That's the simplistic description.
But largely owing to the fact that the story is wordless, the reader is forced to consider each image more. And while they're not overly complex -- most of the humans shown are barely more than stick figures -- the sequences play out in a way that offers more reflection. You're thinking, "Hey, they've taken that rock and are doing something with it? It looks like they're breaking it up, making it into something. They're... forging something? They're making... swords. Because of course!" Now a writer could certainly craft a paragraph together to not only relay the same basic information, but without that critical revelation about what they're making, but I think it hits more powerfully when the reader has to sort through and process it themself.
(Hmm. That I used the word "hits" just now was just a natural flow of my writing here. But particularly in light of this book's content, I'll take a moment to reflect that "hit" is an act of violence. Our very language is built up around war, even when we're talking about non-violent acts of processing thought. That seems to play very much into the drum beat of Sanna's work here, that human kind just keeps waging war after war after war, long after we've theoretically understood that it's nothing but senseless killing.)
At the close of the book, though, Sanna does leave readers with an open ending. The Earth is presented in an entirely different setting, one big rock among many with a hand reaching to examine it. I'm sure many will read it as a divine selection of some kind, a message of hope. Given that we just went through nearly two hundred pages of violence, I'm more inclined to think that it's more premonitional. We've just seen how man keeps making bigger and bigger, and more and more powerful weapons -- eventually the planet itself will become another weapon in man's hands. A planet is just another rock like all of the others after all.
Sanna's paintings are sublime. In most cases, not an abudance of detailed linework but the images are nonetheless very engaging, using a lot of broad shapes and colors to draw people in. The images are more symbolic than representational, which tracks against the history itself -- it's not a strictly linear timeline we follow but more a symbolic one. Which makes all the more sense that this had to be done in a graphic novel format. That the pages are scanned from the full art, too, including smudges of paint towards the edges and bits of tape that remained from masking off borders gives the reader a more direct sense of the art that went into everything. The story isn't "clean" -- it hasn't been sanitized in any way. Humans are a violent race, and trying to suggest otherwise is a form of white-washing. Sanna is clear that he is not doing that here.
Because the book is wordless, it can be read fairly quickly. But I do recommend taking at least some occasions to pause and reflect on individual pages and panels as you're going through it. Again, there's not detailed linework to study, but loads of meaning to absorb. After a 2019 debut in Italy, it was just published in the United States last month, and the hardcover retails for $34.95 US.
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