In 1916, Charley Bourne lies about his age to fight on the battlefields of France. But thoughts of glory and patriotism are swept aside by the bloody artillery barrage of soul-crushing drudgery and need-less sacrifice amidst the trenches of the First World War.

I enjoyed Charley’s War, but I was very confused while reading it. The beginning of the book is very rushed. We are introduced to Charley on the first page, and on the next, he is already in France marching towards the Battle of the Somme. Also, the panels of this comic are very confusing to read — all of them are scrambled on every page.  There is no definite pattern to reading this book, which made it very hard to read and understand. Furthermore, there are some words in this book that, as a person born almost 90 years after World War One, I did not understand, and they were explained by the “editor” in small bubbles at the bottom of the page, which are easy to miss.

Next, the entire book is in black-and-white style pictures, to make it seem like you are in the war, but it was published in 2004, so it just makes everything hard to see and read. I think it would have been a lot better if they just wrote the book in colour, like almost every other Graphic Novel.

The book Charley’s War is a lot like Maus, by Art Speigelman, except Maus is a lot easier to read and understand, has a much better plot, and is a much better book in general. If you are going to read any graphic novels about war, Maus is the one to go with over this. Another book Charley’s War is close to, only based on the subject matter, being war, is Resistance (Book 1). Resistance is written by a much better author and is much clearer, like Maus.

I would not recommend this book to anyone. It is not worth your time. I was barely able to finish it.