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4.34 AVERAGE
4.34 AVERAGE
*space lesbians being gay and doing crime in space*
On A Sunbeam is heartbreaking and beautiful and funny. Beautifully written and beautifully drawn.
It is about friendship and love and family. It is about spaceships and cults and animal spirits and boarding school. It is unapologetically queer without making queerness a major plot point.
Read this. It is so good.
(I want to see more of this universe I loved the worldbuilding)
On A Sunbeam is heartbreaking and beautiful and funny. Beautifully written and beautifully drawn.
It is about friendship and love and family. It is about spaceships and cults and animal spirits and boarding school. It is unapologetically queer without making queerness a major plot point.
Read this. It is so good.
(I want to see more of this universe I loved the worldbuilding)
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I loved this book.
Art:
The artwork is absolutely stunning, and I couldn't help myself from rereading the same page over and over again just to make sure I appreciated it properly. Walden's understanding of color and composition stood out to me most, and the world she built is so creative and vast that I was absolutely hooked on the concept of exploring it. I loved the complex space jungle-like backgrounds, the sleekness of her architecture, and the whimsical nature of the fish ships.
Characters
One of the best aspects of this book is the way we get to watch the relationships between the characters bloom over time. All of the crew are at different points in their lives in terms of age and career, and I think the conflict that can arise from such a situation, as well as the way the characters differences complement each other, is portrayed really well. I also loved that every relationship we saw in this book was wlw (yes, more than one! Three!)
In both timelines, Mia struggles to find a sense of belonging, and I liked how we also saw that reflected in Jules, Grace, and Christie(?), all people who are very different from Mia. In the end, Mia ended up being the person to make all three of them feel connected and supported, which really highlights one of the main takeaways I got from On a Sunbeam: the best way to find a community is to build one.
I think one of my only critiques of this book worth mentioning is that I had a hard time connecting with Mia and Grace's boarding school timeline. I loved the setting and their story was so cute, but I think a few more scenes where we really see their personalities come through would have made their relationship a lot more impactful. I struggled to pin down who they were as people, especially Grace, and because of that I didn't care about her as much as I wanted to. I understand that we're seeing things mostly from Mia's perspective, and she didn't know a lot about Grace back then, but it's less about her shrouded backstory and more about her personality, her likes and dislikes, her personal style etc.
Plot
While I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the plot stood out the least in comparison to the art and the characters. I don't see this as a bad thing, every book emphasizes things differently. The planet/space building(?)- hopping structure of the adventure was super fun, and allowed us to explore Walden's gorgeous world. Its funny to think back on my reading experience, because even though the plot is about flying across space and fixing mysterious buildings or traversing a hostile and mystical planet in pursuit of love while being hunted by the people who live there, it still didn't feel very thrilling. It was interesting and high stakes and I couldn't put the book down, but I wasn't on the edge of my seat being blown away by intricacies of the plot or world building. I actually found it a bit refreshing to have a story set in such a wondrous and dangerous world, told within a typically thrilling genre, turn out to be a sweet and subtle tale of found family and first love.
All in all 4.75/5
-.25 for Grace's and sometimes Mia's lack of depth in such a character centric story
Art:
The artwork is absolutely stunning, and I couldn't help myself from rereading the same page over and over again just to make sure I appreciated it properly. Walden's understanding of color and composition stood out to me most, and the world she built is so creative and vast that I was absolutely hooked on the concept of exploring it. I loved the complex space jungle-like backgrounds, the sleekness of her architecture, and the whimsical nature of the fish ships.
Characters
One of the best aspects of this book is the way we get to watch the relationships between the characters bloom over time. All of the crew are at different points in their lives in terms of age and career, and I think the conflict that can arise from such a situation, as well as the way the characters differences complement each other, is portrayed really well. I also loved that every relationship we saw in this book was wlw (yes, more than one! Three!)
In both timelines, Mia struggles to find a sense of belonging, and I liked how we also saw that reflected in Jules, Grace, and Christie(?), all people who are very different from Mia. In the end, Mia ended up being the person to make all three of them feel connected and supported, which really highlights one of the main takeaways I got from On a Sunbeam: the best way to find a community is to build one.
I think one of my only critiques of this book worth mentioning is that I had a hard time connecting with Mia and Grace's boarding school timeline. I loved the setting and their story was so cute, but I think a few more scenes where we really see their personalities come through would have made their relationship a lot more impactful. I struggled to pin down who they were as people, especially Grace, and because of that I didn't care about her as much as I wanted to. I understand that we're seeing things mostly from Mia's perspective, and she didn't know a lot about Grace back then, but it's less about her shrouded backstory and more about her personality, her likes and dislikes, her personal style etc.
Plot
While I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the plot stood out the least in comparison to the art and the characters. I don't see this as a bad thing, every book emphasizes things differently. The planet/space building(?)- hopping structure of the adventure was super fun, and allowed us to explore Walden's gorgeous world. Its funny to think back on my reading experience, because even though the plot is about flying across space and fixing mysterious buildings or traversing a hostile and mystical planet in pursuit of love while being hunted by the people who live there, it still didn't feel very thrilling. It was interesting and high stakes and I couldn't put the book down, but I wasn't on the edge of my seat being blown away by intricacies of the plot or world building. I actually found it a bit refreshing to have a story set in such a wondrous and dangerous world, told within a typically thrilling genre, turn out to be a sweet and subtle tale of found family and first love.
All in all 4.75/5
-.25 for Grace's and sometimes Mia's lack of depth in such a character centric story
Estoy enamorada del trabajo de Tillie Walden. No tengo palabras para describir lo hermosa y original que es la historia, lo increíble que es la ilustración. Es, sin más, una novela preciosa.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Sapphics are the new norm. Not a single heterosexual, that's the way I like it. Hop in guys we are going to the planet of lesbians. Take me to your leader.
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
also ich fands schon cute
die story und teilweise waren die figuren von Ausarbeitung usw. nicht soo gut aber allein das spacey konzept find ich so cool
ist so eine welt wo man sich reinfantasieren möchte eig
die story und teilweise waren die figuren von Ausarbeitung usw. nicht soo gut aber allein das spacey konzept find ich so cool
ist so eine welt wo man sich reinfantasieren möchte eig
This was so awesome <3
It takes place in space, in a world where apparently there are almost only women (and enby/trans people), so basicaly everyone has two moms and dates girls so it's awesome. We follow Mia, both while she was in high school and fell in love, and when she starts working with a team that renovates old buildings.
I loved everything about this. The setting was great, the drawings were amazing especially when it was landscapes. The characters were amazing, I loved Mia and Julie so so much, but my fave is definitely Ellie, the enby character who's smart and kicks ass and doesn't talk. I know I sometimes have a harder time connecting with the characters in comics but it didn't happen there and I was so glad.
One of my favourite thing is the worldbuilding. Tillie Walden created a really great world, mixing things we know with things she created (characters talking about football and then explaining Lux, the new sport!!). I loved the details, the new sports, the board games, everything. I loved that it was so intimate and domestic at times, it made me feel so much more for the characters. And I really loved that we followed renovation workers! How cool is that?? People who work on beautiful old buildings to make them useable again, it's very very cool.
It was also hella queer and I loved it. Ellie being non-binary was well-handled, and I love how casually sapphic it was.
I read a French translation and I mostly liked how it was translated. In French, technically, when you speak of a group of people where there's at least one person that's a guy, you use "he plural" but they changed it to "she plural" so it was cool. Only minor thing that put me off was that the translator messed-up the enby rep a bit: the equivalent to singular 'they' is 'iel' and the translator kept letting the word "iel" between quotation marks and it felt like they didn't consider it was a real word. It's like having every sentence being:
"They" walked toward the door. "They" were meeting "their" sister today.
It's annoying as hell!! I'm 100% sure it's on the translator and I can't even be mad because I already saw French translations where singular they for an enby is turned to "he plural" and it's messed up so *at least* they used the right word here.
Overall it was an amazing read and I'll definitely reread it because it's just so good!! Everything I wanted from a space opera: casually queer, focuses on intimate stakes, interesting worldbuilding around sports and jobs and all that, it was really awesome.
It takes place in space, in a world where apparently there are almost only women (and enby/trans people), so basicaly everyone has two moms and dates girls so it's awesome. We follow Mia, both while she was in high school and fell in love, and when she starts working with a team that renovates old buildings.
I loved everything about this. The setting was great, the drawings were amazing especially when it was landscapes. The characters were amazing, I loved Mia and Julie so so much, but my fave is definitely Ellie, the enby character who's smart and kicks ass and doesn't talk. I know I sometimes have a harder time connecting with the characters in comics but it didn't happen there and I was so glad.
One of my favourite thing is the worldbuilding. Tillie Walden created a really great world, mixing things we know with things she created (characters talking about football and then explaining Lux, the new sport!!). I loved the details, the new sports, the board games, everything. I loved that it was so intimate and domestic at times, it made me feel so much more for the characters. And I really loved that we followed renovation workers! How cool is that?? People who work on beautiful old buildings to make them useable again, it's very very cool.
It was also hella queer and I loved it. Ellie being non-binary was well-handled, and I love how casually sapphic it was.
I read a French translation and I mostly liked how it was translated. In French, technically, when you speak of a group of people where there's at least one person that's a guy, you use "he plural" but they changed it to "she plural" so it was cool. Only minor thing that put me off was that the translator messed-up the enby rep a bit: the equivalent to singular 'they' is 'iel' and the translator kept letting the word "iel" between quotation marks and it felt like they didn't consider it was a real word. It's like having every sentence being:
"They" walked toward the door. "They" were meeting "their" sister today.
It's annoying as hell!! I'm 100% sure it's on the translator and I can't even be mad because I already saw French translations where singular they for an enby is turned to "he plural" and it's messed up so *at least* they used the right word here.
Overall it was an amazing read and I'll definitely reread it because it's just so good!! Everything I wanted from a space opera: casually queer, focuses on intimate stakes, interesting worldbuilding around sports and jobs and all that, it was really awesome.
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated