The trilogy has not, as far as I can tell, been translated into English and one can only hope it will be soon as it is a modern and original approach to the genre. Set in France in a not too distant future, Chromozone begins shortly after a virus has been unleashed on technology across the world, crippling it. Worse, the virus has been manipulated so that it attacks living beings. Beauverger, a Breton, sets the best of the action on the island of Ouessant off the coast of Brittany near Brest.

ChromozoneThe second tome, Les Noctivores (or Nighteaters), continues the action some 8 years later, retaining some players from the first episode and introducing some new ones. Now the action flashes around France from Lourdes in the SW, via a pirate community to Brittany and back south to Marseilles. Technology is beginning to reappear in the hands of powerful blocs but the virus continues to spread in people, culminating in the noctivores, an exponentially expanding population whose individuals sublimate their individuality to a group will.

Book three, La Cité Nymphale (or City of the Nymphs), finishes the story some 8 years later again, in a frighteningly changed Ouessant and in the new Papal See located in Paris where a curiously irreligious pope reigns.

Beauverger projects a rather pessimistic view of humanity but manages to give us some satisfyingly memorable characters for all that they are shallowly painted, evoking the author’s background in video games and bande dessinées (cartoons). The La Volte editions are beautifully presented in a wide format each peppered with a series of prints from artist Corinne Billon and book three came with the very original Disk of the Book, a CD from French group Hint, apparently inspired by the trilogy.

For reasons I cannot quite pin down, Chromozone remined me of Julian May’s Many Coloured Land trilogy. Undoubtedly this is partly because both are set in (entirely different versions of) France and both have no central character, but rather an entire range of heroes/anti-heroes that the author treats as disposable so that the plot can never be anticipated. Visit the publisher’s site and ask for an English edition. ( )