The Labyrinth (2020) is tough, man. Like damn. There is something about the brutal violence that’s at the heart of this book, and how it falls on people just doing their best to survive, and how that violence begets more violence that…it isn’t entirely senseless, but it certainly doesn’t help anything or anyone. I find it all extremely upsetting.

The world of this book is pretty grim, too, even by the standards Stalenhag set with The Electric State. The particulars of what happened aren’t really explained, nor are they important in a factual way. Earth drifted into a dominion beyond our understanding. Floating black spheres changed things. Strange coral forests overtook the cities. Humanity fled underground. These events give the story a framework of despair and loss, and a bit of context I guess, but it really feels to me like stage dressing for a tale of four people crashing violently into each other.

Stalenhag is really top of his form here, in terms of palette and mood. There are three sorts of environments in the book: the ruined surface, the ultra-clean underground and the flashback glimpses we see of the frantic unraveling of human society. All of them are equally bleak and oppressive in different ways. His experiments in sequenced art from past books (where the same basic painting, with small but important changes revealed by turning pages) is extremely effective here. Honed like a knife, even. It really says something when five views of the same sink leave a horrible psychological impression on you, you know?

But eesh, be careful with this one.