Afar

When Boetema sleeps, she finds herself in the bodies of strange alien creatures, but she isn’t merely dreaming, and she doesn’t know how to make sense of what’s happening. Her life is already more difficult than she would like: her parents are moving the family to a new home in Yopan, a city of luxury and goods, and her brother, Inotu, has a habit of getting into trouble. Comics artist turned writer del Duca explores a post-industrialized desert landscape that mixes technology, mythology, and supernatural powers, a fascinating blend of influences made all the more vivid through Seaton’s depictions of the intermeshing of past and future. With little direct exposition, the story depends on Seaton to illustrate the complexity of a setting that features advanced technology, new or mutated animals, and the wildly diverse planets Boetema explores while engaged in what she eventually learns to be astral projection. It’s a rousing adventure set in a world that would seem to have many more tales to tell. Ages 13–up. (Apr.)