Justice

Before reading this graphic novel I had never heard of the Nepali Civil War which took place over the span of a decade from 1996-2006 with fighting between the Nepali Government and the Communist Party of Nepal. Caught in the crosshairs were tens of thousands of innocent Nepali people living in rural areas like the family in this story.
This story was a very surface level overview of the war meant to raise a wider awareness. While I appreciated learning about this war, I wanted to dig deeper to understand the motives of the Maoists. I also felt like ending the story when the brother had so much to tell about his time away left me wanting more in that regard as well.

This is a very important graphic novel.

It brought awarness to me of a civil war in Nepal and how that greatly affected the Nepali people by telling it through the eyes of a fictional family. The story is told through the perspective of Tara, she is the eldest daughter, as she has gone back home to her childhood house which she and her family had to flee during the war after her brother is taken by the rebels. She flashes back to right before he was taken to what lead them to leave the house. As an American, Justice brought to my attention a tradgic war I had never known. I know that I will carry the story of Tara and her family with me always, and I will wonder about the people in real life that had to live through 10 years of brutal attacks and heartache.

I would certain recommend this book, especially to middle grade and teenage kids; as it will share with them a story of other people's lives to help them better understand to be compassionate with the world around them.

A graphic novel that skims across the Nepalese Civil war to give a background of the 10 year conflict that rocked the country. I do feel the book was trying much more to bring awareness to a conflict and its aftermath, and was not trying to distill the motivations of the two sides to give a deeper understanding. Both are useful tools for graphic novels, but I greatly prefer the latter type.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for the e-ARC of this graphic novel! This graphic novel sheds light on a part of history that is often overlooked and not talked about. I had never read anything about the Nepali civil war before so this was a good, albeit brief, introduction to how the conflict impacted civilians. I thought the story was good and the characters as well, however, I wish the novel was longer so readers could have more time to get to know the characters and have more background about the war. Additionally, one critique I have is that the character introduction at the beginning of the novel spoiled some of the plot points. I also think that there should have been a trigger warning for suicide, as this was totally unexpected for me and I can imagine some potential readers would want to know about this content beforehand. Overall, though, this is an important novel sharing an important story that is underrepresented in mainstream literature.

'Justice: A Tale of the Nepali Civil War' becomes provides an extremely important perspective into a long-forgotten tale of war, politics and social unrest during the civil war that took place in Nepal from 1996 to 2006. The tale presented in this book's duration of ten years is divided in three chapters, each one tenser than the other, enabling the reader to experience difficulties that often stretched beyond normal imaginations. This is an absolute must-read, presented in quite the simple form of illustrations, for those who wish to know more about how different factions of dozens of countries across the world have one thing in common - the hunger for their rights and freedom from injustice.