'The Invisible War: A Tale on Two Scales' by Alisa Wild with art by Briony Barr is a most unusual graphic novel. It tells two very different stories at the same time and both are very interesting.

The first story is about Sister Annie Barnaby treating soldiers in a field hospital during World War I. When a solder comes down with dysentery, she is curious about what is causing it.

The second story is the course of disease as a lethal bacteria enters Annie and threatens her life. This story is told on the microscopic level.

Throughout the story are links to short articles describing things like how patients were moved through field hospitals and what the shigella bacteria is. The story is also a bit on the graphic side with the side effects of disease and war.

The art is really good, as are the articles in the back of the book. This was one of the most unique graphic novels I've read in quite a while. I really enjoyed it.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Scale Free Network and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

When Will Eisner, who created the Spirit, was drafted, into World War II, the powers that be figured that since he was a cartoonist, he should do that during the war too, but to help the troops. He came up with a user manual that used sequential sequence, and funny cartoons to explain how to do things such as check the oil on your jeep. He had a character called Joe Dope. He continued helping the army after the war, so that all the technical publications that had confused the troops could become more clear.

This book, the Invisible War, attempts to do that with dysentery, with a history lesson, thrown in on the side, all in an interesting and informative story.

The readers learns not only how field hospitals were during WWI, but also how the body fights bacteria, before we had antibiotics. And although antibiotics cure so much, because of the mutations that happen in the body, one day we may have to go back to a time that the body had to fight these illness on our own.

Well written, with tons of footnotes that you can either read as you go alone, or read at the end, if you want to know what was going on.

Fascinating stuff. As someone who has had bronchitis, strep throat and pneumonia, I am very grateful for modern medicine, and that I do not have to put my body through what Nurse Annie had to live through.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

Great way to communicate history and science

I loved this graphic novel. The story and illustrations are excellent. The story is roughly evenly split between the horrors of World War I, along with some contemporaneous politics, and the horrors of dysentery. The book likewise, is divided into two sections, the graphic novel part and the additional explanations part. There is a lot about medicine in the novel, but what might need further explanation, is explained very well in the pages following the graphic novel part. Although the writing is geared towards people without a science background, those with one will equally enjoy the amazing story-telling. I recommend this graphic novel for anyone interested in medicine or history.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes

I was perusing the Science category and the cover caught my eye right away. Also, since I have a degree in Microbiology the subject matter was of great interest to me. I don't read scientific books or articles very often these days, but after reading this book, I know I must!

The book consists of a story about a nurse contracting dysentery during WWI and is told in graphic novel format. Throughout the story there are numbers you can click to be brought to another page with additional information. This wasn't working for me (the fault of my reader?) but it wasn't a big deal since all the extra information was at the end of the book and using bookmarks was easy enough. It's this additional info that I really enjoyed. It also contains some clickable links (this was working for me) that bring you to articles on the Web to read more on a particular subject. Some of the information was new to me and I found it absolutely fascinating!

I highly recommend this book - it's suitable for everyone. You don't need a degree in Microbiology to enjoy it as everything is well explained in simple language.

I can see this being a really useful tool for high school students who want to learn about history (World War I) and science (the mechanism of Shigella infection) simultaneously. The story of an Australian nurse serving in France and how she contracts dysentery is fairly thin, and the speech bubbles from the bacteria and phages, etc. are rather silly, but the drawings and plentiful background material are impressive.

A book that melds the genres of historical fiction and science fiction in some really groovy ways.

This was a surprisingly good read, and a most unexpected book. In plain black and white we get to see what a World War One field nurse suffers inside when she gets infected with dysentery, caught via a fly and some strong French cheese from one of her patients. It might seem a bit much to contrast the deaths of millions of young men with trillions of gut flora, but the book doesn't belabour the similarities, and rather heralds the wonders of our internal war zones. Instead, extended footnotes show the many parallels between the two types of war, and the real-life human protagonists in the history of the science portrayed. Great art does come up against cheesy 'dialogue' and rhyming war songs of the micro-protagonists, but on the whole it's definitely a working confection.

People thinking of downloading this on netgalley should note, however, the file is incredibly corrupt - most of the appendix is blank or just missing, it often forces Adobe Digital Editions to close - and when you want to click back to library it has blocked that option, so you have to reboot your whole PC. I'm not the first person here to say clicking on the internal links threw a spanner in the works - but there's a whole monkey wrench as well lying about the place. I downloaded it twice, over a month apart, and the same applied to both copies.

I thought this was a clever way of portraying the impact of a disease like dysentery on the human body. The dual narrative structure worked well, and while at first I wasn’t completely sold on the idea of the bacteria etc. as characters, their individual voices really did work in making the story more engaging and also making it easier to understand what was happening.

If you like history and science, then you will likely enjoy this graphic novel.

The Invisible War: A Tale on Two Scales tells depicts how dysentery enters the human body, grows and propagates. The story is explained at the bacteria's level as well as the human level.

The novel takes place during WWI and follows nurse Annie Barnaby as she gets infected when treating a patient. We follow the bacteria's journey through her body.

The illustrations are in a black-and-white style and excellent. At the end of the story there's a section with questions and answers related to the disease, WWI and other related information.

Overall, an interesting and informative graphic novel.

I received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley