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Rating: 
Summary: A Fellow Artist's Review of Silent City
Review: Silent City is the best work of fantasy related artwork I have seen in a long time. Erez's works compare with those of Ron Spencer or Greg Horn, and are equally brutal in realism. Eric Yakin manages to combine light scaled cubism with modern realism in a bleak outlook of what may have been today. His youthful existance in Communist Russia truely shows through in this magnificent first work. Anyone and everyone should own a copy.
Rating: 
Summary: a good attempt but not a good artwork
Review: The artist, 18 when producing this debut wordless novel, attempts to depict the situations of the dehumanized, angry citizen under sadistic regime in the industrial wasteland. It is a good try but the artwork is a bit dull and flat in most of the pieces. One star for the attempt and another for the idea.
Rating:
Summary: a good attempt but not a good artwork
Review: The artist, 18 when producing this debut wordless novel, attempts to depict the situations of the dehumanized, angry citizen under sadistic regime in the industrial wasteland. It is a good try but the artwork is a bit dull and flat in most of the pieces. One star for the attempt and another for the idea.
Rating:
Summary: Ashes, and Stone, and Zombies
Review: This book is a perfect reflection of what is left when you exterminate the spiritual element of a society. This is what results when you forcibly amputate the "Holy" from Holy Russia. This is what is left- ashes, and stone, and zombies. It is a place of the living dead. Even the sadism of the police seems to lack any real animating passion. It is just a job, and if they are not brutalizing and humiliating someone (anyone really) then they aren't doing their job. Nothing personal. Even when the faceless, brutalized masses finally fight back there is no real heroism involved. It has as little meaning as a stampede at the stockyard.... I've heard this book compared to Jack London's _The Iron Heel_ and Orwell's _1984_. I'd have to agree, this is the purely visual expression of the same anti-totalitarian theme. It works. If you really take it in, then it can't fail to give you nightmares. You can tell that the artist was raised under the specter of the Gulag. That's the difference, if an American tried a similar work it would have come across as just another horror show or comic book- a Russian does it and it comes across as a plausible reality. Maybe that explains why this work hasn't found a wider readership in the U.S.- no one wants to reflect on what it represents. Don't get the idea that this is only about the "Gulagocaust", for it isn't. It isn't even a condemnation of true socialism, for it is pointed out that the "socialist camp" had nothing really to do with socialism, but everything to do with camps. As is pointed out in both the introduction and afterword this book is about any system where people are treated as lifeless statistics. It could just as well represent the coming global world of corporate totalitarianism. Reflect on this book two or three times some evening before turning in. If it doesn't give you nightmares then you haven't really been paying attention. How do you know if your society is slipping into this nightmare? As the closing afterward says- when you find that empathy is impossible and prejudice is unavoidable.
Rating:
Summary: Ashes, and Stone, and Zombies
Review: This book is a perfect reflection of what is left when you exterminate the spiritual element of a society. This is what results when you forcibly amputate the "Holy" from Holy Russia. This is what is left- ashes, and stone, and zombies. It is a place of the living dead. Even the sadism of the police seems to lack any real animating passion. It is just a job, and if they are not brutalizing and humiliating someone (anyone really) then they aren't doing their job. Nothing personal. Even when the faceless, brutalized masses finally fight back there is no real heroism involved. It has as little meaning as a stampede at the stockyard.... I've heard this book compared to Jack London's _The Iron Heel_ and Orwell's _1984_. I'd have to agree, this is the purely visual expression of the same anti-totalitarian theme. It works. If you really take it in, then it can't fail to give you nightmares. You can tell that the artist was raised under the specter of the Gulag. That's the difference, if an American tried a similar work it would have come across as just another horror show or comic book- a Russian does it and it comes across as a plausible reality. Maybe that explains why this work hasn't found a wider readership in the U.S.- no one wants to reflect on what it represents. Don't get the idea that this is only about the "Gulagocaust", for it isn't. It isn't even a condemnation of true socialism, for it is pointed out that the "socialist camp" had nothing really to do with socialism, but everything to do with camps. As is pointed out in both the introduction and afterword this book is about any system where people are treated as lifeless statistics. It could just as well represent the coming global world of corporate totalitarianism. Reflect on this book two or three times some evening before turning in. If it doesn't give you nightmares then you haven't really been paying attention. How do you know if your society is slipping into this nightmare? As the closing afterward says- when you find that empathy is impossible and prejudice is unavoidable.
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