We get bits and pieces from Mia’s memories of Grace, and from Elliot. A lot of it went unexplained, but I thought that worked with the style of the story itself. Yes, there is life after whatever dramatic events happen to you, and sometimes they are ridiculously normal and boring! And the way the story opens up in the second half is like a magic trick the Staircase comes across as a weird space full of culture and dangers that are completely alien to everyone. There’s something so realistic in the way that Mia talks about her life after Grace – it went on as normal, and the way she talks about that is refreshing and warming. She does get dressed down for it, and only has maybe three scenes total, but it is a factor.) (As fair warning: for the most part, everyone’s really respectful of Elliot’s pronouns and not speaking, but there is one minor character who doesn’t even try, despite how upfront Jules is about making sure people know. I was so fond of all of the characters – they all felt realistically complicated and had tangled relationships with each other, and I love them? And they all have their own things going on, or their own secrets in their pasts, and I like that! Especially the non-binary non-verbal badass, who is an actual force of nature. Plus, Tillie Walden’s use of limited palettes across the entire story means that it’s always clear what time you’re in and which characters you should be expecting. Everyone lives on tiny chunks of land in space and spaceships are fish, it’s never explained, and I am quite happy to roll with that because it looks really cool! (Please recommend me more stories where space is treated like the sea, I’m always here for them.) There is a real sense of history and age to the buildings that Mia and the Sunbeam’s crew work on, and different architecture across the galaxy. I love her use of colour and space, and the way her art carries so much of the world building and storytelling. I’ve mentioned how much I like Tillie Walden’s art before, and On a Sunbeam keeps up the tradition.
The second half shifts up a gear into Perilous Adventure as the crew of the Sunbeam go looking for closure. The first half is split between Our Protagonist, Mia’s, present, where she’s part of a crew that restores old buildings IN SPACE, and her time at boarding school where she has a fledgling romance building with the sweet-but-unusual Grace. Tillie Walden’s On A Sunbeam is a beautiful f/f science fantasy graphic novel that started life as a webcomic.
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