Book Review: Morning Glories Vol. 1 by Nick Spencer et al.

Morning Glories Volume 1 For a Better Future written by Nick Spencer and art by Joe Eisma

Morning Glories is the sort of super-exclusive and super-secretive prep school that should draw more attention than it does. For example, all of the students are driven a few hours from a New York airport by a limo service, a trip during which they all fall asleep. They don't know the location of the school and their cell phone signals start to fade right after they call home to parents who completely deny their existence. The students assume their parents are part of some scheme to separate the kids from their old life but it does seem a bit extreme. Things get more extreme pretty quickly--just ask Casey, whose parents didn't want to deny their daughter's existence. She finds out about them when she's led to a chamber with their dead bodies. When another of the students is taken to the nurse's office and doesn't come back, the new students make a secret plan to get her out and get themselves away from Morning Glories.

The storytelling is clearly patterned after the television show Lost, where a set of characters are thrown into a bizarre situation with a bunch of mysteries that slowly get explained as the story goes on. As in Lost, the characters here are interesting, distinct, and mostly likable. Lost became bogged down in continually introducing new mysteries, which made the show less satisfying in later seasons. It's far too early to tell if that will happen here, though the teachers do seem to have a bigger secret project, so maybe when that is solved it will be the end (of the story, if not the world). I am more than interested enough and hopeful enough to keep reading.