Eden: It's An Endless World!, Vol. 2 (v. 2)
There is so much violent, grisly action in part 2 of Endo's postapocalypticmangathat if it didn't look pretty spectacular, you'd grow very impatient with its lack of plot development. Elijah, 15-year-old son of Enoah and Hannah, teen protagonists of volume 1's first part, is still in the hands of apparent mercenaries who have adapted his AI protector, Cherubim, to fight for them (a flashback shows why Elijah and Cherubim were wandering about on their own). The little band moves west toward the Peruvian Andes, scheming to entrap vastly larger forces of Propator, the paramilitary organization contesting the UN for world control in the wake of the devastating viral epidemic of more than a quarter-century ago. Like Elijah, who knows that his parents escaped Propator's clutches before he was born but that his grandfather was working with Propator before that, readers don't quite know whom to root for. Endo's artistic chops and the cliff-hanger ending here, however, should keep them as captivated with the saga as Elijah is within it.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved