 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about a special book, The Electric State by Simon Stalinog. This book is fantastic, y'all. I'm going to show you one or two pictures, but there is artwork on every single page. That's important because the book is brand new. Full price is $35. Now, before you click away, you need to see some of this stuff. I'm not going to show you the best work, but this is what you're getting. That kind of stuff. And I'm going to show you one more that I picked out, especially for this video. That is more than just this. Now, the thing that there's a lot more than what I showed you. In fact, one of those pictures is one of my favorite pictures in the book. And one is just a good overview of what you're going to get the majority of the time, which is stuff kind of lost in the mist. It's the story revolves around a girl and her little robot companion skip right there. There is a terrific story underneath all of this artwork. Also, I hesitate to say too much about the story because I don't want to spoil anything for you, but it has to do with virtual reality and these helmets people wear. And I think that's all I want to tell you about this one. The premise is great. The concept, the art, everything is cool. I did not expect the with artwork this good. I did not expect the story to be even better. I know that sounds odd, but usually when you have a one person art book like this, the story lacks and then the artwork fills in the holes. There could be no artwork in here and it would still be a great book. The artwork is more, much more than just the icing on the cake. It does add depth and layer and it helps those that might not be able to visualize what the author is talking about in here. It does help with all that, but it's not needed. I'm glad that it's there because there's some amazing imagery in here. But there might be, it might be too good in some places. And what I mean by that is sometimes the writing evokes a certain visual image, at least for me it did. And then the image while terrific is, and I was talking about this on stream yesterday. The image is terrific, but it doesn't live up to what I conjured in my own head. I know that sounds weird, but it's like, you know, let's say, even if you don't like cake, let's just say for the sake of argument, all cake is delicious, okay? You have, but chocolate cake, I feel chocolate cake is more delicious than vanilla cake. I love both, but I'm going to go for the chocolate cake first. And chocolate cake is kind of my imagination and the vanilla cake is what's on here. Not that there's anything plain about it. The artwork is amazing, but it's so good is what I'm trying to say. The artwork and story are so good that they don't need each other. So when they come together, somehow it makes a, it makes not a lesser experience. That's not what I'm trying to say. It makes an experience that does kind of take away because you can see the artwork and imagine the story. You can read the story and imagine the artwork. Together it's kind of like he's holding, the author is holding your hand. Now, that does not change the fact that I loved every single page of this book. That would be my only complaint. It's not really a complaint. It's a compliment because both things are so good. What truly shocked me is the ending. I was not expecting to get to the ending of this book and see the last final images with no words on the screen and to feel such a deep emotion for this book. I thought this was just some very cool, grim, I don't want to call it cyberpunk art because I don't think that's cyberpunk. It might be now that I think about it, but I wasn't expecting to have such a deep connection over the passage of time that I read this. When I got to the final bit of it and I was reading about Michelle and Skip and all that and then it just stopped and I was giving images instead. That carried so much more emotional weight for me. I guess I kind of spoiled just a little bit. You know that the writing stops before the actual book stops, but it's up to you to read it for yourself and I really, really do hope you do. This is just something that you can pick up and look at at the bookstore, but it's fantastic artwork and I'm kind of stunned speechless by this book because I wasn't expecting it. It came out of left field for me. The publisher sent it to me for review, sent me a nice little presser and whatnot. I wasn't expecting the book. It's one of those pleasant surprises, kind of like Carolina Kepnitz's You was. It just came out of nowhere for me. It's not something I was looking forward to, but I am definitely now a fan of Stalin Hogg's work and I'm going to go check out the rest of his stuff. He has two more. I think Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood, so I'm excited to go back and pick up those books. But if you read Simon's Stalin Hogg, if so, let me know down there in the comments below. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.