The art was somewhat challenging to understand due to the way it was scanned, but the pages that were presented clearly utilized sharp lines and crisp shading. Each character has at least one distinctive feature (mustache, hair, eyes, etc) that helps the reader tell them apart from the other characters.

The setting is fascinating! A world with small connections to a society like A Quiet Place, where silence is valued and a matter of safety. Characters use sign language at times to communicate, although talking becomes the norm more and more as the book progresses. I would add this to a library manga/graphic novel collection, perhaps once the second volume is released.

Silence is a pseudo manga, since well, it's French. Perhaps for me this was more like a comic than manga. The world is in turmoil, a post-apocalyptic one with monsters and humans (that are dying). The main character is Saber and his village is cut off the world. The monsters hunt thanks to sound and thus the people need to use sign language. A woman named Lune arrives in the village though and it seems the only way to fight the monsters is becoming one. Saber wants this so he can save everyone. The setting is great, really. I liked the world building a lot and how the former village was burnt down just like that. It's still hard to say what happens, since it's just the beginning of the journey. Sadly so we don't get to know the characters well enough yet, which makes this slightly detached.

The art looks nice and different, which is understandable, since this isn't Japanese manga. There's a hint of Dragon Ball art-wise though. There are at least three parts in French, so there's going to be more happening in the future I take. The cover surely looks nice!

Silence is comic originally written in French, but hewing so close to the shonen manga genre in both style and content that it is perhaps only the roman-alphabet sound effects that make it distinguishable from its Japanese inspirations. From the reckless teen protagonist with a more sensible female foil, to the world full of monsters to be fought, to the supernatural powers enabling one to fight the monsters but attracting the suspicion of others--any reader’s enjoyment of this story will probably be strongly predicted by how well they have enjoyed other works in the shonen genre.

However, just because Silence stays within the bounds of its genre does not mean it’s made of cliches. The female foil for the hero is initiative-taking and nuanced, the community the hero struggles with has many different people with different hopes and fears rather than just a hide-bound board of elders, and the supernatural power is themed after an animal I’ve never seen used as a theme for a power before.
Most of all, it’s good shonen. The story is kept moving through multiple different threads rather than just the hero’s linear arc, the fights we see are made interesting though strategy rather than plot-advancement-necessity, and the final pages suggest that the already-expanding world of the story has much yet to be discovered.

To make a final note, one of the most interesting points in the book is the extensive use of sign language in the story, caused by most of the monsters of the setting hunting by sound and lending the book its title. This is, however, undermined by a few factors. The comic medium only allows for the display of one or two signs in panels that contain multiple sentences worth of speech bubbles, keeping it from being represented as fully as it might be. More problematically, this first volume of the series is already using the willingness to speak aloud as a sign of character development and freedom of the fear of the outside world, undermining the representation of sign language as a legitimate communication form.