Review: Project Nought
Reviewed by Jack Remiel Cottrell
Author:
Chelsey Furedi
Publisher:
HarperCollins US
ISBN:
9780358381693
Date published:
04 April 2023
Pages:
336
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$29.99
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Welcome to far-future Auckland where we have time travel, world-leading scientific and technological conglomerates and all the shadowy conspiracies any dystopia could want.
Ren, running away to meet his pen pal, falls over in 1996 and wakes up in 2122. Along with his host Mars, fellow time traveller Phoebe and ex-member of the time travel education programme Jira, Ren finds himself at the centre of a mission to uncover the truth. It seems like time travel might be too good to be true.
Project Nought is a middle-grade to young YA graphic novel. As an adult who has read more dystopian comic books than is healthy, I struggled to suspend my disbelief. A lot of what happens doesn’t make sense – and not in the conspiracy way. Plotlines are jettisoned or resolved too fast. The teenagers of 2122 are using the exact same slang as the teens of 2021.
But this doesn’t make Project Nought a bad graphic novel. It makes me not the right reader. I borrowed a friend’s tween as a test reader because I felt I couldn’t truly do Project Nought justice without someone who thought 1996 was the distant past. They loved the novel. The multiple character views aren’t just artistically impressive but helped them follow the complex plot, which they said was fast-paced and exciting. They also liked seeing themself, and Aotearoa, in well-produced graphic novel.
While I recognised pretty quickly that Project Nought isn’t written for me now, I could also easily see someone it was written for – and even through the use of time travel. This is a story I didn’t get as a young teen but desperately wanted. Straight characters got to do time travel battles with secret conspiracies. Queer characters just got to be queer – and only if they were angst-ridden about it. Project Nought’s characters devote a little time to angst but far more to unravelling the evil corporation and earning themselves a good ending.
There are some excellent parts of Project Nought, even from my jaded perspective. The story unfolds quickly and we’re never left in the same place too long. Where some aspects don’t make sense, they’ve obviously been pruned to appeal to the target reader.
The art is great and the subtle shifts in style from perspective to perspective and character to character is both well-done and interesting. Mars, who is easily the most anime-esque character, gets given the full manga treatment occasionally. Ren, more cautious and guarded, is drawn in a way that’s more muted – even when they share the same panel.
And they share the same panel a lot because this is a love story. Multiple love stories in fact. Plus, the far future may have many things but what it doesn’t have is straight people (every dystopia needs utopian aspects).
Ren and Mars are gay, Phoebe is bisexual, Jira is non-binary. Even the baddies are lesbians. It’s a wonderful contrast to hypermasculine superhero comics. My tweenage test reader found the storyline and especially the characters, “extremely relatable, other than the time travel bits.”
These super cute love stories, for all that there’s not a hetero amongst them, are what peg the book for a younger audience. The most risqué thing on the page is a kiss. These aren’t adult themes – these are themes our rangatahi understand about themselves.
That isn’t to say Project Nought is only for LGBTQ+ young people. Any kid who is looking for something a bit more sophisticated than Marvel or an intro to graphic novels will appreciate it. But there’s something special about a comic where you can see yourself as the hero and not just the wise-cracking sidekick.
Reviewed by Jack Remiel Cottrell
