The production schedule of Warren Elli’s Avatar series has taken a few heavy knocks over the last few months, but the action appears to be speeding up to compensate. There’s a certain amount of slight of hand going on here, with a number of elements of plotting being less revelatory than they initially appear, but the book’s plot is moving far faster than Transmetropolitan’s, and raises some interesting questions as to what the third volume of the series will look like.

With Heavenside rapidly sliding into urban warfare, Preston Stoker decides to get some answers from his prisoner, but for once the police chief isn’t quite moving fast enough. Ellis’s self-imposed embargo on having the title character appear in the series appears to have been listed, with the Doktor trying to judge the moment to bring his plan to fruition, but he’s much physically weaker than the readers remember. This serves to draw attention to the first to the deceptions the writer perpetuates, concerning the ‘John Reinhardt’ in Stoker’s cells, with the excitement of the opening scene initially masking the fact that we’re no closer to discovering which of the prisoner and the Doktor is the real McCoy. Sleepless’s illness could be the next stage of his previously-referred to condition, or a consequence of a tulpa having its creator die on it. The Doktor’s restatement of his apocalyptic objective also draws the reader’s attention to the other big mystery of the book. The character’s plan for bringing an end to Heavenside is now relatively apparent, but we’re still no closer to seeing the progress for this achievement to his nihilistic final objective.

The wisdom of the few issues spent away from the main characters is shown by the large number of elements which are juggled in the closing few pages, as Ellis is able to show the tendrils of the Doktor’s plan slowly animating. The time spent away from Scartop Mountain also appears to have been intended to allow a resetting of roles, with its inhabitants now more obviously the villains of the piece. There’s also an important shift in characterisation for Nurse Igor, far more so than the obvious adjustment in her relationship with her employer. Giving the Stoker/Singer and Berlin/Watson confrontations which are occurring at the same time, it appears that the book’s previously passive female characters are starting to take the initiative. Its merely remains to be seen how much of their home will be lost before they manage to do so.