Wednesday, July 18, 2007
To Terra by Keiko Takemiya was originally published in the late 1970s, and is now finally available in English in three volumes that run to around 1,000 pages total. It would be extremely appropriate to call it epic. Perhaps because I was reading it at about the same time as I was reading Slan (see below), I felt it had a surprising amount of similarities (not just because both main characters share essentially the same name Jomy / Jommy). The story To Terra tells is quite a bit larger, quite a bit more complex, but it is again basically the story of the conflict between humans and the next step in human evolution, which again just happens to be humans + mind reading abilities / telekinetic powers. I think the artwork in To Terra adds a lot to the story - it's usually really impressive - with lots of complex variety to the way panels on pages are laid out. At times the visual approach becomes (intentionally) a little confusing - going more for a sort of poetry than a straight forward 1, 2, 3 kind of thing. It helps to push the book from being just a sort of Star Wars clone space adventure, into some really unique territory. I really appreciated the way the story progresses, the way characters are introduced and developed, and the ensemble feel. The weirdness of it all. The fantastic sense of design. I do think, again similar to Slan, the ending (although less arbitrary) doesn't quite live up to the build up. Somehow the book goes out with a bit of a whimper - but the story does have several extremely powerful high points throughout its 1,000 page journey from the far reaches of space back to mother earth.
