Cloud Hotel Review

In Julian Hanshaw’s brief intro he mentions that Cloud Hotel was inspired by an incident in 1980 where, as a kid, he and his family encountered a spaceship in the English countryside. For realsies. O-k...

Set in 1981, Cloud Hotel is about a kid called Julian who gets abducted by someone and winds up in a flying hotel with some other kids. There’s really only a premise to this one as Hanshaw seems to have blanked on writing an actual story!

The problem is that this book has two halves: one set in our world where Julian watches his granddad die in hospital while his parents cry, and one set in the Cloud Hotel where he and a girl called Emma with stars for eyes wander around aimlessly. And neither, er, “storyline” is interesting.

More annoyingly, there doesn’t seem to be a point to any of it. What is the Cloud Hotel - who made it, is it real, is it in Julian’s head, is it a spaceship, are there aliens? Why are only kids being abducted? How did Emma stay alive in our world the entire time she was in the Cloud Hotel considering where her “real” body was? What did the self-writing books mean - hell, what did any of it mean?! No clue - Hanshaw’s not being artfully impressionistic so much as he’s simply not saying. It’s so unsatisfyingly vague.

The art is unusual though somewhat interesting - except giving everyone black box eyes was a stupid stylistic choice - and the concept is creative, like a Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film. I wouldn’t say Cloud Hotel is a good comic though, let down as it is by poor writing and storytelling.