Review by Frank Plowright
Joe Flood’s very assured storytelling immediately hooks readers as a compact first ten pages supply a lot of information about the desolate Earth two hundred years in the future. Sarah lives in a grim mining community where bottomless pits are used for the dumping of books in large quantities, while the local teacher Mathis is happy to share his music with Sarah, but just notes a complicated situation when asked why more people don’t know the songs. At the same time Flood’s establishing the barren landscape, seen in torrential rain, and the massive parked mining vehicles intimidate by their sheer size. He then jumps forward four years.
Sarah now works in the kitchens, serving the miners their food, and she’s not happy. She believes her parents will return one day while her older sister accepts they’ve died in a mining accident. It’s a sinister society, where those with some authority routinely employ deceit and manipulation among their tools, and a lot has changed for Mathis since his attempt to show a film explaining how the world became as it is in his time. What he passes on also changes Sarah’s life. She’s always known something’s wrong and instinctively who to trust, and decides the time has come to escape to the underworld outside the mining facilities.
The plucky youngster taking on the evil system is hardly a new plot, but Flood works it with considerable panache and skill with the largely underground environment providing somewhere exotic, yet dangerous. His detailed cartooning is also emotion-rich, and he designs some great scurvy characters, people living underground not having many choices when it comes to clothes and accessories. Their experiences are carved on their bodies, and not all are human as we know it. The assorted armour, uniforms and strange vehicles also make for great visual distractions throughout. Colourist Mariane Gusmão avoids effects and her flat colour enlivens the world rather than restricts it. There’s a deliberate contrast between the brightness of what came before and the present day that reinforces the ecological message without it being hammered home.
Once escaped, Sarah has a mission overall, but as Flood plans Knee Deep as a trilogy there’s no great rush to get to it here. That could be frustrating were his world building not so comprehensively entertaining. There’s always another surprise around the corner, very often something to endanger Sarah, in what’s a thrill ride opening. Book Two is presumably a year away, but you’ll want it now.
