Settling firmly on a two-and-a-half stars here.

The art is simply gorgeous. Dark and gritty, and oh so beautiful to behold. There are times when it fails to truly communicate precisely what's going on (usually when something subtle but really important is happening), but mostly, it's excellent.

And the story itself is good. Nothing earthshaking, but it's good.

The problem for me, and the reason I take off at least a star, possibly a star-and-a-half, is simply due to the four characters. Given enough motivation, my suspension of disbelief can easily be kidnapped and taken on a journey. I mean, I live for that shit. But the characterizations of these four robots...one's an alcoholic, fer chrissakes...and the fact that one of them is a "kid" that's innocent and needs to be saved...

Just no. Can't do it. My suspension of disbelief kept becoming unsuspended. It would hit the ground hard, and say, "What? That's just...dumb!" a lot. No matter how hard I tried to distract it with the pretty pictures.

And because this story was about four robots with disturbingly human characteristics, the author had to virtually tie himself in knots to explain why all this seemed logical for the various models of robots to act the way they do.

Just couldn't quite buy into it. ( )