A beautiful and gentle fantasy-adventure graphic novel with well-crafted themes of family, relationships, and ecology.
Lu, a tween living in the land of Lirrin, loves listening to the tales of her Ah-ma (grandmother), a famous geozoologist who has traveled the world to study fantastical animals like cloud-jellies, mossgoats, giant sunfish, and other mega-geofauna. When Ah-ma is off on her travels, she writes to Lu and her mother, although they struggle to read what she writes in Cylian, the language of their ancestral homeland. Ah-ma’s letters suddenly stop, however, and Lu is worried.
When a distant village then seeks help from a geozoologist, Lu figures that Ah-ma might have gone to help them. She decides to travel there herself to find Ah-ma—and if she’s not there, to put together a further route based on clues from Ah-ma’s difficult-to-decipher journal.
She sets off with a childhood friend, Ren, who had moved away with her family but recently returned without her parents. We find out later that Ren is estranged from her family, who have unrealistically high and rigid expectations for her.
The two young people run into various adventures in their travels, as they seek Ah-ma and try to figure out why the fauna around them are acting strangely. Along the way, they meet Ah-ma’s ex, a masculine-presenting woman whom Lu had known nothing about (although the fact of Ah-ma’s queerness is a non-issue). But Mir is the least surprising part of Ah-ma’s past that they discover, as Lu comes to realize that Ah-ma’s doings as a geozoologist might not have been as benign as she had assumed.
As Lu seeks to bring her family back together, and Ren seeks to flee hers, however, they find themselves increasingly at odds as their goals, expectations, and ways of seeing the world clash. At the same time, the dangers from the megafauna around them increase and endanger the people around them. Can the girls repair their relationship and stop a bigger disaster?
Author/illustrator Angela Hsieh has given us a lovely graphic novel that explores both human relationships and the connectedness between humans and their environment. The big themes never weigh down the story, however; the fun adventure, fantastical creatures, lively dialogue, and engaging characters (plus an example of queer elders) make it a joy to read. Highly recommended.
Lu and her mother have dark tan skin and black hair; Ren’s skin is slightly lighter. A character mentioned in passing is nonbinary and uses the title “Mx.”
