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“It’s like the older you get the more you forget that you can change things.”

Release Date: October 2nd, 2018

Genre(s): Young adult, sci-fi, graphic novels, LGBT

Publisher: First Second

Pages: 533

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Synopsis

On A Sunbeam is a young adult science-fiction graphic novel. This book follows Mia and the start of her career when she joins a crew that works on the repair and restoration of older buildings and areas. The book flips between her time at work and her time at school where she met another girl named Grace, and how she’s determined to find her after she disappears one day.

Review

It’s been a little more than ten years since I’ve read a graphic novel, which has been way too long. And even longer since I’ve read a sci-fi graphic novel, so On A Sunbeam was naturally my first pick. It’s been a graphic novel I wanted to read for a while, and I’m happy I finally picked it up. 

I really liked the story in On A Sunbeam. You have the main story of Mia and discovering what happened between her and Grace while she was at school, and how that’s impacting her time at her new job. But you also have other stories happening with some of the characters on the ship, which gets uncovered as the book furthers. There’s a lot of this left open without answers, but for those who do like open-ended stories, and especially subplots, this did create a lot of intrigue. 

Mia is certainly far from a perfect person, and that definitely shows in her actions and the mistakes she makes throughout the novel. I can see some being a bit bothered by this, and while there did eventually come to a point where there was a predictable nature to it, I did appreciate having a flawed character who was trying to right her wrongs. Mia is the youngest of the crew, and her and the support she had from the crew supported her growth throughout the book.

I loved the artistic elements of this book as well. There’s a lot of stunning visuals and scenery that added to the mystery, discomfort, and beauty that space has to offer. Something I noticed as well is how the color schemes changed depending on what was going on – this was such a great and effective way to add to the emotion behind what was happening in each scene. Concepts like these are what I’ve been missing from not reading graphic novels for so long. I love the way the artwork itself contributed to the story.

My main issue with On A Sunbeam is how similar some of the characters turned out to be. While the scenery here is so distinguishable, the characters and their story arcs sometimes weren’t. I would say that this applies more to the artwork itself because some of the characters have similar hair and facial expressions. But there is some open-endedness in terms of character development for some of the characters as well that made them and their stories hard to distinguish from others at times. 

There’s also other elements of the story that are left to be unanswered. There appear to be no men in this story; there is one non-binary character and the others are all women. This is something that I personally did not pick up on for a while, but I know there are others that caught it right away. It’s also something that’s not really explained, so it’s something that made me wonder. It would certainly make for an interesting discussion as to where/if there are male characters in this world, but again, the open-endedness of elements like these might leave some readers wanting to know more.

Overall, I am happy that my return to graphic novels started with On A Sunbeam. While it did have a couple issues here and there, I did enjoy the story, although I would tend to recommend it more to those that prefer some things to be left unanswered.