RASL vol 3: Romance At The Speed Of Light back

From the creator of BONE, a third album-sized volume of intense speculative fiction with one more to come, and I heartily suggest you read the reviews of books one and two because by this point it's growing increasingly hard to explain without giving too much away.

Robert has been hopping divergent dimensions using science he stole from the research facility he helped run and the one he's in now appears to be cracking. There are… echoes, traces, visual footprints if you like, and seemingly random bursts of electricity strong enough to kill hundreds of birds in the sky. Then there's the strange little girl, mute with a lolling head, who seems to know more than she should. On top of all this Robert has been complicating things beautifully by seeing two different women with multiple counterparts and… oh, you really do have to read this for yourself!

Jeff Smith has immersed himself in the underworld of fringe science, Native American mythology and symbolism, and even spent two weeks sweating bare-chested in the desert surrounded by cacti - something that's imprinted itself on the art here. These trips, complete with photographs, sketches and concepts for the covers, are documented in the back.

It's eerie, it's unnerving, but utterly compelling, particularly the science itself. It is also, as you'd imagine, very, very beautiful in bold black and white with some extraordinary effects as the rooms start to ripple and morph.