Whatchya lookin' at, there, buddy?

This was definitely one of those right reads/right times dealios but even had that not been the case, this would have gotten a solid 4 stars out of me.

The art is incredible, all trippy photorealistic pastoral scenes of landscape and machinery, mostly. However, it's not all popartscifi; there's emotion and body language and ambiance and all sorts of other stuff that art people would appreciate and that I cannot clarify.

The story that goes along with the page-sweeping pictures is part journey and part super depressing apocalypse. A girl, with round-headed robot in tow, finds a map in an abandoned car and follows it to its destination. Along the way, she remembers what life was like before everyone got caught up in virtual reality, she remembers her mother and her foster parents and her best friend. The memories aren't really tinged with nostalgia since that life wasn't much better than the one she's now living, unable to connect to her fellow humans through the wires and images they've hooked themselves into. America has become a wasteland of rusting metal and stationary zombies stuck in their online worlds.

If you're an optimist, you can imagine a happy ending.
I am not an optimist.
I simply loved this book.