Book Review: The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag

It's so good to see Simon Stålenhag back with another breathtaking collection of paintings. His earlier books, Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood are masterpieces at visual storytelling. You can expect the same level of quality and treatment here.

Electric State is about the journey of a young woman and her small yellow robot through a dystopian and haunting landscape littered with gigantic battle dones and high tech trash. They are in a world where the society is hooked on virtual reality. Some of the images in this book can be quite scary, as if they are from a parallax universe.

Some of the giant drones are creepy as hell, with entangled cables hanging around in a mess. There's a sequence of images that show a huge pile of rubble coming to life, standing, and it turned out to be a drone, towering over a guy holding a small piston. That's scary, and reminds me instantly of Attack on Titan.

There's plenty to read and the story is long. The pictures themselves tell the story. If you don't read the text, your mind will start wondering about the back story for the images you look at. And that's what good art should do. Immerse people and have them think.

Highly recommended.

This is one of 2018's best artbooks

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