Walden, Tillie – On A Sunbeam

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On A Sunbeam

I almost always choose a sample image that I feel is most representative of the story, but in a case like this, when I’m dealing with an epic with countless moving parts, I just choose a page at random. A peek behind the curtain! This is Tillie’s third (or fourth) book, which started off as a webcomic and ended up becoming a 530ish page science fiction masterpiece. Yeah, I said it. There’s so much going on here that’s impossible to encapsulate in any review, so I’ll try to at least hit some of the high points. At a very basic level this is the story of Mia, told through two different stories: her back in 9th grade and her friendship with Grace, and her five years later with a spaceship crew whose job is to go around the galaxy, fixing up old and damaged buildings. So right off the bat we have a science fiction concept that was new to me, and I’ve read a ton of the stuff. In going back and forth between the two stories we gradually learn more about Mia, her friends at school, her co-workers (and eventual friends) on the ship, and what led her to that ship. Tillie, maybe more than any other skill (and she has bunches), seems to intuitively know when to tell, when to show, and when to just let something go for the sake of the story. For example, there are no men in the story. It’s not mentioned anywhere (unless I missed something, but I don’t think so), but we’re far into the future, so it’s not like it would be a constant topic of conversation, so it just never comes up. She also has a knack for making things seem effortlessly alien. Amazing things in the background that are glimpsed briefly but never seen, all of the other oddities (to modern eyes) that are just clearly part of their daily lives. There’s a lot more tension and drama than I’m mentioning here, but since we don’t see that until we’re about 300 pages in, I’ll leave it to you to uncover. To wrap up I’ll just say that I’ve read two of her books so far, and they’re both among the best comics I’ve ever read. And, if nothing else, I’ve read a whole lot of comics in my life. If you have any interest in science fiction, or just a really amazing story, you owe it to yourself to give this a shot. $32.99

Posted on April 22, 2019, in Reviews and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Leave a Comment.

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