A 2015 Top Ten Great Graphic Novel for Teens
In the year 3797, Nika Tensmith is a scientist and one of the last few thousand humans in the galaxy. Racing ahead of a sickness called the Caul, they're looking for a cure and their best bet rests on the silvery-white flowers known as trillium. On Atabithi, they find fields and fields of them, but they also find a race of people who don't exactly take kindly to invading forces. Nika has been slowly making contact with the Atabithians, but time is running out when they suddenly invite her to consume a trillium petal and she finds herself back in the year 1921, on Earth. Here she encounters William Pike, a soldier still suffering from PTSD from World War I, who has gone on an expedition through the South American jungles with his brother to find a lost Incan temple, which he and Nika discover is also surrounded by trillium. Determined to get back to her time, Nika consumes another flower, and the two of them instantly form a connection that changes them both - across time, across planets, across lives.
I really liked this one. In many ways, it reminded me of "Interstellar." Jeff Lemire's art is beautiful - kind of strange, and spare, and I like the use of watercolors. I also really love the inventive ways Lemire used to tell this story. When the first issue was printed, you could read it either way and choose to start with either Nika's or William's stories that managed to match up perfectly, right down to the number of panels on each page. Unfortunately, that gets lost in a trade collection, but that wasn't the only issue where Lemire get creative with his storytelling - chapter 5 has Nika's story on the top of the pages and William's on the bottom, with the instruction to read the top half first, then read the bottom half. How Lemire kept all that straight is amazing, especially since he managed to contain two stories with parallels to each other in 28 pages. It makes me wish that this had been published as a complete graphic novel instead of the typical monthly series roll out. It's great choice for fans of science fiction.
(Read as part of YALSA's Hub Reading Challenge.)
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