Hot off the press, it's Lane Milburn's long-in-the-works epic meta-science fiction masterwork! Packed with page after page of sumptuous, otherworldly vistas, Lure dives deep into the science fiction realm, stimulating the reader's visual cortex and carrying them out of the ordinary and into fantastic realms. The story that unfolds is, however, a somewhat different animal from what the art might lead one to expect. Without giving away any plot particulars, we can say that the story gradually emerges from its science fiction trappings and evolves into a cautionary tale about the fraught relationship between art and commerce; one in which the slope is very slippery, indeed.
There is a clear allegorical dimension to Lure, one that is present from the outset, with the alien world that is the locale where the story largely unfolds sharing the name with the title of the work. There is also a meta-fictional probing that goes on throughout Lure, starting with the transparent substitution of the planet’s name by the work’s central thematic concern – the multileveled problematics of the lure of the "success" offered by global capitalism – and continuing throughout the work, in a series of simultaneous deconstructions of some of the basic underlying mechanics of science fiction: of how projecting current dilemmas from our present into a posited future make it easier to show things that might otherwise remain hidden in plain sight; how speaking of the normative and familiar in terms of the alien and the other further direct our perceptions and awarenesses through our imaginations in such ways to allow the unearthing of buried conflicts. Suffice it to say there’s plenty of food for thought here in the pages of Lure.
Regardless of the implications of the story, this 192 page, full size, full color hardcover (that was five years in the making!) makes for an engaging read that also provides a true feast for the eyes. Page after page of stunning tableaus that mesh the natural and the technological provide the settings for an unfolding of events filled with memorable, fully realized and authentically interacting characters – the most central of which, it is worth noting, are women, including its protagonist, Jo.
Anyone who'd like to get a foretaste can scroll through a hefty review/preview at Screenrant, HERE (there's enough here that a spoiler warning might apply).
