's beautifully drawn, and the stories are all connected through the night and the dream world. You move through different panels as though moving through different rooms in a house, or through your mind...but these are all different minds. I think this would be a great graphic novel for a book club because there would be a lot to talk about.

The art is simple, but it draws you into each story with a lot of symbolism. I'll be adding this to my bookshelf.

Incredibly beautiful and dark, "Nocturnos" follows dream logic. Laura Pérez's latest graphic novel depicts visions of nocturnal life, liminal spaces, melancholy. It is visually stunning. It is all about the vibes and I loved it.

Profoundly beautiful. Like a folk horror take on Kubrick's 2001. Entrancing, captivating, and eerie.

“Nocturnos” is a stunning lingering on the melancholy and magic of the dark that is nighttime. Perez takes the reader down, through, and back into the rabbit hole with thematically connected whimsical, utterly phantasmagorical vignettes that slide into one another seamlessly.
“Nocturnos” asks what consciousness is and questions the illusion of the passing of time. Time here is shown through the growth of a plant, the quality of light, the rotting of a fruit, the aging of a human body.
I want to live in the lyrical illustrations: delicate vistas, sensuous textures, song depicted as clouds of color, landscape as dreamscape, life/death, awake/dreaming, memory within a dream. Becoming is both sad and beautiful.

Humans have tried to conquer the night, but it cannot be, will not be ours. Nothing is ours. We cannot “own”. We must share and be curious and *be* with the creatures of this world. Perez’s “Nocturnos” will be with me for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley for my Advanced Reader's Copy of this book.

Every now and then I will read a book and not know what to think of it after and this is one of those books. I loved the art but I don't know if this is even a cohesive book. For most of it seems like it's just a bunch of disparate thoughts and images but they all connect to the night and dreams. I would recommend this book but I wouldn't really be able to explain why.

I’m struggling to decide if this is a book I like or just find weirdly interesting for one read only.

*Not suggested for children due to trippy imagery and nude scene for sure*

On one hand the artwork illustrations are super cool!

On the other hand, what in the sleep paralysis nightmare is this book about? I mean, it’s not scary, it’s just sort of odd and eerie.

Moody and at times slightly creepy, but intriguing. More high art than comic, well suited to a more adult graphic novel collection. One scene of full frontal nudity.

By turns elliptical, cryptic, poetic, and philosophical, Nocturnos is rich in experimentation and association and brief textually. It’s abstract yet taps into the idea of night within homes that seem to be fleeting. An older couple discusses where they will find each other after death and one suggests right in the home in which they’ve always dwelled, yet another older woman’s home is torn away from her by a couple of young professionals who want it because it fits their budget. Reading this is sort of like wandering through a tarot deck illustrated with a unique but spare touch with heavy meaningful symbolism, or maybe more like wandering through a tarot reading by a psychic of several dreaming individuals all linked by the questioning of the temporary quality of a home and our wishing to belong in a place inside it.

The author immediately grips the reader not just with the art style and imagery crafted on the page, but also the poetic and insightful words. Each page held meaning and described the passage of life in a way that kept me reflecting back on the graphic novel for quite a while. There were certain points throughout this book that felt almost folkloric in the depictions of certain creatures and animals. As well as the mysticism of the universe as a whole. I would recommend this read for anyone looking to read a quick and almost philosophical outlook on the world around us and our places in it.

The art style was really amazing and I enjoyed reading however I just could not connect with the writing/characters? I was left wanting more but I did appreciate the reflective nature of this book, observing the night and its habitants and reflecting on how we do not own the night no matter how much we might try