“Spill Zone: The Broken Vow”

The second part of Westerfeld, Puvilland, and Sycamore’s “Spill Zone” hit bookstores last week, and now that you’ve had a chance to read it, we’re going to dive into a spoiler-filled review.

Written by Scott Westerfeld
Illustrated by Alex Puvilland
Colored by Hilary Sycamore

Three years ago an event destroyed the small city of Poughkeepsie, forever changing reality within its borders. Strange manifestations and lethal dangers now await anyone who enters the Spill Zone. Addison got close enough to the Spill Zone to touch it, literally. She survived the encounter, but came back changed.

It turns out she’s not alone. North Korea has its own Spill Zone, and a young man named Don Jae is the only one who made it out alive. Alive, but changed. Now Addison, Don Jae, and, curiously, a rag doll named Vespertine, share an unholy bond and uncanny powers.

From Scott Westerfeld, the inspired imagination behind the New York Times bestsellers Uglies and Leviathan, comes The Broken Vow, the second volume of our highly anticipated new graphic novel series.

“Spilll Zone” was a highlight of 2017 for me—the book hooked me at once, especially the sequences with Addison Merritt exploring the Po’Town spill zone—so I was looking forward to the sequel. The thing is, “sequel” is kind of the wrong word for what “Spill Zone: The Broken Vow” is. This is not a follow-up to a self-contained story, nor is it the continuation of an ongoing story. It reads like “Spill Zone” was one book ripped in half; like the second volume of a single book, in much the same way that old novels were published in a series of volumes due to printing limitations.

Indeed, beyond the cover, the subtitle “The Broken Vow” completely vanishes, and the book begins at chapter four, picking up where it left off in “Spill Zone” as if the two were only separated by a page turn rather than an entire year. Which means there is no hand-holding for readers in this book. You’re expected to remember all the characters and the various plot threads as if you’d just read them. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a single-volume edition of “Spill Zone” at some point in the future. At the same time, I can totally understand First Second splitting it the way they did. A 400+ page original graphic novel is a hard sell after all.

With that in mind, this review is very much the second part of my review from last year. My praises in that review hold true in “Spill Zone: The Broken Vow” too, but I won’t restate them here. I want to explore how the splitting the story of “Spill Zone” in two hobbles the second volume a little, though. The first volume was almost exclusively Addison’s story, especially since much of the story is directly narrated by her. We’d see short bits and pieces with other characters, but minus the narration that accompanied Addison’s scenes. Addison is the lens through which the first volume is told, and that gave it a strong focus.

However, “Spill Zone: The Broken Vow” has a much more fragmented point of view. This was something that was always steadily creeping into the narrative throughout the first book, with sequences with Tan’ea, the US government officials and agents, the the North Korean representatives. In the second volume, these moments take a stronger hold over the series. The problem with that is that most of the time these scenes are pure plot construction, setting up who’s going where and why to do what. There’s not much feeling there, and often these sequences are used to artificially create tension. Ultimately “The Broken Vow” sits in the shadow of the former book, with no strong identity of its own.

The thing is, I feel like there was another approach that could’ve been much stronger. In the final chapter of the first book, there was a six-page sequence with Don Jae as the narrator. Jae was only a tease in book one, so that scene very much felt like the hook for book two. The first book was clearly Addison’s book, whereas book two could’ve been both Addison and Jae’s.

There is a bit of that in “The Broken Vow,” and those bits are often the strongest parts. However, there are several scenes which aren’t. For example, early in book two, there’s a scene Jae breaking into Tan’ea’s home. The scene is told from Tan’ea’s viewpoint, with the reader privy to her thoughts, whereas in all previous scenes with Tan’ea we’ve been outside looking in. Framing the point of view this way gives the reader a moment of tension when Jae breaks in, and gives us a moment where he seems frightening and alien. As an isolated scene, it’s powerful.

However, in the context of the larger narrative, this scene is about Jae escaping from his government handlers so that he can find Addison, possibly the one person in the world that understands what it’s like to be him. Jae is isolated from the rest of the world by his experiences and his powers. He’s on a search for connection. By shifting the point of view in that scene, that very human motivation, which ends up being a significant driving force in the narrative of “The Broken Vow,” gets muddied. It’s a moment that trades consistent narrative point of view for a relatively cheap moment of tension.

And this comes up throughout the story. Whenever we learn information through a scene with the government figures from the US or North Korea, it lacks the impact that information would have had if it’d come out in a scene from Addison, Jae, or Lexa—characters who would suddenly understand their situation to be worse than they thought as they gain new information.

Then there’s Wiley. This was a character that reached his peak at the end of book one, and spends all of book two as a story courier. He transports characters where the story needs them most and tells characters the information they need to hear, but ultimately his impact on the plot is passive, which is a shame because the first book literally ended with the cliffhanger “Oh no, Wiley knows about the Spill Zone contaminating the Merritt family,” and then doesn’t really do anything with it. Throughout book one, contamination was a major plot point; Lexa was contaminated, and Addison becomes contaminated, and Wiley was the character that represented the US government’s attempt to prevent further contamination. His concern for Addison and Lexa, and his fear of what the contamination could be doing to them, should have driven him to be proactive, to make choices that affect the other characters for good or ill. Scenes with Wiley should have been crackling with tension, but instead there was none.

And this is where we get to the core of the story construction problems in book two. Book one is in many ways defined by tension. The most powerful sequences were always tense. And in book two the same is true—when it’s tense the book is at its best—but these moments are less frequent and rarely as powerful as they are in its precursor. When Addison returns to the spill zone in book two, she’s untouchable. When she confronts her parents, it’s horrifying and tragic to see them as floating corpses, but Addison has all the power in that scene; she can release them and end it in a mere moment. That confrontation is emotional, but it doesn’t mark her or change her in any way going forward. The Addison at the beginning of book one, if put in the same situation, would have done the same thing.

Even little things seem off. Like in the first book, Addison took risks, but she was still afraid of being contaminated by the spill zone. In book two there’s no follow through on this. There’s no fear of what she is and what she may become now that she’s contaminated. It’s almost like she knows she going to get super powers before Jae tells her, so when that moment comes, it’s not a revelation, but rather a confirmation. Addison never questioned whether the contamination would kill her, or drive her insane, or change her into something or someone else. Much of the narrative tension comes from the ambiguity of the spill zone, yet Addison seems unaffected or even wilfully ignorant of this to an almost inhuman degree. When she finally meets Jae, his character is entirely a comfort, offering answers and possibilities… it’s a release of tension at a point when the story needs the opposite.

Yet, Jae represents a major source of tension that’s largely unexplored. Jae is a kept like a pet by his government because of his link to the spill zone. He’s a valuable asset, a specimen to be controlled and studied. From Addison’s point of view, Jae’s life is what awaits her if the US government discovers her powers. She’s already seen how people will fight over her photographs, and now she’s become something much more valuable. It’s a counterpoint to everything that defines Addison; she’s a character that values her independence—it’s been her primary motivation throughout the story—and now she’s faced with the prospect of being locked away along with her sister and studied by government scientists. Even if that doesn’t actually happen, it would be a possibility that would occur to Addison, and it would affect her actions going forward.

In “The Broken Vow,” Addison sacrifices nothing when she uses her powers, even in front of government agents and military personnel. Despite the grandeur of the final big action sequence, nothing’s lost when she saves her sister by neutralizing the spill zone. She ends up getting exactly what she wants, living free on a tropical island, by doing exactly what she would want to do in any given situation. Addison never faces a choice where her needs or fears conflict with her wants. It means almost all of Addison’s conflicts in the second book are external, when it was the internal conflicts in the first book that defined the character.

That said, “Spill Zone: The Broken Vow” is still a great book. Alex Puvilland’s art is absolutely stunning, especially when he depicts creatures of the Cradle. When the book embraces that weirdness, it’s at its best. When Lexa and Vespertine merge, the book really cuts loose and goes places. Like Addison, Lexa’s corrupted now, but she’s far closer to being like the hovering corpses of the spill zone, and Puvilland uses this to his advantage to create sequences that explode off the page. Visually, Lexa looks like she’s losing her anchor to this reality.

The sequence with Vespertine’s betrothed chasing Lexa through the forest is the most visually stunning sequence in the series, especially as Lexa switches back and forth between herself and Vespertine, at times even performing both characters’ emotions at the same time. There’s an extra level of complexity whenever Lexatine is in a scene, and to throw that into an action sequence which was already burdened with creatures moving unlike anything we’ve ever seen before while the spill zone’s effect bleeds into the forest around takes confidence, careful staging, and very specific control of character performance through the art. It’s moments like these that show how effectively and seamlessly the creative team works together. (Hilary Sycamore’s colors on these books are truly amazing!)

The revelation that Lexa’s connection to Vespertine predates the spill event is another of the most powerful moments in the story, though I wish we could’ve explored what this revelation does to the relationship between Lexa and Addison (but some things need to be sacrificed to keep the pacing up). It also leaves a gaping question: what caused the rift that allowed Lexa and Vespertine to make contact originally?

In the first book, I had assumed that there was some connection between the Po’Town and North Korean spill zones, that perhaps they had even occurred at the same time. In “The Broken Vow” it seems these were entirely independent events, and not triggered by anything overly extraordinary. It leaves the door wide open for another spill event in a future book. Westerfeld and Puvilland wrap this one up and end this story, but they clearly have ideas for a sequel at play here.

There’s a whole other story going on in the Cradle, one that’s only touched on in “The Broken Vow.” We’ve given a few explicit details, such a Vespertine’s parents being murdered, enough to let us know there is way more to this story than we’ve being told. Hopefully it’s something we’ll get to explore in a future book.

Final verdict: 7.5 – “Spill Zone: The Broken Vow” never reaches the same heights as its predecessor, but still stands as a strong conclusion to “Spill Zone.”