Cédric Mayen & Jandro González
The Dyatlov Pass Mystery
An attack by a man or a beast? Secret army nuclear tests? An avalanche? Or temporary insanity? What really happened on the slopes of “Dyatlov Pass” on the night of February 1, 1959, that resulted in the deaths of nine experienced mountaineers?
Wow, this book was full of surprises for me!
Over the years, I have been somehow invested in the Dyatlov mystery and all the theories surrounding it. I think I have seen every movie that has been made about it, and I think I have read every book I have seen about it. Somehow, I never heard about it while growing up, but once I heard about it about a decade ago, the mystery sucked me in.
And then I saw this. A graphic novel. About Dyatlov mystery. Bring it on! Yeah, ok, I was not expecting much from it. Definitely, I was not expecting anything factual or even remotely realistic. Turns out, I was wrong. I was wrong not expecting all that.
First, take this from someone who grew up in the Soviet Union: art is perfect, art is 100% depiction of everything Soviet. All the doom, gloom, facial expressions, and grim misery seep from every character just from the way colors are used and images are created. Unbelievable. That is a seriously great job done by the artist.
The story is super well-told. An extra thing to love about this graphic novel: at the end of it, there are several pages of lots of relevant information regarding the event, including conspiracy theories surrounding it. And did I mention that art is perfect? yeah, let me say it again, art is the best, art has captured the soviet era perfectly.
Oh. And. There are also veeery graphic images there, keep that in mind for the sensitive ones and younger readers. While it most definitely is not a graphic novel for kids, I think that with some basic background information regarding the history it would be an exciting read for a more mature (and not squeamish) young adult audience.
The author has been creative with the font used in *some* images (only a few! Most have regular font!) — as someone who can read Russian, I can say it was both entertaining and confusing. Although I’d love my daughter to read this too (she loves all sorts of graphic novels and scary stories don’t frighten her), I’m afraid I’ll have to spend a weird amount of time explaining to her why R looks like Я and how does it even make sense to substitute R with something that sounds like YA. Same with W being substituted with Ш and how does it even make sense to replace w with sh? The same goes for A being substituted with Russian D, etc. While it does look somewhat quirky, it feels unnecessarily excessive and makes the text a little bit unreadable. I think it might make it totally unreadable for those who are dyslexic, for example, and for most who need an accessible font that’s easy on the eyes. Yes, it does add some extra Russian/Soviet feel to the book, and it’s just a few images. I’m really on the fence about it. I guess it’s ok as it indeed adds to the soviet feel. The good thing is that it’s just only a few of the pictures.
This book’s pub date is set to December 27. Here is the link to the book on Amazon, at the moment it looks like there is only a Kindle version available:
https://www.amazon.com/Dyatlov-Pass-Mystery-Mayen-C%C3%A9dric-ebook/dp/B0CPFS7VJ2/
