Review: Infernal Regions

Infernal Regions is a gorgeous new graphic novel by Rebecca Stewart. It takes the real-life incident of Australian Prime Minister, Harold Holt, who was lost at sea in the 1960s and gives it a sci-fi twist with an environmental theme:

“A Prime Minister strides into a boiling sea. And disappears. Plunged into a slippery nightmare, he must face the consequences of an environmental war we’ve waged on a terrifying abyssal world.”

And this is perhaps the second thing that attracted me to this work (I’ll get onto the first in a moment) – a story that is fun, speculative, but which also points to a serious underlying theme. There is a growing body of work and inquiry at the moment around how the arts, including writing, and very specifically sci-fi, can be used to explore futures thinking in ways that are imaginative and innovative. Infernal Regions is a compelling example of this.

The first reason why I was hanging out to get my hands on a copy?

I knew the art would be good.

Rebecca has illustrated all of the covers for my own works (have a quick squizz at my online shop to admire her work) and I know how talented and audaciously creative she is.

I wasn’t disappointed. This is a beautiful piece of work that repays repeat readings and slow readings (viewings might be a better word). The images are both clear and striking but also full of beautiful shapes and fascinating detail. I love how Rebecca has used different visual textures throughout the work. The way she has laid out the images on each page also contributes to the impact and visual rhythms of the story. Text is used sparingly but usefully, helping the story along at some points but allowing the imagery to sweep the reader along at others.

I felt that Infernal Regions invited me to read / view a story in a different way, to consider the relationship between text, layout, structure, and image in a way that was refreshing to my brain that is so used to reading text all the time.

An entertaining graphic novel that is, in and of itself, a beautiful piece of art. Highly recommended.

Infernal Regions can be bought here.